From parasocial to parakin: Co-creating idols on social media

2020 ◽  
pp. 146144482093331
Author(s):  
Qing Yan ◽  
Fan Yang

Star worship is an ever-growing phenomenon around the globe. Across various social media platforms in China, a new idol–fan relationship model has emerged, such that the fans have stepped up from merely worshipping the idols to being able to co-cultivate their idols, including their public images, the scope of their work, and even their personal lives. Based on a grounded theory approach, this study utilized text analysis and in-depth interviews to explore parakin relationships between fans and idols and proposed a dual motivation model to explain the motivations of fans for forming such a relationship. The findings extend current fandom literature by exploring a new front of fan–idol interactions in the context of social media. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.

2020 ◽  
Vol 6 (4) ◽  
pp. 205630512098446
Author(s):  
Yiftach Ron ◽  
Camelia Suleiman ◽  
Ifat Maoz

The goal of this study is to examine the ways in which dialogue and peace are promoted and mobilized through a Facebook page in the protracted, ethnopolitical conflict between Israeli-Jews and Palestinians. A thematic qualitative text analysis based on the grounded theory approach was conducted on posts and comments that were published on the Facebook page of the Israeli grassroots movement Women Wage Peace (WWP), created by the Jewish and Arab women that participate in this movement. Our findings point to three major mechanisms through which attempts to mobilize peace were performed: building solidarity, maintaining engagement, and calling for action, thus contributing to our understanding of social media as a dialogue-provoking platform that enables users from different gender and ethnopolitical groups in divided and conflicted societies to perform peacebuilding actions. However, the findings indicate that at the same time, the page also constitutes a space for blatant expressions of hostility, hatred, and sexism that convey a backlash against the initiative and activity of WWP.


2017 ◽  
Vol 46 (5) ◽  
pp. 970-987 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sophie Hennekam

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to examine how artists deal with having multiple potentially incompatible work-related identities as a result of a career transition from making a living exclusively as artists to taking on additional work outside the creative industries. Design/methodology/approach In all, 40 semi-structured in-depth interviews were conducted by telephone with artists in the Netherlands. A grounded theory approach was used to analyze the findings. Findings Four different strategies for dealing with multiple potentially incompatible identities were identified: integration, accumulation, separation and dis-identification. The findings suggest that the informal social context, the support of rejection of important others, influenced the strategy adopted by the artists. Invalidation from the environment often leads to stress and separation or dis-identification strategies, while validation seems to lead to integration and accumulation strategies that are less psychologically straining. Practical implications The findings stress the importance of the external environment. While the workers had to deal with their own psychological stress and regret about not succeeding at working exclusively as artists, they also had to create a feasible story that allowed them to “sell” their transition to others. Originality/value Careers are becoming increasingly non-linear, and the number of workers who need to juggle multiple (potentially conflicting) work-related identities is rising. However, how workers deal with this has received only limited attention from researchers.


2018 ◽  
Vol 36 (4) ◽  
pp. 511-515
Author(s):  
Erika Strazdins ◽  
Kathryn Dwan ◽  
Melanie Pescud ◽  
Lyndall Strazdins

AbstractBackgroundIncreasing numbers of GPs are reducing the hours they work in clinical practice. The reasons for and implications of this are not well-understood.ObjectiveTo investigate how the demands of general practice, especially new time pressures, impact GPs’ professional and personal lives and work hour choices.MethodUsing a grounded theory approach, we conducted 26 in-depth interviews with GPs working in Australia.ResultsTime-bound consultation windows, the complexity of patients presenting to general practice and consequent administrative and emotional burdens placed upon GPs combined to increase time pressures and an intensifying clinical load. Many GPs also strove to sequester time for family and reported burnout and poor health along with abiding concerns for quality of care.ConclusionThis study suggests a need for new policies on how clinical consultations are timed and remunerated in keeping with a changed GP demography, new demands and a more complex patient care profile.


2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (23) ◽  
pp. 13032
Author(s):  
Hongmei Song ◽  
Chris Zhu ◽  
Lawrence Hoc Nang Fong

As Chinese traditional villages are receiving increasing attention from the country, society and business in terms of sustainable tourism development, their residents’ perceptions have not been thoroughly investigated. To contribute to the literature, this qualitative study, which was based on stakeholder theory, conducted semi-structured in-depth interviews with 12 different stakeholders in Hongcun, one of the most well-known traditional villages in China. Using grounded theory approach, this study found that residents’ perceptions and attitudes of sustainable development differed in four main areas—economic, environmental, social, and cultural—and several sub-themes were developed to influence these four areas. The study results have important theoretical and practical implications for current sustainable tourism development in traditional villages. In particular, these results have substantial value for the country, society, and business levels with respect to developing traditional village sustainable tourism based on the perceptions and attitudes of the residents.


2021 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 205630512110213
Author(s):  
Brooke Erin Duffy ◽  
Annika Pinch ◽  
Shruti Sannon ◽  
Megan Sawey

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.


2021 ◽  
pp. 1326365X2110037
Author(s):  
D. Guna Graciyal ◽  
Deepa Viswam

Virtual engagement of lives has been made possible with the advent of social media. Almost 80% of the day are spent virtually on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, Snapchat, etc. Usage of social media to connect to and communicate with the ones we care about is always healthy, termed as social networking. Social dysfunction occurs when the constant communication leads to the point where our real or offline life gets replaced by virtual or online life. There is a slight boundary between social networking and social dysfunction. When social networking is advantageous, social dysfunction affects emotional well-being. When emotional well-being is affected, many users experience a compulsion to dissociate from the real world as they find virtual world, full of fantasy and enjoyment. When the Internet was created, perhaps no one was aware of its potential. More than the convenience for sharing of information it has brought the world so close to crumbling the geographical boundaries. The more people-to-people communication is, the more is the strengthening of relationships, bonds grow stronger with ‘more’ social media platforms. Being on ‘more’ social media platforms has become a benchmark for living amidst the younger generation. Either as an activity of happiness or as an activity of pleasure, users tend to use social media at varying levels. This paper aims to conceptualize the the intricacies of social media in young lives and to discern whether their association is happiness or pleasure activity. The research method of this paper has a mixed-methods research design combining data from structured survey with information outputs from in-depth interviews.


2021 ◽  
pp. 146144482110118
Author(s):  
Dominik Neumann ◽  
Patricia T Huddleston ◽  
Bridget K Behe

Marketing on social media has become ubiquitous. Consequently, social media platforms are increasing the level of advertising content that users may later encounter when navigating online shopping websites. It is unclear how this amplification of exposure to marketing messages through social media affects consumers’ attitudes to products online. Furthermore, the roles of social media participation and proneness to experience Fear of Missing Out on product attitude remain largely unexplored. In this research ( N = 1002), we employed an online survey of US Instagram users. These data were submitted to three-way moderation regression analyses with attitude toward the product as the dependent variable. Consumers who are more active on social media and had high (vs low) Fear of Missing Out expressed more favorable attitudes toward online products after being exposed to Instagram content (vs not exposed). The theoretical and practical implications for cognitive processing research and advertising strategy and study limitations are discussed.


SAGE Open ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 215824402110145
Author(s):  
Zhengwei Huang ◽  
Jing Ouyang ◽  
Xiaohong Huang ◽  
Yanni Yang ◽  
Ling Lin

Medical crowdfunding in social media is growing to be a convenient, accessible, and secure manner to cover medical expenses. It differs from traditional donation initiatives and medical crowdfunding on non-social media platforms in that projects are disseminated via social media network and among acquaintances. Through semi-structured in-depth interviews on donation behaviors of 52 respondents, this study uses grounded theory to extract seven main categories that affect medical crowdfunding donation behavior in social media, namely interpersonal relationship, reciprocity of helping, attitude toward donation, perceived behavior control, perceived trust, project information, and characteristics of patients. In the spirit of Elaboration Likelihood Model, we develop a theoretical framework that the seven factors influence donation behavior in medical crowdfunding in social media via a central and a peripheral route.


2021 ◽  
Vol ahead-of-print (ahead-of-print) ◽  
Author(s):  
Suman Choudhary ◽  
Kirti Mishra

Purpose This paper aims to explore the implications of virtual work arrangements on employee knowledge hiding (KH) behaviour and the different strategies of KH used by employees in these arrangements. Design/methodology/approach Following a grounded theory approach to understanding KH, 21 semi-structured in-depth interviews were conducted with employees engaged in virtual working setups. The data collected from these informants were then analysed using qualitative methods. Findings The study revealed that virtual work arrangements increase employee KH behaviour because of three reasons: ease of hiding, digital burnout and loss of control. Further, the study found that rationalized hiding is the most commonly adopted strategy by employees engaged in virtual work arrangements, while inclinations towards evasive hiding strategy decrease in this arrangement. Originality/value This is the first study in knowledge management literature that seeks to explain KH in the virtual work context.


2007 ◽  
Vol 22 (4) ◽  
pp. 140-146 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shannon McCready ◽  
Denise Reid

Student musicians frequently need to take breaks from playing their instruments because of physical playing-related injuries, yet little is known about their experiences with these occupational disruptions. We conducted a qualitative study that explored student musicians' lived experiences with unplanned disruptions stemming from engagement in their major occupation of playing an instrument. In-depth interviews with seven student musicians who attended either a special arts high school or a university were conducted. Consistent with a grounded theory approach to qualitative research, the constant comparative method of qualitative data analysis was implemented. A major finding related to the theme of “being and becoming,” where student musicians expressed a strong sense of belonging to a group of other like musicians who they learned from, relied on for support, and created music with. Another theme was motivation to excel, where students expressed a strong desire and motivation to improve and master their instrument. Occupational tensions and pressures emerged as another theme. Students were aware of the need to practice and the need to care for their bodies. A constant negotiation was required in which students struggled to find a good balance between the need to practice and to respect their bodies while maintaining an identity of a musician. These findings are discussed in relation to how health care providers and educators need to understand the demands and stresses associated with playing an instrument so that they can better support these young musicians.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document