scholarly journals The Role of Suspended Accounts in Political Discussion on Social Media: Analysis of the 2017 French, UK and German Elections

2021 ◽  
Vol 7 (3) ◽  
pp. 205630512110272
Author(s):  
Silvia Majó-Vázquez ◽  
Mariluz Congosto ◽  
Tom Nicholls ◽  
Rasmus Kleis Nielsen

Content moderation on social media is at the center of public and academic debate. In this study, we advance our understanding on which type of election-related content gets suspended by social media platforms. For this, we assess the behavior and content shared by suspended accounts during the most important elections in Europe in 2017 (in France, the United Kingdom, and Germany). We identify significant differences when we compare the behavior and content shared by Twitter suspended accounts with all other active accounts, including a focus on amplifying divisive issues like immigration and religion and systematic activities increasing the visibility of specific political figures (often but not always on the right). Our analysis suggests that suspended accounts were overwhelmingly human operated and no more likely than other accounts to share “fake news.” This study sheds light on the moderation policies of social media platforms, which have increasingly raised contentious debates, and equally importantly on the integrity and dynamics of political discussion on social media during major political events.

2021 ◽  
Vol 21 (2) ◽  
pp. 95-108
Author(s):  
Susanna Heldt Cassel ◽  
Cecilia De Bernardi

This article focused the analysis on social media representations of Sápmi using the hashtags #visitsápmi and #visitsapmi, which nuance official, top-down versions of the place communicated in other contexts, but simultaneously are more focused on visitors and their experiences. The results show that the making of the Sápmi region as a place and a tourism destination through social media content is an ongoing process of interpretation and reinterpretation of what indigenous Sámi culture is and how it connects to specific localities. Future research should look at the broader understanding of places that can be accessed through social media analysis. The main argument is that visual communication is a very important tool when constructing the brand of a destination. Considering the growing role of social media, the process of place-making through visual communication is explored in the case of the destination VisitSápmi, as it is coconstructed in online user generated content (UGC). From a theoretical viewpoint, we discuss the social construction of places and destinations as well as the production of meaning through coconstruction of images and brands in tourism contexts. The focus is on how places are created, branded, and made meaningful by visualizing the place in a framework of tourism experiences, in this case specifically examined through indigenous tourism. We use a content analysis of texts, photographs, and narratives communicated on social media platforms. Regardless of negotiated brand management's efforts at official marketing, branding, and tourism planning, the evolution of Sápmi as a place to visit in social media has its own logic, full of contradictions and plausible interpretations, related to the uncontrollable and bottom-up processes of UGC.


2020 ◽  
Vol 4 (Supplement_1) ◽  
pp. 694-694
Author(s):  
Tammy Mermelstein

Abstract Preparing for or experiencing a disaster is never easy, but how leaders communicate with older adults can ease a situation or make it exponentially worse. This case study describes two disasters in the same city: Hurricane Harvey and the 2018 Houston Texas Ice Storm and the variation in messaging provided to and regarding older adults. For example, during Hurricane Harvey, the primary pre-disaster message was self-preparedness. During the storm, messages were also about individual survival. Statements such as “do not [climb into your attic] unless you have an ax or means to break through,” generated additional fear for older adults and loved ones. Yet, when an ice storm paralyzed Houston a few months later, public messaging had a strong “check on your elderly neighbors” component. This talk will explore how messaging for these events impacted older adults through traditional and social media analysis, and describe how social media platforms assisted people with rescue and recovery. Part of a symposium sponsored by Disasters and Older Adults Interest Group.


2018 ◽  
Vol 20 (4) ◽  
pp. 295-306
Author(s):  
Christopher J. Schneider

Pogonotrophy refers to beard cultivation including growth and grooming practices. This exploratory study contributes to the little understood role of beard culture on YouTube. Scholarship examining the relationship between social media platforms such as YouTube and beard culture is almost nonexistent. This gap in the research allows us to ask the following: What sorts of content do users circulate about beards on YouTube? And, how does this content contribute to how users interact and learn about beards? A total of 62,061 user-generated comments across 310 videos featured on the Beardbrand YouTube channel were collected and examined using qualitative media analysis. Three themes emerged from an analysis of these data: the yeard quest, the ideal type, and how to beard. The findings illustrate the important role that YouTube plays in fostering contemporary beard culture. Suggestions for future research are noted.


2018 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 205630511775072 ◽  
Author(s):  
William Housley ◽  
Helena Webb ◽  
Meredydd Williams ◽  
Rob Procter ◽  
Adam Edwards ◽  
...  

The increasing popularity of social media platforms creates new digital social networks in which individuals can interact and share information, news, and opinion. The use of these technologies appears to have the capacity to transform current social configurations and relations, not least within the public and civic spheres. Within the social sciences, much emphasis has been placed on conceptualizing social media’s role in modern society and the interrelationships between online and offline actors and events. In contrast, little attention has been paid to exploring user practices on social media and how individual posts respond to each other. To demonstrate the value of an interactional approach toward social media analysis, we performed a detailed analysis of Twitter-based online campaigns. After categorizing social media posts based on action(s), we developed a typology of user exchanges. We found these social media campaigns to be highly heterogeneous in content, with a wide range of actions performed and substantial numbers of tweets not engaged with the substance of the campaign. We argue that this interactional approach can form the basis for further work conceptualizing the broader impact of activist campaigns and the treatment of social media as “data” more generally. In this way, analytic focus on interactional practices on social media can provide empirical insight into the micro-transformational characteristics within “campaign communication.”


Foods ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 10 (12) ◽  
pp. 3144
Author(s):  
Mirian Natali Blézins Moreira ◽  
Cássia Rita Pereira da Veiga ◽  
Zhaohui Su ◽  
Germano Glufke Reis ◽  
Lucilaine Maria Pascuci ◽  
...  

The plant-based alternative meat products market has attracted attention in recent years, as the demand for these products has grown worldwide. To meet the needs of this promising market, marketers must pay attention to the expected benefits of consumers and the insights that can be gleaned from comments posted on social media. This article proposed an investigation of the potential of the content analysis of comments posted on the Instagram social network of food companies that manufacture plant-based alternative meat products to understand the expected benefits by end consumers from the perspective of the classic marketing mix variables. The content posted voluntarily by consumers was organized into 13 categories of expected benefits analyzed within a proposal of evidence from the perspective of the marketing mix. The results showed that, among the insights obtained, 63% were related to the place variable, 21% to the product variable, 11% to the price variable, and 5% to the promotion variable. The insights reinforce the notion that marketing mix variables are crucial factors for companies to make products available in the right place, in the right quantity, and at a fair price, in addition to engaging with consumers through social media.


Author(s):  
Henriette De La Garza ◽  
Mayra B. C. Maymone ◽  
Neelam A. Vashi

Despite the increasing prevalence of social media usage in health care contexts, its impact on skin cancer prevention and awareness has not been largely investigated. We conducted a review of literature on this topic with the objective of summarizing and analyzing the role of social media in skin cancer and sun damage awareness and to identify the uses, benefits, and limitations of different social media platforms on skin cancer prevention. In today’s technological society, it is critical to understand and study the best form of communication. Specific platforms like Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, and TikTok vary in originators of material, target demographics, messaging strategies, and reliability of information with regards to skin cancer, sun, and indoor tanning damage. Our results demonstrate that social media interventions have shown promise in skin cancer prevention and continue to escalate by the day. Dermatologists should keep pace with the latest dermatological content on social media and examine its evolution to target the right audience with the proper messages. Further research is needed to evaluate the effectiveness and true impact of social media on meaningful and lasting behavior change for skin cancer prevention.


2018 ◽  
Vol 35 (4) ◽  
pp. 892-912 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rabeeh Ayaz Abbasi ◽  
Onaiza Maqbool ◽  
Mubashar Mushtaq ◽  
Naif R. Aljohani ◽  
Ali Daud ◽  
...  

2020 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 117-128
Author(s):  
A. I. Podberezkin ◽  
O. A. Podberezkina

Social media analysis is widely used in economics, sociology, in medical studies of spreading infectious diseases and in forensic science to stop terrorist networks and drug proliferation. Social media analysis is also used in political sphere. Opinion leaders are increasingly participating in social media. The Internet is a reflection of the real world, it has the same laws as in real society. The ruling elite controls the media and social media as well as it controls the means of production. The article addresses the role of social networks in the foreign and military policies of states and other actors. The spread of leadership networks is at its early state. The potential of this Internet resource format is enormous. There is every reason to assume that economic crisis makes such resources even more popular. During economic crisis many people are left alone with their problems by their government and they are even more motivated to social cooperation and mutual assistance in social networks to receive valuable information, attention and support from the outside.


Author(s):  
Karolina Sobeczek ◽  
Mariusz Gujski ◽  
Filip Raciborski

Social media platforms are widely used for spreading vaccine-related information. The objectives of this paper are to characterize Polish-language human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccination discourse on Facebook and to trace the possible influence of the COVID-19 pandemic on changes in the HPV vaccination debate. A quantitative and qualitative analysis was carried out based on data collected with a tool for internet monitoring and social media analysis. We found that the discourse about HPV vaccination bearing negative sentiment is centralized. There are leaders whose posts generate the bulk of anti-vaccine traffic and who possess relatively greater capability to influence recipients’ opinions. At the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic vaccination debate intensified, but there is no unequivocal evidence to suggest that interest in the HPV vaccination topic changed.


2021 ◽  
pp. 194016122199409
Author(s):  
Shelley Boulianne ◽  
Karolina Koc-Michalska

Political discussion is a key mechanism for the development of reasoned opinions and political knowledge, but online political discussion has been characterized as uncivil, intolerant, and/or ideologically homogeneous, which is detrimental to this development. In this paper, we examine the role of personality in various forms of political talk—online and offline—as well as like-minded discussion. Based on a 2017 survey conducted in the United Kingdom, United States, and France, we find that people who are open-minded and extraverted are more likely to engage in political talk but less likely to engage in like-minded discussion. Individuals who are older, less educated, introverted, and conscientious are more likely to find themselves in like-minded discussions, both online and on social media. Like-minded discussion is rare; personality, rather than ideology, predicts whether people engage in this form of political talk in online and offline modes. Our findings challenge the role of social media in the creation of like-minded discussion. Instead, we should look to the role of individual attributes, such as personality traits, which create a disposition that motivates the use of social media (and offline networks) to cultivate like-minded discussion.


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