Communities of making: Exploring parallels between fandom and open source

First Monday ◽  
2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rachel Winter ◽  
Anastasia Salter ◽  
Mel Stanfill

Studies of social media frequently focus on the most popular platforms (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, etc.) and fail to consider more unconventional platforms and communities that nevertheless fit the criteria of social media. A comparison of fan communities emphasizing different content structures (Archive of Our Own, DeviantArt, and Fanfiction.net) to open source community platform GitHub can provide insight into the practices of communities of making, regardless of even substantial differences in purposes and affordances, while expanding the traditional definition of social media. Study of both fan and open source communities revealed commonalities across platforms, such as non-market practices with deep market ties; gift economies that run on status; and a lack of inclusivity. We argue that the dynamics of inclusion and exclusion, labor, and value on social media platforms can be illuminated by putting these platforms and their communities into conversation.

2018 ◽  
Vol 169 (1) ◽  
pp. 5-15 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stuart Cunningham

This article traverses aspects of a personal journey of a humanities scholar, trained in traditional disciplines of textual analysis and aesthetic appreciation, working with evolutionary economics. Reflecting on a 2008 article for the Journal of Cultural Economics that hypothesised the importance of social network markets as a new definition of creative industries, the article notes how remarkably this had come to pass, with the emergence of social media entertainment. This new industry is based on previously amateur creators engaging in content innovation and media entrepreneurship across multiple social media platforms to aggregate global fan communities and incubate their own media brands. The implications of social media entertainment for screen policy, both through cultural and industry agency support and through regulation and programme innovation, are explored internationally as well as in the context of the current Australian Content and Children’s Review.


Genealogy ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 52
Author(s):  
Bronwyn Carlson ◽  
Tristan Kennedy

Social media is a highly valuable site for Indigenous people to express their identities and to engage with other Indigenous people, events, conversations, and debates. While the role of social media for Indigenous peoples is highly valued for public articulations of identity, it is not without peril. Drawing on the authors’ recent mixed-methods research in Australian Indigenous communities, this paper presents an insight into Indigenous peoples’ experiences of cultivating individual and collective identities on social media platforms. The findings suggest that Indigenous peoples are well aware of the intricacies of navigating a digital environment that exhibits persistent colonial attempts at the subjugation of Indigenous identities. We conclude that, while social media remains perilous, Indigenous people are harnessing online platforms for their own ends, for the reinforcement of selfhood, for identifying and being identified and, as a vehicle for humour and subversion.


2021 ◽  
pp. 1-41
Author(s):  
Donato VESE

Governments around the world are strictly regulating information on social media in the interests of addressing fake news. There is, however, a risk that the uncontrolled spread of information could increase the adverse effects of the COVID-19 health emergency through the influence of false and misleading news. Yet governments may well use health emergency regulation as a pretext for implementing draconian restrictions on the right to freedom of expression, as well as increasing social media censorship (ie chilling effects). This article seeks to challenge the stringent legislative and administrative measures governments have recently put in place in order to analyse their negative implications for the right to freedom of expression and to suggest different regulatory approaches in the context of public law. These controversial government policies are discussed in order to clarify why freedom of expression cannot be allowed to be jeopardised in the process of trying to manage fake news. Firstly, an analysis of the legal definition of fake news in academia is presented in order to establish the essential characteristics of the phenomenon (Section II). Secondly, the legislative and administrative measures implemented by governments at both international (Section III) and European Union (EU) levels (Section IV) are assessed, showing how they may undermine a core human right by curtailing freedom of expression. Then, starting from the premise of social media as a “watchdog” of democracy and moving on to the contention that fake news is a phenomenon of “mature” democracy, the article argues that public law already protects freedom of expression and ensures its effectiveness at the international and EU levels through some fundamental rules (Section V). There follows a discussion of the key regulatory approaches, and, as alternatives to government intervention, self-regulation and especially empowering users are proposed as strategies to effectively manage fake news by mitigating the risks of undue interference by regulators in the right to freedom of expression (Section VI). The article concludes by offering some remarks on the proposed solution and in particular by recommending the implementation of reliability ratings on social media platforms (Section VII).


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.


2021 ◽  
Vol 15 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-11
Author(s):  
Akhmad Roja Badrus Zaman ◽  
Mahin Muqaddam Assarwani

Advances in technology and information provide new opportunities for preachers to be able to take part in spreading Islamic teachings through various social media platforms. One of the preachers who took the role to preach through social media was Habib Husein Jafar al-Hadar. This article examines Habib Husein Jafar’s missionary activities on the social media platform he uses, Youtube. The researcher analyzes the data by observing virtually and visually (virtual ethnography) on the da’wa content displayed by Habib Husein Jafar through Youtube. The study shows that: 1) the attention to the spiritual enlightenment efforts of the younger generation is the basis of the selection of the social media platform Youtube - because based on previous research, the users of this social media platform are 18-29 years of age; 2) starting from the da’wa consumers who are primarily young people, the content they present is suitable to their needs and lifestyle and 3) by using the concept of the circuit of culture analysis, Habib Husein Jafar in various ranges can reconstruct people’s perception of one’s definition of holiness. It is not limited based on normative appearance - cloaked and sacrificed, for example - but more on the substantive side, namely by behaving and having knowledgeable skills. With the variety of content, he could visualize himself as a pious young man by not abandoning his social status as a young person.


The rise of social media platforms like Twitter and the increasing adoption by people in order to stay connected provide a large source of data to perform analysis based on the various trends, events and even various personalities. Such analysis also provides insight into a person’s likes and inclinations in real time independent of the data size. Several techniques have been created to retrieve such data however the most efficient technique is clustering. This paper provides an overview of the algorithms of the various clustering methods as well as looking at their efficiency in determining trending information. The clustered data may be further classified by topics for real time analysis on a large dynamic data set. In this paper, data classification is performed and analyzed for flaws followed by another classification on the same data set.


2020 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
pp. 181-199
Author(s):  
Agnes Kovacs ◽  
Tamas Doczi ◽  
Dunja Antunovic

The Olympic Games are among the most followed events in the world, so athletes who participate there are exceptionally interesting for the media. This research investigated Olympians’ social media use, sport journalists’ attitudes about Olympians’ social media use, and the role of social media in the relationship between Olympians and sport journalists in Hungary. The findings suggest that most Hungarian Olympians do not think that being on social media is an exceptionally key issue in their life, and a significant portion of them do not have public social media pages. However, sport journalists would like to see more information about athletes on social media platforms. The Hungarian case offers not only a general understanding of the athlete–journalist relationship, and the role of social media in it, but also insight into the specific features of the phenomenon in a state-supported, hybrid sport economy.


2020 ◽  

‘Trolls for Trump’, virtual rape, fake news — social media discourse, including forms of virtual and real violence, has become a formidable, yet elusive, political force. What characterizes online vitriol? How do we understand the narratives generated, and also address their real-world — even life-and-death— impact? How can hatred, bullying, and dehumanization on social media platforms be addressed and countered in a post-truth world? Violence and Trolling on Social Media: History, Affect, and Effects of Online Vitriol unpacks discourses, metaphors, dynamics, and framing on social media, in order to begin to answer these questions. Written for and by cultural and media studies scholars, journalists, political philosophers, digital communication professionals, activists and advocates, this book connects theoretical approaches from cultural and media studies with practical challenges and experiences ‘from the field’, providing insight into a rough media landscape.


2021 ◽  
pp. 030157422110262
Author(s):  
Tarulatha R Shyagali ◽  
Ayesha Rathore ◽  
Abhishek Gupta ◽  
Anil Tiwari ◽  
Shanya Kapoor ◽  
...  

Introduction: In little more than a decade, social media has gone from being an entertainment source to a fully integrated part of nearly every aspect of daily life. This study aimed to provide an insight into how orthodontics-related social media posts are looked upon by the Indian population. Material and Methods: Orthodontics-related social media posts were analyzed for the number of likes, shares, and comments. Comments were also scrutinized for determining whether they were appreciation comments or enquiries related to orthodontic treatment and procedure. Posts were collected from 3 platforms: Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram. A mixed-methods approach was applied. First, all posts were structured according to a quantitative content analysis. Subsequently, qualitative analysis was performed to detect potential differences between the quality of response to posts on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram. Using one-way ANOVA test, differences in the data were tabulated. A Chi- Square test was used to analyze the qualitative differences in the comments, which were scrutinized to check if they were appreciation comments or enquiries/doubts related to the posts. Results: There was a significant difference between the numbers of likes, shares, and comments. Appreciation comments were more in number than enquiries. Instagram had the maximum number of likes, followed by Facebook and Twitter ( P < .00001). Facebook had more shares in comparison to Twitter. Upon an analysis done on the number of comments, Facebook was found to have the highest number of comments, followed by Instagram and Twitter. All the results were significant, with P < .00001. Conclusion: It can be concluded that social media awareness related to orthodontics posts among Indians is gaining pace, and a lot can be achieved using these social media platforms to spread awareness related to orthodontic treatment.


2018 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 205630511775072 ◽  
Author(s):  
William Housley ◽  
Helena Webb ◽  
Meredydd Williams ◽  
Rob Procter ◽  
Adam Edwards ◽  
...  

The increasing popularity of social media platforms creates new digital social networks in which individuals can interact and share information, news, and opinion. The use of these technologies appears to have the capacity to transform current social configurations and relations, not least within the public and civic spheres. Within the social sciences, much emphasis has been placed on conceptualizing social media’s role in modern society and the interrelationships between online and offline actors and events. In contrast, little attention has been paid to exploring user practices on social media and how individual posts respond to each other. To demonstrate the value of an interactional approach toward social media analysis, we performed a detailed analysis of Twitter-based online campaigns. After categorizing social media posts based on action(s), we developed a typology of user exchanges. We found these social media campaigns to be highly heterogeneous in content, with a wide range of actions performed and substantial numbers of tweets not engaged with the substance of the campaign. We argue that this interactional approach can form the basis for further work conceptualizing the broader impact of activist campaigns and the treatment of social media as “data” more generally. In this way, analytic focus on interactional practices on social media can provide empirical insight into the micro-transformational characteristics within “campaign communication.”


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