#AbolishNCR: A Qualitative Analysis of Social Media Narratives around the Insanity Defense

Author(s):  
Ilvy Goossens ◽  
Marlee Jordan ◽  
Tonia Nicholls

This article presents an analysis of social media posts by laypersons regarding a finding of Not Criminally Responsible on Account of Mental Disorder (NCRMD) for Matthew de Grood after a high-profile trial in 2016 in Canada. From trial to verdict, a total of 4,991 tweets relating to the case were harvested from Twitter. Qualitative content analysis of 365 tweets by laypersons revealed three themes – largely equating the insanity defense to a legal loophole: (1) The case exemplified a misappropriation of the legal defense (e.g., due to privilege, due to the seriousness of the offence); (2) The perception existed that the NCRMD defence is a miscarriage of justice; (3) Many comments reflected a search for answers and justice. These embodied the ABCs of NCRMD: advocating, blaming, and clarifying. A need for public education about the forensic psychiatric system is evident; misconceptions about the insanity defence appeared pervasive. Further research could focus on the efficacy of knowledge translation over new media channels, such as Twitter.

2013 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Nadas Ramachandra Pillay

This study seeks to examine the exponential growth of social media technology as a key component in recent American political campaigning, as well as its use and impact on the larger disciplines of marketing and branding. Adopting the approach of a case study with the focus firmly on the current American president, Barack Obama, the study identifies the key media and technologies used in the build-up to the 2008 American presidential elections in order to unpack and understand how such media channels, technological platforms and patterns were successfully utilised. References are also made to the concepts of ‘branding’ and ‘super branding’ in the discussion, and to the myriad ways in which social media has helped create and roll-out what has since become commonly known as ‘brand Obama’. To provide a framework for the discussion and in order to further understand the rapid growth and proliferation of social media on the political campaigning landscape, a comparison is made with the 2004 American presidential election campaign. This, it is posited, will assist us understand the drivers of new media technologies especially as they are used to create and impact positively on the growth of political super brands.


Author(s):  
Shalin Hai-Jew

With the popularization of the Social Web (or Read-Write Web) and millions of participants in these interactive spaces, institutions of higher education have found it necessary to create online presences to promote their university brands, presence, and reputation. An important aspect of that engagement involves being aware of how their brand is represented informally (and formally) on social media platforms. Universities have traditionally maintained thin channels of formalized communications through official media channels, but in this participatory new media age, the user-generated contents and communications are created independent of the formal public relations offices. The university brand is evolving independently of official controls. Ex-post interventions to protect university reputation and brand may be too little, too late, and much of the contents are beyond the purview of the formal university. Various offices and clubs have institutional accounts on Facebook as well as wide representation of their faculty, staff, administrators, and students online. There are various microblogging accounts on Twitter. Various photo and video contents related to the institution may be found on photo- and video-sharing sites, like Flickr, and there are video channels on YouTube. All this digital content is widely available and may serve as points-of-contact for the close-in to more distal stakeholders and publics related to the institution. A recently available open-source tool enhances the capability for crawling (extracting data) these various social media platforms (through their Application Programming Interfaces or “APIs”) and enables the capture, analysis, and social network visualization of broadly available public information. Further, this tool enables the analysis of previously hidden information. This chapter introduces the application of Network Overview, Discovery and Exploration for Excel (NodeXL) to the empirical and multimodal analysis of a university’s electronic presence on various social media platforms and offers some initial ideas for the analytical value of such an approach.


2019 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 205630511982612 ◽  
Author(s):  
Judith E. Rosenbaum

This study extends current research into social media platforms as counterpublic spaces by examining how the social media narratives produced by the #TakeAKnee controversy negotiate technological affordances and existing discourses surrounding American national identity. Giddens’ Structuration Theory is used to explore the nature of user agency on social media platforms and the extent to which this agency is constrained or enabled by the interplay between the systems and structures that guide social media use. Exploratory qualitative content analysis was used to analyze and compare tweets and Instagram posts using the #TakeAKnee hashtag shared in September 2017. Results showed that narratives are dominated by four themes, freedom, unity, equality and justice, and respect and honor. Users actively employ technological affordances to create highly personalized meanings, affirming that agency operates at the intersection of reflexivity and self-efficacy.


2018 ◽  
pp. 1072-1124
Author(s):  
Shalin Hai-Jew

With the popularization of the Social Web (or Read-Write Web) and millions of participants in these interactive spaces, institutions of higher education have found it necessary to create online presences to promote their university brands, presence, and reputation. An important aspect of that engagement involves being aware of how their brand is represented informally (and formally) on social media platforms. Universities have traditionally maintained thin channels of formalized communications through official media channels, but in this participatory new media age, the user-generated contents and communications are created independent of the formal public relations offices. The university brand is evolving independently of official controls. Ex-post interventions to protect university reputation and brand may be too little, too late, and much of the contents are beyond the purview of the formal university. Various offices and clubs have institutional accounts on Facebook as well as wide representation of their faculty, staff, administrators, and students online. There are various microblogging accounts on Twitter. Various photo and video contents related to the institution may be found on photo- and video-sharing sites, like Flickr, and there are video channels on YouTube. All this digital content is widely available and may serve as points-of-contact for the close-in to more distal stakeholders and publics related to the institution. A recently available open-source tool enhances the capability for crawling (extracting data) these various social media platforms (through their Application Programming Interfaces or “APIs”) and enables the capture, analysis, and social network visualization of broadly available public information. Further, this tool enables the analysis of previously hidden information. This chapter introduces the application of Network Overview, Discovery and Exploration for Excel (NodeXL) to the empirical and multimodal analysis of a university's electronic presence on various social media platforms and offers some initial ideas for the analytical value of such an approach.


2015 ◽  
pp. 586-635
Author(s):  
Shalin Hai-Jew

With the popularization of the Social Web (or Read-Write Web) and millions of participants in these interactive spaces, institutions of higher education have found it necessary to create online presences to promote their university brands, presence, and reputation. An important aspect of that engagement involves being aware of how their brand is represented informally (and formally) on social media platforms. Universities have traditionally maintained thin channels of formalized communications through official media channels, but in this participatory new media age, the user-generated contents and communications are created independent of the formal public relations offices. The university brand is evolving independently of official controls. Ex-post interventions to protect university reputation and brand may be too little, too late, and much of the contents are beyond the purview of the formal university. Various offices and clubs have institutional accounts on Facebook as well as wide representation of their faculty, staff, administrators, and students online. There are various microblogging accounts on Twitter. Various photo and video contents related to the institution may be found on photo- and video-sharing sites, like Flickr, and there are video channels on YouTube. All this digital content is widely available and may serve as points-of-contact for the close-in to more distal stakeholders and publics related to the institution. A recently available open-source tool enhances the capability for crawling (extracting data) these various social media platforms (through their Application Programming Interfaces or “APIs”) and enables the capture, analysis, and social network visualization of broadly available public information. Further, this tool enables the analysis of previously hidden information. This chapter introduces the application of Network Overview, Discovery and Exploration for Excel (NodeXL) to the empirical and multimodal analysis of a university's electronic presence on various social media platforms and offers some initial ideas for the analytical value of such an approach.


2021 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 1-20
Author(s):  
Nosharwan Arbab Abbasi ◽  
Dianlin Hunag ◽  
Furqan Rao

China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), also known as One Belt, One Road (OBOR), was launched in 2013 by President Xi Jinping. BRI opens “gateway to opportunities” and establishes a new grand geopolitical strategy for regional development, international economic cooperation and new world order. To foster BRI, China hosted the second Belt and Road Forum for International Cooperation (BRF) in Beijing on 25-27 April 2019. New media tools including dedicated web pages and social media sources were utilised to promote the BRF 2019. Particularly, Twitter was used by government and media organizations to promote and share the proceedings of the event. Topics related to Belt and Road Initiative were trending on social media resulting in a wide reach and engagement. A large number of pertinent tweets appeared with trending hashtags such as #brf2019, #BeltandRoad and #BRI. Major contribution to this tweet activity came from politicians, government officials and media groups. This study analyses the trending hashtags #brf2019 and #BeltandRoad (N=20,727) on Twitter on the occasion of second BRF 2019 to understand the patterns of Twitter data. Specifically, this study attempts (1) to investigate how Twitter was used by media groups to promote the second Belt and Road Forum; (2) to identify top influencers to promote the second Belt and Road Forum; (3) to analyse overall sentiment towards the second Belt and Road Forum. The study follows mixed method for Social Media performance data by combining qualitative content analysis and sentimental analysis of tweets. All the tweets collected were publicly posted and were tracked using Twitter streaming API and Python programming language. For analysis, parameters such as; users, reach, impression, engagement, type of tweet, trending topics, source of tweets and main themes were analysed.


Author(s):  
Denise Fecker ◽  
Monica Nadegger ◽  
Stefanie Haselwanter

This chapter aims to explore the use of social media channels in the crisis communication of Austrian family-led hotels during the COVID-19 pandemic. Building on current research on family businesses and crisis communication on social media, the authors investigated seven Instagram profiles of family-owned hotels in Tyrol and its borders. The data were collected in spring and summer 2020 and then analyzed using a mixed-method approach. First, the researchers did a quantitative analysis of the hashtags and then conducted a qualitative content analysis of the pictures and respective captions. The results show that information relating to the crisis is rarely communicated and the focus of communication rather lies on positive attitudes, emotions, and classic alpine marketing topics. During the crisis, the hotels present themselves as resilient and anchored in their family values. This chapter adds new insights to current research on family firms' crisis communication and provides valuable findings for the development of a successful communication strategy for family businesses.


2019 ◽  
Vol 95 (6) ◽  
pp. 1331-1348
Author(s):  
Michèle Bos ◽  
Jan Melissen

Abstract Most research on social media as a tool for public diplomacy focuses on its use by recognized international actors to advance their national interest and reputation, deliver foreign policy objectives or promote their global interests. This article highlights the need for paying more attention to non-state diplomacy in conflict situations outside the western world. We examine how rebel groups use new media to enhance their communications, and what the motivations behind this are. Our public diplomacy perspective helps convey the scope of rebel communications with external actors and provides insights for policy-makers seeking to ascertain the nature, intentions and capacities of myriad rebel groups. Our focus is on the Sahel region, where numerous such groups vying for international attention and support make use of multiple social media channels. We analyse two groups in Mali: the MNLA, a Tuareg secessionist group; and Ansar Dine, a Salafist insurgency with ties to Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb. Our qualitative analysis of Ansar Dine and MNLA communications on several digital platforms helps identify these African rebel groups' international and local framing activities. Rebel groups use public diplomacy nimbly and pragmatically. The digital age has fundamentally changed which stakeholders such groups can reach, and we suggest that social media increase the power they are able to carve out for themselves on the international stage.


Author(s):  
Sandra Vlatković

Technological development has made it possible for the modern individual to understand the world around them using a computer and screen as their fundamental means of accessing information. With analysis of certain features of modern communication and new media, and of communication forms determined by new ‘agents’ such as the Internet, the mobile phone, social media – and most of all Twitter – it can be concluded that new media channels are no longer merely an asset, but also a place of social interaction. The ways in which social media are used influence the creation of an altered image of the world around us. The custom-made environment of information which reaches the user serves to diminish the chances for a more comprehensive perception. The era of Donald Trump is a striking example of the use of new media, primarily Twitter, as a powerful means of reaching a significant number of future voters. The way in which information is framed on Twitter is rooted in the theoretical basics of framing, and as such has played a significant role in establishing Trump’s political superiority. Article received: March 25, 2018; Article accepted: April 10, 2018; Published online: September 15, 2018; Preliminary report – Short CommunicationsHow to cite this article: Vlatković, Sandra. "New Communication Forms and Political Framing: Twitter in Donald Trump's Presidential Campaign." AM Journal of Art And Media Studies 16 (2018): 123−134. doi: 10.25038/am.v0i16.259


2016 ◽  
Vol 39 (6) ◽  
pp. 850-868 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elif Kavakci ◽  
Camille R Kraeplin

A ‘hijabista’ – from the terms hijabi and fashionista – is a Muslim woman who dresses ‘stylishly’ while still adhering to the rules governing ‘modest’ apparel that coincides with Islamic dress code. A handful of these digitally savvy young women have established an online presence, becoming social media personalities with hundreds of thousands, even millions, of ‘followers’ who avidly consume (read) their personal blogs and/or social media posts. This study examines new media, faith, and fragmentation online, where virtual spaces facilitate the construction (re-construction) of a digital identity or persona. We employ an approach that combines netnography and case study to examine the content generated by three high-profile hijabistas, or hijabi fashion and lifestyle bloggers, and build upon identity theory to determine how each has negotiated an online persona that privileges her religious or fashionable self.


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