scholarly journals The State of Social Media in Canada 2017

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anatoliy Gruzd ◽  
Jenna Jacobson ◽  
Philip Mai ◽  
Elizabeth Dubois

Today, billions of people around the world are turning to social media to socialize, conduct business, keep up with the news, as well as discover, discuss, and share information. The significance of this global adoption of a relatively new communication and information technology cannot be overlooked. As a country, Canada has one of the most connected populations in the world. For many Canadians, social media is now a part of their daily routine. Our survey results show that an overwhelming majority of online Canadian adults (94%) have an account on at least one social media platform. This makes it critical for policy makers, researchers, and others to have a better grasp of what social media platforms Canadians are using to connect and converse with one another. This report provides a snapshot of the social media usage trends and patterns amongst online Canadian adults based on an online survey of 1,500 participants (see Methods on p. 16 for more details).

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anatoliy Gruzd ◽  
Jenna Jacobson ◽  
Philip Mai ◽  
Elizabeth Dubois

Today, billions of people around the world are turning to social media to socialize, conduct business, keep up with the news, as well as discover, discuss, and share information. The significance of this global adoption of a relatively new communication and information technology cannot be overlooked. As a country, Canada has one of the most connected populations in the world. For many Canadians, social media is now a part of their daily routine. Our survey results show that an overwhelming majority of online Canadian adults (94%) have an account on at least one social media platform. This makes it critical for policy makers, researchers, and others to have a better grasp of what social media platforms Canadians are using to connect and converse with one another. This report provides a snapshot of the social media usage trends and patterns amongst online Canadian adults based on an online survey of 1,500 participants (see Methods on p. 16 for more details).


2020 ◽  
Vol 57 (9) ◽  
pp. 1093-1099
Author(s):  
Alexandra S. Hudson ◽  
Alexander D. Morzycki ◽  
Regan Guilfoyle

Objective: Studies have begun analyzing how the world converses on social media platforms about medical/surgical topics. This study’s objective was to examine how cleft lip and palate, two of the most common birth defects in the world, are discussed on the social media platform Twitter. No study to date has analyzed this topic. Methods: Tweets were identified using any of the following: cleft, cleft lip, cleft palate, #cleft, #cleftlip, #cleftpalate. Eight months between 2017 and 2018 were analyzed. Main Outcome Measures: The primary outcome was the tweet subject matter. Secondary outcomes were author characteristics, tweet engagement, multimedia, and tweet accuracy Results: A total of 1222 tweets were included. #Cleft was the most common hashtag (71%), and it was significantly associated with more retweets ( P = .03). Twenty-seven countries tweeted, with the United States (34%) and India (27%) producing the most. Charities (36%), hospitals (14%), and physicians (13%) were the most common authors. Over three-quarters of tweets were self-promotional. The top content included charity information (22%) and patients’ cleft stories (14%). Tweets about patient safety/care and surgical service trips generated the most engagement. The accuracy of educational tweets was 38% low accuracy and 1% inaccurate. One hundred forty-nine tweets (12%) discussed a published research article, but 41 tweets did not share a link. Conclusions: Charities dominate the cleft lip/palate “Twitterverse.” Most tweets were self-promotional, and over a third of educational tweets were low accuracy. As the cleft social media community continues to grow, we recommend using the hashtag #cleft to reach a wider audience.


2021 ◽  
pp. 146144482110594
Author(s):  
Yiyi Yin ◽  
Zhuoxiao Xie

This study discusses the shifting dynamics of fan participatory cultures on social media platforms by introducing the concept of “platformized language games.” We conceive of a fan community as a “speech community” and propose that the language and discourses of fan participatory cultures are technological practices that only make sense in use and interactions as “games” on social media platform. Based on an ethnography of communication on fan communities on Weibo, we analyze the technological-communicative acts of fan speech communities, including the platformized setting, participants, topics, norms, and key purposes. We argue that the social media logic (programmability, connectivity, popularity, and datafication) articulates with fans’ language games, thus shifting the “form of life” of celebrity fans on social media. Empirically, fan participatory cultures continue to mutate in China, as fan communities create idiosyncratic platformized language games based on the selective appropriation of the social media logics of connectivity and data-driven metrics.


2021 ◽  
Vol 15 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-11
Author(s):  
Akhmad Roja Badrus Zaman ◽  
Mahin Muqaddam Assarwani

Advances in technology and information provide new opportunities for preachers to be able to take part in spreading Islamic teachings through various social media platforms. One of the preachers who took the role to preach through social media was Habib Husein Jafar al-Hadar. This article examines Habib Husein Jafar’s missionary activities on the social media platform he uses, Youtube. The researcher analyzes the data by observing virtually and visually (virtual ethnography) on the da’wa content displayed by Habib Husein Jafar through Youtube. The study shows that: 1) the attention to the spiritual enlightenment efforts of the younger generation is the basis of the selection of the social media platform Youtube - because based on previous research, the users of this social media platform are 18-29 years of age; 2) starting from the da’wa consumers who are primarily young people, the content they present is suitable to their needs and lifestyle and 3) by using the concept of the circuit of culture analysis, Habib Husein Jafar in various ranges can reconstruct people’s perception of one’s definition of holiness. It is not limited based on normative appearance - cloaked and sacrificed, for example - but more on the substantive side, namely by behaving and having knowledgeable skills. With the variety of content, he could visualize himself as a pious young man by not abandoning his social status as a young person.


2021 ◽  
Vol 31 (2) ◽  
pp. 269-276
Author(s):  
Prashanth Bhat

Widespread dissemination of hate speech on corporate social media platforms such as Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube has necessitated technological companies to moderate content on their platforms. At the receiving end of these content moderation efforts are supporters of right-wing populist parties, who have gained notoriety for harassing journalists, spreading disinformation, and vilifying liberal activists. In recent months, several prominent right-wing figures across the world were removed from social media - a phenomenon also known as ‘deplatforming’- for violating platform policies. Prominent among such right-wing groups are online supporters of the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in India, who have begun accusing corporate social media of pursuing a ‘liberal agenda’ and ‘curtailing free speech.’ In response to deplatforming, the BJP-led Government of India has aggressively promoted and embraced Koo, an indigenously developed social media platform. This commentary examines the implications of this alternative social platform for the online communicative environment in the Indian public sphere.


Author(s):  
Iman Mohamed Zahra

The objective of the current chapter is to analyze one of the most recent and successful social media campaigns namely #NotInMyName from the viewpoint of the seven dimensions of religion utilized by Van Esch and others as the main pillar of social marketing and media campaigns. Further #NotInMyName Public Relations (PR) campaign is scrutinized for PR strategies and message strategies utilized in formulating the campaign messages. To achieve that end, a qualitative analysis was implemented on three levels relating to each video and vine of the study sample: first locating the Dimensions of Religion (DOR taxonomy(ies) used in this video or vine, then emanating on the PR campaign strategies implemented in the video or vine and finally searching for the message strategies utilized in the video or vine. The major conclusion of this study was that although campaigns launched via social media lack the scientific known steps utilized to plan and launch media campaigns traditionally, those campaigns derive from the social media platform exacerbating an unprecedented power to stir political and social movements especially, regarding controversial and stagnant matters. Posts, comments and shares on different social media platforms go viral, stir discussions, and trigger public opinion both virtually and in reality. Dimensions of Religion taxonomies proved reliability as a viable platform stemming from another discipline to plan messages and to analyze campaigns based on the different aspects the model would provide. Ranging from simple aspects to more complicated aspects, Dimensions of Religion model must be subjected to further research to determine its feasibility to be applied to different campaigning structures and objectives.


Author(s):  
Kristy A. Hesketh

This chapter explores the Spiritualist movement and its rapid growth due to the formation of mass media and compares these events with the current rise of fake news in the mass media. The technology of cheaper publications created a media platform that featured stories about Spiritualist mediums and communications with the spirit world. These articles were published in newspapers next to regular news creating a blurred line between real and hoax news stories. Laws were later created to address instances of fraud that occurred in the medium industry. Today, social media platforms provide a similar vessel for the spread of fake news. Online fake news is published alongside legitimate news reports leaving readers unable to differentiate between real and fake articles. Around the world countries are actioning initiatives to address the proliferation of false news to prevent the spread of misinformation. This chapter compares the parallels between these events, how hoaxes and fake news begin and spread, and examines the measures governments are taking to curb the growth of misinformation.


Through case studies of incidents around the world where the social media platforms have been used and abused for ulterior purposes, Chapter 6 highlights the lessons that can be learned. For good or for ill, the author elaborates on the way social media has been used as an arbiter to inflict various forms of political influence and how we may have become desensitized due to the popularity of the social media platforms themselves. A searching view is provided that there is now a propensity by foreign states to use social media to influence the user base of sovereign countries during key political events. This type of activity now justifies a paradigm shift in relation to our perception and utilization of computerized devices for the future.


2019 ◽  
Vol 36 (1) ◽  
pp. 58-72
Author(s):  
Saeed Rouhani ◽  
Ehsan Abedin

Purpose Crypto-currencies, decentralized electronic currencies systems, denote a radical change in financial exchange and economy environment. Consequently, it would be attractive for designers and policy-makers in this area to make out what social media users think about them on Twitter. The purpose of this study is to investigate the social opinions about different kinds of crypto-currencies and tune the best-customized classification technique to categorize the tweets based on sentiments. Design/methodology/approach This paper utilized a lexicon-based approach for analyzing the reviews on a wide range of crypto-currencies over Twitter data to measure positive, negative or neutral sentiments; in addition, the end result of sentiments played a training role to train a supervised technique, which can predict the sentiment loading of tweets about the main crypto-currencies. Findings The findings further prove that more than 50 per cent of people have positive beliefs about crypto-currencies. Furthermore, this paper confirms that marketers can predict the sentiment of tweets about these crypto-currencies with high accuracy if they use appropriate classification techniques like support vector machine (SVM). Practical implications Considering the growing interest in crypto-currencies (Bitcoin, Cardano, Ethereum, Litcoin and Ripple), the findings of this paper have a remarkable value for enterprises in the financial area to obtain the promised benefits of social media analysis at work. In addition, this paper helps crypto-currencies vendors analyze public opinion in social media platforms. In this sense, the current paper strengthens our understanding of what happens in social media for crypto-currencies. Originality/value For managers and decision-makers, this paper suggests that the news and campaign for their crypto in Twitter would affect people’s perspectives in a good manner. Because of this fact, the firms, investing in these crypto-currencies, could apply the social media as a magnifier for their promotional activities. The findings steer the market managers to see social media as a predictor tool, which can analyze the market through understanding the opinions of users of Twitter.


2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (12) ◽  
pp. 211
Author(s):  
Philip Nyblom ◽  
Gaute Wangen ◽  
Vasileios Gkioulos

Social media are getting more and more ingrained into everybody’s lives. With people’s more substantial presence on social media, threat actors exploit the platforms and the information that people share there to deploy and execute various types of attacks. This paper focuses on the Norwegian population, exploring how people perceive risks arising from the use of social media, focusing on the analysis of specific indicators such as age, sexes and differences among the users of distinct social media platforms. For data collection, a questionnaire was structured and deployed towards the users of multiple social media platforms (total n = 329). The analysis compares risk perceptions of using the social media platforms Facebook (n = 288), Twitter (n = 134), Reddit (n = 189) and Snapchat (n = 267). Furthermore, the paper analyses the differences between the sexes and between the digital natives and non-natives. Our sample also includes sufferers of ID theft (n = 50). We analyse how account compromise occurs and how suffering ID theft changes behaviour and perception. The results show significant discrepancies in the risk perception among the social media platform users across the examined indicators, but also explicit variations on how this affects the associated usage patterns. Based on the results, we propose a generic risk ranking of social media platforms, activities, sharing and a threat model for SoMe users. The results show the lack of a unified perception of risk on social media, indicating the need for targeted security awareness enhancement mechanisms focusing on this topic.


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