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Social media platforms are increasingly looked at as means to investigate social phenomena like collective events, issues or causes. Digital methods – techniques exclusively focused on online data and shaped by the environment hosting these data – have become part and parcel of these investigations, often approaching platforms as hybrid assemblages of users, infrastructures, and algorithms. In its 'online groundness', this type of digital methods research, however, often tends to skim over the socio-cultural, contextual dimension of both wider social phenomena and social media uses and practices. In this paper, we advance a threefold contribution aimed at both sparking future efforts to address this limitation and aligning digital methods inquiry with contemporary epistemological debates that counter universalistic views of platforms and data. First, we question the degree to which digital methods can inform social investigations of collective events, issues or causes. Second, we advance a digital methods paradigm that addresses platforms as socio-cultural artifacts rather than hybrid assemblages. Finally, by reflecting on how we accessed, handled, and explored 9,000 Instagram visuals and around 400,000 Facebook comments to understand influences on middle class understandings of food consumption in Brazil and South Africa, we illustrate a way to design culturally sensitive digital methods research built on 'quanti-quali' practices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The internet is an increasingly influential actor and arena for debating emerging sustainability controversies, but studies often overlook the role of visualisations in online spreading of information. This paper offers a way to better understand this role: what images do competing online actors use, are there differences between opponents and proponents, differences between internet regions, and are there shifts in their online visualisations over time? Adopting a controversy studies perspective and the digital methods approach, we studied the online spread of visual information. We compared the use of visualisation about shale gas on top-ranked pages in the internet regions of South Africa, Mexico and the United Kingdom in 2018 and 2019. The results indicate a connection between the actor's standpoints in the controversy and the type of image used. In Mexico, proponents and neutrals used, most of all, photographs of people (officials). Opponents posted more data visuals. South African and British neutral actors used more data visuals, while proponents posted landscapes and opponents photographs of people (protesters). Also, we noticed that changes in the actor's position in the controversy between 2018 and 2019 coincided with changes in the use of type and content of visualisations. Context-specifics of each country offered possible explanations for these shifts in standpoint and visualisation of the controversy. Our study indicates that visuals are highly relevant digital objects in public debate and the decision-making process. [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]