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This paper introduces the 'Independence' themed special issue which includes research presented at the 22nd annual Association of Internet Researchers (AoIR) conference (2021). 'Independence' as a special issue theme could hardly be timelier, both in geopolitical and internet research terms. The call for the 2021 AoIR annual conference asked us to reflect on the ambivalence of the term, to look back on historical struggles for independence, the long waves of history, and prompted us to ask who benefits from independence (and who does not). Hosted online for a second year, this time by universities in Philadelphia (USA), the conference was bounded by the Black Lives Matter movement, the insurrectionist storming of Washington, D.C.'s Capitol Hill, and global struggles to control the COVID-19 pandemic. This special issue includes nine papers that showcase new research exploring the affordances offered by digital media platforms to people, users, and workers, while also identifying tendencies towards new forms of control and surveillance facilitated by platforms. Topics include geopolitical and biopolitical digital sovereignty, facial recognition technologies, data divides, new methods approaches and innovative data sourcing, mobile and social media, examinations of embodied local knowledge as well as patriarchal, racist, and gendered social structures, and a broad range of field sites from Asia, Africa, and South America. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How do people in the world's largest democracy consume news online? In this paper, I aim to answer this question by conducting a quantitative assessment of the online news consumption behavior of a large sample of Indian internet users (N≈50,000) over a period of 45 months. In doing so, I contribute to theoretical debates about global news media use, by systematically appraising the prominence and trends in audience share of different types of news sources, thereby shedding light on the digital news consumption landscape of a crucial, but understudied context. Theoretically, I engage with the displacement-complementarity hypothesis and find no evidence that digital-born media have contested the hegemony of legacy media in India online. Next, I investigate the regional-national media divide and find that regional, vernacular media have suffered significant declines in their audience shares over time. This begs the question whether the notion of 'polycentrism' – the idea that the Indian media environment is comprised of national and regional media of equivalent weight – is at all applicable online as it is offline. These findings also run counter to claims of 'internet vernacularization' that have been touted in the past. Finally, I propose the concept of audience mobility, and use it to identify qualitatively distinct dynamics in how vernacular audiences in India have migrated to national vis-à-vis international outlets. The findings and their implications are discussed in light of contemporary changes in Indian society that is characterized by rapid digitization and increasing literacy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper analyses the role of alternative far-right media in promoting and organizing mobilization against the Global Compact for Migration – the first intergovernmentally negotiated agreement, prepared under the auspices of the United Nations, covering all dimensions of international migration in a holistic and comprehensive manner. Exploring four European alternative far-right media: PI-News in Germany, Il Primato Nazionale in Italy, the UK localization of Breitbart, and the transnational Voice of Europe, we show that these media have gone beyond (dis)informing and have actively mobilized and channeled indignation through petitioning and protest organization. While most research on far-right media practices so far has focused either on social media interactions or exclusively on 'disinformation' and 'fake news', we analyse web based alternative news media as part of а far-right social movement that has successfully used progressive left-wing protests repertoires and tactics. We argue that alternative far-right news media act as 'indignation mobilization mechanisms' that not only fuel the indignation of the public by channeling the messages of far-right politicians but also channel bottom-up indignation through online campaigns, petitions, and offline street protests. This unabashedly biased and mobilization-oriented approach is what distinguishes far-right media from mainstream media and guarantees them a loyal and dedicated supporter base. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the late 1970s, the Mexican government has been embroiled in an armed conflict with the drug cartels, and criminal organisations have engaged in violent confrontations with each other. Violence escalated in 2006 under the presidency of Felipe Calderón Hinojosa, and since then killings have become spectacular and highly mediatised. An often-overlooked front of the cartel wars is the use of non-official networked media that generates and sustains popular narratives about cartel leaders. In this paper, we focus on the media assemblages that sustain the myths associated with the now captured 'El Chapo' Guzmán, perhaps the most celebrated narco in Mexican history. In particular, we focus on the phenomenon of the El Chapo memes as these have moved into a new phase via digital platforms such as Whatapps. We argue the El Chapo memes play an important role in popular communication revolving around narco culture, functioning as artefacts of and even opportunities for political contestation, as well as everyday humour and survival. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper draws on my experience over two decades as part of an early generation of scholars who graduated with a PhD in sociology into a career as a researcher and teacher in the multidisciplinary field of digital media. I reflect on my experiences to offer an assessment of the state of digital media scholarship within sociology and the field of communication. The study of digital media remains underdeveloped within sociology. In part, this is due to disciplinary failures, an array of relevant, specialized areas within sociology have yet to fully realize the role of digital media. Sociological perspectives are also constrained through a dominant 'communication perspective' at the center of the field of communication. Communication is home to most digital media scholars and uses its institutional dominance to arbitrate what qualifies as scholarship. Whereas communication serves as a plural disciplinary catch-all for the subjects of the social sciences, it often does so without crossing the boundaries of a relatively homogeneous, epistemological framework. That framework does not adequately represent sociological perspectives on digital media. I point to key differences between sociology and communication that tend to marginalize sociological perspectives. These differences have also served to render the field of communication less relevant to sociology (and likely to other disciplines in the social sciences). I stress the importance of building institutions and practices that support (multi)disciplinary representation in the field to strengthen sociology and other perspectives and avoid a myopic lens on our understanding of digital media and social life. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Young people's lives are inextricably tied in with the digital, whether it is for education, engagement, leisure, or work. Studies from the Global North have examined children and social media from several perspectives, with discourse now veering towards a rights-based approach to foreground young people's voices in a digital and social media world, something that is missing in countries like India. This paper drew on deep interactions with young people from a large Indian city to gain preliminary insights into social media practices and modes of engagement with particular reference to management of access, privacy, safety, and negotiating challenges or problem solving. Our study suggests that conversations about digital platforms, particularly social media spaces, in relation to children's everyday life practices need to begin early, at the point when children begin interacting with these technologies. Critical digital literacy must recognize the agency of young people, their naturalized interactions with the digital world, as well as the complexities of family and school life that moderate such interactions. These contextual nuances become significant when framing regulatory policies, parental advisories and critical digital literacy and media education programs. This article adds to the slowly growing literature from the Global South that enhances and diversifies our understanding of how the 'born digital' generation lives with/in social media. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although previous research has offered important insights into the consequences of mis- and disinformation and the effectiveness of corrective information, we know markedly less about how different types of corrective information – news media literacy interventions and fact-checkers – can be combined to counter different forms of misinformation. Against this backdrop, this paper reports on experiments in the US and the Netherlands (N = 1,091) that exposed people to evidence-based or fact-free anti-immigration misinformation, fact-checkers and/or a media literacy intervention. The main findings indicate that evidence-based misinformation is seen as more accurate than fact-free misinformation, and the combination of news media literacy interventions and fact-checkers is most effective in lowering issue agreement and perceived accuracy of misinformation across countries. These findings have important implications for journalism practice and policy makers that aim to combat mis- and disinformation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this blended ethnography, combining fieldwork with campus conservative organizations/figures and digital ethnography of their social media, we explore how capitalism, Christianity, and conservatism are brought together and branded for youth. We argue that campus conservative organizations like Turning Point USA are important sites for mainstreaming, branding, and circulating an assemblage of conservative, Christian, and racialized discourses aligned with Christian nationalism and against the left. We analyze how this 'friend enemy distinction' occurs through gendered social media practices, constructing female 'cuteservatives', influencers who sell friendship and t-shirts, and masculine heroes who battle a socialist enemy. We explore how these discourses are produced, marketed, and circulated. And finally, through Turning Point's celebration of Kyle Rittenhouse, we show the dangerous potential consequences of this violent rhetoric. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With society becoming increasingly digital, new opportunities are afforded to potential offenders to weaponize digital features and affordances to carry out their crimes. As a result, concerns persist over online forms of crime, particularly cybercrime involving sexual exploitation, and what can be done about them. Drawing on interview and focus group data collected from 70 sex crime investigators from police service organizations across Canada, we uncover police perspectives on online sex-based crime. We demonstrate that police perceive online crimes to not necessarily be new forms of crime, but rather altered by digital media in terms of methods and weapons being used. We focus on uncovering the features and affordances police identify as contributing to the increase in crime itself as well as the creation of greater opportunities for crime to occur. In addition, resulting from crime shifting into digital spaces, we uncover the challenges digital media has presented for police in terms of how they handle, respond to, and investigate online crime. We discuss these challenges and their impact on policing and provide solutions for combatting them moving forward. Overall, this article contributes to the current body of literature investigating online crime and policing in the digital age by drawing on the theoretical framework of affordances and offering police perspectives on online sex-based crimes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study investigates social media usage patterns, Twitter' frequency use and message typologies of selected South African female politicians'. Using the digital public sphere theory as a lens, the study considers six hundred Twitter posts from six female politicians from the African National Congress, Democratic Alliance, and Economic Freedom Fighters political parties to examine the potential of social media for visibility and participation, particularly for female politicians who are underrepresented in mainstream media platforms. The study finds that these politicians leverage digital media to promote their public works, challenging media gatekeeping and asserting agency in shaping public discourse. The findings also reveal the strategic use of social media for self-promotion allowing female politicians to enhance visibility, influence public perception, and consolidate their positions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examines how social media platforms can facilitate greater visibility of Tunisian women in political communication activism to survive male politicians' domination and the conventional media's boycott. The authors chose to focus on the case of Tunisian activist Abir Moussi to investigate how she uses Facebook for political mobilization and self-branding purposes. A monographic approach to the content of the Facebook page was carried out, along with a semiotic analysis of the speech given by Moussi on the decisions announced by President Kais Said on 25 July 2021. The results revealed a Facebook-Live-based communication strategy to address audiences as well as a large number of photos and videos. Besides, The Tunisian political activist used several linguistic elements in her discourse to make her political discourse effective, such as contrast, intertextuality, metaphor, etc. Unlike President Said, who uses Standard Arabic, the Tunisian political activist speaks the Tunisian dialect; Abir's tone ranges from humorous, enthusiastic, provocative, menacing and promising; she provides her propaganda speech with legal texts and arguments to convince her audience, claiming to enlighten minds by simplifying ordinances and complex political terms. Moreover, she revealed several political and economic 'hot issues' that led to the Tunisian crisis. The authors conclude that social media does not create new ways of activism but rather amplifies traditional ones; they suggest enhancing the political efficacy of social media to boost political activism and emphasizing the concept of 'online political efficacy' in future research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Anthropogenic climate change remains a polarizing topic. As most social media users share articles solely relying on the headline, this raises the question of how emerging digital media reporting – especially in the headlines – shapes the perception of climate change issues and engages audiences. Guided by the dual-systems emotion model and discrete-emotions model, this study compared emotion words used in headlines versus full text among climate change articles – and their social media engagement, using computational methods. Findings suggested that climate change support headlines were more likely to use fear words while denial headlines were significantly more likely to contain emotion words, negatively-valenced words, as well as words for anger, anticipation, disgust, sadness, and surprise. Regarding the full text, denial articles were more likely to contain emotion words, negatively-valenced words, and many discrete emotions related words than support articles. A denial article's engagement was predicted by the total number of emotion words contained in its headline, whereas a support article's engagement was predicted by negatively-valenced words and words for fear used in its headline. Emotions contained in the full text did not predict support and -denial articles' engagement. Findings provide practical guidance on how to increase the engagement level of climate change articles. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The concept of hegemonic masculinity has been used in Chinese sociology since the early-2020s to explain Chinese wealthy men's power over women in the market reform era. Scholars have also paid attention to the ways in which rural, working-class men achieve a sense of manhood, but the links between digital media and gender theory have often not been explored. To fill in this gap, this article examines the ways in which Chinese rural migrant heterosexual men sophisticatedly employ digital technology and gain advantages in the highly competitive field of marriage, translating savvy digital media usage into cultural capital. Research findings drawing upon our long-term ethnography offer substantial evidence of a relationship between men's active use of digital technology, caring practices, and the desirability of rural migrant men. As such, we develop the concept of caring capital in relation to men's ability to: master romantic online courting manners, display caring behaviors during follow-up offline courtship, and please their (future) parents-in-law. Research limitations are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The advent of online technologies has been triggering a wave of empirical examinations of online political participation (OPP) over the past twenty years. It also stimulated scholarly debate on how to conceptualize political participation in a digital age. Scholars differ on whether to consider passive and expressive online behaviors part of or a mere precursor to political participation. This study argues that due to its rapid evolution as well as its dependence on platform affordances, quantitative empirical studies on OPP may be prone to deviations between established, much-cited definitions and measurements applied in the field. Based on a systematic literature review of 289 international peer-reviewed survey-based and experimental studies, we analyze both definitions and measurements of OPP. We find a series of disconnections: Measures preponderantly address online activities, yet merely a small share of definitions focuses on the online sphere. While only few definitions account for passive activities (e.g., reading news about politics), many operationalizations include measures capturing such passive behaviors. Expressive activities are most popular in measures of OPP, but definitions rarely reflect this focus. Finally, while measures of OPP are prone to be platform-specific, definitions tend to neglect this characteristic. We conclude by reflecting the conceptual implications of common measurement practices for the study of OPP. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article investigates how personal technologies interact with the sociality of young people in a context of long-distance mobility. We focussed on a group of individuals – expatriates and internal migrants – who are highly mobile, multilingual, multicultural, sometimes also multinational, highly educated, and who extensively use personal technologies to support their sociality. The long-distance mobility of these young adults has been discussed so far in socio-economic terms, but scholars have substantially neglected to explore how these young persons manage their sociality and communication as well as the sustainability of their life in the long run. We adopted a qualitative approach and conducted 23 interviews with a convenience sample. The main results highlight three implications, due to the intensive use of personalised technologies: (a) when the spatial distance is great, close relationships are strengthened; (b) the relationships with new friends are evaluated less than those with the friends left behind; (c) the role played by digital media is only positive (not ambivalent as in sedentary contexts) since it is only thanks to these media that the young adults are able to manage their overall sociality. Moreover, these people tend to stay in a mobile status, which risks being detrimental for them. Finally, but not unexpectedly, mobile sociality emerges as a dimension full of tensions and contradictions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this introductory essay, the editors consider the current challenges in understanding a networked China. We consider how the digital media landscape has changed just since an earlier collection of research in 2015, subtitled 'global dynamics of digital media and civic engagement.' We take up this orienting concept of civic engagement to explore emerging mediated spaces for cultural production through global connectivities. Beyond an area studies contribution, we focus on China more broadly as a complex global assemblage: an intersection of technology, norms, and socio-cultural structures. Our contributors were invited to consider 'what' and 'where' is China, and 'how do we know China?' Along with logistical challenges of fieldwork involving constraints of geopolitics and pandemic, we encouraged an epistemic reflexivity around reliance on certain paradigms, concepts and kinds of data. This research is further complicated by sensitivities around by the very vocabulary often involved, including public, civil society, and civic engagement itself. In the search for digital China, contributors consider how to think about China and how to locate a digital China. In exploring digital production and performance of and in China, we include analyses of fandom, idols, and the curation of collective pandemic memories. Together, this collection provides a rich set of deeply researched cases and imaginative new strategies to understand how the contradictions of digital China – between connectivity and control – are playing out, with important implications for the changing nature of public life. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article analyses how knowledge workers experience and reflect upon intrusions from digital media in the pursuit of focused work. As a multitude of digital media technologies have become integral to working life, scholars have observed a connectivity paradox in which these technologies are experienced as both helpful and hindering, as integral to but also intruding upon focus and concentration. To understand this important and widespread ambivalence in digital society, we analyze qualitative interviews with knowledge workers in a range of professions. With a theoretical framework drawing on domestication theory, sociology of work and critiques of digital modernity, we highlight how workers negotiate spatial, temporal, and technological conditions, and the conflicted norms that are activated in the process. Our findings indicate that negotiations about digital media technologies come to represent psychological, cultural and social dilemmas that go beyond the individual worker, but are nevertheless experienced as individual cross-pressures to be managed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Much contemporary social mobilization is digitally enabled. Digital media may provide the communication platforms on which supporters deliberate movement goals, share information, discuss tactics, and generate discourses in response to ongoing happenings. Yet digital media's capability to serve these functions should depend on platform-specific affordances and movement dynamics. Based on such premises, this article examines how the online forum LIHKG became the central communication platform in the Anti-Extradition Bill Movement in Hong Kong. Empirically, digital media and content analysis data help establish the forum's prominence during the first few months of the movement, while analyses of protest onsite survey data show how the use of LIHKG systematically related to several movement-related attitudes among the protesters. The article highlights the affordances and movement dynamics that allow the forum to play the role. It contributes to understanding the factors that shape the role and impact of digital media platforms in social mobilization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Digital technologies afford ample opportunities for children's development, identity formation, imagination and sociability through free play. At stake, we argue, is children's agency. Yet free play is under threat in both digital and nondigital contexts. Recognising that different configurations of the contexts in which play occurs affect whether and how children can play on their own terms, this article draws on the long tradition of research on child-led or free play in natural or nondigital contexts to explore children's play in digital contexts. Combining qualitative and quantitative research methods, we examine the qualities of children's play and the factors that shape it so as to reimagine, together with children, parents and professionals working with children, a digital environment that could better serve children's best interests. The findings show that the qualities of children's play are strikingly similar in digital and nondigital contexts but that children find certain social-technical configurations restrictive of their agency and freedom to develop their identity through play in digital contexts. Based on children's implicit and explicit calls for change, we propose a 'playful by design' approach by which designers and providers of digital products and services could urge those with the powers to redesign digital environments to prioritise digital features that promote children's imaginative, social, open-ended, risk-taking and stimulating play while limiting the risks to children's safety, privacy and self-determination that arise from commercial interests. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With childhood blurring into youth in most contemporary Western societies, public perceptions and concern about "the young" seem to proliferate as a result of the urge to police the boundary between childhood and youth - whether regarding sexual health (as a corollary of sexual experience or sexual knowledge), children's and youth's media uses and cultural practices, or consumption of popular culture. The authors are sensitive to the lack of adequate research as to how young refugees participate in out-of-school educational settings due to specific needs and requirements - even more so during the COVID-19 pandemic, where the digital exclusion of young refugees from educational settings was exacerbated. 3 Barbovschi, M., Ní Bhroin, N., Chronaki, D., Ciboci, L., Farrugia, L., Lauri, M. A., Sevcíková, A., Staksrud, E., Tsaliki, L., & Velicu, A. (2021). [Extracted from the article]

This article focuses on the educational participation of young refugees in the context of digitalized settings. Education policies often consider digital media beneficial for the educational participation of disadvantaged groups, or vulnerable groups facing many challenges in education and society, such as young people with a forced migration background. Moreover, digital media are highly relevant in the everyday lives of young refugees. Our 3-5-year (02/2019-07/2022) research project focuses on the trans-organizational orientation occurring in different everyday media-permeated life contexts of young refugees, which includes the formal educational setting of school, the non-formal setting of child and youth welfare, and informal contexts in the everyday life of young refugees. Through combining grounded theory, ethnography, and neo-praxeological methodologies, organizational cross-connections and cross-relations were revealed in practices and arrangements, involving digital artifacts as well as human actors. This article presents methodological insights into distributed educational practices concerning understanding information, acquiring knowledge, and developing agency in which digital media are implicated. Emerging dimensions of educational inequalities within digitalized educational contexts, which became apparent during lockdown periods in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The equalization-normalization debate concerns whether the Internet equalizes politics by empowering resource-poor organizations, or whether it further strengthens the position of resource-rich organizations. We address this debate by studying how interest groups' utilization of digital media is associated with their success in influencing news media. We suggest digital media is characterized by the coexistence of old and new media logics that benefit resource-rich and resource-poor groups in different ways. Analyzing a dataset of 1,127 Finnish interest groups, we found that groups' utilization of digital media is positively associated with their news media success, yet traditional ways of influencing the news media remain more effective. Among resource-rich groups with larger public relations staff, blog publishing is positively associated with both media access (media visibility) and agenda-building success (influencing news topics). In contrast, utilization of digital media among resource-poor groups only correlates with agenda-building success, and audiovisual content is more effective than other content. We suggest that while resource-poor groups benefit from network media logic in which the flow of information is initially based on popularity among social media users, resource-rich groups can exploit mass media logic where traditional journalistic gatekeeping is more important. The findings also imply that digital media has not decreased resource-related bias in interest groups' media access. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines how the nationalist imagination structures cyberspace from the bottom up, or what I call user-generated nationalism. It also looks at the interplay between nationalism and other, non-spatial modes of social identification. My analysis of a month of tweets indicates that religious, racialized, and partisan identities are quite pronounced online, but they also tend to be conflated with nationalism. I argue that nationalism is not simply banal itself: because of its fixity in place and political correctness, it is used to lend legitimacy to and 'banalize' other identities. This dynamic is key to understanding the explosion of right-wing populism around the 'world of nations' – especially the success of populist leaders in normalizing religious, racialized, and partisan identifications – and the central role being played by digital media in this process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay examines the role of disinformation in the Indian general election of 2019. The findings are presented against the background of previous work on the role of digital media in Indian politics. The essay uses 25 in-depth interviews among ordinary Indians to probe their level of awareness about so-called 'fake news'. It also examines their behavior in seeking news and sharing political information and their views about the digital campaign strategies of leaders and parties. The interviewees were concerned about the increasing role of religious extremism online. Yet they were also strongly aware of the role of disinformation campaigns and had strategies for working around being misled by information shared on social media. The essay concludes by assessing how disinformation and online extremism are likely to have affected the 2019 election, and makes comparisons with Modi's election in 2014 and with other leaders. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]