Exploring local meaning-making resources

2019 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
pp. 260-282 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yaqian Jiang ◽  
Camilla Vásquez
Keyword(s):  
Facial Expression ◽  
Meaning Making ◽  
Digital Culture ◽  
Visual Texts ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Social Media Platforms ◽  
Local Meaning ◽  
Affective Meanings ◽  
Textual Meaning ◽  
Chinese Popular Culture

Abstract This study examines various combinations of visual and textual meaning-making resources in a popular Chinese meme. The meme features an exogenous image – the grinning facial expression of a U.S. wrestler, D’Angelo Dinero – that has been recontextualized into numerous other visual texts, to create semiotic ensembles with local meanings, which are then distributed across Chinese social media platforms. We analyzed 60 of these image macros, and our findings show that local meanings are created when Dinero’s facial expression is blended with visual references to Chinese digital culture, Chinese popular culture, Chinese social class issues, Chinese politics, and Chinese institutions. The majority of textual elements in the image macros are Chinese; however, the handful of examples that also include other languages typically involve multilingual wordplay and carnivalesque themes. We argue that although the multivalency of the wrestlers’ facial expression invites interpretations of a wide range of affective meanings, an overarching rebellious or transgressive stance is consistent across individual texts.

Who tells which story and why? Micro and macro contexts in narrative

2008 ◽  
Vol 28 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Anna de Fina
Keyword(s):  
Collective Identity ◽  
Local Community ◽  
Social Space ◽  
Social Power ◽  
Meaning Making ◽  
Symbolic Capital ◽  
Social Processes ◽  
Local Context ◽  
Local Meaning ◽  
The Many

AbstractThis article focuses on the inter-relations between storytelling and micro and macro contexts. It explores how narrative activity is shaped by and shapes in unique ways the local context of interaction in a community of practice, an Italian American card-playing club, but also illustrates how the storytelling events that take place within this local community relate to wider social processes. The analysis centers on a number of topically linked narratives to argue that these texts have a variety of functions linked to the roles and relationships negotiated by individuals within the club and to the construction of a collective identity for the community. However, the narrative activities that occur within the club also articulate aspects of the wider social context. It is argued that, in the case analyzed here, local meaning-making activities connect with macro social processes through the negotiation, within the constraints of local practices, of the position and roles of the ethnic group in the wider social space. In this sense, narrative activity can be seen as one of the many symbolic practices (Bourdieu 2002 [1977]) in which social groups engage to carry out struggles for legitimation and recognition in order to accumulate symbolic capital and greater social power.

scholarly journals Profiles, Identities, Data: Making Abundant and Anchored Selves in a Platform Society

2018 ◽  
Vol 29 (3) ◽  
pp. 169-188 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lukasz Szulc
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Digital Media ◽  
Digital Culture ◽  
Internet Users ◽  
Social Media Platforms

AbstractThe practice of profile making has become ubiquitous in digital culture. Internet users are regularly invited, and usually required, to create a profile for a plethora of digital media, including mega social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter. Understanding profiles as a set of identity performances, I argue that the platforms employ profiles to enable and incentivize particular ways and foreclose other ways of self-performance. Drawing on research into digital media and identities, combined with mediatization theories, I show how the platforms: (a) embrace datafication logic (gathering as much data as possible and pinpointing the data to a particular unit); (b) translate the logic into design and governance of profiles (update stream and profile core); and (c) coax—at times coerce—their users into making of abundant but anchored selves, that is, performing identities which are capacious, complex, and volatile but singular and coherent at the same time.

scholarly journals Social Media, Peer Surveillance, Spiritual Formation, and Mission: Practising Christian Faith in a Surveilled Public Space

2018 ◽  
Vol 16 (4) ◽  
pp. 517-532
Author(s):  
Bex Lewis
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Lived Experience ◽  
Public Space ◽  
Spiritual Formation ◽  
Technological Development ◽  
Self Regulation ◽  
Digital Culture ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Online Spaces ◽  
The Individual

Social media has become a part of everyday life, including the faith lives of many. It is a space that assumes an observing gaze. Engaging with Foucauldian notions of surveillance, self-regulation, and normalisation, this paper considers what it is about social and digital culture that shapes expectations of what users can or want to do in online spaces. Drawing upon a wide range of surveillance research, it reflects upon what “surveillance” looks like within social media, especially when users understand themselves to be observed in the space. Recognising moral panics around technological development, the paper considers the development of social norms and questions how self-regulation by users presents itself within a global population. Focusing upon the spiritual formation of Christian users (disciples) in an online environment as a case study of a community of practice, the paper draws particularly upon the author’s experiences online since 1997 and material from The Big Bible Project (CODEC 2010–2015). The research demonstrates how the lived experience of the individual establishes the interconnectedness of the online and offline environments. The surveillant affordances and context collapse are liberating for some users but restricting for others in both their faith formation and the subsequent imperative to mission.

scholarly journals Psychology, Meaning Making, and the Study of Worldviews

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ann Taves ◽  
Egil Asprem ◽  
Elliott Daniel Ihm
Keyword(s):  
Meaning Making ◽  
Sense Making ◽  
Evolutionary Perspective ◽  
Cognitive Level ◽  
Multidisciplinary Study ◽  
Human Ability ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Object Of Study ◽  
Different Levels ◽  
Ways Of Life

To get beyond the solely negative identities signaled by atheism and agnosticism, we have to conceptualize an object of study that includes religions and non-religions. We advocate a shift from “religions” to “worldviews” and define worldviews in terms of the human ability to ask and reflect on “big questions” ([BQs], e.g., what exists? how should we live?). From a worldviews perspective, atheism, agnosticism, and theism are competing claims about one feature of reality and can be combined with various answers to the BQs to generate a wide range of worldviews. To lay a foundation for the multidisciplinary study of worldviews that includes psychology and other sciences, we ground them in humans’ evolved world-making capacities. Conceptualizing worldviews in this way allows us to identify, refine, and connect concepts that are appropriate to different levels of analysis. We argue that the language of enacted and articulated worldviews (for humans) and world-making and ways of life (for humans and other animals) is appropriate at the level of persons or organisms and the language of sense making, schemas, and meaning frameworks is appropriate at the cognitive level (for humans and other animals). Viewing the meaning making processes that enable humans to generate worldviews from an evolutionary perspective allows us to raise news questions for psychology with particular relevance for the study of nonreligious worldviews.

scholarly journals Prevalence of health misinformation in social media: a systematic review (Preprint)

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Victor Suarez-Lledo ◽  
Javier Alvarez-Galvez
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
Systematic Review ◽  
Social Media ◽  
Eating Disorders ◽  
Communicable Disease ◽  
Health Concern ◽  
Public Health Concern ◽  
Medical Treatments ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Social Media Platforms

BACKGROUND The propagation of health misinformation through social media has become a major public health concern over the last two decades. Although today there is broad agreement among researchers, health professionals, and policy makers on the need to control and combat health misinformation, the magnitude of this problem is still unknown. Consequently, before adopting the necessary measures for the adequate control of health misinformation in social media, it is fundamental to discover both the most prevalent health topics and the social media platforms from which these topics are initially framed and subsequently disseminated. OBJECTIVE This systematic review aims to identify the main health misinformation topics and their prevalence on different social media platforms, focusing on methodological quality and the diverse solutions that are being implemented to address this public health concern. METHODS This systematic review was conducted according to the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic reviews and Meta-Analyses guidelines (PRISMA). We searched PubMed, MEDLINE, Scopus and the Web of Science for articles published in English before March 2019 with a particular focus on studying health misinformation in social media. We defined health misinformation as a health-related claim based on anecdotal evidence, false, or misleading due to the lack of existing scientific knowledge. The criteria for inclusion were: 1) articles that focused on health misinformation in social media, including those in which the authors discussed the consequences or purposes of health misinformation; and 2) studies that described empirical findings regarding the measurement of health misinformation in these platforms. RESULTS A total of 69 studies were identified as eligible, covering a wide range of health topics and social media platforms. The topics were articulated around six principal categories: vaccines (32%), drugs or smoking (22%), non-communicable disease (19%), pandemics (10%), eating disorders (9%), and medical treatments (7%). Studies were mainly based on five methodological approaches: Social Network Analysis (28%), Evaluating Content (26%), Evaluating Quality (24%), Content/Text analysis (16%) and Sentiment Analysis (6%). Health misinformation proved to be the most more prevalent in studies related to smoking products and drugs such as opioids or marijuana. Posts with misinformation reached 87% in some studies focused in smoking products. Health misinformation about vaccines was also very common (43%), but studies reported different levels of misinformation depending on the different vaccines, with the Human Papilloma Virus (HPV) vaccine being the most affected. Secondly, health misinformation related to diets or pro eating disorders (pro-ED) arguments were moderate in comparison to the aforementioned topics (36%). Studies focused on diseases (i.e. non-communicable diseases and pandemics) also reported moderate misinformation rates (40%), especially in the case of cancer. Finally, the lowest levels of health misinformation were related to medical treatments (30%). CONCLUSIONS Prevalence of health misinformation was most common on Twitter and on issues related to smoking products and drugs. However, misinformation is also high on major public health issues such as vaccines and diseases. Our study offers a comprehensive characterization of the dominant health misinformation topics and a comprehensive description of their prevalence in different social media platforms, which can guide future studies and help in the development of evidence-based digital policy actions plans. CLINICALTRIAL

scholarly journals Electoral Disinformation: Looking Through the Lens of Tsek.ph Fact Checks

Plaridel ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 17 (1) ◽  
pp. 285-295
Author(s):  
Yvonne Chua ◽  
Jake Soriano
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Presidential Election ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Midterm Elections ◽  
Fertile Ground ◽  
Social Media Platforms ◽  
The Media ◽  
Fact Checking

Elections are fertile ground for disinformation. The 2019 midterm elections, like the 2016 presidential election, buttress this observation. This ugly side of electoral contests is documented by Tsek.ph, a pioneering collaborative fact-checking initiative launched by three universities and eleven newsrooms specifically for the midterms. Its repository of fact checks provides valuable insights into the nature of electoral disinformation before, during and after the elections. Clearly, electoral disinformation emanates from candidates and supporters alike, on conventional (e.g., speeches and sorties) and digital (e.g., social media) platforms. Its wide range of victims includes the media no less.

Affective meanings and social relations: identities and positions in the social space

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jens Ambrasat ◽  
Christian von Scheve
Keyword(s):  
Social Relations ◽  
Conceptual Knowledge ◽  
Social Space ◽  
Sociological Theory ◽  
Meaning Making ◽  
Occupational Status ◽  
Regional Culture ◽  
The Social ◽  
Affective Meanings ◽  
Affective Relations

Ever since Georg Simmel’s seminal works, social relations have been a central building block of sociological theory. In relational sociology, social identities are an essential concept and supposed to emerge in close interaction with other identities, discourses and objects. To assess this kind of relationality, existing research capitalises on patterns of meaning making that are constitutive for identities. These patterns are often understood as forms of declarative knowledge and are reconstructed, using qualitative methods, from denotative meanings as they surface: for example, in stories and narratives. We argue that this approach to some extent privileges explicit and conceptual knowledge over tacit and non-conceptual forms of knowledge. We suggest that affect is a concept that can adequately account for such implicit and bodily meanings, even when measured on the level of linguistic concepts. We draw on affect control theory (ACT) and related methods to investigate the affective meanings of concepts (lexemes) denoting identities in a large survey. We demonstrate that even though these meanings are widely shared across respondents, they nevertheless show systematic variation reflecting respondents’ positions within the social space and the typical interaction experiences associated with their identities. In line with ACT, we show, first, that the affective relations between exemplary identities mirror their prototypical, culturally circumscribed and institutionalised relations (for example, between role identities). Second, we show that there are systematic differences in these affective relations across gender, occupational status and regional culture, which we interpret as reflecting respondents’ subjective positioning and experience vis-à-vis a shared cultural reality.

Mapping the Pilgrimage Network

2021 ◽  
pp. 58-88
Author(s):  
Marion Grau
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Social Issues ◽  
Meaning Making ◽  
Participant Observation ◽  
Nation Building ◽  
World War ◽  
Post World War Ii ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Local Officials ◽  
Religious Meaning

This chapter outlines the author’s approach to research and method, as well as the scope and timeline of participant observation. The redevelopment of the Norwegian pilgrimage network comes on the heels of the post–World War II European efforts to build transregional and transnational peace. Historic pilgrimage routes become part of this network but are slow to begin in Protestant contexts. In contemporary pilgrimage, embodiment and relations to other pilgrims are central ingredients. It is through physical relations to landscape and people that sacred, transforming encounters are sought. Ritual creativity features strongly in how such encounters are facilitated by pilgrim priests, hosts, government, local officials, artists, and scores of volunteers. Religious meaning-making and secular nation-building are closely intertwined in these efforts to lift up and preserve, if not stage, local heritage. A consistent ambivalence is the overlap between pilgrims and tourists, and questions of spirituality and consumption. As Norway’s population has become more diverse religiously and ethnically, actors continually adjust the pilgrimage network to the needs of a changing population and a wide range of social issues.

Crypto-currencies narrated on tweets: a sentiment analysis approach

2019 ◽  
Vol 36 (1) ◽  
pp. 58-72
Author(s):  
Saeed Rouhani ◽  
Ehsan Abedin
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Radical Change ◽  
Media Analysis ◽  
Support Vector ◽  
Policy Makers ◽  
Content Type ◽  
The Social ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Social Media Platforms ◽  
Social Opinions

Purpose Crypto-currencies, decentralized electronic currencies systems, denote a radical change in financial exchange and economy environment. Consequently, it would be attractive for designers and policy-makers in this area to make out what social media users think about them on Twitter. The purpose of this study is to investigate the social opinions about different kinds of crypto-currencies and tune the best-customized classification technique to categorize the tweets based on sentiments. Design/methodology/approach This paper utilized a lexicon-based approach for analyzing the reviews on a wide range of crypto-currencies over Twitter data to measure positive, negative or neutral sentiments; in addition, the end result of sentiments played a training role to train a supervised technique, which can predict the sentiment loading of tweets about the main crypto-currencies. Findings The findings further prove that more than 50 per cent of people have positive beliefs about crypto-currencies. Furthermore, this paper confirms that marketers can predict the sentiment of tweets about these crypto-currencies with high accuracy if they use appropriate classification techniques like support vector machine (SVM). Practical implications Considering the growing interest in crypto-currencies (Bitcoin, Cardano, Ethereum, Litcoin and Ripple), the findings of this paper have a remarkable value for enterprises in the financial area to obtain the promised benefits of social media analysis at work. In addition, this paper helps crypto-currencies vendors analyze public opinion in social media platforms. In this sense, the current paper strengthens our understanding of what happens in social media for crypto-currencies. Originality/value For managers and decision-makers, this paper suggests that the news and campaign for their crypto in Twitter would affect people’s perspectives in a good manner. Because of this fact, the firms, investing in these crypto-currencies, could apply the social media as a magnifier for their promotional activities. The findings steer the market managers to see social media as a predictor tool, which can analyze the market through understanding the opinions of users of Twitter.

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