scholarly journals The social media logic of political interaction: Exploring citizens’ and politicians’ relationship on Facebook and Twitter

First Monday ◽  
2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bente Kalsnes ◽  
Anders Olof Larsson ◽  
Gunn Sara Enli

This paper examines citizens’ interactions with politicians in social media in what is referred to as an everyday context, unmediated by news media. Through a representative survey, we compare the influence of a series of socio-demographical variables such as political interest, age, gender and education on the interaction levels between citizens and politicians. The article argues that the social media logic can be operationalized into “connected affordances”: Redistribution, Interacting and Acknowledging — which are the three types of user practices on Facebook and Twitter. The study finds that Facebook is a service where “ordinary” people engage in political interaction with politicians — and receive replies from politicians — while Twitter is mostly used by just a small group of the population for these purposes. Hence, the popularity of Facebook could be seen as allowing for new connections between citizens and politicians without news media as mediators. Our results suggest that the stronger the political interest the citizens express, the more connective affordances are utilized — such as commenting and sharing. Political interest also impacts what response citizens receive from political actors in social media.

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.


Author(s):  
Mary Francoli

On May 2, 2011, Canadians voted in what the news media dubbed “Canada's First Social Media Election.” This allowed Canadians to join their neighbours to the south who, arguably, had gone through one national social media election during the 2008 bid for the presidency. Through a theoretical discussion of what constitutes sociality and networked sociality, and a critical examination of social media as a campaign tool, this chapter asks “What makes a campaign social?” It also asks if the term “social media campaign” adequately describes current campaign practices? In exploring these questions, the chapter draws on the 2011 federal election in Canada and the 2008 American election. Ultimately, the chapter argues we have limited evidence that social media has led to increased sociality when it comes to electoral politics. This calls the appropriateness of the term “social media campaign” into question. Such lack of evidence stems from the dynamism of networked sociality, which renders it difficult to understand, and methodological difficulties when it comes to capturing what it means to be “social.”


2020 ◽  
pp. 174165902091863
Author(s):  
Justin R Ellis

Social media has transformed public discourse on policing and the contest of control over the police image. This article draws on original, empirical research to conceptualise the phenomenon of the ‘social media test’ – the evolution of social media into a legitimate measure of police performance. Through in-depth interviews with police and non-police respondents the article maps the genealogy of, and provides perspective on, one of the first viral cases of bystander video of police excessive force in Australia filmed and uploaded to YouTube. The study shows the video’s impact on hegemonic mainstream and police news media narratives, processes of criminalisation and police accountability and the merit of narrative criminology in unpacking these phenomena. Police alluding to the ‘social media test’ in in-depth interviews shows that digital media in general and social media in particular can no longer be dismissed as peripheral or subsidiary to public discourse on policing in a digital society.


2018 ◽  
Vol 167 (1) ◽  
pp. 57-70 ◽  
Author(s):  
Caroline Fisher ◽  
David Marshall ◽  
Kerry McCallum

Traditionally politicians have been dependent on political news media to get their message across to the public. The rise of social media means that politicians can bypass the Press Gallery and publish directly to their target audiences via Facebook, Twitter and other social media platforms. This article argues that Prime Minister John Howard’s (1996–2007) use of talk back radio and early forays on YouTube were pivotal in the trend towards ‘disintermediation’ in Australian politics. It draws on two studies. One involving interviews with 87 key media actors from the Howard era including journalists, broadcasters, politicians and media advisers; and a second, which includes fresh interviews with contemporary press secretaries. This article examines the shift from a ‘mass media logic’ to a ‘hybrid logic’, considered from a mediatization theoretical position. We also ask important questions about the press gallery’s ongoing relevance in the digital era, when politicians preside over their own social media empires.


2019 ◽  
Vol 8 (07) ◽  
pp. 24683-24789
Author(s):  
Dr. D. Murali ◽  
Vinutha BA

The precious data from online origin has developed into a extended research. The mass media and news media provides the daily events to the common people. Huge amount of information is been achieved by an online social media suchlike Twitter, which contains more information about news-associated content. It is necessary to find a way to filter noise, for these resources to be useful and grab the content that is depend on the similarity to news media. Despite after the noise is eliminated the excessive data still remain in the data so it is essential to prioritize it for utilization. We are introducing three factors for prioritization. The unsupervised technique finds the news topics that are common in the pair of social media and news media, and then ranks them by the applicability factors such as MF, UA and UI. Initially the temporal prevalence of the appropriate topic in news media focus (MF). Secondary the temporal prevalence of the appropriate topic in social media illustrates the user attention (UA). Finally the interconnection among the social media users who specify this topic demonstrates the power of the society who is discussing; it is termed as the user interaction (UI).  


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Karolina Karas

This major research paper (MRP) examines the visual social semiotics of Canadian politicians’ Instagram accounts and their followers’ responses. As a qualitative study, it seeks to address the following questions: From the coded images in the data collection, which qualities do the Instagram followers prefer? From the coded images in the data collection, which qualities do the Instagram followers prefer the least? What do these qualities reveal about the political actors in the data collection? To answer these questions, I coded the most liked and least liked Instagram postings between April 1, 2014 and March 31, 2015 from two of Canada’s federal party leaders, Prime Minister Stephen Harper and Liberal leader Justin Trudeau. These images were coded through a visual social semiotics analysis under the following categories in my codebook: community outreach, competence, empathy, excitement, ideology, personal, symbols of nationalism, celebrity, and miscellaneous. This codebook was constructed from a literature review encompassing the public’s values of politicians in traditional media. The findings of this MRP expand on visual social semiotic theory in the social media context and build on research about audience perceptions of politicians. The results suggest that photo composition and the presentations of values in an image are important considerations for politicians. Based on the findings, this study is relevant to how professional communicators can construct a persuasive image and story in the political context on a social media platform.


2021 ◽  
Vol 32 (1) ◽  
pp. 193-196
Author(s):  
Ilire Zajmi

Social media are changing the nature of mass communication, demediating traditional media. They are being used as powerful platforms for the distribution and dissemination of information, activities, promotion of institutions, certain groups of interest of individuals, but also political actors for different purposes.Placing and disseminating information through the opportunities offered by social media enables the mobilization of a wider audience in new ways and ways. Politicians are exploiting these opportunities provided by social networks, without having to put information through journalists or traditional media. There are two theories in the literature regarding the use of social networks, optimistic and pessimistic theory. According to optimistic theory, social networks provide opportunities to compete for power. Theorists of this theory of using social media think that in the digital age, we are witnessing the transformation of information and the audience that uses them. According to them, the global success of social media has made it possible for everyone to connect directly to his audience through the platforms offered. With the use of these platforms, politicians gain attention and at the same time build a symmetrical or asymmetric relationship with their followers.Pessimistic theory, however, blames the social media for the use of false promise, and a pseudo-modernization of modern society. Studies believe that involvement in social networks and political actors at the same time implies a greater engagement of the audience that absorbs the information disclosed and affects the democratization of political competition. This paper aims to analyze the use of social networks as a means of information dissemination by Kosovar political actors and the content of the information being disclosed.The paper analyzes the posts of three key Kosovar politicians, Prime Minister Ramush Haradinaj, President Hashim Thaçi and Kosovo Assembly Speaker Kadri Veseli in their profiles on Facebook and Twitter social networks during a one-month monitoring period during May 2019


2019 ◽  
Vol 16 (2) ◽  
pp. 239-264
Author(s):  
Ray Surette

A 2006 US copycat crime wave came into being, surged with thousands of crimes committed, and dissipated without substantial news media attention. The development of this early copycat crime meme is traceable to the nature of the crime, “ghost riding the whip,” and the social media and popular music communication channels associated with it. Ghost riding the whip involved traffic violations where drivers exit their cars and dance atop or alongside the moving driverless vehicles. Social media allowed the widespread diffusion of detailed instructions that spread this crime from a single minority community to the middle class within a 3-month period. The study of this copycat crime meme examined four types of data: Google Trends, rap songs, ProQuest news media data, and YouTube videos. The examination of the crime wave suggests how Gabriel Tarde’s 19th-century ideas operate in the contemporary social media era. However, unlike pre-social media-based crime waves that were launched via interpersonal and legacy media communication pathways, for ghost riding, rap songs, YouTube postings, and Google searches spurred its growth. Legacy media were found to be most important during the crime wave’s decline, but not during its diffusion. For this copycat crime meme, social media’s influence flowed in a unique upward and outward pattern and the results raise the research questions as to how social media have changed the dynamics of crime waves and how important legacy media will be in future crime waves.


2019 ◽  
Vol 63 (12) ◽  
pp. 1665-1683 ◽  
Author(s):  
Guy J. Golan ◽  
Ilan Manor ◽  
Phillip Arceneaux

Mediated public diplomacy literature examines the engagement of foreign audiences by governments via mediated channels. To date, scholars have examined the competitive contest between global rivals in promoting and contesting one another’s frames as reflected in global news media coverage. Recognizing the meaningful impact of social media platforms, along with the global rise of government-sponsored media organizations, the current study builds on previous mediated public diplomacy scholarship by expanding the scope of the literature beyond the earned media perspective to also include paid, shared, and owned media. The article presents a revised definition of the term mediated public diplomacy along with a case study of government to foreign stakeholder engagement via the social media platform, Twitter.


Author(s):  
Jane Suiter ◽  
Roderick Flynn

This chapter summarizes the development of the Irish media system through the lens of mediation and mediatization. It outlines the early strong state control of the broadcasting sector and the relatively quiescent attitude of many print journalists in the early days of development. It follows with a description of the growing influence of political actors and consequences of mass media logics which was at the core of late twentieth-century Irish democracy. Next, it describes the rise of digital communication technologies and the advent of social media, and the emergence of a hybrid media system that instigated a shift in power relations between politicians and journalists. Finally, it concludes with a focus on the challenges related to regulation of the social media environment and those related to supporting a quality information environment.


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