scholarly journals THE CHESHIRE CAT OF SOCIAL MEDIA: VALUES IN PLATFORM POLICIES

Author(s):  
Rebecca Scharlach ◽  
Blake Hallinan ◽  
Limor Shifman

Value is fundamental for social media platforms, not only in the economic sense but also in the sense of normative principles like community and free speech. Policy documents are pivotal sites for the expression of values and present a public-facing account of the roles and responsibilities assigned to various actors, including individual users, third parties, governments and social media corporations. While prior research has examined the construction of individual values such as privacy and transparency in platform policies, there has been no holistic account of the values invoked in these documents. Combining a dictionary-based analysis with a qualitative content analysis, we present the first comprehensive study of the values presented in the policy documents of five major social media platforms: Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, Twitter, and TikTok. Our analysis reveals that policy documents invoke a large number of values that seemingly point to conflicting priorities and commitments. However, these values can be organized in four overarching principles that were consistent across platforms: community, expression, privacy, and improvement. Each principle assigns responsibility for the enactment of these values and by that allows platforms to limit their ethical responsibility for executing the values they publicly promote. Values can thus be described as the “Cheshire cat” of social media platform policies – they look magical, but once touched, may assume a different shape, pop up in an alternative location, or even disappear.

2021 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 205630512110088
Author(s):  
Ioana Literat ◽  
Neta Kligler-Vilenchik

Adopting a comparative cross-platform approach, we examine youth political expression and conversation on social media, as prompted by popular culture. Tracking a common case study—the practice of building Donald Trump’s border wall within the videogame Fortnite—across three social media platforms popular with youth (YouTube, TikTok, Instagram), we ask: How do popular culture artifacts prompt youth political expression, as well as cross-cutting political talk with those holding different political views, across social media platforms? A mixed methods approach, combining quantitative and qualitative content analysis of around 6,400 comments posted on relevant artifacts, illuminates youth popular culture as a shared symbolic resource that stimulates communication within and across political differences—although, as our findings show, it is often deployed in a disparaging manner. This cross-platform analysis, grounded in contemporary youth culture and sociopolitical dynamics, enables a deeper understanding of the interplay between popular culture, cross-cutting political talk, and the role that different social media platforms play in shaping these expressive practices.


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 ◽  
pp. 147078532110475
Author(s):  
Manit Mishra

The ubiquity of social media platforms facilitates free flow of online chatter related to customer experience. Twitter is a prominent social media platform for sharing experiences, and e-retail firms are rapidly emerging as the preferred shopping destination. This study explores customers’ online shopping experience tweets. Customers tweet about their online shopping experience based on moments of truth shaped by encounters across different touchpoints. We aggregate 25,173 such tweets related to six e-retailers tweeted over a 5-year period. Grounded on agency theory, we extract the topics underlying these customer experience tweets using unsupervised latent Dirichlet allocation. The output reveals five topics which manifest into customer experience tweets related to online shopping—ordering, customer service interaction, entertainment, service outcome failure, and service process failure. Topics extracted are validated through inter-rater agreement with human experts. The study, thus, derives topics from tweets about e-retail customer experience and thereby facilitates prioritization of decision-making pertaining to critical service encounter touchpoints.


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.


2018 ◽  
Vol 39 (9) ◽  
pp. 1019-1032 ◽  
Author(s):  
Apoorve Nayyar ◽  
Jihane Jadi ◽  
Roja Garimella ◽  
Stephen Tyler Elkins-Williams ◽  
Kristalyn K Gallagher ◽  
...  

Abstract Background Social media has become an indispensable tool for patients to learn about aesthetic surgery. Currently, procedure-specific patient preferences for social media platforms and content are unknown. Objectives The authors sought to evaluate social media preferences of patients seeking aesthetic surgery. Methods We utilized a choice-based conjoint analysis survey to analyze the preferences of patients seeking 3 common aesthetic procedures: breast augmentation (BA), facial rejuvenation (FR), and combined breast/abdominal surgery (BAB). Participants were asked to choose among social media platforms (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat, Pinterest, Tumblr, YouTube), information extent (basic, moderate, comprehensive), delivery mechanism (prerecorded video, live video, photographs, text description), messenger (surgeon, nurse/clinic staff, patient), and option for interactivity (yes/no). The survey was administered using an Internet crowdsourcing service (Amazon Mechanical Turk). Results A total of 647 participants were recruited: 201 in BA, 255 in FR, and 191 in BAB. Among attributes surveyed, participants in all 3 groups (BA, FR, BAB) valued social media platform as the most important (30.9%, 33.1%, 31.4%), followed by information extent (23.1%, 22.9%, 21.6%), delivery mechanism (18.9%, 17.4%, 18%), messenger (16%, 17%, 17.2%), and interactivity (11.1%, 9.8%, 11.8%). Within these attributes, Facebook ranked as the preferred platform, with comprehensive information extent, live video as the delivery mechanism, and surgeon as the messenger as most preferred. Conclusions The choice of social media platform is the most important factor for patients, and they indicated a preference for comprehensive information delivered by the surgeon via live video on Facebook. Our study elucidates social media usage in common aesthetic populations, which can help improve aesthetic patient outreach.


2021 ◽  
Vol 31 (2) ◽  
pp. 269-276
Author(s):  
Prashanth Bhat

Widespread dissemination of hate speech on corporate social media platforms such as Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube has necessitated technological companies to moderate content on their platforms. At the receiving end of these content moderation efforts are supporters of right-wing populist parties, who have gained notoriety for harassing journalists, spreading disinformation, and vilifying liberal activists. In recent months, several prominent right-wing figures across the world were removed from social media - a phenomenon also known as ‘deplatforming’- for violating platform policies. Prominent among such right-wing groups are online supporters of the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in India, who have begun accusing corporate social media of pursuing a ‘liberal agenda’ and ‘curtailing free speech.’ In response to deplatforming, the BJP-led Government of India has aggressively promoted and embraced Koo, an indigenously developed social media platform. This commentary examines the implications of this alternative social platform for the online communicative environment in the Indian public sphere.


Author(s):  
Iman Mohamed Zahra

The objective of the current chapter is to analyze one of the most recent and successful social media campaigns namely #NotInMyName from the viewpoint of the seven dimensions of religion utilized by Van Esch and others as the main pillar of social marketing and media campaigns. Further #NotInMyName Public Relations (PR) campaign is scrutinized for PR strategies and message strategies utilized in formulating the campaign messages. To achieve that end, a qualitative analysis was implemented on three levels relating to each video and vine of the study sample: first locating the Dimensions of Religion (DOR taxonomy(ies) used in this video or vine, then emanating on the PR campaign strategies implemented in the video or vine and finally searching for the message strategies utilized in the video or vine. The major conclusion of this study was that although campaigns launched via social media lack the scientific known steps utilized to plan and launch media campaigns traditionally, those campaigns derive from the social media platform exacerbating an unprecedented power to stir political and social movements especially, regarding controversial and stagnant matters. Posts, comments and shares on different social media platforms go viral, stir discussions, and trigger public opinion both virtually and in reality. Dimensions of Religion taxonomies proved reliability as a viable platform stemming from another discipline to plan messages and to analyze campaigns based on the different aspects the model would provide. Ranging from simple aspects to more complicated aspects, Dimensions of Religion model must be subjected to further research to determine its feasibility to be applied to different campaigning structures and objectives.


Author(s):  
Shalin Hai-Jew

Malicious political socialbots used to sway public opinion regarding the U.S. government and its functions have been identified as part of a larger information warfare effort by the Russian government. This work asks what is knowable from a web-based sleuthing approach regarding the following four factors: 1) the ability to identify malicious political socialbot accounts based on their ego neighborhoods at 1, 1.5, and 2 degrees; 2) the ability to identify malicious political socialbot accounts based on the claimed and linked geographical locations of their accounts, their ego neighborhoods, and their #hashtag networks; 3) the ability to identify malicious political socialbot accounts based on their strategic messaging (content, sentiment, and language structures) on respective social media platforms; and 4) the ability to identify and describe “maliciousness” in malicious political socialbot accounts based on observable behaviors on that account on three social media platform types: (a) microblogging, (b) social networking, and (c) crowd-sourced encyclopedia content sharing.


2019 ◽  
pp. 449-459
Author(s):  
Abdulmutallib A. Abubakar

There is volume of literature and growing studies on the roles and responsibilities of conventional mass media and to some extent computer-based social media in enhancing political engagement, mobilisation and participation in developed and emerging democracies such as Nigeria. However, a few studies exist that provide insight about the intersection between mobile-based social media platforms and political mobilisation and participation in various democracies (liberal and non-liberal, developed and developing). It is therefore pertinent to examine such relationship especially from Nigeria's perspective as emerging democracy that is struggling to mobilise and absorb people from all sectors and sections to ensure acceptance and institutionalisation of democratic ideals in the country. Thus, the focus of this chapter is to examine the roles, significance and application of mobile based social media platforms that can only be registered and used on mobile phones. The chapter also evaluated strategies and techniques required to enrich engagement, mobilisation and participation in democratic processes particularly in the Northern part of the country through these mobile-based social media. Thus political actors can use mobile based social media to engage and mobilise youth and women to participate keenly in political discourse, electioneering, policy formulation and implementation at various levels.


Author(s):  
Kristy A. Hesketh

This chapter explores the Spiritualist movement and its rapid growth due to the formation of mass media and compares these events with the current rise of fake news in the mass media. The technology of cheaper publications created a media platform that featured stories about Spiritualist mediums and communications with the spirit world. These articles were published in newspapers next to regular news creating a blurred line between real and hoax news stories. Laws were later created to address instances of fraud that occurred in the medium industry. Today, social media platforms provide a similar vessel for the spread of fake news. Online fake news is published alongside legitimate news reports leaving readers unable to differentiate between real and fake articles. Around the world countries are actioning initiatives to address the proliferation of false news to prevent the spread of misinformation. This chapter compares the parallels between these events, how hoaxes and fake news begin and spread, and examines the measures governments are taking to curb the growth of misinformation.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document