scholarly journals Social media visibility: challenges to activism

2017 ◽  
Vol 40 (1) ◽  
pp. 41-58 ◽  
Author(s):  
Julie Uldam
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Social Media ◽  
Media Studies ◽  
Security And Privacy ◽  
Online Security ◽  
Social Media Platforms ◽  
The Media ◽  
Government Surveillance ◽  
The Uk ◽  
Corporate Social

As activists move from alternative media platforms to commercial social media platforms, they face increasing challenges in protecting their online security and privacy. While government surveillance of activists is well-documented in scholarly research and the media, corporate surveillance of activists remains under-researched. This article examines BP’s surveillance of activists who criticise the company’s corporate social responsibility (CSR) programme as ‘greenwashing’. In this way, it goes beyond corporations’ uses of big data and instead explores how they monitor and discuss strategies for responding to the activities of individual activists in social media. It shows that while social media afford an unprecedented level of visibility for activists, it comes with the risk of being monitored by corporations. Theoretically, it draws on conceptions of visibility in social sciences and media studies as well as literature on activism and political participation in media studies. Empirically, it draws on files from BP on specific civil society individuals obtained through Subject Access Requests under the UK Data Protection Act 1998 as well as press responses from BP.

scholarly journals Defending the media from itself: Reforming media regulations to minimise the impact of misinformation

European View ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 18 (2) ◽  
pp. 210-219
Author(s):  
Juha-Pekka Nurvala ◽  
Amelia Buckell
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Social Media ◽  
Case Studies ◽  
Search Engines ◽  
Behavioural Changes ◽  
Social Media Platforms ◽  
The Media ◽  
The Uk ◽  
The Impact

This article argues that media regulations on correcting incorrect articles are in dire need of reform due to technological and behavioural changes. By using case studies from the UK, the authors demonstrate the huge difference between the number of people who were reached by the original article before the Independent Press Standards Organisation (the regulator in the UK) ruled it incorrect and the number reached by the correction or corrected article. The authors argue that media regulations must be reformed to ensure that corrections reach the same people as the original incorrect article to avoid misinformation impacting peoples’ decision-making, and that reforms must include social media platforms and search engines.

Coming out of the closet? Audience reactions to the heteronormative disruptive advertising

2020 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
pp. 75-102
Author(s):  
Ramasela Semang L. Mathobela ◽  
Shepherd Mpofu ◽  
Samukezi Mrubula-Ngwenya
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Human Rights ◽  
Coming Out ◽  
Gender Issues ◽  
Qualitative Approach ◽  
Positive Development ◽  
Global Trend ◽  
Social Media Platforms ◽  
The Media

An emerging global trend of brands advertising their products through LGBTIQ+ individuals and couples indicates growth of gender awareness across the globe. The media, through advertising, deconstructs homophobia and associated cultures through the use of LGBTIQ+s in commercials. This qualitative research paper centres the advancement of debates on human rights and social media as critical in the interaction between corporates and consumers. The Gillette, Chicken Licken‘s Soul Sisters and We the Brave advertisements were used to critically analyse how audiences react to the use of LGBTIQ+ characters and casts through comments posted on the brands‘ social media platforms. Further, the paper explored the role of social media in the mediation of significant gender issues such as homosexuality that are considered taboo to engage in. The paper used a qualitative approach. Using the digital ethnography method to observe comments and interactions from the chosen advertisement‘s online platforms, the paper employed queer and constructionist theories to deconstruct discourses around same-sex relations as used in commercials, especially in quasiconservative. The data used in the paper included thirty comments of the brands customers and audiences obtained from Twitter, Facebook and YouTube. The paper concludes there are positive development in human rights awareness as seen through advertisements and campaigns that use LGBTIQ+ communities in a positive light across the world.

scholarly journals The Nested Precarities of Creative Labor on Social Media

2021 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 205630512110213
Author(s):  
Brooke Erin Duffy ◽  
Annika Pinch ◽  
Shruti Sannon ◽  
Megan Sawey
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Cultural Production ◽  
Ecological Model ◽  
Creative Economy ◽  
Cultural Industries ◽  
Professional Success ◽  
Social Media Platforms ◽  
The Media ◽  
Depth Interviews

While metrics have long played an important, albeit fraught, role in the media and cultural industries, quantified indices of online visibility—likes, favorites, subscribers, and shares—have been indelibly cast as routes to professional success and status in the digital creative economy. Against this backdrop, this study sought to examine how creative laborers’ pursuit of social media visibility impacts their processes and products. Drawing upon in-depth interviews with 30 aspiring and professional content creators on a range of social media platforms—Instagram, YouTube, TikTok, Pinterest, and Twitter—we contend that their experiences are not only shaped by the promise of visibility, but also by its precarity. As such, we present a framework for assessing the volatile nature of visibility in platformized creative labor, which includes unpredictability across three levels: (1) markets, (2) industries, and (3) platform features and algorithms. After mapping out this ecological model of the nested precarities of visibility, we conclude by addressing both continuities with—and departures from—the earlier modes of instability that characterized cultural production, with a focus on the guiding logic of platform capitalism.

scholarly journals Social Media Toxicity Classification Using Deep Learning: Real-World Application UK Brexit

Electronics ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 10 (11) ◽  
pp. 1332
Author(s):  
Hong Fan ◽  
Wu Du ◽  
Abdelghani Dahou ◽  
Ahmed A. Ewees ◽  
Dalia Yousri ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Hate Speech ◽  
Modern Society ◽  
User Generated Content ◽  
Real World Application ◽  
Proposed Model ◽  
Social Media Platforms ◽  
Public Dataset ◽  
The Uk ◽  
Harmful Side Effect

Social media has become an essential facet of modern society, wherein people share their opinions on a wide variety of topics. Social media is quickly becoming indispensable for a majority of people, and many cases of social media addiction have been documented. Social media platforms such as Twitter have demonstrated over the years the value they provide, such as connecting people from all over the world with different backgrounds. However, they have also shown harmful side effects that can have serious consequences. One such harmful side effect of social media is the immense toxicity that can be found in various discussions. The word toxic has become synonymous with online hate speech, internet trolling, and sometimes outrage culture. In this study, we build an efficient model to detect and classify toxicity in social media from user-generated content using the Bidirectional Encoder Representations from Transformers (BERT). The BERT pre-trained model and three of its variants has been fine-tuned on a well-known labeled toxic comment dataset, Kaggle public dataset (Toxic Comment Classification Challenge). Moreover, we test the proposed models with two datasets collected from Twitter from two different periods to detect toxicity in user-generated content (tweets) using hashtages belonging to the UK Brexit. The results showed that the proposed model can efficiently classify and analyze toxic tweets.

scholarly journals ‘Rival visions of reality’: An analysis of the framing of Boko Haram in Nigerian newspapers and Twitter

2018 ◽  
Vol 11 (4) ◽  
pp. 392-406 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mercy Ette ◽  
Sarah Joe
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Reliability And Validity ◽  
Research Tool ◽  
Terrorist Group ◽  
Framing Analysis ◽  
Boko Haram ◽  
Media Space ◽  
Social Media Platforms ◽  
The Media

This article focuses on the framing of Boko Haram, a transnational terrorist group, in legacy and social media platforms. The discussion is predicated on the understanding that in spite of its popularity as a research tool, the concept of framing is still problematic. One area of contention has been the reliability and validity of framing analysis. Drawing on Robert Entman’s seminal definition, this study investigates the viability of two innovative framing approaches and explores the intersection of the framing of Boko Haram in four Nigerian newspapers and Twitter. The authors argue that, while newspapers continue to dominate the media space, it is important to acknowledge the growing relevance of social media in shaping and influencing the opinion of their users. The study’s findings support the viability of these approaches and come to the conclusion that exploring the differences between the platforms can unearth different versions of reality.

scholarly journals Confronting the digital mob: Press coverage of online justice seeking

2020 ◽  
Vol 35 (6) ◽  
pp. 597-612
Author(s):  
Daniel Trottier
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Press Coverage ◽  
Social Actors ◽  
The Public ◽  
News Reports ◽  
The Press ◽  
Social Media Platforms ◽  
The Uk

This article offers an exploratory account of press coverage of digitally mediated vigilantism. It considers how the UK press renders these events visible in a sustained and meaningful way. News reports and editorials add visibility to these events, and also make them more tangible when integrating content from social media platforms. In doing so, this coverage directs attention to a range of social actors, who may be perceived as responsible for these kinds of developments. In considering how other social actors are presented in relation to digital vigilantism, this study focusses on press accounts of those either initiating or being targeted by online denunciations, and also on a broader and often amorphous range of spectators to such events, often referred to as ‘internet mobs’. Relatedly, this article explores how specific practices related to digital vigilantism such as denunciation are expressed in press coverage, as well as coverage of motivations by the public to either participate or facilitate such practices. Reflecting on how the press represent mediated denunciation will illustrate not only how tabloids and broadsheets frame such practices, but also how they take advantage of connective and data-generating affordances associated with social platforms.

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.

scholarly journals The public accountability of social platforms: lessons from a study on bots and trolls in the Brexit campaign

2018 ◽  
Vol 376 (2128) ◽  
pp. 20180003 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marco Bastos ◽  
Dan Mercea
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Ethical Issues ◽  
Lessons Learned ◽  
Information Warfare ◽  
The Public ◽  
Social Media Platforms ◽  
Application Programming ◽  
Access To Data ◽  
The Uk

In this article, we review our study of 13 493 bot-like Twitter accounts that tweeted during the UK European Union membership referendum debate and disappeared from the platform after the ballot. We discuss the methodological challenges and lessons learned from a study that emerged in a period of increasing weaponization of social media and mounting concerns about information warfare. We address the challenges and shortcomings involved in bot detection, the extent to which disinformation campaigns on social media are effective, valid metrics for user exposure, activation and engagement in the context of disinformation campaigns, unsupervised and supervised posting protocols, along with infrastructure and ethical issues associated with social sciences research based on large-scale social media data. We argue for improving researchers' access to data associated with contentious issues and suggest that social media platforms should offer public application programming interfaces to allow researchers access to content generated on their networks. We conclude with reflections on the relevance of this research agenda to public policy. This article is part of a discussion meeting issue ‘The growing ubiquity of algorithms in society: implications, impacts and innovations'.

Is Snapchat Discover really a news platform? News snacking from social media and users’ knowledge of current affairs

2021 ◽  
Vol 00 (00) ◽  
pp. 1-23
Author(s):  
Jayeon Lee
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Negative Relationship ◽  
The United States ◽  
Journalism Studies ◽  
Soft News ◽  
Current Affairs ◽  
Social Media Platforms ◽  
The Media ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Negative Predictor

The role of the media in informing the public has long been a central topic in journalism studies. Given that social media platforms have become today’s major source of news, it is important to understand the impact of social media use on citizens’ knowledge of current affairs. While people get news from multiple platforms throughout the day, most research treats social media as a single entity or examines only one or two major platforms ignoring newer social media platforms. Drawing on news snacking framework, this study investigates how using some of today’s most popular social media platforms predicts users’ current affairs knowledge, with particular attention to Snapchat and its news section Discover. A survey conducted in the United States (N=417) demonstrated that each of the platforms is distinct: Twitter is a strongly positive predictor of knowledge, Facebook a marginally significant negative predictor, Reddit a significantly negative predictor and Instagram not a significant predictor. Overall Snapchat use has no significant association with users’ knowledge of current affairs, whereas Discover use has a negative relationship. Further analysis revealed that mere exposure to Snapchat is positively related to soft-news knowledge and attention to Discover is negatively related to hard-news knowledge.

Platform Politics: The Emergence of Alternative Social Media in India

2021 ◽  
Vol 31 (2) ◽  
pp. 269-276
Author(s):  
Prashanth Bhat
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Public Sphere ◽  
Hate Speech ◽  
Right Wing ◽  
Bharatiya Janata Party ◽  
The World ◽  
Social Media Platforms ◽  
Media Platform ◽  
Corporate Social ◽  
Widespread Dissemination

Widespread dissemination of hate speech on corporate social media platforms such as Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube has necessitated technological companies to moderate content on their platforms. At the receiving end of these content moderation efforts are supporters of right-wing populist parties, who have gained notoriety for harassing journalists, spreading disinformation, and vilifying liberal activists. In recent months, several prominent right-wing figures across the world were removed from social media - a phenomenon also known as ‘deplatforming’- for violating platform policies. Prominent among such right-wing groups are online supporters of the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in India, who have begun accusing corporate social media of pursuing a ‘liberal agenda’ and ‘curtailing free speech.’ In response to deplatforming, the BJP-led Government of India has aggressively promoted and embraced Koo, an indigenously developed social media platform. This commentary examines the implications of this alternative social platform for the online communicative environment in the Indian public sphere.

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