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News sharing on social media is ubiquitous and extends across demographics, platforms, and political ideologies. Online far-right communities are no exception, with a barrage of embedded news stories populating the social media feeds of far-right users. This has potentially profound implications for liberal democracy, especially given the propensity for far-right communities to spread disinformation via 'fake news'. Yet, we do not know enough about how news content is embedded into far-right discourses, nor the extent to which the practice may contribute to the digital transmission of far-right ideologies. Accordingly, this paper investigates how far-right communities share news media to promulgate illiberalism on social media platforms. The paper aims to uncover the dominant discursive devices deployed to integrate news media reports into far-right discourses. To achieve this aim, this paper applies critical discourse analysis alongside conceptualisations of legitimacy and far-right ideology to an original dataset of social media posts in an Australian context. It finds that news sharing in far-right online circles may legitimise and reify far-right ideology through the juxtaposition of mainstream news media indicating the validity of far-right grievances. The paper also introduces a prototype model of news sharing legitimisation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper describes a 2020 disinformation campaign promoting the unsubstantiated claim that the novel coronavirus is the product of a Chinese bioweapons program. Exploiting a vulnerability in open-access scientific publishing, the campaign was based on papers posted to an online preprint repository designed to accelerate the diffusion of scientific knowledge. This provided the campaign with an air of scientific legitimacy, helped it reach millions of Americans, and muddied public discourse over the origins of SARS-CoV-2. This case study offers insights into the tactics and practices of media manipulation, the contested nature of modern epistemic systems, the interplay of technical and social systems, and the vulnerability of open systems to manipulation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Burgess and Bruns (2015) have linked the computational turn in social media research to an increase in the number of studies focussing exclusively on 'easy data', such as the 'low hanging fruit' provided by Twitter hashtags. This paper explores whether there is a preponderance of such easy data in digital activism research through a systematic review of relevant journal articles published between 2011 and 2018 (N = 315). Specifically, it examines whether computational digital methods have become increasingly prominent in digital activism research during this period. A key focus of the paper is the extent to which digital activism research focused on easily accessible Twitter data, and whether these were obtained via standard API services. Results indicate that (1) traditional research methodologies were more commonly deployed in these articles than digital methods, but (2) Twitter was the most researched platform in the corpus, and (3) single-platform hashtag studies were an archetype of digital activism research alongside single-platform Facebook studies and holistic approaches (hybrid, multi-method & multi-sited, e.g., ethnography). The paper concludes by advocating for greater diversity in terms of the methodological approaches adopted in digital activism research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

By analyzing Douyin users' mediated interactions with interracial couples in everyday contexts, this paper addresses the convergence of anti-blackness and domestic gender tension on Chinese social media. It introduces the perspective of 'multiple triangulations' to examine discussions of four types of interracial relationships on Douyin: black women and Chinese men, black men and Chinese women, white women and Chinese men, and white men and Chinese women. This approach complicates explanations of why Chinese social media users have been rejecting blackness in a potentially mixed-race China in relation to whiteness and Chineseness. It also illuminates how they have encoded gender tension in marriages in China into anti-black discourses. Additionally, this research highlights the race-blind digital infrastructure and the dynamic connotations of anti-black racism in contemporary China. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although other social media platforms have seen a steeper increase in users recently, Facebook is still the social networking site with the largest number of users worldwide. A large number of studies from the social and behavioral sciences have investigated the antecedents, types, and consequences of its use. In addition or as an alternative to self-reports from users, many studies have used data from the platform itself, usually collected via its Application Programming Interfaces (APIs). However, with the drastic reduction of data access via the Facebook APIs following the Cambridge Analytica scandal, this data source has essentially become unavailable to academic researchers. Hence, there is a need for different modes of data access for what Freelon (2018) has called the 'post-API age'. One promising approach is to directly collaborate with platform users to ask them to share (parts of) their personal Facebook data with researchers. This paper presents experiences from two studies employing such approaches. The first used a browser plugin to unobtrusively observe Facebook use while users are active. The second asked participants to export and share parts of their personal Facebook data archive. While both approaches yield promising insights suitable to extend or replace self-reports, both also entail specific limitations. We discuss and compare the unique advantages and limitations of both approaches and provide a list of recommendations for future research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Radical-right populist parties will often try to exploit and ride a wave of popular discontent for their own electoral gain. This paper studies the online populist communication of the leaders of the Rassemblement National (RN) in France in the context of the Gilets Jaunes (GJ) protests and the 2019 European election. It analyses the Twitter activity of these leaders to determine whether they temporarily softened their nativist and exclusionary stances to align their communications with the anti-elitist discourse of the protest movement. We explored this question by employing a quantitative text analysis using R Studio tools of their tweets over a 12-month period in combination with a more qualitative analysis of their output on this social media platform. We carried out tests on bigram frequency, network structure, as well as qualitative analysis of posts on the GJ protests and then compared this data with existing works on the GJ, to identify whether and how the RN adapted its social media discourse at strategic times in the election cycle to better suit the Gilets Jaunes' demands and themes. The results provide support for the expectation of a strategic modification and moderation of exclusionary populist discourse online with both politicians returning to nativist themes after the European election campaign was over and the GJ mobilisation lost momentum. We therefore suggest that the change in output is part of a strategic moderation or 'de-demonisation' in order to gain a wider pool of potential voters and in particular those sympathetic to the protest movement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent years, deepfakes have become part and parcel of contemporary algorithmic culture. It is regularly claimed that they have the potential to introduce novel modes of societal disruption, violence, and harm. Yet, over-emphasising the power of deepfakes risks occluding frictions, struggles, and logics that already persist in the digital landscape. Arguing for a conceptualisation of deepfakes as an assemblage of differential tensions in society, we explore how they represent both a rupture and a continuation of the variegated politics of the image in the social world. The paper analyses the tensions of deepfakes through three distinct case studies: bodies, politics, and ideas of objectivity. Ultimately, we argue that the tensions and ethicopolitical implications of deepfakes are not reducible to a problem that can be solved through a logic of algorithmic detection and verification. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Communicative responsiveness of politicians to public opinion signals has become increasingly important for politicians' electoral fate and citizens' sense of feeling represented. Although politicians can communicate directly with the public via social media, little is known about the extent, conditions, and favorability of politicians' responsiveness on social media to public opinion cues. This paper scrutinizes politicians' responsiveness to one particular public opinion signal: street protest. Do politicians respond to street protest on social media? And if so, when, and how do they react? We address these questions by means of two datasets: (1) a protest event dataset of all protests staged in Brussels (Belgium) between July 2017 and June 2019 (N = 124); and (2) a social media dataset containing all Facebook messages (N = 36.323) and tweets (N = 142.596) by Belgian politicians (N = 236) in the days surrounding each protest. Results show that politicians do respond to protest and its issue; the lion's share of social media messages supporting protesters. Protest that is large, (inter)nationally coordinated, and organized on socio-cultural issues is more frequently discussed by politicians; left-wing, opposition, and issue-owning politicians are more responsive as well. Whereas especially left-wing politicians endorse protests, right-wing politicians are more prone to discredit it. Responsiveness is thus asymmetric across the political spectrum. Our findings have implications for democratic representation and its challenges in hybrid media systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The proliferation of hate speech and disinformation on social media has prompted democratic countries around the world to discuss adequate regulations to limit the power exerted by platforms over national politics. As a result, the once ostensibly uniform content moderation practices of social media companies are becoming increasingly territorialized, and the governance of online political speech is constantly negotiated between global social media platforms and national governments. To comprehend the evolving landscape of online political speech governance, this paper scrutinizes how Facebook has adapted its content moderation practices to the political and legal contexts of three democratic nations: the United States, Germany, and South Korea. We assessed national laws and governmental documents to explain the regulatory landscapes of the three countries, and used VPNs and corporate PR materials to see how Facebook's platform design and public communication diverge by location. The findings suggest that the seemingly 'splintering' regulatory frameworks still have a 'centralizing' effect: Facebook formally complies with national laws, but its platform interface and communication activities steer users away from the local systems and towards its centralized operations. We discuss future implications for the regulation of online political speech in democratic nations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the early days of the internet, it was hoped that digital technology would bring about democracy and positive outcomes for society. Recently, the debate has shifted towards tech lash with many critics pointing towards technology companies undermining democracy, stability, and sustainability. As a result, a new consensus seems to be emerging among policymakers, companies, and civil societal actors that self-regulation has to move towards co-regulation. This Special Issue of Information, Communication and Society draws together cutting-edge contributions on three core themes in scholarly and policy discourse on platform regulation: First, the papers in this special issue enhance empirical understandings of the role of the state in governing social media platforms developing in the United States, Europe, and Sub-Saharan Africa. Second, they provide a holistic framework to understand policy problems that need to be addressed, which helps to develop and evaluate new policy initiatives. Finally, papers point towards three approaches in governing social media platforms and discuss the advantages and disadvantages of content moderation, process-based co-regulation, as well as competition regulation and alternative business models. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Social media may have amplified the Black Lives Matter movement, but companies like Facebook are often accused of not doing enough to address online hate speech. These platforms nevertheless have the potential to facilitate informal learning about the color blind racism through which whites rationalize the inequalities and injustices experienced by People of Color (PoC). This paper adds to the emergent literature in this area by exploring a high-profile Twitterstorm in February 2018 following a tweet from Cambridge University Professor Mary Beard about the sexual misconduct of Oxfam aid workers in Haiti. Academics like Dr Priya Gopal faced much criticism for suggesting the tweet was evidence of the white fragility and privilege to which they were frequently subjected. A qualitative content analysis of 1718 unique tweets containing 'Mary Beard', posted between 16 and 20 February 2018, was conducted to assess whether there was much evidence of agonistic debate between critics and supporters of Beard about whiteness. Results indicate that there were twice as many tweets criticizing Beard for her performative white privilege and frailty than those defending her. While the framing of the Twitterstorm was generally agonistic, there was little evidence of informal learning, with PoC conspicuously under-represented. Indeed, the burden of talking about racism and whiteness fell on the few PoC in the corpus, in much the same way as the 'pre-social media' era. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Algorithms make highly consequential decisions and, thereby, exercise considerable power. In this study, I investigate how social power through algorithms is exercised in media consumption, particularly through curation algorithms. This conceptual paper then contributes to the understanding of social power through algorithms by suggesting the concept of algorithmic meta-capital. The concept derives from Bourdieu's theory on meta-capital which has also been applied to legacy media. I then argue that this algorithmic meta-capital is an extension of the power traditionally held by the state and legacy media. The study also contributes to the understanding of meta-capital as it proposes how the meta-capital possessed by digital intermediaries functions. It does so by legitimating representations of the world and by creating a necessity for algorithmic visibility across different fields, thereby shaping habitus. This Bourdieusian approach enables researchers to take a balanced view on the power of algorithms on the structure/agency continuum. [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]

The emergence of social network sites and online communities has offered new possibilities for older adults to stay socially connected and older adults comprise a growing user group of social media. This paper examines the relationship between older adults' online social engagement and social capital based on a national survey of adults aged 60 and over. Findings show that older adults who engage more often in specific online social activities (i.e., asking questions on social media, looking at photos of family members/others) enjoy greater bridging social capital (both in offline and online contexts) than those who do so less often. Furthermore, Internet skills moderate the relationship between online social engagement and social capital. Specifically, older adults with greater Internet skills benefit relatively more from engaging in specific online social activities more often with respect to online bridging. The paper discusses the implications for digital inequality scholarship. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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]

This paper offers some insights into Twitter as a political field, based on Bourdieu's field theory. Networked publics, as agents of this field, are competing overpower by performing networked practices. To investigate this field, we focused on two networked practices: networked framing and narrating. Persian Twitter in 2017 presidential election provides a good context to analyze how such a field is constituted. Combining a social-network analytic approach with discursive and textual interpretations, we analyzed a corpus of 2,596,284 tweets. We identified three main networked publics in the retweet network: reformists, conservatives, and diaspora users. Having identified the most influential users in each community based on PageRank metric, we thoroughly investigated all of their tweets. The results show that ordinary users constituted the major population of conservative and diaspora publics. The reformist community included mostly journalists and to a lesser extent media. Findings also confirm that all networked publics used the same strategies to gain more power in the field. They produced quite the same frames and narratives to compete with each other. Moreover, the battle was more about the routine and electoral debates, not the legitimacy or entity of regime. Hence, none of the networked publics challenged the hegemonic discourse in Iran significantly. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is a growing body of literature around the concept of artivism, which refers to artists who use social engagement and activism in their artistic practices. Artists, however, are not necessarily perceived as political actors and are heard for their political activism only through a legitimacy cross-over from artistic field to political field. In this paper, therefore, we theorize that audience attention has become an important resource for political legitimacy and study how a set of artivists are received on social media. To this end we have analyzed over two million tweets and argue that content on social media platforms such as Twitter provides insight into how people talk about social issues, such as politics and activism. We employ the methods of topic modeling and semantic network analysis to study how Twitter users engage with artivists and find that very few Twitter users are interested in the societal issues that artivists raise. Instead, the majority of tweets in our data involves attention to state prosecution, media-centric artistic recognition and consumerism. These findings indicate that even though some artivists succeed in bringing their activist art to Twitter audiences, political activism that originates from artists is rarely a topic of discussion among Twitter users in terms of its activist content. [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]

It has been widely recognized that platforms utilize their editorial capacity to transform the industries they intermediate. In this paper, we examine the intermediary role of the leading audio streaming platform – Spotify – on the recorded music industry. Spotify is often called the 'new radio' for the influence it has on breaking songs and artists, and for the role it plays in music discovery and consumption. Our purpose is to determine whether Spotify is leveling the playing field or entrenching hierarchies between major labels and independent labels. We attempt to answer this question through a longitudinal analysis of content owners (major labels or 'indies') and formats (albums, tracks, or playlists) promoted by Spotify through its global Twitter account: @Spotify. As a carefully curated venue for corporate speech @Spotify provides a window into continuities and changes in Spotify's corporate strategy. By using @Spotify as a proxy through which to track patterns of promotion between the years 2012 and 2018, this paper offers a novel empirical examination of how Spotify is shaping the consumption of music, and in turn the structure of the recording industry. In doing so, we provide evidence for speculating about the future of the recorded music industry in a platform era. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

TikTok, a short video platform featuring content between 15 and 60 seconds long, has become a popular and rapidly growing social media application around the world. As a platform catering for light entertainment, TikTok champions virality and encourages memetic remixes. Meme videos, mostly featuring lip-syncs, dance routines, and skits, have become one of the defining features of the platform. These seemingly trivial videos have been utilised by young TikTokers to advocate for various causes. This paper uses #OkBoomer memes as a case study to examine the political culture of young people and Gen Z in particular. By analysing how intergenerational politics has been 'memefied', this study delineates how Gen Z imagines and expresses a generational sentiment towards 'Boomers' as the imagined other. They do so through short video cultures and practices on TikTok, drawing upon the networked experiences of their peers. Specifically, the paper considers the key controversial issues, meme forms and meme functions across the #OkBoomer memes on TikTok, and its eventual mainstreaming in society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Social media uptake in the Gulf States continues to grow, and while previous research has explored its place in terms of political action and individual responses to pressures of globalisation and urbanisation, little attention has been paid to how social media has integrated with the tribal networks in the region. This paper presents research that uses inductive thematic analysis of 107 public Twitter and Instagram accounts of Gulf State tribal groups to explore how tribes in the Gulf region use these platforms to facilitate tribal power and cohesion. We argue that tribal social media is performing multiple simultaneous roles, including aiding in maintaining tribal cohesion in the face of urbanisation and globalisation, displaying a tribe's social power and influence, and enabling social cohesion and mutual aid. We conclude that to understand flows of power and information in the Gulf States, it is critical to understand the influence of the tribe on both individuals and wider social and political trends in the Gulf region. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Social media provides marginalized activists multiple options for constructing alternative narratives that challenge mainstream discourse. However, despite these platforms' increasing accessibility, disabled activists may struggle in creating their counter-narrative. Their inability to conform to able-bodied notions of activism leaves their individual experiences out of the discussion of social media activism. This paper addresses this gap by presenting the individual decision-making process of disabled social media users regarding activists' performances in social media as gleaned from the qualitative analysis of in-depth interviews. This process includes three phases that demonstrate the experiences of social media users with communicative concealable disabilities – autistics, hard-of-hearing (HoH), and people who stutter. First, these interviewees present a spectrum of perceptions of disability activism in social media. Second, these perceptions lead to a spectrum of motivations, which mirror the interviewees' various risk-benefit calculations regarding public self-disclosure as disabled. Third, these perceptions and motivations are manifested through interviewees' strategic design of their activist performances in private and public spheres. By rethinking key concepts in social media activism – risk-benefit calculation, slacktivism, and digital storytelling – this process illustrates taken-for-granted assumptions of personalization, visibility and representation, that challenge current discussions on social media activism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the early days of the internet it was hoped that going online would bring communities together, help people find each other and that social media would become a powerful advocacy tool as communities could better campaign for the causes they believed in. Instead, gender discrimination, trolling and abusive behavior are rife on the internet. This introduction provides context on women in the digital world. The papers in this special issue include research on gender and politics from political actors' and citizens' perspective, they examine the importance of the online access to information, the role of women within the tech industry, they look at online harassment, at how women are treated online, and how NGOs deal with evidence of mistreatment of women. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The disclosure of life events is among the most common behaviors on social media and is part of the everyday activities revealed through the use of many other new media. This paper explores the awareness of major life events through these media as they relate to a person's belief in a just world for themselves and others. Using survey data, we find that text messaging, commenting on Facebook, and having more Facebook friends are associated with awareness of desirable events. Passive modes of communication, e.g., the use of the 'like' interaction on Facebook, are related to an awareness of both desirable and undesirable life events across a greater range of social ties. Awareness of undesirable events in the lives of strong ties fosters a lower perception of equity and justice for others, whereas an awareness of desirable experiences in the lives of strong ties is related to greater, perceived, personal justice. We discuss the implications of the awareness of major life events through new media in terms of the psychological benefits that can come from the vicarious joy and comfort one receives from other's experiences; what we call mudita and comfort from others (MACO). We argue that the long-term, cumulative effects of greater awareness of undesirable life events may lend support to social movements that seek to reduce injustices experienced by disadvantaged groups. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For some time now, media regulators in Germany and beyond have been trying to cope with the rise of digital intermediaries like social networks and search engines. In this context, the German Network Enforcement Act ('NetzDG') has become the epitome of the concept of new-school speech regulation: the increasing co-optation of intermediaries for governmental content moderation – with all its potential harms to free expression and democratic discourse. Contrary to this trend, however, recent legislative measures in Germany, including the Interstate Media Treaty (IMT), suggest that the country is exploring new avenues in digital intermediary regulation. Not only does the new German legislation focus on procedural instead of substantive aspects of content moderation, offering a case study for concepts promoted by recent literature on platform regulation. By introducing a positive bias for certain 'content of value,' the country also includes the role of beneficial content in its regulation. This paper analyzes the new German countermovement against new-school regulation and presents its potential impact for future regulatory concepts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the role of social media evidence in sexual assault trials in Canada, focusing on cases with underage female victims. Teenage girls are among the heaviest social media users and face unique expectations regarding the performance of heteronormative gender norms. Society simultaneously encourages girls to enact gender roles that emphasize their femininity and sexuality and punishes them for acting according to these standards. When girls engage in performativity online, they leave behind a digital footprint that can be used against them at trial. Through a detailed case study of 14 publicly available judgments, we analyze how judges evaluate girls' social media content in sexual assault trials that feature a mistake of age defense. Drawing on social media research, legal studies, and the concept of performativity, we show that judges vary greatly in their understandings of gender norms and that this translates to divergent case outcomes. In the 'guilty' cases, the judges contextualize social media content as insufficient and unreliable, noting that it is common for youth to lie or embellish facts online. In the 'not guilty' cases however, the judges appear to take such evidence at face value and hold girls accountable for having provocative pictures or misrepresenting themselves online. Such practices are problematic because they perpetuate rape myths and misconceptions about victim behavior. We call for greater consideration of the socio-cultural norms that govern girls' social media use to avoid biased interpretations that adversely shape the outcome of sexual assault trials. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Social media technologies like Twitter are credited with enabling a new form of connective action, in which political movements coalesce and mobilise around hashtags, memes and personalised action frames. After the UK riots in 2011, citizen ‘broom armies’ took to the streets to clear up and repair damage. Different hashtags, including #RiotCleanUp and #OperationCupOfTea, were implicated in these movements. This paper questions connective action theory in this context. It seeks to respond to two criticisms of the connective approach, namely that connective action underplays differences between technologies and does not account sufficiently for cultural and ideological drivers of action. The paper combines an analysis of software systems, issue publics and discourse to giver a fuller account of connective politics during the riot clean-up movements. In doing so, it develops several metrics to advance understanding of digital communication systems, drawing attention to the roles that time and account status play in assembling meaning on Twitter. This analysis suggests that the clean-up movements were complex, discursive political acts, in which celebrity accounts played an influential role in framing discourse. Furthermore, the #RiotCleanUp hashtag credited with mobilising these groups is found to provide a less compelling explanation of action when compared against the more emotive but less noted #OperationCupOfTea. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The role of community manager is gaining importance as the proper usage of social media becomes a key factor for achieving more active involvement of citizens in social and political issues. Focused on Spanish local governments and in line with the literature of Excellence Theory, this paper aims to analyze whether some characteristics of the community manager function are determinant in their fostering of citizens’ online engagement via social media. In particular ‘independence’, ‘having access to the dominant coalition’, ‘gender diversity’, ‘continuous training’ and ‘culture of the organization’ are the characteristics considered in this paper. As to the main findings, this study confirms that community managers have not as yet achieved their goal of embedding the use of social media by citizens as a means of establishing more direct contact with their local governments. Moreover, in line with Excellence Theory, community managers of local governments should be aware of the importance of having direct access to key managers of the organization in order to better achieve the objectives of the organization and, more specifically, to increase citizens’ engagement. Furthermore, continuous training in issues related to social media truly helps develop the skills and potential of community managers. Likewise, an excellent communication department should rely on good professionals no matter their gender, and, in this sense, the gender of community managers is not a significant factor in their performance. However, the results of this study also reveal that in the case of public sector community managers, an authoritarian culture seems to be a determining factor for obtaining better results in enhancing citizens’ engagement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The emergence of information communication technologies has transformed communication in Nigeria. The mass media once regarded as the most vocal and vibrant press in Africa is losing public trust as people easily source for critical information from social media instead of the media due to their patrimonial relationship with the state. The potentials of these information communication technologies in holding government accountable and enhancing journalism practice has endangers the state. Consequently, attempts by the state at regulating social media and the mass media through draconian bills such as protection from internet falsehood and manipulation bill of 2019, and the National Communication for the prohibition of Hate Speech bill 2019. Using Habermas notion of the public sphere coupled with semi-structured interviews with 12 media practitioners, this paper examines ways in which such regulatory frameworks have impacted on both the media and democratic cultures of the Nigerian state. The paper argues that social media and its convergence in the newsroom has expounded the democratic culture due to its affordances of speedy and accountability. However, the potentials of social media and its affordance has been misused. Consequently, the contestation between the state, public and media on how social media and its convergence in the newsroom can be effectively regulated. The media and public do not trust the state as they blame the state for the rise of fake news (misinformation and disinformation). On the other hand, the state has blamed the desire for profit and commodification of news for the rise of fake news. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

'Checking in' at or 'tagging' oneself to various places on social media constitute online representations that contribute to the classification, or 'making', of places. At the same time, users are also classified based on what they (show that they) do where. In this paper, we deploy Bourdieusian cultural sociology to the realm of place-exposing geomedia practices to understand social reproduction on social media. The study uses multiple correspondence analysis on a national survey deployed in Sweden (n=3,902). Various place-exposing practices are analyzed in relation to the contemporary Swedish class structure. Results reveal a connection between various forms and volumes of capital and the places that people visit and chose to put on display for online audiences. We are thus able to verify how the socio-technological regime of geomedia, with its new arenas for online exposure, extends deep-seated dynamics of socio-cultural reproduction and even reinforces the classificatory linkages between spatial appropriation and social identity work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As hiring processes have increasingly moved online, having better digital skills could play an important role in successful job seeking. However, digital inequality suggests that people use the Internet in different ways with varying levels of skills raising questions about who is most likely to be able to search for jobs online, including on social media. This paper examines online job searching, including the role of digital job-search skills in the process. Results show that sociodemographic characteristics (i.e., age, race, education, and income) as well as online experiences, being a social media user, and having higher digital job-search skills relate to online job-seeking behaviors. These findings highlight the presence of digital inequalities in online job searching including differences by social media experiences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Social media emerged with a broad understanding that egalitarian practices would become the standard approach to publishing and distributing content. In recent times we have seen this flat hierarchical approach fade as commercial stakeholders, platform providers and content publishers continue to design and practice exclusionary processes to ensure their work is visible. This current practice limits the capacity for all voices to be heard, prompting the question how can digital activism remain visible in a media-saturated social media environment? This paper draws on a content analysis of the most popular YouTube users in Australia to illustrate the absence of digital activism within its visual culture. It maps the process of fragmented platformization, called here micro-platformization, to highlight the content production and publishing strategies digital activists should adopt. While successful commercial YouTube practitioners adhere closely to the principles of social media logics (Van Dijck, J., & Poell, T. (2014). Understanding Social Media Logic. Media and Communication, 1(1), 2–14), this paper argues that stakeholders engaging in the practice of digital activism need to adopt similar strategies to their commercial counterparts. By including strategies that reflect the successful practices of social media logics, digital activism can not only become visible across social media spaces, but also engage public discourse on civic matters and public affairs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While so far social media have been largely constructed as the quintessential tools of collective action and praised for their potential to empower individuals to act as civic agents, this paper foregrounds the tension between expectations created by public discourse and citizens' own involvement with digital activism. This study adds to an understanding of barriers by examining how they are experienced by participants in mobilizations at the individual level. Looking at how obstacles of digital activism are experienced by citizens reveals the processes through which the structures of digital mediation impose limits over those who depend on them for their organization. By examining three regional Canadian cases, this research discusses the significant barriers mobilizers experience and finds that many of the obstacles organizers face point to an enduring need for a well-organized, tech-savvy, collaborative network as an organizing body to reflectively handle the challenges posed by digital grassroots civic mobilization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In May 2016, an enormous wildfire threatened the city of Fort McMurray, Alberta and forced the evacuation of all of the city’s residents. Outpourings of support teemed in from all across Canada and over the world, prompting the largest charitable response in Canadian Red Cross history. This paper examines Albertans’ response to the wildfire by exploring caring and helping behaviors as well as the role of social media in facilitating these remarkable charitable efforts. The paper uses mixed methods including an analysis of the most popular Tweets related to the wildfire and an Alberta survey collected months after the disaster. The analysis of tweets reveals that care, concern, and invitations to help were prominent in social media discourse about the wildfire. The analysis of survey data demonstrates that those who followed news about the wildfire on social media express higher overall levels of care and concern for those affected, which led to helping those impacted by the wildfire. The findings provide important insights about the role of social media in disaster relief and recovery as well as citizens’ civic engagement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a case study of a digitally enabled mode of transnationally networked framing by far-right actors. We analyze the reach and strategic aims of the '120 decibels' campaign, launched by members of the Austrian Identitarian Movement via social media in early 2018 in an attempt to latch onto the prominence of the MeToo hashtag (#MeToo). We argue that this constituted a form of discursive 'hijacking,' marked by a narrowing of the scope of the problem definition and a reformulation of the political demands. We draw on user-generated Twitter data and focus on geolocation markers and language clusters in order to investigate the transnational scope of these coordinated efforts. We employ content analysis to investigate the campaign's strategic use of #MeToo. Our findings show distinct clusters of German-Austrian – and UK-US-based user groups, from which we infer directionalities in the transnational spread of the campaign. We demonstrate how the initial dissemination of the hashtag was driven by influential individual nodes within their respective networks and tied to #MeToo. The results point toward transnational networking activities among the far right and illustrate emerging dynamics between progressive and reactionary forms of digitally enabled networked framing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Social media constitute a fertile though challenging arena for the use of ironic humor. A combination of facilitating and hindering factors turns the production and identification of irony in this sphere into a complex venture, positioning it as a powerful tool in consolidating group boundaries. The main aims of this paper are to identify the markers of ironic humor on social media and to explicate their workings within the dynamics of digital interactions. Existing literature about ironic markers addresses mostly face-to-face and mass-mediated interactions, while there is a gap in our understanding of the production and interpretation of irony in the unique communicative conditions of social media. An analysis of a bilingual corpus of successful and failed ironic utterances extracted from five social network sites yielded a novel typology of five ironic markers: platform, participants, style, intra-textual content, and contextual knowledge. These markers both resemble and deviate from features of irony in non-digital settings. Media affordances often allow access to necessary complementary information, yet such forensic activity is only accessible to active users, who recognize the need for further investigation of the meant. Hence, using certain types of ironic markers forms utterances that are decipherable to some audiences but opaque to others. In this sense, the marking of digital irony and its decoding both rely on group boundaries and play a central role in their delineation. We conclude by evaluating the roles of this new regime of ironic markers in processes of boundary work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present paper contributes to the research on the activities of far-right actors on social media by examining the interconnections between far-right actors and groups on Telegram platform using network analysis. The far-right network observed on Telegram is highly decentralized, similarly to the far-right networks found on other social media platforms. The network is divided mostly along the ideological and national lines, with the communities related to 4chan imageboard and Donald Trump's supporters being the most influential. The analysis of the network evolution shows that the start of its explosive growth coincides in time with the mass bans of the far-right actors on mainstream social media platforms. The observed patterns of network evolution suggest that the simultaneous migration of these actors to Telegram has allowed them to swiftly recreate their connections and gain prominence in the network thus casting doubt on the effectiveness of deplatforming for curbing the influence of far-right and other extremist actors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores Mark Zuckerberg's attempts at 'network switching' (Arsenault & Castells, 2008a. Switching power: Rupert Murdoch and the global business of media politics: A sociological analysis. International Sociology, 23(4), 488–513) in order to examine the nature of power in the network society in an age of social media dominance. Through a case study of Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook we illustrate how novel networked media moguls gain and retain power through the interconnection of multiple networks and attempts to reprogram common goals and resources. We thus further test Arsenault and Castells' (2008a. Switching power: Rupert Murdoch and the global business of media politics: A sociological analysis. International Sociology, 23(4), 488–513) hypothesis through an analysis of Zuckerberg, and Facebook's, key operational strategies and their success in facilitating the interconnection of a multitude of networks. In disentangling the strategy, rhetoric and actions of Zuckerberg – notably in the Cambridge Analytica scandal and in his philanthropic efforts with the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative – we analyze how 'switching' power manifests within the context of an inextricable relationship between SNSs and a range of other networks including political, financial, philanthropic and scientific. Moreover, an examination of the multitude of networks Zuckerberg operates within highlights both the opportunities and pitfalls associated with the decentralization and dissemination of power within the network society. Accordingly, this paper offers two updates to the original hypothesis posed by Arsenault & Castells; (1) network switches act as both points for leveraging power and as potential sites of weakness and (2) growing technological interconnection and the visibility of social media require successful network switchers to increasingly operate 'mega-switches' in order to successfully compete against other power seekers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Nowadays, the web offers a world of choice, providing millions of options at the click of a button. Web-based platforms such as Amazon.com and Yelp.com provide users with a range of tools and functionalities to navigate and compare options within a complex and bewildering landscape of choice. Whilst such websites afford users the feeling of objective and 'free' choice, it is also clear that the design features and architecture of websites have strategic affordances for structuring choice in different ways and for particular aims and objectives. Based on a study of 500 top-ranking websites, in this paper, we argue for a re-evaluation of the relationship between choice and the web, through an examination of the affordances of websites for shaping and governing choice. Using illustrative examples and drawing on a conceptual framework from previous work, we examine four interconnected aspects of how choice is structured through the affordances of websites. We discuss the role of algorithms in governing choice through websites, including their role in drawing users into a political economy of choice-making that appears to 'nudge' them in particular directions. Websites not only constitute and structure choice, but also presuppose, deploy, and potentially (re)produce the characteristics and capacities of 'choosers', and as choosers are not equals this in turn may reproduce and reinforce social inequalities and fissures. The paper concludes with a reflection on the entangled trajectories of choice and web technologies, and how this might impact our understanding of choice in contemporary society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper combines human- and computer-mediated content analysis to advance the understanding of how far-right parties are using new media to mobilize their supporters in the transitioning Ukrainian democracy. This study's theoretical approach employs the framework of connective action logic; results suggest that young and challenger parties are more adoptive of this logic, and provide opportunities for personalized engagement to their supporters. Moreover, use of interactive technologies by the studied parties also goes hand in hand with a smaller proportion of opinionated messages in their Twitter network, in spite of the inherent polarizing nature of these parties. Implications of these findings for research on future political campaigns conclude this paper. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Social media use enables information consumption and exchange as well as group ties that can facilitate participation in boycott and buycott campaigns. Social media also provide low-threshold activities that serve as a stepping stone towards more intense forms of cause-oriented participation. This paper uses original survey data (n = 1,539) collected in 2019. Reading political information, posting political information on social media, and following social and leisure groups increase the likelihood of boycotting and buycotting. Changing profile pictures doubles the odds of participating in political consumerism. Overall, citizens use symbolic low-effort activities on social media to mobilize their peers to participate in political consumerism but, in the end, they also mobilize themselves toward more intense forms of participation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sharenting, or the practice of sharing one's parenting or information about one's children on social media, occurs in an increasingly platformized digital culture, where visual formats are central across participatory and commercial repositories. This paper investigates the articulation between sharenting as performed by celebrities and the wider construction of children's digital identities. Through qualitative content analysis, this research looks at how Cristiano Ronaldo, the most-followed individual on Instagram since 2018, his partner, and his mother shared information about his children on that social media platform between 2018 and 2020. Through manual exploration, we searched for Ronaldo's children across a variety of digital spaces. Our analysis reveals that sharenting on Instagram engages audiences through the portrayal of children as the parents' extended self. Content from Instagram and news media is appropriated in vernacular and commercial digital spaces for conflicting affects: the cute father-son dyad, and the son as extension of the uber-famous, vain father. This extreme case shows how the digital identities of children of celebrities are widely public, formed by the everyday, intimate content of the family's life, which is persistent and collectively recreated by news media, vernacular culture, and commercial platforms. [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]

Single-issue protests and online mobilization have proliferated in the wake of social media. While significant ground has been covered regarding the changing possibilities for mobilization, the question of how specific circumstances condition the political impact of online mobilization and public protests has received much less attention. During the last couple of years, Greenlanders have increasingly employed Facebook to mobilize the populace and arrange public demonstrations with noteworthy results. Arguing that single-issue protests cannot be separated from the issues they are concerned with, the paper explores how a single and potential trivial political issue – a new parliament building – developed from a prestige project supported by a nearly unanimous Parliament into a public-contested issue and a failed political project. The paper invokes Actor-Network Theory to account for the trajectory of the issue and how it was translated along the way as actors built and broke alliances. The concepts of mobilizing structures, opportunity structures and framing processes are employed to shed light on the conditions of possibilities for the emergence, development and impact of the protest against the parliament building. Finally, the paper discusses social media’s impact on the image of politically engaged Inuit and on the power relations between citizens and parliament in Greenland. This discussion is of paramount importance as Greenlanders are struggling with their colonial heritage while they are constructing Greenlandic democracy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent years, political discourse in digital spheres has seen a rise in the use of infographics. The paper addresses an unexplored question about this phenomenon: which characteristics are associated with higher levels of ostensive user engagement with political infographics in social media? We conceptualize ostensive user engagement as the outward-facing metrics afforded by a platform (e.g., like, share, and comment count) that serve both as means for self-presentation and shape the informational environment that others are exposed to. A corpus comprised of all infographics posted on Facebook by the four leading candidates in the 2016 US presidential campaign (N = 252) was coded for cognitive, behavioral, and emotional characteristics. We found that two of the cognitively oriented dimensions enhanced engagement, while behavioral cues (calls to action) were, surprisingly, negatively linked. The inclusion of emotions did not show an overall association; however, a deeper look revealed a candidate-specific effect: anger was associated with greater engagement on Trump's infographics, and similarly, pleasure on Sanders'. In conclusion, we discuss the implications of our findings for understanding the informational environment shaped by engagement with infographics in light of the two seemingly opposing perceptions of internal and external authenticity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines memetic content as a window into the values expressed by far-right constituents. Our main premise was that far-right memes are a site of interaction between two types of values: those of the far-right as a social movement and those characterizing memetic communication on social media. We studied this notion through a case from Italy: the photo-based meme genre of 'alternative calendar commemorations' that memorialize events or figures important to the far-right imaginary. A multi-modal qualitative analysis based on Schwartz's theory of personal and political values yielded mixed results. As expected, we found strong appeals to collectivistic values such as patriotism and tradition. Yet some of the individualistic values associated with memes, such as self-direction and authenticity, were also evident in the corpus. We conclude by discussing how this blend of values challenges both well-established value theories and perceptions about the political work of far-right memes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we complicate and bring a new perspective to debates on the democratic limitations of filter bubbles, by exploring the case study of feminist filter bubbles. We extend understandings of the filter bubble to examine the highly reflexive, everyday ways in which filtering is adopted as a practical response to the information saturation and the politicised vulnerability engendered by digital environments. In doing so, we make a case for the necessity of filtering practices to create 'safe spaces' for feminist deliberation, at the same time as questioning whether absolute 'safety' is possible in feminist politics. Drawing on two separate studies of young feminist women who regularly engage with feminist private groups on Facebook, we document significant ambivalence regarding these closed spaces. While feminist filter bubbles were essential for surviving the risks of more open online environments, participants reported complicated feelings of guilt in not moving beyond these bubbles. Maintaining the 'safety' of these spaces also involved significant, ongoing labour in the requirement for participants to customise content within these bubbles, involving vigilant practices of moderation of content and the consistent application of trigger warnings. As such, we question whether the model of the feminist filter bubble is sustainable in the labour it requires already exhausted feminists to perform, and politically capacious enough to allow sustained difficult conversations. We suggest further critical engagement is required to connect filter bubbles to the everyday, affective politics of deliberation on social media platforms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An introduction is presented in which the editor discusses various reports within the issue on the sociological aspects of communication and information technologies (ICTs) including computers, social media, and Internet.

This paper uses as its base a key initiative involving a not-for-profit organisation (NPO), government start-up funding and a social enterprise which evolved through three phases. The purpose of the initiative was the development of a smart phone technology platform for people with disability. The paper's purpose is to answer questions about the ways in which the mobile technology, seen here as assistive technologies, supported the development of disability citizenship and active citizenship. Data were collected through in-depth interviews conducted at three points in the 13-week programme during which participants with disability received customised support for their phone and training in its use, at no cost. Fifteen participants volunteered to take part in the research project, along with their significant other and service provider. Key themes were identified in the preliminary analysis. Exploring these using Ragnedda's ([2017]. The third digital divide: A Weberian approach to digital inequalities. Abingdon: Routledge) three levels of digital divide, and Wilson's ([2006]. The information revolution and developing countries. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press) categories of access allowed a series of philosophical, ethical and human services management questions to emerge, challenging the optimism with which the digital economy is presented as a solution to issues of inequality. Although the mobile technologies were very successful as assistive technologies for some participants, the findings reinforced the potential for such technologies to further entrench aspects of social exclusion. They also identified ways in which the shift in the role of the NPO to social entrepreneurship, and its relationships with government and private enterprise, had the potential to undermine the exercise of disability citizenship by turning participants into consumers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper I explore economic and inclusion opportunities for people with disabilities and mental health issues afforded by 'live streaming' ‒ the live broadcast of one's activities over the internet to a globally dispersed audience. In both 2016 and 2017, the leading live streaming platform Twitch.tv broadcast over 500,000 years of video, which were produced by over two million regular broadcasters ('streamers'), and consumed by an audience of several hundred million viewers. Streamers can profit, up to and including a full-time living 'wage' for those at the highest levels. Numerous successful streamers with chronic health issues have discussed the personal and professional benefits streaming brings them. Utilising data from a research project with 100 interviews, alongside approximately 500 hours of ethnographic observation, this paper examines the experiences of live streaming for broadcasters with disabilities, mental health issues, or physical health issues. Firstly, I explore the positive elements of streaming for these broadcasters, focusing on the many conditions represented in this demographic, and the benefits streaming gives for inclusion and community. Secondly, I consider the negative experiences of these streamers, focused on entanglements of health and technology that make their streaming lives potentially more challenging than their colleagues. Thirdly, I focus on the economic opportunities, and the potential for entrepreneurial activity, the platform affords. I conclude the analysis by exploring how these aspects make live streaming a potentially exemplary emancipatory and entrepreneurial space for these individuals, but not one without challenges. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]