scholarly journals Political Social Media Sites as Public Sphere: A Case Study of the Norwegian Labour Party

Author(s):  
Marius Rohde Johannessen ◽  
Asbjørn Følstad
Author(s):  
Collen Sabao ◽  
Tendai Owen Chikara

The chapter examines and discusses the role and communicative potential of social media based platforms in citizen political participation and protests in Zimbabwe specifically focusing on the #thisflag movement on Facebook, Twitter and Whatsapp. #thisflag is a social media-based platform that rose to challenge the Zimbabwean government over the political and economic decay as well as rampant corruption characterising the country contemporarily. While a new phenomenon to Zimbabwe and Zimbabwean politics, the impact and communicative potential of social media as an alternative public sphere was recently tested in nationwide protest stayaway organised through the Facebook and Twitter movement under the #thisflag handle/brand. This chapter discusses the manners in which such social media platforms impact national politics in Zimbabwe as well as globally, specifically looking at the #thisflag movement as a case study.


2020 ◽  
pp. 772-786
Author(s):  
Collen Sabao ◽  
Tendai Owen Chikara

The chapter examines and discusses the role and communicative potential of social media based platforms in citizen political participation and protests in Zimbabwe specifically focusing on the #thisflag movement on Facebook, Twitter and Whatsapp. #thisflag is a social media-based platform that rose to challenge the Zimbabwean government over the political and economic decay as well as rampant corruption characterising the country contemporarily. While a new phenomenon to Zimbabwe and Zimbabwean politics, the impact and communicative potential of social media as an alternative public sphere was recently tested in nationwide protest stayaway organised through the Facebook and Twitter movement under the #thisflag handle/brand. This chapter discusses the manners in which such social media platforms impact national politics in Zimbabwe as well as globally, specifically looking at the #thisflag movement as a case study.


Author(s):  
Debashis ‘Deb' Aikat

The world's largest democracy with a population of over 1.27 billion people, India is home to a burgeoning media landscape that encompasses a motley mix of traditional and contemporary media. Drawing from the theoretical framework of the networked public sphere, this extensive case study focuses on the role of social media in India's media landscape. Results indicate that new social media entities complement traditional media forms to inform, educate, connect, and entertain people from diverse social, ethnic, religious, and cultural origins. The author concludes that social media enable Indian citizens to actively deliberate issues and ideas, increase their civic engagement and citizen participation, and thus enrich India's democratic society.


2018 ◽  
Vol 32 (4) ◽  
pp. 389-400
Author(s):  
Brendan O’Hallarn ◽  
Stephen L. Shapiro ◽  
Marion E. Hambrick ◽  
D.E. Wittkower ◽  
Lynn Ridinger ◽  
...  

Popular social media platforms have faced recent criticism because of the tendency for users to exhibit strongly negative behaviors, threatening the open, prodemocratic discourse that proponents believe was made possible when social media sites first gained widespread adoption a decade ago. A conceptual model suggests that the microblogging site Twitter, and especially sport-themed debate through hashtags, can still realize these ideals. Analyzing a dataset of tweets about the firing of former Major League Baseball pitcher Curt Schilling by ESPN on April 20, 2016, as well as a qualitative questionnaire given to the users of the hashtag, this study attempted to ascertain how closely the discourse comes to realizing the ideal of the Habermasian public sphere. The findings demonstrate that although users draw value from participation in the discussion, they are less inclined to desire interaction with other hashtag users, particularly those who disagree with them. This suggests that Twitter hashtags provide an open forum that approaches the participatory requirement of the public sphere, but the lack of back-and-forth engagement suggests the medium is not ideal for the generation of deliberative public opinion.


Author(s):  
Kenneth C. C. Yang ◽  
Yowei Kang

Weibo provides an alternative channel for many Chinese citizens to obtain non-censored news contents and share their opinions on public affairs. In this book chapter, the authors employed Jürgen Habermas's concept of public sphere to examine how Chinese Weibo users (i.e., microbloggers) make the most use of this social medium to form a public sphere to contest omnipresent state power. Habermas's analytical framework helps to better comprehend the role of social media and its interactions with other stakeholders in Chinese politics. The role of social media in shaping this less controlled sphere of political deliberation and participation was examined using a case study approach. The authors analyzed the Chinese Jasmine Revolution to discuss the interrelations among social media, civil society, state power, economic development, political process, and democratization in China. The case study identified Weibo's essential role as a device to bypass existing government censorship, to mobilize users, and to empower Chinese Internet users to engage in political activities to foster its nascent civil society.


Author(s):  
Kenneth C. C. Yang ◽  
Yowei Kang

Weibo provides an alternative channel for many Chinese citizens to obtain non-censored news contents and share their opinions on public affairs. In this book chapter, the authors employed Jürgen Habermas's concept of public sphere to examine how Chinese Weibo users (i.e., microbloggers) make the most use of this social medium to form a public sphere to contest omnipresent state power. Habermas's analytical framework helps to better comprehend the role of social media and its interactions with other stakeholders in Chinese politics. The role of social media in shaping this less controlled sphere of political deliberation and participation was examined using a case study approach. The authors analyzed the Chinese Jasmine Revolution to discuss the interrelations among social media, civil society, state power, economic development, political process, and democratization in China. The case study identified Weibo's essential role as a device to bypass existing government censorship, to mobilize users, and to empower Chinese Internet users to engage in political activities to foster its nascent civil society.


Author(s):  
Kenneth C. C. Yang ◽  
Yowei Kang

Western scholars have previously predicted Weibo and social media will provide Chinese netizens with an opportunity to foster its nascent civil society. However, the growing applications of surveillance technologies have challenged this rosy, yet deterministic prediction. This chapter argues that Jürgen Habermas's concept of public sphere is less likely to function properly, given the pervasive applications of surveillance technologies in China, which has fundamentally challenge its many assumptions. Using Habermas's analytical framework that is used to better comprehend the role of social media in Chinese politics, the authors argue that information technologies turn out to deteriorate the formation and maintenance of a public sphere for Chinese civil society. The authors employ a case study to examine the interrelations among social media, surveillance technologies, civil society, state power, economic development, political process, and democratization in China as demonstrated in Hong Kong's Anti-Extradition Law Protests.


Societies ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 12 ◽  
Author(s):  
Celine Morin ◽  
Arnaud Mercier ◽  
Laetitia Atlani-Duault

1. Background: While many studies analyze the functions that images can fulfill during humanitarian crises or catastrophes, an understanding of how meaning is constructed in text–image relationships is lacking. This article explores how discourses are produced using different types of text–image interactions. It presents a case study focusing on a humanitarian crisis, more specifically the sexual transmission of Ebola. 2. Methods: Data were processed both quantitatively and qualitatively through a keyword-based selection. Tweets containing an image were retrieved from a database of 210,600 tweets containing the words “Ebola” and “semen”, in English and in French, over the course of 12 months. When this first selection was crossed with the imperative of focusing on a specific thematic (the sexual transmission of Ebola) and avoiding off-topic text–image relationships, it led to reducing the corpus to 182 tweets. 3. Results: The article proposes a four-category classification of text–image relationships. Theoretically, it provides original insights into how discourses are built in social media; it also highlights the semiotic significance of images in expressing an opinion or an emotion. 4. Conclusion: The results suggest that the process of signification needs to be rethought: Content enhancement and dialogism through images have a bearing on Twitter’s use as a public sphere, such as credibilization of discourses or politicization of events. This opens the way to a new, more comprehensive approach to the rhetorics of users on Twitter.


2020 ◽  
Vol 23 (6) ◽  
pp. 968-983
Author(s):  
Paul Dawson

This article investigates the role that narrative plays in the emergence of cultural movements from the networked interactions of users with the algorithmic structures of social media platforms. It identifies and anatomizes a new narrative phenomenon created by the technological affordances of Twitter, a phenomenon dubbed ‘emergent storytelling’. In doing so, it seeks to explain: (a) the multiple concepts of narrative that operate at different levels of hashtag movements emerging from the dynamic forces that circulate in and through Twitter; (b) the interplay of narrative cognition with stochastic viral activity and the invisible design of social media algorithms; and (c) the varying rhetorical purposes that narrative is put to in public discourse about viral movements. Using #MeToo as a case study in the generation and reception of ‘affective publics’, it clarifies how iterative appeals to the experiential truth of individual stories manifest as narratable social movements in the networked public sphere.


2020 ◽  
Vol 7 (11) ◽  
Author(s):  
Ridwan Rachmadi ◽  
Heri Budianto

AbstractThe hashtag #2019GantiPresiden was initiated by Dr. Mardani Ali Sera, a politician from the Partai Keadilan Sejahtera (PKS) has become a trending topic on social media, the use of hashtags has increasingly colored political dynamics in the country's public sphere. The research aims to obtain an overview of the Political Branding of the #2019GantiPresiden hashtag in increasing the electability of the Partai Keadilan Sejahtera in the realm of social media. This research uses a constructivist paradigm, a qualitative approach and a case study method. The results showed that the Partai Keadilan Sejahtera was able to make good use of social media as a campaign tool and was able to present its best politician to become national figures. One of them was Dr. Mardani Ali Sera who initiated the hashtag #2019GantiPresiden. The hashtag #2019GantiPresiden became a trending topic, the surface was present ahead of the 2019 Presidential election which presented only two candidates for the Presidential and Vice-Presidential candidate pairs. The public's desire for a replacement of the President is accommodated through the hashtag #2019GantiPresiden. The hashtag #2019GantiPresiden is affiliated with one of the Presidential Candidates and Vice-Presidential Candidates carried by the Partai Keadilan Sejahtera. The hashtag #2019GantiPresiden benefits the Partai Keadilan Sejahtera because it is a politician of the Partai Keadilan Sejahtera who initiated it. Political Branding Tagar #2019GantiPresiden contributes to increasing the electability of the Partai Keadilan Sejahtera in the realm of social media so that it has implications for the vote acquisition of the Partai Keadilan Sejahtera in the 2019 legislative elections.Keywords: Political Branding, Tagar, 2019 Change President, Prosperous Justice Party, Social Media Keywords: fPolitical Branding, Tagar, 2019 Change President, Prosperous Justice Party, Social Media  AbstrakTanda pagar #2019GantiPresiden di inisiasi Oleh Dr. Mardani Ali Sera, politikus Partai Keadilan Sejahtera (PKS) menjadi tranding topik di media sosial penggunaan tagar semakin mewarnai dinamika politik di ruang publik Tanah Air. Penelitian bertujuan untuk memperoleh gambaran tentang political branding tagar #2019GantiPresiden dalam meningkatkan elektabilitas Partai Keadilan Sejahtera di ranah media sosial. Penelitian menggunakan paradigma konstruktivis, pendekatan kualitatif dan metode studi kasus. Hasil penelitian menunjukan bahwa, Partai Keadilan Sejahtera mampu memanfaatkan media sosial sebagai sarana kampanye dengan baik dan mampu menghadirkan kader-kader terbaiknya menjadi tokoh nasional salah satu diantaranya adalah Dr. Mardani Ali Sera yang menginisiasi tagar #2019GantiPresiden. Tagar #2019GantiPresiden menjadi tranding topik, hadir kepermukaan jelang perhelatan pemilu Presiden 2019 yang menghadirkan hanya dua kandidat pasangan calon Presiden dan Wakil Presiden. Keinginan masyarakat akan pergantian Presiden terakomodir melalui tagar #2019gantiPresdien. Tagar #2019GantiPresdien berafiliasi dengan salah satu kandidat Calon Presiden dan Calon Wakil Presiden yang di usung oleh Partai Keadilan Sejahtera. Tagar #2019GantiPresiden menguntungkan Partai Keadilan Sejahtera karena yang menginisiasinya adalah kader Partai Keadilan Sejahtera. Political Branding Tagar #2019GantiPresiden berkontribusi menaikan elektabiltas Partai Keadilan Sejatera di ranah media sosial sehingga berimplikasi pada perolehan suara Partai Keadilan Sejahtera pada pemilu legislatif tahun 2019.  Kata kunci: Political Branding, Tagar, 2019 Ganti Presiden, Partai Keadilan Sejahtera, Media Sosial


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