scholarly journals The Politics of Social Media Manipulation

2020 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
New Media ◽  
Empirical Studies ◽  
Fake News ◽  
Mainstream Media ◽  
Media Technologies ◽  
Data Journalism ◽  
Digital Methods ◽  
Media Systems ◽  
Media Manipulation

Disinformation and so-called fake news are contemporary phenomena with rich histories. Disinformation, or the willful introduction of false information for the purposes of causing harm, recalls infamous foreign interference operations in national media systems. Outcries over fake news, or dubious stories with the trappings of news, have coincided with the introduction of new media technologies that disrupt the publication, distribution and consumption of news -- from the so-called rumour-mongering broadsheets centuries ago to the blogosphere recently. Designating a news organization as fake, or der Lügenpresse, has a darker history, associated with authoritarian regimes or populist bombast diminishing the reputation of 'elite media' and the value of inconvenient truths. In a series of empirical studies, using digital methods and data journalism, the authors inquire into the extent to which social media have enabled the penetration of foreign disinformation operations, the widespread publication and spread of dubious content as well as extreme commentators with considerable followings attacking mainstream media as fake.

Illusions of Empowerment

2012 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 36-51 ◽  
Author(s):  
Corinne Weisgerber
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
New Media ◽  
The Public ◽  
Media Technologies ◽  
Digital Democracy ◽  
Internet Users ◽  
Attention Economy ◽  
The Social ◽  
Social Media Platforms ◽  
Media Systems

This article calls into question the social media empowerment narrative and the underlying idea that social media platforms are empowering everyday netizens to have their voices heard. The author argues that social media technologies may simply privilege only those Internet users who are new media savvy and have leisure time to participate in the so-called digital democracy. While social media systems might have lowered the entrance threshold for civic engagement, hurdles such as the growing competition in an attention economy, the odds of standing out amidst millions of other individual voices, knowledge of new media technologies required to achieve visibility, and time demands make the social media empowerment vision more difficult to attain than the architects of the empowerment ideology have made the public to believe.

scholarly journals old war, new battleground: deconstructing the potency of social media for community engagement in nigeria’s human rights advocacy efforts

2021 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 56-74
Author(s):  
Joel Chinedum Ugwuoke ◽  
◽  
Joshua Aghogho Erubami ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Human Rights ◽  
New Media ◽  
Public Involvement ◽  
Fundamental Rights ◽  
Development Discourse ◽  
Mainstream Media ◽  
Media Technologies ◽  
The Social ◽  
Human Rights Advocacy

Although the need to guarantee human rights has been long acknowledged, efforts towards their full realization seem limited to the sole reliance on the conventional top-down approach to development. However, current development discourse emphasizes the centrality of people’s involvement in social development, such as human rights promotion, and the social media seem to hold considerable prospects in the actualization of this goal. Using a survey of 1,000 respondents drawn from states across Nigeria, this study investigates how new media technologies, such as social media, are shifting focus from the sole reliance on the mainstream media and influencing public involvement in human rights promotion in Nigeria. Findings showed that the social media have engendered community-wide engagements of people in efforts aimed at reducing cases of human rights violation in Nigeria, as people do not only get exposed to human rights issues on the social media, but also participate in their discussion and promotion. Overall, using the social media for human rights advocacy was significantly associated with respondents’ gender (.528**), education (.674**), perception (.753**), and social media exposure (.421**). Hence, there is the need for stakeholders to leverage the potentials of the social media in the promotion of people’s fundamental rights.

scholarly journals MEDIA LITERACY TOOLS IN COMBATING DISINFORMATION AND FAKE NEWS IN SOCIAL MEDIA

2020 ◽  
Vol 13(62) (1) ◽  
pp. 103-112
Author(s):  
Maria Magdalena POPESCU
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
New Media ◽  
Media Literacy ◽  
Literacy Skills ◽  
User Generated Content ◽  
Fake News ◽  
Mainstream Media ◽  
Inaccurate Information ◽  
Raising Awareness ◽  
Cognitive Influence

If mainstream media meant one sender and inordinate receivers, nowadays, new media brought the chance and challenge to have numberless senders and receivers at the same time, in a network of information. Along with polyphonic chunks, inaccurate information penetrates the echo-chambers we create. The danger is that unless timely spotted, it sows disinformation and polarization. The solution resides in media literacy skills, in raising awareness over types of communication products meant for malicious use especially within social media where user generated content contributes to proliferating and spreading the content at incredible speed. The present paper is meant to present ways that help individuals avoid being subject to mal-intended behavioural and cognitive influence.

scholarly journals Russian-Speaking Digital Buddhism: Neither Cyber, nor Sangha

Religions ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (6) ◽  
pp. 449
Author(s):  
Timur Badmatsyrenov ◽  
Elena Ostrovskaya ◽  
Fyodor Khandarov ◽  
Innokentii Aktamov
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
New Media ◽  
Graph Model ◽  
Social Shaping Of Technology ◽  
Mixed Methods Approach ◽  
Media Technologies ◽  
Second Stage ◽  
Modeling Techniques ◽  
Social Shaping ◽  
Key Issues

The paper presents the results of a study that implemented a mixed methods approach to explore the question of correlation between online and offline activities of Buddhist organizations and communities in Russia. The research was carried out in 2019–2020 and addressed the following key issues: How do Buddhist websites and social media communities actually interact with offline organizations and Russian-speaking Buddhist communities? How do the ideological specifics of Buddhist organizations and communities influence their negotiations with the Internet and strategies towards new media technologies? Within the methodological frame of the religious–social shaping of technology approach by Heidi Campbell, we used the typology of religious digital creatives to reveal the strategies created by the Russian-speaking Buddhist communities developing their own identity, authority, and boundaries by means of digital technologies. In the first stage, we used quantitative software non-reactive methods to collect data from social media with the application of mathematical modeling techniques to build a graph model of Buddhist online communities in the vk.com social network and identify and describe its clusters. The second stage of the research combined biographical narratives of Buddhist digital creatives and expert interviews.

What the fake? Assessing the extent of networked political spamming and bots in the propagation of #fakenews on Twitter

2019 ◽  
Vol 43 (1) ◽  
pp. 53-71 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ahmed Al-Rawi ◽  
Jacob Groshek ◽  
Li Zhang
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Data Sets ◽  
Fake News ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Mainstream Media ◽  
News Discourse ◽  
Twitter Data ◽  
News Organizations ◽  
Twitter Users ◽  
One Year

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to examine one of the largest data sets on the hashtag use of #fakenews that comprises over 14m tweets sent by more than 2.4m users.Design/methodology/approachTweets referencing the hashtag (#fakenews) were collected for a period of over one year from January 3 to May 7 of 2018. Bot detection tools were employed, and the most retweeted posts, most mentions and most hashtags as well as the top 50 most active users in terms of the frequency of their tweets were analyzed.FindingsThe majority of the top 50 Twitter users are more likely to be automated bots, while certain users’ posts like that are sent by President Donald Trump dominate the most retweeted posts that always associate mainstream media with fake news. The most used words and hashtags show that major news organizations are frequently referenced with a focus on CNN that is often mentioned in negative ways.Research limitations/implicationsThe research study is limited to the examination of Twitter data, while ethnographic methods like interviews or surveys are further needed to complement these findings. Though the data reported here do not prove direct effects, the implications of the research provide a vital framework for assessing and diagnosing the networked spammers and main actors that have been pivotal in shaping discourses around fake news on social media. These discourses, which are sometimes assisted by bots, can create a potential influence on audiences and their trust in mainstream media and understanding of what fake news is.Originality/valueThis paper offers results on one of the first empirical research studies on the propagation of fake news discourse on social media by shedding light on the most active Twitter users who discuss and mention the term “#fakenews” in connection to other news organizations, parties and related figures.

scholarly journals Political super branding through the use of social media technology : the Barack Obama presidential campaign in 2008

2013 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Nadas Ramachandra Pillay
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
New Media ◽  
Barack Obama ◽  
Media Technology ◽  
Media Technologies ◽  
Political Campaigning ◽  
American President ◽  
Use Of Social Media ◽  
Media Channels ◽  
Social Media Technology

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.

scholarly journals Fake and Real News detection Using Python

2020 ◽  
pp. 423-428
Author(s):  
Fakhra Akhtar ◽  
Faizan Ahmed Khan
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Fake News ◽  
False Information ◽  
False Negatives ◽  
Mainstream Media ◽  
Social Media Platforms ◽  
The Masses ◽  
Negative Attributes ◽  
Entire Dataset ◽  
F Measure

<p>In the digital age, fake news has become a well-known phenomenon. The spread of false evidence is often used to confuse mainstream media and political opponents, and can lead to social media wars, hatred arguments and debates.Fake news is blurring the distinction between real and false information, and is often spread on social media resulting in negative views and opinions. Earlier Research describe the fact that false propaganda is used to create false stories on mainstream media in order to cause a revolt and tension among the masses The digital rights foundation DRF report, which builds on the experiences of 152 journalists and activists in Pakistan, presents that more than 88 % of the participants find social media platforms as the worst source for information, with Facebook being the absolute worst. The dataset used in this paper relates to Real and fake news detection. The objective of this paper is to determine the Accuracy , precision , of the entire dataset .The results are visualized in the form of graphs and the analysis was done using python. The results showed the fact that the dataset holds 95% of the accuracy. The number of actual predicted cases were 296. Results of this paper reveals that The accuracy of the model dataset is 95.26 % the precision results 95.79 % whereas recall and F-Measure shows 94.56% and 95.17% accuracy respectively.Whereas in predicted models there are 296 positive attributes , 308 negative attributes 17 false positives and 13 false negatives. This research recommends that authenticity of news should be analysed first instead of drafting an opinion, sharing fake news or false information is considered unethical journalists and news consumers both should act responsibly while sharing any news.</p>

New Media and Terrorism

2014 ◽  
pp. 184-196
Author(s):  
Pauline Hope Cheong
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
New Media ◽  
Critical Examination ◽  
War On Terrorism ◽  
Mainstream Media ◽  
Social Media Networks ◽  
Social Media Platforms ◽  
Hearts And Minds ◽  
Video Material

Beyond the widespread coverage of terrorism-related stories on international news outlets, we are witnessing the swift spread of alternative interpretations of these stories online. These alternative narratives typically involve digital transmediation or the remix, remediation, and viral dissemination of textual, audio, and video material on multiple new and social media platforms. This chapter discusses the role of new(er) media in facilitating the transmediated spread of extremist narratives, rumors, and political parody. Drawing from recent case studies based upon multi-modal analyses of digital texts on social media networks, including blogs, vlogs, Twitter, and Jihadist sites associated with acts of terror in Asia, Middle East, and North America, the chapter illustrates how digital transmediation significantly works oftentimes to construct counter narratives to government counter insurgency operations and mainstream media presentations. In discussing these examples, the chapter demonstrates how the new media points to varied narratives and reifies notions of national security, global politics, terrorism, and the media's role in framing the “War on Terrorism.” Moreover, a critical examination of remix texts and digital mashups of popular artifacts inform a Web 2.0 understanding of how the creative communication practices of online prosumers (hybrid consumers and producers) contest dominant interests in the online ideological battlefield for hearts and minds.

Leveraging New Media as Social Capital for Diversity Officers

2015 ◽  
pp. 1718-1742
Author(s):  
Kindra Cotton ◽  
Denise O'Neil Green
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
New Media ◽  
Social Media Marketing ◽  
Subject Matter Experts ◽  
Personal Lives ◽  
Media Technologies ◽  
Diversity And Inclusion ◽  
Marketing Planning ◽  
The Social ◽  
A Current

While most have grasped how to utilize social media in their personal lives, very few have been able to bridge the gap in leveraging new media effectively to enhance their careers. This chapter is a how-to guide for Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion (EDI) professionals seeking to use social media to carve a niche in the social networking arena. The purpose of this chapter is to highlight how EDI professionals can benefit from utilizing new media marketing tools to position themselves as subject-matter experts and use this authority to create engaged communities surrounding the topics of equity, diversity, and inclusion in higher education. A current review of new media technologies and emerging strategies starts the chapter. It continues with further details on the steps needed to develop and implement a successful social media marketing strategy. The chapter concludes with how to turn plans into actionable steps and includes a social media marketing planning worksheet.

scholarly journals Simulacra in the Age of Social Media: Baudrillard as the Prophet of Fake News

2020 ◽  
pp. 019685992097715
Author(s):  
James Morris
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
General Trend ◽  
Digital Age ◽  
The United States ◽  
The Political ◽  
Fake News ◽  
Donald Trump ◽  
Online Technology ◽  
Mainstream Media ◽  
Mass Reproduction

“Fake News” has been a frequent topic in the last couple of years. The phenomenon has particularly been cited with regards to the election of Donald Trump to the presidency of the United States. The creation of “post truth” reports that are disseminated via the Web and social media has been treated as something new, a product of the digital age, and a reason to be concerned about the effects of online technology. However, this paper argues that fake news should be considered as part of a continuum with forms of media that went before in the 20th Century, and the general trend of postmodernity detailed by Baudrillard. The simulation of communications media and mass reproduction was already evident and has merely progressed in the digital age rather than the latter providing a wholly new context. The paper concludes by asking whether the political havoc caused by fake news has an antidote, when it appears to be a by-product of media simulacra’s inherent lack of connection to the real. In a communications landscape where the misrepresentations of the so-called “Mainstream Media” are decried using even more questionable “memes” on social media, is there any possibility for truth?

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