Using Social Media to Organize a Marginalized Community

Author(s):  
Todd R. Burton

Potential leaders within marginalized communities find it difficult to connect, learn, strategize, and support one another and build a cohesive community capable of effecting social change. This research contributes to filling a gap in empirical research on effective approaches to employing social media tools to organize and engage in social movements. The research builds on earlier studies of marginalized communities and social media to organize and engages in social movements by applying a case study design to assess how the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) military community employed social media to organize and advocate for inclusion and end discrimination within the U.S. armed forces. Seventeen findings were identified that describe key ways the LGBT military community employed these tools to organize, identify leaders and their roles, and how online behavior affected offline advocacy.

Author(s):  
Todd R. Burton

Potential leaders within marginalized communities find it difficult to connect, learn, strategize, and support one another and build a cohesive community capable of effecting social change. This research contributes to filling a gap in empirical research on effective approaches to employing social media tools to organize and engage in social movements. The research builds on earlier studies of marginalized communities and social media to organize and engages in social movements by applying a case study design to assess how the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) military community employed social media to organize and advocate for inclusion and end discrimination within the U.S. armed forces. Seventeen findings were identified that describe key ways the LGBT military community employed these tools to organize, identify leaders and their roles, and how online behavior affected offline advocacy.


Author(s):  
Todd R. Burton

Potential leaders within marginalized communities find it difficult to connect, learn, strategize, and support one another and build a cohesive community capable of effecting social change. This research contributes to filling a gap in empirical research on effective approaches to employing social media tools to organize and engage in social movements. The research builds on earlier studies of marginalized communities and social media to organize and engages in social movements by applying a case study design to assess how the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) military community employed social media to organize and advocate for inclusion and end discrimination within the U.S. armed forces. Seventeen findings were identified that describe key ways the LGBT military community employed these tools to organize, identify leaders and their roles, and how online behavior affected offline advocacy.


2018 ◽  
Vol 4 (4) ◽  
pp. 205630511880791 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marcia Mundt ◽  
Karen Ross ◽  
Charla M Burnett

In this article, we explore the potential role of social media in helping movements expand and/or strengthen themselves internally, processes we refer to as scaling up. Drawing on a case study of Black Lives Matter (BLM) that includes both analysis of public social media accounts and interviews with BLM groups, we highlight possibilities created by social media for building connections, mobilizing participants and tangible resources, coalition building, and amplifying alternative narratives. We also discuss challenges and risks associated with using social media as a platform for scaling up. Our analysis suggests that while benefits of social media use outweigh its risks, careful management of online media platforms is necessary to mitigate concrete, physical risks that social media can create for activists.


2019 ◽  
Vol 20 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-19 ◽  
Author(s):  
Junic Kim ◽  
Hwanho Choi

This research examines social media users’ value-creation processes and the drivers of a start-up company’s successful social media strategy. This research primarily aims to understand start-ups’ effective utilization of social media and value co-creation processes. Although utilizing social media has become key for many organizations, start-ups and small businesses often suffer from a lack of understanding and knowledge of the utilization of social media tools. Therefore, this article uses a case study on the relationship between a social media platform and users’ value co-creation to offer a conceptual framework for start-ups to consider in utilizing social media. Our research reveals that four core drivers of social media success include experience, satisfaction, expression, and sharing ability. Each of these drivers in turn contains conditions for understanding users’ value-creation process and the creation of drivers for successful social media strategies. The research contributes to literature by providing a detailed review of users’ value co-creation as a part of a start-up’s successful social media strategy.


Author(s):  
J. J. Sylvia IV ◽  
Kyle Moody

The issue of Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. Presidential election has been widely debated by scholars and journalists. However, these works have not fully analyzed the ads that have been released by Facebook and the U.S. Congress. This project uses a case study to analyze the ads posted by the Russian-affiliated Internet Research Agency, considering the quantities of ads targeted to particular geographic locations, the frequency of targeting for unique keywords, and the reach and impressions of each of the ads. Further, these results are compared to results from best practices in traditional social media campaigns as a way to better understand the goals and potential impacts of the IRA ads. In conclusion, the project, by analyzing the full set of IRA ads, sheds new light on the way false information narratives were leveraged by the Russian-linked IRA.


2012 ◽  
pp. 1824-1837 ◽  
Author(s):  
Leila Sadeghi ◽  
Steve Ressler ◽  
Andrew Krzmarzick

This chapter examines the growing literature on e-government and Web 2.0 with particular attention to online collaborative platforms, such as GovLoop, that complement government. The authors present a thorough background to the topic of Web 2.0 in e-government and present numerous examples of how these technologies are used across government both in the U.S. and globally. This chapter explores two main areas: first, how Web 2.0 and social media are being used as a vehicle to enhance e-government, and second, to present a case study of GovLoop, which is a collaborative social media platform designed to complement the work of government. GovLoop provides those working within and external to government—citizens, government employees, academics, non-profit professionals and contractors—with the ability to share information and collaborate on issues of public benefit. The chapter presents a starting point for future research on how Web 2.0 is changing the very nature of e-government and service delivery, and how governments are in a unique position to utilize these tools to expand collaboration and openness with their communities.


2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ty Hollett ◽  
Jeremiah (Remi) Kalir

In this article, we analyze the production of learner-generated playgrids. Playgrids are produced when learners knit together social media tools to participate across settings and scales, accomplish their goals, pursue interests, and make their learning more enjoyable and personally meaningful. Through case study methodology we examine how two platforms - Slack and Hypothesis - enabled learners to curate and participate among their own digital resources and pathways for learning. We contend that both theoretical and pedagogical development is necessary to support adult learners as they curate tools and pathways based upon their contingent needs and goals, and that the concept of playgrids does so by usefully connecting less formal social media practice with more formal professional learning across various settings and scales. In the end, we demonstrate the importance of honoring learners' desire to connect their completion of formal course activities with their less formal social media practices; both sets of practices need not be in conflict and may be complementary.


Author(s):  
Liza Potts

Social web tools are being leveraged by participants to communicate throughout their workday as well as during times of crisis. Using the London Bombings of 7 July 2005 as a case study, this chapter illustrates the need for sociotechnical interventions in systems design. By employing Actor Network Theory the author makes visible the active participants and technologies within the ecosystems of social media tools. Such visibility provides insight to the designer seeking to optimize communication systems in the wake of disaster, as well as providing further generalization to everyday use. Guidelines for improving systems and user interfaces based on disaster scenarios are described.


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