Not quite an echo chamber: ethnic debate on Ethiopian Facebook pages during times of unrest

2020 ◽  
Vol 42 (3) ◽  
pp. 365-379 ◽  
Author(s):  
Terje Skjerdal ◽  
Sintayehu Gebru
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
State Of Emergency ◽  
The Public ◽  
Political Situation ◽  
Mainstream Media ◽  
Primary Means ◽  
Echo Chamber ◽  
The Government ◽  
Facebook Pages ◽  
Chamber Effect

Social media commonly function as alternative channels for debate in controlled media societies, often supported by the digital diaspora. This study takes a closer look at Ethiopia, where communication traditionally has been controlled by the government. The situation was particularly tense between 2016 and 2017, when a state of emergency act was declared following anti-government protests. The study scrutinizes three of the most popular online channels during the unrest (Ethiopian DJ, Mereja.com and Zehabesha), all of which used Facebook as their primary means of communication. The findings show that the stories posted by the sites were overwhelmingly political, with a particular focus on ethnic issues. Reader reactions show a slightly different pattern, concentrating less on politics and more on society and culture. This could be an expression of felt anxiety among the public due to the tense political situation. Interestingly, when users did comment on ethnic issues, they were not in agreement, but debated the issues intensely and fiercely. A diversity of views was represented. The study concludes that an echo chamber effect was not detected. For lack of appropriate channels for public discussion in the mainstream media, Facebook accommodated a space for political exchange during the state of emergency.

scholarly journals Media Sosial Dan Kebijakan Kapolri Mengenai ”Hate Speech” (Ujaran Kebencian)

2016 ◽  
Vol 14 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Satria Kusuma ◽  
Djuara P. Lubis
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Public Space ◽  
Information Technologies ◽  
Hate Speech ◽  
Public Information ◽  
Shared Responsibility ◽  
The Public ◽  
Political Situation ◽  
The Government ◽  
False News

The developments of information technologies affect the life of democracy in Indonesia. Information technology such as social media has caused social change. Social media should be a public space to establish relations and public information centers. The user submits a message to create a closer ties with the community and convey information about social problems. The public get information faster from social media rather than print media, radio and television. But there are some people who spread false news (hoaxes) or even attack the other party through hate speech. Such actions lead to defamation toward certain people then lead public opinion to worsen the socio-political situation, causing a split. The insult to the President by a citizen through a message on social media which continues to the proceedings reminds us to be more concerned about the ethical consideration of communication in public spaces. This issue should be a shared responsibility between the organizers and users of social media in order to maintain a cultured communication behavior and ethical understanding. The policy from the head of Indonesian Police regarding hate speech in social media is the firm stance of the government against violators who deliberately spread messages of hate, violate the values, norms, manners and ethics. The act of spreading the message of hate speech is against the law. Hate speech message ruins the conduciveness of social and political situation. This kind of violation could threaten the mentality of younger generations as users of social media in creating a civilized communication in Indonesia.Keywords: hate speech policy, messages of hate, and social media.

scholarly journals ANALISIS MESEJ DAKWAH ISLAMIAH DALAM HALAMAN FACEBOOK

2020 ◽  
Vol 3 (SI1) ◽  
pp. 41-51
Author(s):  
Mohd Baharudin Othman ◽  
Mohd Nazif Badruddin
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
New Media ◽  
Positive Impact ◽  
Rapid Development ◽  
Framing Theory ◽  
Delivery Strategy ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Government ◽  
Use Of Social Media ◽  
Facebook Pages

  The rapid development of new media gives an impact on almost every corner of people’s life. This development also opens the opportunity to the missionaries to use social media as a medium to deliver Islamic propagation. Hence, the transformation occurs in the method of Islamic propagation delivery among the missionaries who started using social media, especially Facebook. This is because social media is suitable as a compliment and an alternative medium to the da’wah medium of the existing. However, the use of social media in delivering the message of Islamic da’wah should be carried out prudently and wisely to different audiences. Accordingly, this research aims to identify the category of the message, the function of the messages, and the delivery strategy of Islamic propagation through the medium of Facebook of five elected missionaries. Five Facebook pages have been chosen and analyzed using the thematic analysis with NVivo software. The theme of this study has been prepared in advance because this research involves the knowledge related to the Islamic laws that have been established by the tenets of Islam. The theoretical framework of this study is built base on the Framing Theory. The results obtained showed that the majority of the messages displayed in the selected Facebook pages categorized as religious missionaries. The function to encourage charity is a message that often discussed in the analyzed entry. However, the strategy of choice for missionaries to be applied on their Facebook page is the writing that has the effect of information. The findings can be referred to the missionaries and also to the government agencies and NGOs in practicing and strategizing before the establishment of Islamic missionary message is disseminated to the public. Utilizing an accurate delivery strategy will be more appealing and provide a positive impact on society.   Keywords: Social media, Facebook, Islamic Da’wah, Framing Theory

scholarly journals Quantifying Media Effects, Its Content, and Role in Promoting Community Awareness of Chikungunya Epidemic in Bangladesh

Epidemiologia ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 84-94
Author(s):  
Mst. Marium Begum ◽  
Osman Ulvi ◽  
Ajlina Karamehic-Muratovic ◽  
Mallory R. Walsh ◽  
Hasan Tarek ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Web Based ◽  
Study Objective ◽  
The Public ◽  
Mainstream Media ◽  
Related Information ◽  
Vector Borne ◽  
Media Outlet ◽  
And Control

Background: Chikungunya is a vector-borne disease, mostly present in tropical and subtropical regions. The virus is spread by Ae. aegypti and Ae. albopictus mosquitos and symptoms include high fever to severe joint pain. Dhaka, Bangladesh, suffered an outbreak of chikungunya in 2017 lasting from April to September. With the goal of reducing cases, social media was at the forefront during this outbreak and educated the public about symptoms, prevention, and control of the virus. Popular web-based sources such as the top dailies in Bangladesh, local news outlets, and Facebook spread awareness of the outbreak. Objective: This study sought to investigate the role of social and mainstream media during the chikungunya epidemic. The study objective was to determine if social media can improve awareness of and practice associated with reducing cases of chikungunya. Methods: We collected chikungunya-related information circulated from the top nine television channels in Dhaka, Bangladesh, airing from 1st April–20th August 2017. All the news published in the top six dailies in Bangladesh were also compiled. The 50 most viewed chikungunya-related Bengali videos were manually coded and analyzed. Other social media outlets, such as Facebook, were also analyzed to determine the number of chikungunya-related posts and responses to these posts. Results: Our study showed that media outlets were associated with reducing cases of chikungunya, indicating that media has the potential to impact future outbreaks of these alpha viruses. Each media outlet (e.g., web, television) had an impact on the human response to an individual’s healthcare during this outbreak. Conclusions: To prevent future outbreaks of chikungunya, media outlets and social media can be used to educate the public regarding prevention strategies such as encouraging safe travel, removing stagnant water sources, and assisting with tracking cases globally to determine where future outbreaks may occur.

scholarly journals UPAYA PENCEGAHAN PEMUTUSAN HUBUNGAN KERJA PEKERJA DI SEKTOR FORMAL BERDASARKAN KEADAAN MEMAKSA PANDEMI COVID-19

2021 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 139-161
Author(s):  
Steven Suprantio
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
Job Creation ◽  
Public Health Emergency ◽  
State Of Emergency ◽  
Business World ◽  
The Public ◽  
Economic Slowdown ◽  
The Government ◽  
Economic Necessity ◽  
Government Workers

The business world everywhere including those in Indonesia cannot but felt the brunt of economic slowdown caused by the public health emergency (the COVID 19 pandemic). Quite a few national and local businesses have had to close their operation and lay off all its employees. Although the consensus between the government, workers (individuals and unions) as well as employers is to prevent and avoid termination of employment at all costs, the Law No. 11 of 2020, re. Job Creation allows massive dismissal of employees due to economic necessity or state of emergency. This article shall critically examine how the prevailing law, Law No. 11 of 2020 re. Job Creation regulates termination of employment in case of state of emergency.  

scholarly journals THE ROLE OF INSTAGRAM AS AN INFORMATION DELIVERANCE TO THE CITIZEN BY THE PUBLIC RELATIONS OF SALATIGA CITY GOVERNMENT

2019 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 111
Author(s):  
Silvia Widya Kusumaningtyas ◽  
Zon Vanel
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Public Relations ◽  
Active Role ◽  
City Government ◽  
Online Information ◽  
The Public ◽  
Information Media ◽  
Government Public Relations ◽  
The Government

<span lang="IN">Social media is one type of new media that facilitates the process of communication among human. Social media makes it easy for users to communicate and share information in a wider range. At present, not only people use Instagram, but the government also needs to keep up with the time to participate in using Instagram as an online information media. Public Relations of the Salatiga Government is one of the public relations departments that uses Instagram as an online information media to provide information needed by the community.<br /> This research aimed to find out how the content of the information was<span>  </span>and how the role of instagram was as an information deliverance to the citizen by the public relations of Salatiga. Through qualitative methods research, data is collected by means of interviews and observations. The results showed that the Salatiga <span> </span>Government Public Relations Instagram account had a role to increase brand awareness, connect many people and as a source of information/ business promotion.Public Relations of the Salatiga Government considers that Instagram plays an active role in conveying information to the public. This is seen from the many positive responses received by the Salatiga City Government Public Relations during managing Instagram as a modern information deliverance.<span>     </span></span>

Who is Setting Emotions? A Comparative Study on Emotion Diffusion in Social Media among Public, Government and Media during the COVID-19 Pandemic in China (Preprint)

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shuhuan Zhou ◽  
Yi Wang
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Information Exchange ◽  
Positive Emotions ◽  
Negative Emotions ◽  
Chinese Government ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Media ◽  
The Government ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Time Point

BACKGROUND During the COVID-19 outbreak, social media served as the main platform for information exchange, through which the Chinese government, media and public would spread information. At the same time, a variety of emotions interweave, and the public emotions would also be affected by the government and media. OBJECTIVE This study aims to investigate the types, trends and relationships of emotional diffusion in Chinese social media among the public, the government and the media under the pandemic of COVID-19 (December 30,2019, to July 1,2020) . METHODS In this paper, Python 3.7.0 and its data crawling framework Scrapy 1.5.1 are used to write a web crawler program to search for super topics related to COVID-19 on Sina Weibo platform of different keywords . Then, we used emotional lexicon to analyze the types and trends of the public, government and media emotions on social media. Finally cross-lagged regression was applied to build the relationships of different subjects’ emotions. RESULTS The highlights of our study are threefold: (1) The public, the government and the media mainly diffuse positive emotions during the COVID-19 pandemic in China; (2) Emotional diffusion shows a certain change over time, and negative emotions are obvious in the initial phase of the pandemic, with the development of the pandemic, positive emotions surpass negative emotions and remain stable. (3)The impact among the three main emotions with the period as the time point is weak, while the impact of emotion with the day as the time point is relatively obvious. The emotions of the public and the government impact each other, and the media emotions can guide the public emotions. CONCLUSIONS This is the first study of comparing pubic, government and media emotions on the social media during COVID-19 pandemic in China. The pubic, the government and the media mainly diffuse positive emotions during the pandemic. And the government and the media have better effect on short-term emotional guidance. Therefore, when the pandemic suddenly occurs, the government and the media should intervene in time to solve problems and conflicts and diffuse positive and neutral emotions. In this regard, the government and the media can play important roles through social media in the major outbreaks. At the theoretical level, this paper takes China's epidemic environment and social media as the background to provide one of the explanatory perspectives for the spread of emotions on social media. At the some time, because of this special background, it can provide comparison and reference for the research on internet emotions in other countries.

FANTASI KELOMPOK PENDUKUNG PRABOWO DI MEDIA SOSIAL PADA DEBAT PEMILIHAN PRESIDEN INDONESIA 2019

2019 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 47-58
Author(s):  
Laskarko Patria
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Support Group ◽  
Analysis Method ◽  
Economic Independence ◽  
Fantasy Theme Analysis ◽  
The Public ◽  
National Economic ◽  
The Government ◽  
Public Audience ◽  
Fantasy Themes

This research uses the theory of Symbolic Convergence, with the Subjective-Interpretive paradigm, with the Qualitative approach, and the Fantasy Theme Analysis method. The object of this research is the public audience/netizens who use Youtube-TVONE social media, during the broadcast of the 2019 Presidential Election Debate (Pilpres). Methods of data collection, using Observation and Documentation techniques. Netizens’ comments on Youtube social media at the time of the Debate show, are data that are the object of research. The research data is in the form of comments from netizens who are considered relevant are support presidential candidate Prabowo Subianto. The purpose of this study is to identify and interpret fantasy themes that appear in comments on Youtube. The results showed that fantasy themes that often appear in netizen’s comments are Leadership and Character. The meaning of the imagination of Prabowo’s support group is that the public wants Prabowo to be president, because he has a good character, honest, courageous, assertive, and has a leadership spirit, so he can regulate and discipline state ofcials and realize national economic independence. Prabowo’s support group was convinced that the president had to be replaced, because he did not have a leadership spirit, and the government was now considered less effective, and not pro-people. 

Implementation of Social Media Concepts for E-Government

2019 ◽  
pp. 1071-1091
Author(s):  
Raimundo Díaz-Díaz ◽  
Daniel Pérez-González
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Citizen Participation ◽  
Smart Cities ◽  
City Council ◽  
Political Agenda ◽  
The Public ◽  
Partnership Model ◽  
The Government ◽  
Technological Platform

Some governments have proven social media's potential to generate value through co-creation and citizen participation, and municipalities are increasingly using these tools in order to become smart cities. Nevertheless, few public administrations have taken full advantage of all the possibilities offered by social media and, as a consequence, there is a shortage of case studies published on this topic. By analyzing the case study of the platform Santander City Brain, managed by the City Council of Santander (Spain), the current work contributes to broaden the knowledge on ambitious social media projects implemented by local public administrations for e-Government; therefore, this case can be useful for other public sector's initiatives. The case studied herein proves that virtual social media are effective tools for civil society, as it is able to set the political agenda and influence the framing of political discourse; however, they should not be considered as the main channel for citizen participation. Among the results obtained, the authors have found that several elements are required: the determination and involvement of the government, a designated community manager to follow up with the community of users, the secured privacy of its users, and a technological platform that is easy to use. Additionally, the Public Private Partnership model provides several advantages to the project, such as opening new sources of funding.

Chinese Citizenry Social Media Pressures and Public Official Responses

2020 ◽  
pp. 139-181
Author(s):  
James Robert Masterson
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Public Domain ◽  
Chinese Government ◽  
Public Official ◽  
Government Officials ◽  
The Public ◽  
Access Information ◽  
The Government ◽  
Use Of Social Media ◽  
High Level

Widespread use of social media in China is a double edged sword: social media offers opportunities for the government to connect with society, gauge the opinion of citizens in the public domain, and allow citizens to voice their anger when necessary by blowing off steam online rather than in the streets. However, social media also allows citizens to access information outside of China much more rapidly and efficiently and to link up and communicate with other citizens much more quickly. Social media allows users to share texts, photos, and files, making it much more difficult for the government to control information and to thwart organizing for political purposes. In some instances, the use of social media has forced the Chinese government to take actions that it otherwise would not have done or to reverse actions or policies already set in place. The goal of this chapter is to illustrate the double-edged sword that social media poses to government officials in China, particularly high-level party officials in Beijing.

Social Media and Marriage Equality in Australia: The Media Roles in the Public Sphere and the Agenda-Setting

2020 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 1
Author(s):  
Yuhanyin Ma
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Public Sphere ◽  
Agenda Setting ◽  
Decisive Role ◽  
Marriage Equality ◽  
Same Sex ◽  
Same Sex Marriage ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Government ◽  
The Public Sphere

<p align="justify">Marriage equality or the equal status of same-sex marriage has undergone a rather tough road in Australia, involving diverging opinions in parties at the state and federal levels and constitutional amendments. It appears that people in power set the agenda on the legalization of same-sex marriage. However, it cannot be denied that social media played an almost decisive role in this process because it enabled the gathering of massive public opinion to pressure the government to make changes. To be specific, social media or social networking sites offered platforms for people concerned to share reports about the progress of foreign countries in legalizing same-sex marriage, to express their opinions and to launch campaigns in support of their beliefs. This essay explores the role that social media played in the legalization of marriage equality movement in Australia from the perspectives of the public sphere theory and the agenda-setting theory.</p>

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