scholarly journals The Rise of Political Influencers— Perspectives on a Trend Towards Meaningful Content

2021 ◽  
Vol 6 ◽  
Author(s):  
Magdalena Riedl ◽  
Carsten Schwemmer ◽  
Sandra Ziewiecki ◽  
Lisa M. Ross
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Political Communication ◽  
Political Ideology ◽  
Empirical Studies ◽  
Political Engagement ◽  
Opinion Leaders ◽  
Important Research ◽  
Conspiracy Theories ◽  
The Past ◽  
Important Research Topic

Despite an increasing information overflow in the era of digital communication, influencers manage to draw the attention of their followers with an authentic and casual appearance. Reaching large audiences on social media, they can be considered as digital opinion leaders. In the past, they predominantly appeared as experts for topics like fashion, sports, or gaming and used their status to cooperate with brands for marketing purposes. However, since recently influencers also turn towards more meaningful and political content. In this article, we share our perspective on the rise of political influencers using examples of sustainability and related topics covered on Instagram. By applying a qualitative observational approach, we illustrate how influencers make political communication look easy, while at the same time seamlessly integrating product promotions in their social media feeds. In this context, we discuss positive aspects of political influencers like contributions to education and political engagement, but also negative aspects such as the potential amplification of radical political ideology or conspiracy theories. We conclude by highlighting political influencers as an important research topic for conceptual and empirical studies in the future.

scholarly journals Social media and democracy: How the Facebook usage patterns of Toronto city councilors influence political engagement

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christian Campbell
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Political Communication ◽  
Political Engagement ◽  
Small Communities ◽  
Political Actors ◽  
The Public ◽  
Usage Patterns ◽  
Media Platform ◽  
Use Of Social Media ◽  
National Governments

In the early days of the Internet, many political communication theorists held the utopian belief that political actors would use online tools to communicate directly with members of the public, and thereby bolster political engagement and enrich democracy. Unfortunately, studies over the past two decades found that political websites were not usually used to interact directly with the public, but instead were used to simply disseminate information in a one-way information-sharing model. However, the emergence of social media sites presents political actors with the opportunity to interact with the public far more easily than websites had previously allowed. Given the widespread adoption and high usage rates of social media sites, these online resources could potentially open up a space for public discussion about politics and allow political actors to interact directly with members of the public. Literature indicates that this type of shared space is conducive to the kind of civic mindset that leads to higher rates of political engagement. Research on political uses of social media tends to focus on the use of social media engagement. Research on political uses of social media tends to focus on the use of social media within elections, such as the 2008 U.S presidential election, and on the use of social media by national governments. I have chosen instead to examine how a group of municipal councilors in Toronto, Ontario uses social media. These politicians have the greatest need to interact directly with individuals throughout their term of service because municipal councilors are expected to know the members of their ward far more intimately than federal, or even provincial, politicians. My study focuses on the use of Facebook because literature indicates that it is the most political social media platform and that it presents politicians with the greatest opportunity to foster political engagement online. Through analysis of the Facebook pages of Toronto city councilors this study examines the degree to which councilors use Facebook to engage their followers, whether certain citizens are consistently engaged in ongoing political discussions, and whether small communities of politically engaged citizens develop around the Facebook profiles of councilors.

Elections and Social Media

2015 ◽  
pp. 314-328
Author(s):  
Ahmet Sarıtaş ◽  
Elif Esra Aydın
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Political Communication ◽  
Political Campaigns ◽  
The Internet ◽  
Election Campaigns ◽  
The Past ◽  
Target Mass ◽  
The Social ◽  
The World ◽  
Use Of Social Media

Today, using of the internet extended social media by individuals habitually enables both the business firms and politicians to reach their target mass at any time. In this context, internet has become a popular place recently where political communication and campaigns are realized by ensuring a new dimension to political campaigns. When we examine the posts and discussions in the social media, we can say that they are converted into open political sessions. As there are no censorship in such channels, individuals have a freedom to reach to any partial/impartial information and obtain transparent and fast feedback, and with this regard, political parties, leaders and candidates have a chance to be closer to electors. In this study, it is aimed to give information about the social media, present what medium has been used for election campaigns from the past until today and besides, by considering the effects of effective and efficient use of social media and new trends related to the internet by politicians, together with their applications in the world, to make suggestions about its situation and application in Turkey.

Young Citizen's Political Engagement in India

2020 ◽  
pp. 115-132
Author(s):  
Mandakini Paruthi ◽  
Priyam Mendiratta ◽  
Gaurav Gupta
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Public Relations ◽  
Political Communication ◽  
Political Engagement ◽  
Major Influence ◽  
Digital Citizenship ◽  
Digital Medium ◽  
General Elections ◽  
Marketing Tool ◽  
Use Of Social Media

Social media has emerged as a dominant digital medium platform in contemporary society. The quick development of social media has instigated changes concerning the way publics to interact with a group of people with similar ideologies, the quality of information they share, or the opportunity to acquire and share ideas. Social media use has a major influence on public relations, marketing, and political communication. Therefore, politicians are formulating their strategies to reach increasingly networked individuals. The chapter defines political engagement concept, focuses on excessive use of social media to understand how the emergence of digital citizenship is changing political engagement. In addition to this, the chapter also examines whether the use of social media exercise any effect on 2014 and 2019. General elections outcome or not and discuss the proposed conceptual framework for future empirical testing. The chapter highlights the various concerns needed to be taken care of while using social media as a marketing tool for promoting political participation and engagement.

What about WhatsApp? A systematic review of WhatsApp and its role in civic and political engagement

First Monday ◽  
2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Natalie Pang ◽  
Yue Ting Woo
Keyword(s):  
Systematic Review ◽  
Social Media ◽  
Civic Engagement ◽  
Instant Messaging ◽  
Empirical Studies ◽  
Political Engagement ◽  
Communication Tool ◽  
Ongoing Research ◽  
Social Media Platforms

The use of instant messaging platforms such as WhatsApp for civic and political purposes has been observed and reported to be growing faster than other social media platforms especially in recent years. Using empirical research on WhatsApp studies published from 2009 to 2019 as its corpus of data, this article systematically reviews them to provide more robust conclusions about WhatsApp and its relationship with political and/or civic engagement. This paper seeks to answer three central questions related to WhatsApp and engagement: 1) What are the motivations in using WhatsApp and how do they manifest in the use of WhatsApp as a communication tool? 2) What is the role of WhatsApp in civic and political engagement? 3) How do researchers study the use of WhatsApp in civic and political engagement? The review finds that across empirical studies, while WhatsApp is used by activists and organisational networks for mobilisation and coordinating actions, it is also used by users who draw on the affordances of the medium for informal and ‘de-politicised’ conversations. The findings contribute to the theorising of social media-mediated movements and activism and highlight methodological gaps of ongoing research on WhatsApp.

scholarly journals E-Electioneering 2007–13: Trends in Online Political Campaigns over Three Elections

2014 ◽  
Vol 152 (1) ◽  
pp. 57-74 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jim Macnamara ◽  
Gail Kenning
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Political Communication ◽  
Turning Point ◽  
Political Engagement ◽  
Political Campaigns ◽  
Election Campaign ◽  
Democratic Engagement ◽  
Us Presidential Election ◽  
Use Of Social Media ◽  
Presidential Election Campaign

Following the 2004 US presidential election campaign, which was described as ‘a critical turning point’ in use of social media, and particularly the 2008 Obama campaign, there has been increasing focus on use of social media for political campaigning and what is termed e-electioneering and e-democracy. However, studies of election campaigns between 2010 and 2012 in a number of countries have identified what Steve Woolgar (2002) calls cyberbole in relation to social media for political engagement. With substantive patterns of change in political communication yet to be identified, a quantitative and qualitative study of social media use in the 2013 Australian federal election campaign was conducted using the same methodology as studies of the 2007 and 2010 campaigns to gain comparative longitudinal data. This identified trends in the volume of e-electioneering and the ways in which social media are being used for political communication and democratic engagement.

scholarly journals Article-level metrics and what they tell us about the impact of PLOS publications

2014 ◽  
Author(s):  
Damian Pattinson
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Important Research ◽  
Citation Data ◽  
The Past ◽  
Web Tools ◽  
Individual Paper ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Early Activity

PLOS launched its Article-Level Metrics (ALMs) programme in 2009 as an alternative to the crude journal-level metrics that scientists have relied upon for so long to identify important research. ALMs allow readers to see how many views, downloads, citations and shares an individual paper has received, and thus to determine its impact on a field. Over the past year, the ALMs programme has been expanded to include social media information, such as Facebook likes and Tweets, and novel web tools such as Mendeley and Citeulike. Researchers are now using this information to examine the links between early activity indicators and long-term citation data, and to identify what tools best predict truly impactful research. In this session I will present the latest additions to PLOS's ALMs suite, and show some data on what these metrics tell us about the impact of papers published in PLOS journals.

scholarly journals The evolution of online discussions about GMOs in China over the past decade: Changes, causes and characteristics

2019 ◽  
Vol 2 (4) ◽  
pp. 311-325 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yang Li ◽  
Chen Luo ◽  
Anfan Chen
Keyword(s):  
New Media ◽  
Genetically Modified Organisms ◽  
Semantic Network ◽  
Online Discussions ◽  
Opinion Leaders ◽  
Semantic Network Analysis ◽  
Conspiracy Theories ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Government

This paper uses word frequency statistics and semantic network analysis to analyse text related to genetically modified organisms (GMOs) in microblog in China. We discuss the structure of the main discourses and changes in them over the past decade, explore the reasons for those changes and provide possible references that may be useful when related problems or situations occur in future. We have found that conspiracy theories permeated online discussions and that netizens’ emotions had a nationalist tendency. The GMO issue was highly socialized. Participants in online discussions were from different backgrounds, and the topics went far beyond GMO technology. The public tended to trust the government, rather than experts, while opinion leaders also played a role in guiding public opinion. The keywords in this discussion have gradually changed in recent years from clustering around ‘harmful’ to clustering around ‘scientific’, and new participation models brought about by new media have provided new reference paths for problem solving.

E-Collaboration Concepts, Systems, and Applications

2008 ◽  
pp. 165-171 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christos Bouras ◽  
Eri Giannaka ◽  
Thrasyvoulos Tsiatsos
Keyword(s):  
Research Topic ◽  
Important Research ◽  
Major Research ◽  
Research Activity ◽  
Psychological Issues ◽  
The Past ◽  
Important Research Topic

E-Collaboration is an important research topic, with a great number of researchers contributing on many aspects. The main reason for this major research activity is the broad topic’s scope, which involves not only technological but also social and psychological issues. As a result there are multiple interpretations about what e-collaboration is. More specifically we definitely can say that e-collaboration has been defined in many ways in the past, and the number of definitions has grown recently. The next section present the main terms in this area.

Determinants of the Citizen Engagement Level of Mayors on Twitter

2022 ◽  
pp. 917-930
Author(s):  
İbrahim Hatipoğlu ◽  
Mehmet Zahid Sobaci ◽  
Mehmet Fürkan Korkmaz
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Political Communication ◽  
Empirical Studies ◽  
Relevant Literature ◽  
Citizen Engagement ◽  
Political Actors ◽  
Local Politicians ◽  
The Status ◽  
Election Results ◽  
Use Of Social Media

Today, politicians like other political actors use social media to interact with their audiences. In the relevant literature, studies on the use of social media by politicians focus more on how politicians use social media for political communication during the election periods and its impact on the election results. Furthermore, these studies mainly focus on national politicians. Few studies focus on the use of social media during a non-election period by the local politicians, and these studies analyse the purpose of using social media. Therefore, in the relevant literature, there is a need for empirical studies to measure the citizen engagement level of local politicians during the non-election period and analyse its determinants beyond the purpose of using social media. In this context, this study aims to analyse the relationship between some factors and the level of citizen engagement of the mayors on Twitter in Turkey. The findings of the analysis show that there is a relationship between the status of municipalities and the engagement level of mayors.

scholarly journals A qualitative study on library ethicsKütüphanecilik etiği üzerine nitel bir çalışma

2016 ◽  
Vol 13 (3) ◽  
pp. 5826
Author(s):  
Burcu Umut Zan ◽  
Aslı Yazıcı ◽  
Sedat Yazıcı
Keyword(s):  
Ethical Issues ◽  
Empirical Studies ◽  
Research Topic ◽  
Academic Ethics ◽  
Important Research ◽  
Structured Interviews ◽  
Conceptual Connection ◽  
Important Research Topic ◽  
Library Users ◽  
Library Professionals

Library ethics is an important research topic because of its conceptual connection with many areas of academic ethics. However, although concerns about ethical issues in librarianship go back to beginning of the twenty century, very few empirical studies have been conducted on this topic. The purpose of this study was to examine library professionals’ and users’ perceptions, experiences and awareness of library ethics. The study group consists of 52 library users and 13 library professionals. Data were obtained via semi-structured interviews and analyzed for coding using NVIVO program. A great number of participants from both groups declared that they were unfamiliar with the notion of library ethics. However, the participants pointed out many issues, situations and behaviors that are very closely related to library ethics. Among others, the most common ethical issues faced in libraries were found damaging library materials, copy rights violations, concealing books, reservation of seats, disturbing others, disrespectful behavior, requesting privilege user rights. Taking care of library materials, fair and equal services, not censoring, providing suitable place for study, helping users, obeying copy rights, professional efficiencies were stated among the institutional ethical responsibilities of libraries.    ÖzetKütüphanecilik etiği akademik etiğin çoğu alanıyla doğrudan ilişkili olması açısından son derece önemli bir konudur. Ne var ki, kütüphanecilik alanındaki etik kaygıların ortaya çıkışının yaklaşık bir asırlık geçmişi olmasına karşın konuyla ilgili uluslararası literatürde yapılan uygulamalı çalışmaların sayısı oldukça sınırlıdır. Bu araştırmanın amacı kütüphane çalışanları ile kullanıcılarının kütüphanecilik etiğine ilişkin algı, deneyim ve farkındalıklarını incelemektir. Araştırmanın çalışma grubu 52 kütüphane kullanıcısı ve 13 kütüphane çalışanından oluşmaktadır. Yarı yapılandırılmış görüşme sorularıyla elde edilen veriler kodlanarak NVIVO programıyla analiz edilmiştir. Araştırma bulgularına göre, her iki gruptan önemli sayıdaki katılımcı kütüphanecilik etiği kavramına pek fazla aşina olmadıklarını bildirmişlerdir. Buna karşın, katılımcıların çoğu kütüphanecilik etiği kapsamına giren birçok etik durum, davranış ve soruna işaret etmiştir. Bunlardan en sıklıkla ifade edilenler kütüphane materyaline zarar verme, telif hakkı ihlalleri, kitap saklama, yer tutma, saygısızlık, başkalarını rahatsız etme, farklı davranılma isteği olmuştur. Kurumsal açıdan bir kütüphanenin etik sorumlulukları arasında kütüphane materyaline özen gösterme, adil ve eşit hizmet, sansür uygulamama, uygun hizmet ortamı sağlama, okuyucuya yardımcı olma, telif hakkına riayet ve çalışanlarının mesleki yeterlilikleri gösterilmiştir.

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