scholarly journals Managing Diverse Online Networks in the Context of Polarization: Understanding How We Grow Apart on and through Social Media

2020 ◽  
Vol 6 (4) ◽  
pp. 205630512097571
Author(s):  
Cigdem Bozdag

Social media enable their users to be connected with a diverse group of people increasing their chances of coming across divergent viewpoints. Thus, network diversity is a key issue for understanding the potentials of social media for creating a cross-cutting communication space that is one of the premises of a functioning democracy. This article analyzes the strategies social media users adopt to manage their network diversity in the context of increasing polarization. The study is based on 29 semi-structured interviews with diverse social media users from Turkey and qualitative network maps. Furthermore, the study adopts a cross-platform approach comparing Facebook, Twitter, and WhatsApp in relation to the diversity of their users’ networks. The study shows that social media users adopt different strategies interchangeably in specific contexts. These strategies include visible (unfriending, blocking) and invisible (muting, unfollowing, and ignoring) forms of disconnection, debating, observing divergent opinions, and self-censorship. Political interest of social media users, political climate, issue sensitivity, and “imagined affordances” of social media platforms play a role in users’ choices about which strategy to choose when they are confronted with divergent viewpoints through their diverse online networks. Building on the unfriending literature that points out to rather partisan users, who unfriend, unfollow or block others, this article demonstrates that in peak moments of polarization, also the politically disengaged or moderate users disconnect from diverse others.

Author(s):  
Cristina Miguel

This paper aims to contribute to the understanding of how to study the way people build intimacy and manage privacy through social media interaction. It explores the research design and methodology of a research project based on a multi-sited case study composed of three different social media platforms: Badoo, CouchSurfing, and Facebook. This cross-platform approach is useful to observe how intimacy is often negotiated across different platforms. The research project focuses on the cities of Leeds (UK) and Barcelona (Spain). In particular, this article discusses the methods used to recruit participants and collect data for that study - namely, participant observation, semi-structured interviews, and user profiles analysis. This cross-platform approach and multi-method research design is helpful to investigate the nature of intimacy practices facilitated by social media at several levels: online/offline, across different platforms, among different types of relationships, within both new and existing relationships, and in different locations


2021 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 205630512110088
Author(s):  
Ioana Literat ◽  
Neta Kligler-Vilenchik

Adopting a comparative cross-platform approach, we examine youth political expression and conversation on social media, as prompted by popular culture. Tracking a common case study—the practice of building Donald Trump’s border wall within the videogame Fortnite—across three social media platforms popular with youth (YouTube, TikTok, Instagram), we ask: How do popular culture artifacts prompt youth political expression, as well as cross-cutting political talk with those holding different political views, across social media platforms? A mixed methods approach, combining quantitative and qualitative content analysis of around 6,400 comments posted on relevant artifacts, illuminates youth popular culture as a shared symbolic resource that stimulates communication within and across political differences—although, as our findings show, it is often deployed in a disparaging manner. This cross-platform analysis, grounded in contemporary youth culture and sociopolitical dynamics, enables a deeper understanding of the interplay between popular culture, cross-cutting political talk, and the role that different social media platforms play in shaping these expressive practices.


2015 ◽  
Vol 24 (1) ◽  
pp. 28-42 ◽  
Author(s):  
Laurence Dessart ◽  
Cleopatra Veloutsou ◽  
Anna Morgan-Thomas

Purpose – This paper aims to delineate the meaning, conceptual boundaries and dimensions of consumer engagement within the context of online brand communities both in term of the engagement with the brand and the other members of the online brand communities. It also explores the relationships of consumer engagement with other concepts, suggesting antecedents of engagement. Design/methodology/approach – Data are collected through semi-structured interviews with 21 international online brand community members, covering a variety of brand categories and social media platforms. Findings – This paper suggests that individuals are engaging in online communities in social network platforms both with other individuals and with brands. The study also identifies three key engagement dimensions (cognition, affect and behaviours). Their meaning and sub-dimensions are investigated. The paper further suggests key drivers, one outcome and objects of consumer engagement in online brand communities. These findings are integrated in a conceptual framework. Research limitations/implications – Further research should aim at comparing consumer engagement on different social media and across brand categories, as this study takes a holistic approach and does not focus on any particular category of brands or social media. Consumers’ views should also be evaluated against and compared with marketing managers’ understanding of consumer engagement. Originality/value – This paper contributes to the fast-growing and fragmented consumer engagement literature by refining the understanding of its dimensions and situating it in a network of conceptual relationships. It focusses on online brand communities in rich social media contexts to tap into the core social and interactive characteristics of engagement.


2021 ◽  
pp. 146144482110595
Author(s):  
Matthew Barnidge ◽  
Michael A Xenos

Some people live in social media “news deserts,” while others are embedded in online networks that are rich in news content. These news deserts represent a new form of digital inequality—distinct from problems of access, resources, or civic skills—that could foreclose one of the ways social media are believed to contribute to informing citizens and engaging them in democratic processes: providing opportunities for incidental news exposure. This study investigates incidental exposure on social media platforms, drawing on an online survey administered just before the 2018 US Midterm Elections ( N = 1493). The study finds that even after controlling for key individual-level factors, characteristics of social media discussion networks play a role in explaining variation in incidental exposure. The results are discussed in light of prevailing theory about incidental exposure, public engagement, and digital inequalities.


2020 ◽  
pp. 193229682096558
Author(s):  
Kristen Chalmers ◽  
Mia Smith ◽  
Megan Moreno ◽  
Faisal Malik

Background: The majority of adolescents with type 1 diabetes (T1D) integrate social media engagement into their daily lives. The aim of this study was to explore adolescents’ experiences and perspectives discussing their T1D on social media. Methods: Semi-structured interviews with adolescents with T1D were conducted in person and via telephone. Questions focused on the participant’s experiences utilizing social media to discuss T1D and factors that informed the nature of T1D-related social media engagement. Open coding and thematic content analysis were used to identify emergent themes that aligned with accepted domains of social media affordances. Results: Participants included 35 adolescents with T1D. Adolescents’ experiences related to discussing T1D on social media aligned with four affordances of social media: identity, cognitive, emotional, and social. The identity affordances of social media platforms allowed adolescents to curate online personas that selectively included their diagnosis of T1D, while managing the potential negative emotional and social implications linked to the stigma of T1D. Adolescents who decided to discuss T1D on social media leveraged cognitive affordances by providing and receiving diabetes management advice, emotional affordances by obtaining affirmation from peers, and social affordances by extending their network to include other individuals with T1D. Conclusions: Adolescents with T1D flexibly leverage the affordances offered by social media to access emotional support, information, and identity affirmation resources while navigating stigma-based social consequences. Our findings highlight the value of developing tools to support adolescents with T1D in comfortably discussing and receiving appropriate support about T1D on social media.


Author(s):  
Hannah Sally Glassman ◽  
Paul Rhodes ◽  
Niels Buus

Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) is an NGO designed to support anyone who identifies as alcoholic to stop drinking alcohol. Existing qualitative research in this field has primarily reflected the experiences of those who have conformed to AA ideology and had positive experiences in AA. To address this, the current study aimed to explore the perspectives and experiences of individuals who have left AA with some degree of disappointment. The study involved semi-structured interviews with 11 ex-members of AA from America, Australia, and England, who were recruited from several private social media platforms. The study used an interactionist conception of social career involving conversion and deconversion, and data were analyzed thematically. Findings included that while participants experienced some genuinely positive aspects of AA, they retrospectively believed that they remained in AA because they had been indoctrinated into a particular way of understanding themselves. Moreover, findings highlighted participants’ concerns with the people, ideology and practices within AA that ultimately led to their dissociation from the community. Our findings demonstrate a disparity between the idealistic principles in AA and the actual experiences of participants, and this is discussed in relation to the breadth of possible experiences across varying groups and AA’s unregulated peer-to-peer framework.


Author(s):  
Mark Richard Johnson ◽  
Jamie Woodcock

The website and platform Twitch.tv is the overwhelming market leader in the live broadcast (“streaming”) of user-created videos over the internet, known primarily for the streaming of video game play. In both 2016 and 2017 over two million people regularly broadcast on the platform, resulting in over a million years of video content in total viewed by over one hundred million people (Twitch, 2017). The deep newness of this phenomenon, alongside the many elements that constitute it, make it an important site for studying digital labour, co-production, and gaming culture. In this paper we focus on three elements of the conference theme: the shifting political and creative economies of streaming media, in our case Twitch; social media, platforms, podcasts, and actors in online networks; and the materialities of data, in our case a million years of video content. Specifically, we consider the entangling of the technical and social dimensions of the Twitch phenomenon: how these elements shape the labour of Twitch streamers, audience engagement with the platform, and Twitch’s wider position in contemporary media production. To do so we draw upon semi-structured interviews with over one hundred professional streamers on the Twitch platform, lasting between ten minutes and one hour, alongside at least one hour of ethnographic observation from over two hundred Twitch channels and ethnographic work from almost a dozen gaming events in the United Kingdom, United States, Germany and Poland in the past two years.


2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrés Monroy-Hernández ◽  
Jazmin Gonzalez-Rivero ◽  
danah boyd ◽  
Benjamin Mako Hill

In this paper, we explore the role that attribution plays in shaping user reactions to content reuse, or remixing, in a large user-generated content community. We present two studies using data from the Scratch online community – a social media platform where hundreds of thousands of young people share and remix animations and video games. First, we present a quantitative analysis that examines the ef- fects of a technological design intervention introducing au- tomated attribution of remixes on users’ reactions to being remixed. We compare this analysis to a parallel examination of “manual” credit-giving. Second, we present a qualita- tive analysis of twelve in-depth, semi-structured, interviews with Scratch participants on the subject of remixing and at- tribution. Results from both studies suggest that automatic attribution done by technological systems (i.e., the listing of names of contributors) plays a role that is distinct from, and less valuable than, credit which may superficially involve identical information but takes on new meaning when it is given by a human remixer. We discuss the implications of these findings for the designers of online communities and social media platforms.


2020 ◽  
pp. 146144482090244
Author(s):  
Laura A. Pasquini ◽  
Paul William Eaton

Social media platforms and digital networks have enabled professionals to communicate with colleagues, disseminate information, and co-create knowledge. As the Internet has grown up and social networks have scaled, there is an increased awareness of the occupational impact of being online. Prior research in postsecondary education has examined the structure of social networks, imagined audiences online, openness of practice, and informational/communication patterns of academics. We conducted 92 semi-structured interviews with higher educational professionals beyond the faculty/academic role to understand motivations and challenges online. Participants shared how they navigate digital identity and contribute to networked practices in professional online communities. Multiple factors influence and impact the use of social media over time, specifically as professionals reflect on their digital presence, network affiliations, and informal learning opportunities. We identify seven networked practices: kinship in community, self-directed learning, digital norms, navigating context collapse, career advancement, reputation management, and risk versus reward assessment.


Author(s):  
Fay Cobb Payton ◽  
Natasha Pinto

This chapter describes the role social media plays in patient communication at hospitals. The chapter explores how social media platforms are used by national and local hospitals to deliver higher quality healthcare and increase patient engagement. Using an in-depth literature review and semi-structured interviews at two local hospitals, the chapter assesses how hospitals approach traditional and social media strategies. The chapter identifies the importance of using both online and offline communication strategies for the most comprehensive and effective delivery of healthcare. The chapter also includes a discussion of how social media has the ability to influence health information seeking and the patient-physician relationship.


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