THE CHESHIRE CAT OF SOCIAL MEDIA: VALUES IN PLATFORM POLICIES

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.

Queros as Inalienable Objects: Ritual Drinking Vessels and the End of the Inka Empire at Moqi (Locumba Valley, Southern Peru)

Mutual toasting using pairs of intricately carved wooden cups, called queros, was the fundamental act incorporating local communities into the Inka Empire (AD 1400–1532). These cups then remained in the possession of provincial communities and were used to reaffirm political ties in subsequent state-sponsored events. I argue that the value of these cups derives from their inalienability: they were indelibly imbued with the power of the Inka state and were objects of memory embodying the history of local–imperial relationships. Archaeologically, queros are often found in mortuary contexts, usually as pairs. This suggests that these vessels functioned to authenticate claims to authority vis-à-vis the empire for an individual or kin group. Less frequently, queros are deposited singly and in ritualized non-mortuary contexts. I review archaeological examples and present two new queros from the site of Moqi (Upper Locumba Valley, southern Peru). At Moqi, these queros were used not only to promote a shared affinity with the empire but also to commemorate the sundering of the community's ties to the Inka state on abandonment of the site. Such community expression, at the expense of personal aggrandizement, may have been particularly important at Moqi and other sites constructed and populated de novo by the Inka.

Sold out or bought in? Complexities of the X Swatch as subcultural accessory for the straight edge scene

This research explores lifestyle consumerism and inquires into a subcultural community’s use of a mainstream fashion object to express alternative values. The ‘X-rated Swatch Watch’ is extremely popular within straight edge, a clean-living punk offshoot in which participants abstain from alcohol, tobacco and illicit drugs. Swatch first released the watch in 1987 with a black band and white face featuring a large black ‘X’, a prominent symbol in the straight edge scene visible on clothing, in tattoos and drawn on hands. The limited-edition watch became highly collectable on the second-hand market and was re-released by Swatch in 2018 with design changes, including larger size and more colour options. The first and second incarnations of the watch, as well as knockoffs, indicate aesthetic trends in the fashion cycle, evolutions as well as stagnations in subcultural individual and community expression, and the complexities of a mass market item that has multiple cultural meanings within the same time period. In this article, we use qualitative mixed methods to explore the significance of the watch for United States straight edgers who own or express interest in the watch. Primary data collection included surveys, social media discussions, participant observation and archive visits. Results indicate that wearers utilize this watch to strengthen their straight edge identity and communal connections to similar individuals and to the historic lineage of their lifestyle. X Swatch consumers are not overly concerned with the duality of subcultural and mainstream meanings as they compartmentalize their community from wider society.

#Palestine2Ferguson a community created through words

Purpose The purpose of this essay is to highlight how the digital age makes visible community expression and organization on an international scale. Design/methodology/approach This project provides a rhetorical analysis of the sub-cultural twitter hashtag “#Palestine2Ferguson”. By focusing on #Palestine2Ferguson, this piece interrogates the ways groups that have been displaced by oppression can build bridges in the new digital age. Through the adaptation of Deluca and Peeples “public screen”, this project reveals how increased sophistication of discernment adds a new “touch” to the screen. Findings An analysis of #Palestine2Ferguson through the lens of “the public touchscreen” emboldens rhetorical studies understanding of how ethnic/racial minority individuals are capable of self-selecting their method and modes of self-expression when building community. Originality/value The transformation of life within the digital age has created an exigence for a reconsideration and expansion of Deluca and Peeples concept of “public screens”.

Country Music as Cultural Practice

This chapter argues that country music should be examined first and foremost as social practice—as a driver of community expression and social capital through music, words, and dance. While country music functions in a multitude of ways, from narrative storytelling to commercial product and points in between, the commercial sphere of country music has been exhaustively examined. Scholarly inquiry into country music, rooted in the folk revival of the mid-twentieth century and significantly influenced by collectors (and collections) of commercial country music, has maintained a southern, commercial focus for much of the past half-century. As such, scholarly and popular understanding of what, where, and who country music springs from has ignored significant regional vernacular forms and uses of country music. Ethnographic inquiry has made it possible to tell the story country music culture and traditions. Murphy illustrates his argument with examples from New England, the Mid-Atlantic, and Atlantic Canada.

Finding Community in the New England Country and Western Event

This chapter examines how country and western musicians regularly navigate the frontier between self-expression and community expression, and such navigation is a defining characteristic of the folk medium of country and western music. In New England, this frontier occupies a space between a show and a dance—what is referred to as the country and western event, and which is a defining characteristic that distinguishes New England country and western from its other regional variations. At the country and western event, the performing group and the audience participate in negotiations between what the band wants to play and what the audience wants to hear. Today, the line between the show and the dance is thoroughly blurred, though some vestiges of the old formal style hang on in places like the Canadian-American Club of Watertown, Massachusetts.

Batman, Pandaman and the Blind Man: A Case Study in Social Change Memes and Internet Censorship in China

While the internet has been examined as a utilitarian space for social movements, it also acts as a cultural space for personal and community expression about important social issues. While examining the particularities of the memetic form – often catchy humor, simple imagery, and remixing – the author examines meme culture as a vehicle for political and social critique in the context of China’s stringent web censorship and propaganda. She looks at social change memes that have arisen around internet censorship and in support of the blind lawyer activist Chen Guangcheng. First, she considers these memes as visual and creative practices that sidestep the mechanics of internet censorship in China. She then argues for the role of internet memes in challenging hegemonic media environments, and maintains that these actions should be considered important political acts in and of themselves.