A Comparative View of Censored and Uncensored Political Discussion

Author(s):  
Qihao Ji

Through a content analysis on Chinese online dissidents' social media discourses, this study examines the impact of Internet censorship on Chinese dissidents' political discourse in two social media platforms: Weibo and Twitter. Data was collected during a time period when China's Internet censorship was tightened. Results revealed that Chinese online dissidents are more likely to post critical opinions and direct criticism towards the Chinese government on Twitter. In addition, dissidents on Twitter are more likely to engage in discussing with others, while Weibo dissidents tend to adopt linguistic skills more often to bypass censorship. No difference was found in terms of dissidents' civility and rationality across the two platforms. Implications and future research are discussed in detail.

Author(s):  
Qihao Ji

Through a content analysis on Chinese online dissidents' social media discourses, this study examines the impact of Internet censorship on Chinese dissidents' political discourse in two social media platforms: Weibo and Twitter. Data was collected during a time period when China's Internet censorship was tightened. Results revealed that Chinese online dissidents are more likely to post critical opinions and direct criticism towards the Chinese government on Twitter. In addition, dissidents on Twitter are more likely to engage in discussing with others, while Weibo dissidents tend to adopt linguistic skills more often to bypass censorship. No difference was found in terms of dissidents' civility and rationality across the two platforms. Implications and future research are discussed in detail.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Olivia Hughes ◽  
Rachael Hunter

BACKGROUND Psoriasis is a chronic inflammatory skin condition, which can be affected by stress. Living with psoriasis can trigger negative emotions, which may influence quality of life. OBJECTIVE This study explored the experiences of people with psoriasis with attention to the potential role of anger in the onset and progression of the chronic skin condition. METHODS Semi-structured qualitative interviews were conducted with twelve participants (n=5 females, n=7 males) recruited online from an advert on a patient charity’s social media platforms. Data were transcribed and analysed using thematic analysis. RESULTS Four key themes were identified: (1) ‘I get really angry with the whole situation:’ anger at the self and others, (2) the impact of anger on psoriasis: angry skin, (3) shared experiences of distress, and (4) moving past anger to affirmation. CONCLUSIONS Findings suggest that anger can have a perceived impact on psoriasis through contributing to sensory symptoms and unhelpful coping cycles and point to a need for enhanced treatment with more psychological support. The findings also highlight the continued stigma which exists for people living with skin conditions and how this may contribute to, and sustain, anger for those individuals. Future research could usefully focus on developing targeted psychosocial interventions to promote healthy emotional coping with psoriasis.


Author(s):  
Mary-Kate Hickman ◽  
Wilson Ozuem ◽  
Jummy Okoya

Gender is a concept that has evolved with time, varying its meaning and relevance regularly. Today, it manifests across many facets of life. Whilst theories of gender began as a device to categorise individuals and groups, these have evolved into a broad, complex system of identification to describe the uniqueness of the individual. Central to the discussion of gender is the question of how we can understand human conduct and experience in technologically laden marketing environments. Drawing on extant theories, the current chapter examines how the technologically mediated marketing environment (TMME) is increasingly challenging fashion and luxury marketers to reconsider their marketing communications strategies, particularly with the impact of evolving Internet technologies such as social media platforms. The concluding section offers further agenda for future research.


2021 ◽  
Vol ahead-of-print (ahead-of-print) ◽  
Author(s):  
Metwaly Ali Mohamed Edakar ◽  
Ahmed Maher Khafaga Shehata

Purpose The rapid spread and severity of the coronavirus (COVID-19) virus have prompted a spate of scholarly research that deals with the pandemic. The purpose of this study is to measure and assess the coverage of COVID-19 research on social media and the engagement of readers with COVID-19 research on social media outlets. Design/methodology/approach An altmetric analysis was carried out in three phases. The first focused on retrieving all papers related to COVID-19. Phase two of the research aimed to measure the presence of the retrieved papers on social media using altmetric application programming interface (API). The third phase aimed to measure Mendeley readership categories using Mendeley API to extract data of readership from Mendeley for each paper. Findings The study suggests that while social media platforms do not give accurate measures of the impact as given by citations, they can be used to portray the social impact of the scholarly outputs and indicate the effectiveness of COVID-19 research. The results confirm a positive correlation between the number of citations to articles in databases such as Scopus and the number of views on social media sites such as Mendeley and Twitter. The results of the current study indicated that social media could serve as an indicator of the number of citations of scientific articles. Research limitations/implications This study’s limitation is that the studied articles’ altmetrics performance was examined using only one of the altmetrics data service providers (altmetrics database). Hence, future research should explore altmetrics on the topic using more than one platform. Another limitation of the current research is that it did not explore the academic social media role in spreading fake information as the scope was limited to scholarly outputs on social media. The practical contribution of the current research is that it informs scholars about the impact of social media platforms on the spread and visibility of COVID-19 research. Also, it can help researchers better understand the importance of published COVID-19 research using social media. Originality/value This paper provides insight into the impact of COVID-19 research on social media. The paper helps to provide an understanding of how people engage with health research using altmetrics scores, which can be used as indicators of research performance.


2021 ◽  
Vol ahead-of-print (ahead-of-print) ◽  
Author(s):  
Puneet Kaur ◽  
Amandeep Dhir ◽  
Amal Khalifa Alkhalifa ◽  
Anushree Tandon

PurposeThis study is a systematic literature review (SLR) on prior research examining the impact of the nocturnal use of social media platforms on a user's sleep, its dimensions and its perceptually allied problems. This SLR aims to curate, assimilate and critically examine the empirical research in this domain.Design/methodology/approachForty-five relevant studies identified from the Scopus and Web of Science (WoS) databases were analyzed to develop a comprehensive research profile, identify gaps in the current knowledge and delineate emergent research topics.FindingsPrior research has narrowly focused on investigating the associations between specific aspects of social media use behavior and sleep dimensions. The findings suggest that previous studies are limited by research design and sampling issues. We highlight the imperative need to expand current research boundaries through a comprehensive framework that elucidates potential issues to be addressed in future research.Originality/valueThe findings have significant implications for clinicians, family members and educators concerning promoting appropriate social media use, especially during sleep latency.


2019 ◽  
Vol 43 (1) ◽  
pp. 89-112 ◽  
Author(s):  
Suliman Aladhadh ◽  
Xiuzhen Zhang ◽  
Mark Sanderson

PurposeSocial media platforms provide a source of information about events. However, this information may not be credible, and the distance between an information source and the event may impact on that credibility. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to address an understanding of the relationship between sources, physical distance from that event and the impact on credibility in social media.Design/methodology/approachIn this paper, the authors focus on the impact of location on the distribution of content sources (informativeness and source) for different events, and identify the semantic features of the sources and the content of different credibility levels.FindingsThe study found that source location impacts on the number of sources across different events. Location also impacts on the proportion of semantic features in social media content.Research limitations/implicationsThis study illustrated the influence of location on credibility in social media. The study provided an overview of the relationship between content types including semantic features, the source and event locations. However, the authors will include the findings of this study to build the credibility model in the future research.Practical implicationsThe results of this study provide a new understanding of reasons behind the overestimation problem in current credibility models when applied to different domains: such models need to be trained on data from the same place of event, as that can make the model more stable.Originality/valueThis study investigates several events – including crisis, politics and entertainment – with steady methodology. This gives new insights about the distribution of sources, credibility and other information types within and outside the country of an event. Also, this study used the power of location to find alternative approaches to assess credibility in social media.


2020 ◽  
Vol 22 (10) ◽  
pp. 1823-1830
Author(s):  
Linnea I Laestadius ◽  
Megan M Wahl ◽  
Julia Vassey ◽  
Young Ik Cho

Abstract Introduction Effective August 2018, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) required that nicotine addiction warnings be placed on ads for nicotine containing e-liquids. As per FDA comments, this provision pertains to visual ads communicated via social media, raising questions about compliance within the large e-liquid promotion community on Instagram. Aims and Methods This study examines use of warnings on promotional Instagram posts before and after provisions took effect on August 10, 2018. Netlytic was used to gather a sample of 500 promotional #eliquid and #ejuice posts from: May 2017, October 2017, March 2018, August 2018, and September 2018. The 1500 prewarning and 1000 postwarning posts were coded using content analysis. Changes in products and marketing strategies were also considered. Post volume was tracked monthly between May 2017 and February 2020. Results In the prewarning period, nicotine warning statements were absent on all posts. Following August 10, 2018, FDA compliant warnings were present on 13.6% of posts. Among US-based posts, 36.4% used the warnings, with warnings more common on posts made by e-liquid brands (52.3%) and posts promoting e-liquids with nicotine (40.0%). Promotional strategies and products did not significantly change. The share of posts made by US Instagram users decreased by 11%, although total post volume continued to grow. Conclusions Many e-liquid promotion posts on Instagram remained noncompliant with nicotine warnings after FDA provisions took effect. The large volume of international users also limited the impact of FDA-mandated warnings on the social media environment. Implications Further guidance and enforcement are needed to ensure that US e-liquid marketers on visual social media platforms adhere to current provisions, particularly for individual social media users who are sponsored by industry. The inherently global span of social media also indicates the importance of a shared approach to marketing regulations. Further work is needed to assess enforcement strategies viable for the social media environment.


2018 ◽  
pp. 1967-2006
Author(s):  
Mary-Kate Hickman ◽  
Wilson Ozuem ◽  
Jummy Okoya

Gender is a concept that has evolved with time, varying its meaning and relevance regularly. Today, it manifests across many facets of life. Whilst theories of gender began as a device to categorise individuals and groups, these have evolved into a broad, complex system of identification to describe the uniqueness of the individual. Central to the discussion of gender is the question of how we can understand human conduct and experience in technologically laden marketing environments. Drawing on extant theories, the current chapter examines how the technologically mediated marketing environment (TMME) is increasingly challenging fashion and luxury marketers to reconsider their marketing communications strategies, particularly with the impact of evolving Internet technologies such as social media platforms. The concluding section offers further agenda for future research.


2019 ◽  
pp. 135-174 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mary-Kate Hickman ◽  
Wilson Ozuem ◽  
Jummy Okoya

Gender is a concept that has evolved with time, varying its meaning and relevance regularly. Today, it manifests across many facets of life. Whilst theories of gender began as a device to categorise individuals and groups, these have evolved into a broad, complex system of identification to describe the uniqueness of the individual. Central to the discussion of gender is the question of how we can understand human conduct and experience in technologically laden marketing environments. Drawing on extant theories, the current chapter examines how the technologically mediated marketing environment (TMME) is increasingly challenging fashion and luxury marketers to reconsider their marketing communications strategies, particularly with the impact of evolving Internet technologies such as social media platforms. The concluding section offers further agenda for future research.


2021 ◽  
Vol 9 ◽  
pp. 80-98
Author(s):  
Hollenbaugh Erin E. ◽  

This paper reviews existing research on self-presentation in social media in order to inform future research. Social media offer seemingly limitless opportunities for strategic self-presentation. Informed by existing self-presentation theories, a review of research on self-presentation in social media revealed three significant context and audience variables that were conceptualized in a model. First, three affordances of social media – anonymity, persistence, and visibility – were discussed, as research has revealed the moderating effects of these affordances between self-presentation goal and the self-presentational content shared in social media. For example, one might expect that social media users are more likely to present their actual selves under conditions of less anonymity, more persistence, and more visibility. On the other hand, the freedom associated with more anonymous, less persistent, and less visibility social media may lead to idealized self-presentation. The second finding revealed the impact of other-generated content in the form of likes, comments, tags, and shares on social media users’ self-presentation content, mediated by how they choose to manage such content.The third theme concerned the moderating effect of context collapse on the relationship between goals and self-presentation content. The composition of an impression manager’s audience from one platform to the next varies across social media platforms, impacting and often complicating the attainment of self-presentation goals in the midst of merging networks of people. Social media users have adopted varying ways to navigate the complexities of context collapse in their pursuit of self-presentation. Although we have learned much from this body of literature, a more comprehensive theory of self-presentation in the hypermedia age is needed to further advance this area of research.


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