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Published By Sage Publications

2200-467x, 1329-878x

2022 ◽  
pp. 1329878X2110678
Author(s):  
Patrick Heiberg Kapsch

Based on participant-driven media use tracking and self-reflexive media use Vlogs, this article explores how young adult media users make sense of their user agency vis-à-vis algorithms in digital media and how they try actualizing it through reflexive and mundane enactments of algorithmic systems. The article proposes to adapt the concept of ‘small acts of engagement’ to grasp the productive and agentic potentials of how users enact algorithms purposively in daily media use. By engaging research participants actively in reflections to better understand, and possibly respond to the influence of algorithmic power in daily media use, the study unfolds common boundaries of users’ reflexive capabilities, showing how exercising user agency in a datafied age is increasingly complex and prospective, yet not merely limited by algorithmic power. As a result, the article discusses the methodological implications and potentials of engaging media users in reflections and actions to shape their communicative agency, which might be a possible step towards mobilizing algorithmic literacy.


2022 ◽  
pp. 1329878X2110688
Author(s):  
Catherine Hartung ◽  
Natalie Ann Hendry ◽  
Kath Albury ◽  
Sasha Johnston ◽  
Rosie Welch

During a tumultuous period marked by a global pandemic, forced lockdowns, and educational institutions going ‘digital by default’, TikTok has emerged as a key platform for teachers to connect and share their experiences. These digital practices have been widely celebrated for providing teachers with an outlet during a challenging time, though little is known about the particulars of TikTok's appeal among teachers and their followers. This article focuses on a teacher from South Australia, ‘Mr Luke’, whose upbeat TikTok videos capturing ‘#teacherlife’ have seen him grow a significant following. Drawing on interviews with Mr Luke and an Australian pre-service teacher who follows him, we consider their thoughts on TikTok and its relationship to professional practice. We identify key factors that have enabled TikTok's popularity among educators, with implications for both teacher education and social media scholarship.


2022 ◽  
pp. 1329878X2110684
Author(s):  
Jandy Luik

This article aims to explore the media content during the COVID-19 pandemic. It focuses on the pandemic-handling videos released by start-up companies in Indonesia through their official YouTube accounts. As start-ups were also experiencing the impact of the pandemic, one of their biggest challenges was to communicate optimistic messages to the public with the right content and context. Therefore, this article examines the contents of the videos released by start-up companies during the COVID-19 pandemic in Indonesia. Drawing from the data collected between March and December 2020, this qualitative study finds four inspirational media themes: ‘ we all are affected by the pandemic’, the appearance of human values, presenting action taken, and optimistic expressions. Further, this article discusses the arrangement of inspirational statements and acts of empathy, which are predominantly mixed with brand identities and echo the value of gotong royong (mutual assistance).


2021 ◽  
pp. 1329878X2110675
Author(s):  
Gabriela Elisa Sued ◽  
María Concepción Castillo-González ◽  
Claudia Pedraza ◽  
Dorismilda Flores-Márquez ◽  
Sofía Álamo ◽  
...  

This article seeks to understand how Latin American feminist public expression has gained algorithm-mediated visibility on social media. To this end, a cross-platform analysis was conducted for two issues: the legalisation of abortion in Argentina and the struggle to eliminate violence against women. The data were collected on four platforms: Twitter, Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube through the representative hashtags, ‘#abortolegal2020’, ‘#25N’, and ‘#niunamenos’. Digital critical methods were employed to gather data and approach high-visibility users, visual messages, and hashtagging practices. The findings reveal two configurations of algorithmic mediated visibility, formed by assemblages of actors, formats, and knowledge: platform vernaculars and algorithmic resistance. Both result in a mutual shaping between platforms, seeking to impose a quantitative logic of visibility, and feminist actors, using the tactics of algorithmic resistance to give visibility to the content, aesthetics, and resignified messages about their struggles.


2021 ◽  
pp. 1329878X2110688
Author(s):  
Yuan Jiang

Compared with similar research mainly focusing on the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) in Australian mainstream media using discourse analysis, this paper explores the reasons for the narrative shift by conducting semi-structured interviews with leading and well-known Australian narrative producers. This paper takes two conditions as a given. Firstly, the BRI narratives in Australian mainstream media shifted in tone from mostly positive to highly critical. Secondly, the Australian mainstream media's increasingly negative attitudes towards the BRI are essentially not just about the BRI but the Chinese government. Based on my analysis and interviews, this paper makes contributions by filling in the gap of finding out reasons to explain this narrative shift. More concretely, this paper finds out that while mainstream media is influential in many areas of national policy making, mainstream media reporting on foreign affairs is less so. By comparison, the Australian government's BRI or China policy has a significant impact on Australian mainstream media reporting. This narrative shift has been driven by international politics and Australia's China policy, influenced by Australian audiences’ preference of local news and their local position, and its democratic responsibilities. Meanwhile, the vagueness and constant changing characteristics of the BRI do not help the understanding of the BRI in Australian media.


2021 ◽  
pp. 1329878X2110617
Author(s):  
Tara Ross

This article explores how journalists navigate the tensions between community engagement and professional detachment by tracing how journalists used Twitter during Tonga and Australia's inaugural rugby league test match in 2018. As a high-profile Pacific cultural and sporting event, it provides an opportunity to study how journalists engage with marginalised Pacific communities, and whether that engagement demonstrates the reciprocity needed to build relationships. More than 9000 tweets were analysed using quantitative and qualitative methods to reveal that media organisations and journalists tended more towards broadcasting than interactive approaches on Twitter. Practices differed between subgroups, however: Individual journalists engaged in public discussion more than media organisations, and Pacific journalists engaged more than non-Pacific journalists. In fact, Pacific journalists’ identity work – performed through specific discourses, including emojis – demonstrated a less detached journalism than did non-Pacific journalists, who appeared to talk past the Pacific communities in this Twitter public.


2021 ◽  
pp. 1329878X2110646
Author(s):  
Giselle Newton ◽  
Clare Southerton

There is a pressing need to facilitate sensitive conversations between people with differing or opposing views. On video-sharing app TikTok, the diverse experiences of donor-conceived people and recipient parents sit uneasily alongside each other, coalescing in hashtags like #donorconceived. This article describes a method ‘Situated Talk’ which uses TikToks to facilitate a reflexive encounter, drawing on three areas of scholarship: media ethnography and elicitation, researcher reflexivity and duoethnography/collaborative autoethnography. We describe how we, as a donor-conceived adult (Giselle) and a queer woman who would need donor sperm to have a child (Clare), employed TikToks from #donorconceived as prompts to facilitate a sensitive conversation and elicit situated insights. We explore three central insights from applying our method: (1) discomfort as a productive tension; (2) unresolved dilemmas; and (3) discovering parallels in experience. Using TikToks as stimuli, ‘Situated Talk’ contributes an innovative method for generating grounded social media insights.


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