The murder of Charles Taylor

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elizabeth Yardley
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Media Coverage ◽  
Identity Management ◽  
Charles Taylor ◽  
Gendered Identities ◽  
Media Practices ◽  
Insight Into

This chapter analyses the murder of Charles Taylor by his daughter-in-law, Amanda Taylor, in Virginia. On April 4, 2015, 59-year-old Charles Taylor was killed by Amanda, then 24, and her friend, 32-year-old Sean Ball. During the visit, the conversation turned to the topic of Rex Taylor, Amanda's late husband, who had committed suicide in August 2014. Amanda blamed Charles for Rex's suicide. The case highlight the performance of valued gendered identities through networked media prior to, during and following the homicide. The chapter first provides a background on Amanda's relationship with Rex and Charles Taylor as well as on Sean Ball before considering the context that yields some insight into Amanda as a homicide perpetrator. It also examines Amanda's media practices and her social media posts about the murder, media coverage of her while she was in prison, and her identity management as a killer.

Disconnective intimacies through social media: practices of transnational family among overseas Chinese students in Australia

2019 ◽  
Vol 173 (1) ◽  
pp. 36-52 ◽  
Author(s):  
Xinyu Zhao
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
International Students ◽  
Family Relations ◽  
Transnational Families ◽  
Cross Border ◽  
Transnational Family ◽  
Use Of Social Media ◽  
Media Practices ◽  
Contemporary Chinese ◽  
Insight Into

This article investigates Chinese international students’ everyday transnational family practices through the use of social media. Specifically, the article highlights the relevance of two interlinked forms of disconnection in these students’ daily negotiations of ambivalent cross-border family relations in an age of always-on connectivity. The first form involves their disconnection from the general public via their creation of intimate spaces on social media that are exclusive to their family members. The second form involves the students detaching themselves from such intimate spaces, often temporarily, to escape and resist familial control and surveillance. I conclude the article by developing the notion of ‘disconnective intimacy’ to conceptualise contemporary Chinese transnational families. This article contributes to the literature on the transnational family by providing an insight into the micro-politics of mediated co-presence through the trope of ‘disconnective practice’.

The flashing of fireflies

2016 ◽  
Vol 37 (3) ◽  
pp. 52-56
Author(s):  
Peter Buell Hirsch
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Social Engagement ◽  
Design Methodology ◽  
Audience Engagement ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Social Media Engagement ◽  
Original Insight ◽  
Media Practices ◽  
Insight Into

Purpose This paper aims to identify the characteristics of enduring audience engagement through social media. Design/methodology/approach The approach is to examine recent examples of successful social media practices to identify common characteristics. Findings The most common characteristics of successful social media engagement include continuous beta, co-ownership, room for error and convenor-ship. Originality/value The author’s analogy of successful social media to the biophysical phenomenon of entrainment is an original insight into social engagement.

scholarly journals “Gendering” the Self in Online Dating Discourse

2013 ◽  
Vol 38 (4) ◽  
Author(s):  
Melonie Fullick
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Social Life ◽  
Online Dating ◽  
The Self ◽  
Cultural Resources ◽  
New Literacy ◽  
Self Presentation ◽  
Gendered Identities ◽  
Gender Presentation ◽  
Insight Into

Online dating has become an increasingly acceptable way for “singles” to meet appropriate partners. The author uses discourse analysis to explore the use of language in the construction of gendered identities in 20 online profiles, comparing the norms of gender presentation and communication with the ways in which language is used to signal various kinds of gendered “selves.” Dating sites require users to develop a new literacy of self-presentation, one that reinforces and re-inscribes the tendency toward promotionalism that permeates contemporary social life. In this context, how are Internet and social media users tapping into existing social and cultural resources and putting gender norms to work in their representations of self? How do online dating sites provide insight into an ongoing, reflexive process of self-promotion and self-construction?Les services de rencontre en ligne sont devenus un moyen de plus en plus acceptable pour les célibataires de chercher des partenaires convenables. Dans cet article, l’auteure a recours à l’analyse du discours afin d’explorer, dans vingt profils en ligne, l’utilisation du langage pour la construction d’une identité sexuée. L’auteure compare les normes de présentation et de communication de genre avec la manière dont le langage est utilisé pour afficher diverses sortes de soi sexués. Les sites de rencontre obligent les utilisateurs à développer une nouvelle présentation de soi qui renforce et réinscrit une tendance à ce type de promotion qui est si présent dans la vie sociale contemporaine. Dans ce contexte, comment les utilisateurs d’internet et des médias sociaux utilisent-ils les ressources sociales et culturelles qui sont à leur disposition et comment incorporent-ils les normes de genre dans leurs représentations de soi? Comment d’autre part les sites de rencontre permettent-ils de mieux comprendre les processus continus et réflexifs de la promotion et de la construction de soi?

scholarly journals Young Women’s Mental Illness and (In-)visible Social Media Practices of Control and Emotional Recognition

2020 ◽  
Vol 6 (4) ◽  
pp. 205630512096383
Author(s):  
Natalie Ann Hendry
Keyword(s):  
Mental Health ◽  
Social Media ◽  
Mental Illness ◽  
Psychiatric Service ◽  
Youth Mental Health ◽  
Research Attention ◽  
The Social ◽  
Media Practices ◽  
Insight Into

What “counts” as a mental illness–related image matters. Most research attention has focused on distressing or recognizable mental illness–related visual practices, yet this offers partial insight into youth mental health. Using visibility and practice theories, I share an in-depth case study exploring the social media practices of four young women, aged 14–17 years, engaged with an Australian adolescent psychiatric service. They describe how being visible to others on social media potentially produces anxiety and burdens them to respond to others’ questions or unhelpful support. In response, they engage in practices of control to manage the vulnerability of mental illness and burdensome sociality. Their mental illness–related media practices are often invisible; they rework mental illness through ambiguous, supportive or humorous practices or, through imagined intimacy, engage with images that feel relatable to them even if the images do not depict recognizable mental illness content or employ recognizable hashtags or titles. These insights complicate “what counts” as mental illness–related content or practices on social media and challenge researchers and practitioners to consider the sociotechnical contexts that shape young people’s mental health.

Discussion: the complex contexts of social media homicide confessions

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elizabeth Yardley
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Social Group ◽  
Charles Taylor ◽  
Conceptual Frameworks ◽  
The Family ◽  
Media Practices

This chapter examines the cases of Jennifer Alfonso, Randy Janzen and Charles Taylor collectively in the context of the relevant conceptual frameworks. It first considers the perpetrators' media practices prior to becoming involved in homicide before discussing their confessions, focusing on continuities and changes. It shows that the family emerged as a prominent social group in the perpetrators' social media archives, and that the perpetrators all admitted responsibility for taking the lives of others but in very different ways. The narratives, the chapter suggests, were rooted in perpetrators' social realities and structural locations. The chapter also highlights the broader structures and contexts in which people like Derek Medina, Randy Janzen and Amanda Taylor make homicide confessions on social media and concludes by proposing directions for future criminological enquiry into media in homicide.

scholarly journals Using interpersonal communication strategies to encourage science conversations on social media

PLoS ONE ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 15 (11) ◽  
pp. e0241972
Author(s):  
Curtis Martin ◽  
Bertrum H. MacDonald
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Interpersonal Communication ◽  
Communication Strategies ◽  
Scientific Information ◽  
Scientific Content ◽  
Governmental Organizations ◽  
Non Governmental Organizations ◽  
Understanding Of Science ◽  
Media Practices ◽  
Insight Into

Today, many science communicators are using social media to share scientific information with citizens, but, as research has shown, fostering conversational exchanges remains a challenge. This largely qualitative study investigated the communication strategies applied by individual scientists and environmental non-governmental organizations on Twitter and Instagram to determine whether particular social media practices encourage two-way conversations between science communicators and citizens. Data from Twitter and Instagram posts, interviews with the communicators, and a survey of audience members were triangulated to identify emergent communication strategies and the resulting engagement; provide insight into why particular practices are employed by communicators; and explain why audiences choose to participate in social media conversations with communicators. The results demonstrate that the application of interpersonal communication strategies encourage conversational engagement, in terms of the number of comments and unique individuals involved in conversations. In particular, using selfies (images and videos), non-scientific content, first person pronoun-rich captions, and responding to comments result in the formation of communicator-audience relationships, encouraging two-way conversations on social media. Furthermore, the results indicate that Instagram more readily supports the implementation of interpersonal communication strategies than Twitter, making Instagram the preferred platform for promoting conversational exchanges. These findings can be applicable to diverse communicators, subjects, audiences, and environments (online and offline) in initiatives to promote awareness and understanding of science.

The Role of Platforms in Fulfilling the Potential of Crowdfunding as an Alternative Decentralized Arena for Cultural Financing

2019 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 115-140 ◽  
Author(s):  
Roei Davidson
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Heterogeneous System ◽  
Media Practices ◽  
Corporate Blog

Abstract This study considers cultural crowdfunding as a heterogeneous system that allows money and attention to flow from backers to founders of cultural projects in diverse cultural sectors and focuses on the nature of the standards governing it. It analyzes Kickstarter’s corporate blog since the platform’s launch and finds indications that social media practices are increasingly naturalized as integral to crowdfunding and that social media architectures are increasingly adopted by the crowdfunding platform. This, I argue, has a potential exclusionary effect. At the same time, the analysis finds evidence that Kickstarter is striving to develop an independent capacity to set aesthetic standards, which might moderate that effect and help constitute crowdfunding as an alternative decentralized arena for the funding of culture.

Media Coverage and Solidarity after Tragedies: The Reporting of School Shootings in Two Nations

2012 ◽  
Vol 11 (6) ◽  
pp. 845-874 ◽  
Author(s):  
James Hawdon ◽  
James Hawdon ◽  
Atte Oksanen ◽  
James Hawdon ◽  
Atte Oksanen ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Media Coverage ◽  
New York Times ◽  
Virginia Tech ◽  
School Shootings ◽  
Considerable Research ◽  
National Comparison ◽  
The Media ◽  
Insight Into ◽  
Cross National

Abstract Although considerable research analyzes the media coverage of school shootings, there is a lack of cross-national comparative studies. Yet, a cross-national comparison of the media coverage of school shootings can provide insight into how this coverage can affect communities. Our research focuses on the reporting of the school shootings at Virginia Tech in the U.S. and Jokela and Kauhajoki in Finland. Using 491 articles from the New York Times and Helsingin Sanomat published within a month of each shooting we investigate how reports vary between the nations and among the tragedies. We investigate if one style of framing a tragedy, the use of a “tragic frame,” may contribute to differences in the communities’ response to the events.

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