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This Special Issue of "TikTok and Social Movements" emerges from an attempt to map out the landscape of social movements happening on TikTok, drawing from the online symposium "TikTok and Social Movements" hosted in September 2021 by the TikTok Cultures Research Network, a research portal for interdisciplinary scholarship on TikTok cultures. The recent growing popularity of TikTok has transformed the cultures and practices of social movements worldwide. Through the platform's participatory affordances, many users find meaningful ways to engage with the platform and its cultures, by leading and participating in a variety of activist initiatives for global awareness, social change, and civic politics. Within this context, this introduction to the Special Issue titled "TikTok and Social Movements" begins by thinking about how social media pop cultures have served as a vehicle for mobilizing and engaging in social movements for social (in)justice and politics in the era of social media. By situating TikTok, a nascent platform and culture of short video, within the ongoing discussion of digitally mobilized movements and social justice, this introduction addresses several crucial points to consider when discussing TikTok cultures and social movements that are happening or interrupted on the platform. These points are interrogated with more details and cultural contexts in the five case studies and three expert commentaries in this Special Issue. Specifically, the collection of papers interrogate how TikTok's interactive and creative affordances have augmented and altered our cultures, practices, politics, and power dynamics of engaging with publics for various beliefs and social agendas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This mixed-methods study examines social media use among public mass shooters in the United States as an extension of a comprehensive database of 170 mass shooters from 1966 to 2021. Here, we report findings from a systematic content analysis of public data and detailed timelines that were constructed for 44 mass shooters' social media habits and changes to those habits during the period of time leading up to their shooting. The paper also presents as a case study, a sentiment analysis, and term-linkage network for one perpetrator's total 3,000 tweets. Several themes were found in the data—there were shooters who changed their posting habits and in some cases, stopped using social media entirely in the lead up to their crime; shooters who used hate speech and were "radicalized" to violence online; shooters with a demonstrable interest in violence, who referenced past mass shooters in their own communications; shooters who exhibited signs of mental illness and suicidality; shooters who were already known to authorities; and shooters who like those described above, actively posted while shooting, presumably to boost their own celebrity status. The findings from this study provide insight into commonalities among mass shooters in terms of their social media usage, which could lead to new pathways for prevention and intervention. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Special Issue on Trust and Safety on Social Media delves into two pressing and interlinked concerns: the growing prevalence of anti-social behavior and the widespread presence of misinformation within and across various social media platforms. The collection of articles featured in the issue collectively examines factors that contribute to these concerns and proposes potential strategies to mitigate their negative impact on social media users and society. The articles included in the issue are extended versions of research first presented at the 2022 International Conference on Social Media & Society (#SMSociety), organized by the Social Media Lab at Toronto Metropolitan University. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the ways in which what we call the analogue and the datafied mindsets perceive the functioning of the datafied world. Based on a qualitative interview study of two generations of media users in Estonia, Portugal, and Sweden, we present and analyze underlying patterns in participants' media attitudes and related practices. We show that belonging to a media generation does not always produce a homogeneous mindset or a uniform attitude toward media technologies. These mindsets, being ideal-typical constructs, are not bound to individuals: the same person can display features of the analogue and the datafied mindset in relation to different parts of the datafied world. One mindset does not replace the other but rather adds another layer to the social action of the individuals. The mindsets are multi-dimensional and molded by contrasting understandings, indicating that the tenacious structures of the analogue world linger on in the datafied social space. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Fan philanthropy in China has undergone a significant transformation with the rise of social media platforms, allowing fan communities to showcase unprecedented organizational capabilities and efficient collective action. It is worth noting that behind this collective action is the dual identity mechanism of Chinese fans who both support idols as fans and need to be positive citizens. This article employs the social identity model of collective action (SIMCA) to investigate how different fans' social media practices impact their philanthropic action. Based on survey data from 700 respondents with fan philanthropy experiences online in China, this study differentiates between fans' data and textual practices, uncovering that these practices enhance both group and civic identities. However, data practices, being more structured, notably boost group identity more significantly. Fans' group identity directly affects fans' philanthropic participation, whereas fans' civic identity has no significant impact. Notably, the dual identity indirectly affects participation through participatory efficacy. As such, this study highlights the performative nature of fan philanthropy under rigorous state governance. It suggests that while fan philanthropy aids in achieving fan goals and has the potential to connect with broader civic activities, its primary function remains celebrity promotion, raising questions about its effectiveness as true civic participation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While numerous studies have explored the participatory benefits of social media use for political participation, the empirical literature on the mobilizing role of political memes is nearly absent. In addition, most of the attention has been on Western democratic contexts. By employing survey data from an Asian context--Singapore--this study scrutinizes the impact of exposure to political memes in the interplay between political use of social media and online political participation. In addition, it investigates the contingent role of political cynicism. First, the results show that political social media use is associated with online political participation and that association is mediated by exposure to political memes. Further, moderation analyses indicate that social media use provides participatory gains only for individuals exhibiting low political cynicism. However, when such social media use facilitates exposure to political memes, it primarily mobilizes those with high political cynicism into active online political participation. The results suggest that memes can mobilize disengaged groups into active participation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this research is to enhance our understanding of homophilic behaviors—where individuals prefer to associate with others like themselves—on Twitter, particularly focusing on how these behaviors vary across different political affiliations. While a general increase in homophily is a well-documented phenomenon in social networks, its expression within the diverse political contexts on Twitter remains underexplored. This study seeks to understand how political alignment influences homophily and its possible role in reinforcing extreme viewpoints. In particular, the research examines the patterns of interaction within political communities on French Twitter, delineating between right-wing, left-wing, and centrist groups. The findings reveal a significant pattern: right-wing groups demonstrate a marked increase in homophily over time, suggesting a stronger predilection for in-group interaction when compared with their centrist and left-wing counterparts. In addition, the study monitors the evolution of follower networks among these political clusters, providing insights into the shifting popularity of political parties within each group. By analyzing the social connections within these clusters, the study offers a detailed perspective on the dynamics of political homophily on Twitter and how it evolves, informing our understanding of political communication and group behavior in the digital age. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Affective polarization is on the rise, not least in the United States. Recent scholarship has identified meta-perceptions, concerning how much opposing partisans think they dislike each other, as a potential driver of actual interparty animosity. I theorize that social media content shapes people's political meta-perceptions, which in turn influence affective polarization. I integrate prior work on meta-perceptions with research on intergroup conflict and social norms to distinguish perceptions about people's ingroup from perceptions about their outgroup. A probability sample (n = 825) shows outgroup meta-perceptions (i.e., perceptions about the outparty's feelings toward the inparty) are linked to actual affective polarization. Ingroup meta-perceptions do not predict affective polarization above and beyond outgroup meta-perceptions. An original experiment (n = 541) then examines the proposed causal pathway by exposing subjects to politically unifying, divisive, or neutral media content. In line with the proposed model, unifying content reduces affective polarization, and this effect is mediated by political meta-perceptions. Surprisingly, divisive content has no effects on meta-perceptions or affective polarization. These findings have theoretical implications for research on social media, perceptions, and intergroup relations. These, as well as practical implications, are discussed in light of mounting concerns about increasing affective polarization and the role social media may play in exacerbating it. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Photojournalists publish images they have created in news publications and on social media, and images captured by ordinary citizens sometimes appear in journalism spaces. This study examines how the professionalism of a photograph's authorship and presentational context influence the perceived credibility of the image using a two (photographer; staff or amateur) by two (image presentational context; news site or social media) quasi experiment. The small difference in how respondents rate the credibility of the images suggests that, broadly, participants in this study are willing to accept newsworthy images as credible on social media, and social media images as credible in the news. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Drawing on our 3-year digital ethnography of cross-partisan debates in the context of the 2020 US election and January 6 Capitol insurrection, this essay examines the affective and discursive dimensions of online polarization, contributing new understandings of how genre functions as a system of norms that shapes emotional performance online. Through a cross-disciplinary theoretical framework, we demonstrate melodrama's role as a fundamental storytelling structure responsible for the production of polarized cross-partisan debate on social media platforms. Our multi-method analysis of 5000 posts from Twitter, Facebook and Gab reveals users' adherence to melodramatic group identities, enforced through emotional policing and mimetic identification with political influencers. Adopting roles of victim and villain, users channel emotions into archetypal and ritualized narratives of good and evil that in turn polarize political debate. Finally, this essay outlines our innovative methodology of "affective discourse analysis", a multi-method approach to tracking and coding the social materiality of emotion through digital linguistic practices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article builds on ethnographic research among an emergent group of self-styled political consultants and digital influencers in India to highlight the contours of what is defined here as "shadow politics" and its implications for disinformation research and policy. Shadow politics refers to the dual structure of "official" and "unofficial" streams of campaign organization that can integrate diverse influence actors with the party campaign system. The specificity of this form of political influence management emerges from the growing uptake for digital tools and how commercial consultants anchor "data" to the goal of "narrative building" to favor their political clients, thereby delinking data practices from the moor of political moralities. It sets the stage to draw extreme content as one data type among many to choose from. Through such data practices, a vast substratum of indirectly sanctioned influence operators is linked to the public campaign stream as a "shadow," with incentive structures to "innovate" upon excitable and inflated content. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Social media engagements, such as likes and follows, have become crucial for driving algorithmic recommendations and underpinning platform economies. This has given rise to disinformation industries that focus on the production and sale of engagements, including Instagram followers—a phenomenon we term the "engagement as a service" market. However, this market poses significant challenges for empirical research as its operations remain obscured from the scrutiny of platforms, their users, and researchers alike. In this article, we propose a mixed-methods approach to make visible the relationship between the engagement market and platform governance, the latter of which increasingly aims to moderate account behavior in terms of authenticity and inauthenticity—what we refer to as "authenticity governance." By developing this approach, we explore the relationship between the engagement market and platform ecosystems through three case studies: (1) engagement market responses to platform governance; (2) the evolution of engagement as a service; and (3) testing the quality of engagement as a service on Instagram. These investigations allow us to comprehend disinformation as an ongoing negotiation between the engagement market and authenticity governance. Overall, our three integrated approaches can help researchers move forward with the empirical study of disinformation markets that operate at the periphery of platform ecosystems. In short, this article presents a methodological outlook for analyzing (in)authentic engagements as a form of disinformation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Influencer marketing spending in the United States was expected to surpass $6 billion in 2023. This marketing tactic poses a public health threat, as research suggests it has been utilized to undercut decades of public health progress—such as gains made against tobacco use among adolescents. Public health and public opinion researchers need practical tools to capture influential accounts on social media. Utilizing X (formerly Twitter) little cigar and cigarillo (LCC) data, we compared seven influential account detection metrics to help clarify our understanding of the functions of existing metrics and the nature of social media discussion of tobacco products. Results indicate that existing influential account detection metrics are non-harmonic and time-sensitive, capturing distinctly different users and categorically different user types. Our results also reveal that these metrics capture distinctly different conversations among influential social media accounts. Our findings suggest that public health and public opinion researchers hoping to conduct analyses of influential social media accounts need to understand each metric's benefits and limitations and utilize more than one influential account detection metric to increase the likelihood of producing valid and reliable research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Discourse has long been recognized as a source of symbolic violence, perpetuating power relations and reinforcing existing social hierarchies. With the rise of social media platforms, the influence of discourse on society has gained renewed attention. These platforms, while enabling social interactions, also serve as catalysts for violent behaviors, reinforcing and legitimizing forms of oppression and symbolic violence, particularly the violence of language. While the concept of toxicity is frequently used to describe this phenomenon, its meaning and connection to language often remain unexplored. This article aims to address this gap by examining the significance of toxicity in discourse and how the infrastructure of social media platforms facilitates the emergence of toxic discourses. It argues that while toxicity and violence are related, they are distinct phenomena. Toxicity, as a dimension of symbolic violence, contaminates debates and discourses, and is enabled by the characteristics of platformization in online interactions. Thus, toxicity is an effect of platforms mediating social interactions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Politics and religion are traditionally connected in large democracies, with many examples in the Global South. Recently in Brazil, a specific Bible verse has been assimilated into political expression and amplified by social media: John 8:32 ("And you shall know the truth, and the truth will set you free"). In this article, we employ thematic analysis of Twitter1 data referencing this verse, collected during the 2022 Brazilian presidential election. The analysis shows how the verse became symbolic shorthand for a bundle of values associated with political and religious righteousness, reinforcing the connections between conservative politics and religion. Strongly associated with the persona of former president Jair Bolsonaro, the verse was deployed by his supporters as a symbolic debunking tool against perceived misinformation but was also used ironically by Bolsonaro's detractors to criticize the former president. By zooming in on the multifaceted use of this Biblical verse in the online political sphere, this article illuminates the multilayered interconnections between political expression on social media, religion, and misinformation in the context of Brazil. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite the widespread use of YouTube by children, there has been limited research undertaken on the "why" questions of their use. Past theoretical approaches have framed these questions in terms of broader individual needs and their relation to media use, though this work has mainly focused on adults and adolescents. This article presents relevant findings from a mixed methods study of children's (aged 0–16) uses of social media in the United Kingdom to consider instead the "purposes" of children's YouTube use, drawing on: (1) an online family survey; (2) family case studies; (3) child focus groups; and (4) child telephone interviews. "Purpose" is theorized in the article in relation to the ways children themselves make sense of and articulate the reasons they use YouTube or, in the case of parents and carers, for allowing, facilitating, or encouraging their children to use YouTube. Parents tended to frame the purposes of children's YouTube use more instrumentally, focusing on perceived educational benefits and their own convenience needs. While sharing a focus on instrumental purposes, children sometimes emphasized broader dimensions of purpose, with an increased focus on humor, sensory, and hedonic dimensions. Children's responses also emphasized the autotelic nature of play. The study foregrounded the extent to which the purposes of others (such as commercial entities) are served by children's YouTube use. Seven child-centered, parent-centered, and "other" purposes for children's YouTube use are discussed: cognitive, corporeal, cultural, collaborative, creative, commercial, and convenience. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Social media use among preadolescents continues to increase each year. The current cross-sectional study examined how preadolescents' different (i.e., authentic and inauthentic) online presentation strategies, as well as the social feedback these representations receive, are associated with their perceived attractiveness. The results of our study (n = 638; 52.4% girls, 9–13 years, Mage = 10.94, SDage = 0.85) showed that more truthful online self-presentation practices coincided with feeling more positive about one's appearance. A significant moderation effect was found for social feedback, with the association becoming stronger as levels of online feedback (e.g., online popularity, likes, comments, and tags by other users) increased. Contrary to our expectations, inauthentic self-presentation was negatively related to preadolescents' perceived attractiveness, while no significant interaction effect with online feedback was found. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Political memes have become a common way for people to be exposed to political content and express their political views online. However, little is known about who shares political memes online or whether exposure to memes is associated with key attitudinal, emotional, and behavioral political outcomes. To address these gaps, this study uses data from a two-wave survey (YouGov) of American adults fielded during the 2020 U.S. presidential election (N = 1800) to investigate (a) predictors of creating and sharing political memes on Facebook and (b) associated outcomes of exposure to political memes on Facebook. Results reveal that sharing political memes is a form of political expression employed by a variety of people in the United States, including political moderates and people both politically interested and noninterested. The data suggest that people who circulate political memes are motivated to make fun of politicians, but also to persuade and inform others in some cases. Results also highlight potential consequences of exposure to political memes, such as heightened online opinion expression, political participation, and anger toward the opposing presidential candidate. Taken together, the results provide insights into how people engage with memes and their associations with key political outcomes and offer an important foundation for future work on the effects of political memes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, we present findings from an analysis of social media users' own descriptions of having lived with social media for over a decade. In doing so, we draw upon the users' reflections as related in data collected over 10 years. We present findings from a unique dataset of 36 stimulated-recall interviews, where we have studied the same group of informants in 2012, 2017, and 2022. While previous work on reminiscing, memories, and social media have relied on descriptions of practices as they are remembered, our approach has allowed us to follow and examine how users reflect upon their own practices over time. In this article, we focus on social media reminiscing practices and show how social media users seek and engage with previously posted social media content to reminisce and how their reflecting upon how their social media practices have evolved over time evoke ambiguous feelings. Drawing upon previous work and our own empirical material, we define and discuss social media nostalgia. We describe how social media users experience both personal social media nostalgia (referring to how I was), and historical social media nostalgia (referring to how it was) when reflecting upon past social media practices and demonstrate how social media users nostalgize as they interact with and through social media memories. Finally, we discuss our findings in relation to the interplay between reminiscing practices and technology and point to how social media memories represent a detailed insight into an ongoing social transformation of everyday life. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The concept, "White Rage," has previously been used to describe the way Whites have historically responded to Black advancement with policies and practices designed to quietly disrupt the progress Blacks had been making. White rage is typically subtle, masking its true intent. In contrast, recent research has found that the covert, subtle expressions of racism that are so normal in most mainstream spaces may be less common in internet-based communication. The extent to which online racism is connected to real-world racist attitudes, behaviors, and events, however, is unclear. In this article, we test the effects of real-world racialized events on explicit expressions of racism in online spaces using days that Obama gave speeches as our treatment effect and explicit usage of the "n-word" on the social media platform X (formerly Twitter) as our measurable outcome. Does usage of the n-word, a racial slur, increase in the days following speeches made by President Obama? Our results of over 9 years and more than 2.9 million tweets demonstrate a statistically significant increase of racist speech in response to those speech cycles, which are further placed in contrast to the speeches of other political actors, including President Trump. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The condition of road infrastructure in New Orleans is recognized among citizens as unacceptably poor. This problem is one in a long list of problems with the municipal government and city services that have combined to create an atmosphere of distrust and deep frustration. On Instagram, "Look At This F*ckin Street" (LATFS) exists to document failing local infrastructure and has over 94,000 followers and an active culture of crowdsourced user submissions and regular engagement in comments and reposts. In this article, I utilize Multimodal Critical Discourse Analysis to explore all of the relevant discursive modalities seen in the account in order to uncover how they work to challenge and ultimately undermine power. Via an open coding process, I identify three main strategies employed by the anonymous account manager and the participating followers: Shaming, Mocking, and Exposing. Within each of these strategies, I explore the specific techniques observed within these discourses that contribute to the effectiveness of these strategies. I argue that LATFS is an effective and powerful participatory platform for exposing a broad range of systemic problems and their causes, allowing residents to take back the narrative of their city's infrastructure challenges, diminish and demean the powerful interests responsible, and ultimately attempt to reclaim the power lost to negligent or even bad-faith municipal authorities in New Orleans. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As online platforms grow, they find themselves increasingly trying to balance two competing priorities: individual rights and public health. This has coincided with the professionalization of platforms' trust and safety operations--what we call the "customer service" model of online governance. As professional trust and safety teams attempt to balance individual rights and public health, platforms face a crisis of legitimacy, with decisions in the name of individual rights or public health scrutinized and criticized as corrupt, arbitrary, and irresponsible by stakeholders of all stripes. We review early accounts of online governance to consider whether the customer service model has obscured a promising earlier model where members of the affected community were significant, if not always primary, decision-makers. This community governance approach has deep roots in the academic computing community and has re-emerged in spaces like Reddit and special purpose social networks and in novel platform initiatives such as the Oversight Board and Community Notes. We argue that community governance could address persistent challenges of online governance, particularly online platforms' crisis of legitimacy. In addition, we think community governance may offer valuable training in democratic participation for users. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although previous studies examined the role of digital literacy in successful identification of misinformation, scant scholarly attention has been given to users' attention to metadata as informative areas that attest to message credibility. This study introduces a novel approach and methodology to contribute to our understanding of how users evaluate and identify misinformation, and the relationship between users' ocular attention to metadata, misinformation identification, and digital literacy. In an eye-tracking study, participants were asked to rate the credibility of online messages posted on social media and web pages. Throughout the session, participants' eye movements were recorded. The results indicate that digital literacy predicts successful identification of online misinformation, as well as webpage scan patterns, specifically devoting attention and focusing gaze at metadata areas that provide cues attesting to the credibility of the messages. In addition, successful identification of misinformation is positively linked to ocular attention to information metadata. In other words, technologysavvy users devote more attention to information metadata, which leads to better identification of misinformation, and they are also directly more successful at identifying misinformation online. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Teen users outpace adults in social media use across several platforms. Though much scholarship has considered the negative effects of social media use on teen well-being, this study considers how participation on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, and TikTok is influencing teens' political interests and behaviors. Compared to traditional resources, we find that social media use across these platforms positively correlated with political interest and civic online and offline engagement, while Twitter and Facebook use had positive relationships with affective polarization. TikTok and Instagram each correlated with higher levels of interest and civic engagement, and the platforms had no relationship with polarization. We discuss these implications and what they mean for political participation among teens online. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study aimed to explore the perceptions, concerns, and strategies of LGBTQ social media activists in Turkey. Through semi-structured interviews with 20 LGBTQ social media activists, we investigated how they navigate cultural and political challenges and utilize social media for activism purposes. Our findings revealed that LGBTQ activists in Turkey strive to balance the risks and benefits of being online activists. They aim to avoid punishment from society and the government while simultaneously asserting their existence and amplifying their voices through social media. In addition, the study highlights the concerns of activists regarding both state and lateral surveillance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Social media users are key actors in the spreading of misleading or incorrect information. To develop an integrative parsimonious summary of social media users' own accounts of motives for sharing political information, we conducted: (1) a literature review of motives for personally sharing false information as reported by social media users and (2) qualitative research concerning these motives using an innovative, ecologically valid method. Based on our findings, we developed a pool of items evaluating social media users' motives for sharing false political information, which we then tested and analyzed the dimensionality of in (3) a pre-registered questionnaire-based study to identify key clusters of users' own accounts of motives for sharing both true and false political information. The current findings show that there are distinct sets of motives people report for their misinformation sharing behavior: prosocial activism, attack or manipulation of others, entertainment, awareness, political self-expression, and fighting false information. Also, these sets of motives are associated with variables known to predict sharing misinformation, and some of these sets predict social media users' self-reports of having shared misinformation in the past. Our findings highlight and elaborate on users' motives that reflect a concern with "making things better" and acting in a manner that is beneficial to society as a whole, and suggest that different interventions may be required to combat misinformation sharing driven by different motives. A potential set of 18 items that could be used in questionnaires measuring motivations for sharing political news online is described. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Violence is an almost ubiquitous phenomenon in contemporary digital environments. In this context, there is a growing need to understand how violence is enacted and represented on social media. Drawing from a case study where Colombian young adults discussed the violence they interacted with on their everyday uses of digital platforms, this article explores how violence on social media is experienced and understood by users. Findings emphasize the need to look at violence on digital platforms as a multifaceted, fluid, overlapping, and interconnected phenomenon. In light of these results, I suggest framing current harmful practices as ecologies of violence. To better explore these ecologies, I outline three specific areas that highlight how violence is transformed on social media: practices, contexts, and grammars. Overall, this study emphasizes the need to recognize and address the complexity of violence in social media--a necessary step toward building cultures of peace in and outside of our digital environments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As the online learning landscape expands and social media continue to be an important information source for many, it is important to ask how people evaluate and experience online sources of learning differently and how this compares across domains. Drawing on interviews with 45 adults in the United States, we examine how people's attitudes and experiences around online learning differ across science and religion. We find that the topic shapes how people evaluate different ways of seeking knowledge online, including through social media. Trust, knowledge, ease, and privacy further influence how people approach learning by domain. Our findings highlight incidental learning through online social networks, suggesting that personal (offline and online) networks as well as intentions shape how the internet helps people learn. We discuss the implications of the findings for future research on the online learning landscape considering the different experiences people have when learning about different topics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Early-onset cancer patients, survivors and caregivers have unique needs in comparison to their older counterparts. As a result, they often turn to social media to find others with similar experiences. This study employs hermeneutic phenomenology to understand the unique needs of early-onset cancer patients and caregivers as they engage with communities related to their illness across different social media platforms. Drawing from such theories as uses and gratifications, context collapse, and aspirational self-presentation, this study shows how people engaging with social media communities related to early-onset cancer employ "affordances-in-practice," choosing what to post based both on the technical affordances of each platform, and on the audience they imagine to be on each platform. We find that in addition to seeking information and social support, participants in early-onset cancer communities use social media to seek hope. This finding suggests a nuanced reconsideration of the existing dichotomy between online authenticity and the aspirational self on social media platforms like Instagram. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Hindutva, the core political ideology of India's current ruling party, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), seeks to transform constitutionally secular India into a Hindu Rashtra ("Hindu nation"). Although Hindutva has all of the features of right-wing extremism (RWE), it is nevertheless viewed as an insular sociopolitical phenomenon, due to the Eurocentric nature of RWE discourse. Recent theoretical and analytical research has sought to showcase the similarity between RWE and Hindutva, but empirical research on their relationship has been largely absent. To fill this gap, in our study, we collected 15 million tweets and used network analysis to identify prominent themes of RWE--including exclusionary nationalism, conspiracy theories, and anti-minority violence and hate speech--among the supporters of Hindutva and the BJP. Furthermore, in our toxicity analysis (performed to understand which themes produced higher levels of toxicity), we found that Hindi-language tweets related to conspiracy theories and anti-minority violence or hate speech were more toxic than English-language tweets. Given that the growing global presence and normalization of RWE-based ideas and movements are sources of concern for everyone invested in the idea of liberal democratic society, our research broadens the discussion on RWE to include the Indian context and invites researchers to further investigate Hindutva from the perspective of RWE. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, we draw from 159 qualitative interviews with Canadian correctional officers (COs) exploring their experiences and attitudes regarding social media. We frame our study within the "synoptic" mode of surveillance and public visibility--referring to the many observing the few--impacting public safety personnel, exploring the perceived vulnerabilities of COs, including toward prisoners, management, the organization, and the public. We highlight recent research on COs, especially in the Canadian context, and review the synoptic surveillance implications of social media in society. Our findings highlight four interrelated areas: COs (sometimes lack of) awareness of Correctional Service Canada (CSC) policies regarding social media use; challenges they experience online; the central role of privacy; and strategies they use to manage challenges and maintain privacy, especially considering their role as public representatives. We conclude by discussing how the use of social media produces new vulnerabilities for COs in public spaces and suggest future directions for research and practices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As social media become increasingly important for science communication, scientists are grappling with their new role on these platforms. While some have called for the increased presence and training of scientists on social media, others prefer to leverage the influence of social media influencers for science communication. This study explores the effects of source identity (scientist or influencer) and self-disclosure type (personal or professional) on perceptions of authenticity and expertise, as well as parasocial interactions. In an online between-subjects experiment (N = 1579), participants rated scientists on Twitter as more authentic and qualified than influencers, and rated Twitter profiles with professional self-disclosure as more qualified than profiles with personal self-disclosure. Subsequently, participants indicated stronger parasocial interactions, higher information-seeking intentions, and higher prosocial intentions. Anti-intellectualism was found to moderate these relationships. These findings suggest that scientists can employ certain strategies as they seek to establish themselves and reach wider audiences on social media platforms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The discursive construction of sociotechnical imaginaries by the leaders of platform companies can help legitimate their platforms, shaping how they are perceived and ultimately regulated. Scholars have identified the construction of "future imaginaries" by large platform companies such as Meta—but do smaller platforms also seek to construct imaginaries, and if so, what form do they take? In this article we undertake a critical discourse analysis of statements by John Matze, co-founder and CEO of the fringe social media platform Parler, that garnered media coverage in 2020. Parler gained significant popularity among US right-wing users during 2020, before it was removed from Apple and Google's app stores in January 2021 following the riot at the US Capitol. Using Van Leeuwen's framework for discursive legitimation, we analyze a curated dataset of 186 news articles to identify the legitimating themes that Matze invoked in media coverage of Parler in 2020. We find that Matze foregrounded free expression, and with it the vision of Parler as a "town square," which can be seen as an attempt to legitimate the fledgling platform. However, this discursive legitimation must be understood in the context of Parler's base of predominantly US right-wing users, many of whom turned to Parler because of the perceived "bias" and "censorship" of mainstream platforms. We argue that, in contrast to the future imaginaries constructed for large platform companies such as Meta, Matze's discursive strategy constructed an imaginary that was fundamentally retrograde. Parler's "past imaginary" resembles efforts by far-right groups to justify and legitimate hate speech in increasingly platformized societies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Social media has become increasingly integrated into the lives of students for the past decade; however, the public health restrictions associated with the COVID-19 pandemic have led to a sharp increase in social media use in a short period of time. The purpose of this study was to investigate the effects of social media use on university students during the COVID-19 pandemic. Fifteen students from a mid-sized Canadian city were interviewed to share their experiences with social media during the COVID-19 pandemic. Purposive sampling was conducted to gather a diverse sample of participants, including individuals of various ages, gender and sexual identities, and ethnicities. Thematic analysis on the 15 interviews was completed using NVivo (version 12). Participants experienced both advantages and disadvantages associated with social media use. Ease of communication and stress relief were acknowledged as the strongest benefits. Social comparison, loneliness, development of bad habits, and lack of focus were cited as major disadvantages to social media use during the pandemic. Cost–benefit analysis of social media was common, and participants expressed the importance of using social media with moderation, balance, and awareness. Our study indicates that the focus on health with respect to the pandemic should not be solely based on physical health, rather the potential mental health risks associated with social media use during the pandemic should be recognized and addressed by healthcare providers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Influencers are omnipresent on social media platforms. They occupy important digital real estate across a range of topical domains including beauty, fashion, and gaming. While researchers have contributed important work on the respective role that authenticity plays for influencers' success and have described a burgeoning industry within the larger domain of social media entertainment, comparably little is known about what happens when influencers get involved in politics, when they harness their digital clout to promote political causes and social issues, and thereby become political influencers. This introduction to the special issue on political influencers provides a definition of what makes someone a political influencer. It theoretically locates political influencers within the larger field of media and communication scholarship, and delineates the term from other, related concepts such as that of opinion leader. Building on eight contributions focused across more than six countries and nine platforms, the article showcases important strands of current and future research. It provides the foundation for a more systemic understanding of political influencers on social media, situating them within a media ecology complicated by a diverse array of traditional and nontraditional actors, tactics, and dynamics. The article concludes with recommendations for future research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We investigate the effect of social media endorsements (likes, retweets, shares) on individuals' policy preferences. In two pre-registered online experiments (N = 1,384), we exposed participants to non-neutral policy messages about the COVID-19 pandemic (emphasizing either public health or economic activity as a policy priority) while varying the level of endorsements of these messages. Our experimental treatment did not result in aggregate changes to policy views. However, our analysis indicates that active social media users did respond to the variation in engagement metrics. In particular, we find a strong positive treatment effect concentrated on a minority of individuals who correctly answered a factual manipulation check regarding the endorsements. Our results suggest that though only a fraction of individuals appear to pay conscious attention to endorsement metrics, they may be influenced by these social cues. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In June 2022, the German government implemented a transit policy offering travelers an unlimited ticket to ride the country's regional train system all summer long for a mere 9€. Conservative pundits and commentators decried the policy, worrying that the rabble would use their 9€ tickets to overwhelm posh tourist destinations like the island of Sylt in the North of Germany. An overwhelming invasion never materialized, but a fair share of raucous punks did set up shop in Sylt's public squares in the days after the ticket became available. Just as significant as the physical "invasion" of Sylt were the flurry of memes produced surrounding the Sylt controversy. Through memes, social media participants simultaneously mocked conservative worry about Sylt and punk presence on Sylt. All this memetic play inspired participants to become. Through a mix of identification and disidentification, memes hailed participants into political stances characterized by specific modes of expression. Sylt memery was lulzy, agonistic, and ephemeral. In other words, it was indicative of the broader ambivalence that characterizes public participation inflected by the internet culture. The Sylt story therefore holds lessons about the potentials and pitfalls of collective expression on social media. Memetic becoming, at best, can help people speak truth to power. At worst, it can inspire only a nihilistic smirk as the pixels speed across the screen. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The walkthrough method was developed as a way to trace an app or platform's technological mechanisms and cultural references to understand how it guides users. This article explores the method's enduring strengths and emergent weaknesses regarding technological advances and developments in app studies. It engages with adjacent methods for understanding apps' intensifying structural and economic complexity, datafication, algorithmic logic, and personalization as well as approaches fostering a feminist ethics of care toward users. Considering these perspectives, the article discusses challenges encountered in teaching the method and applying it to algorithmically driven apps. With TikTok as a central example, examining the walkthrough process demonstrates the method's incongruence for investigating several aspects of the app, especially its automated personalization. These challenges highlight the need to combine, supplement, or exchange the method with other approaches as part of an expanding and flexible toolkit of methods in app studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Commercial image banks powerfully shape the cultural meanings of social media, especially when circulated as "fact" in the news media. To this end, we report a social semiotic analysis that documents the representational, compositional, and interpersonal framing of social media in a corpus of 600 stock photographs top-sliced from three global image banks. This core analysis is complemented with reference to (a) keywords used to categorize photos in image banks, and (b) two indicative samples of photos reproduced in international English-language news reports. We find that a visual "regime of truth" is produced in stock photography (and then circulated by the news media) that is gendered, affectively flattened, and "corporatized." Social media are also depicted in ways that are disembedded and largely asocial or desocialized. We interpret these findings in terms of visual and media ideologies, and vis-à-vis scholarly perspectives on "connectivity" and "sociality" in digital communication/culture. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Enabled by social media, the data frenzy in the data-driven fandom culture in China has attracted widespread attention. Unlike most forms of data labor and fan activities, Chinese fans' online data-making behavior (zuoshuju) appears tedious, time- and money-consuming, and overwhelmingly irrational. Therefore, this study aimed to examine the sociopsychological motivation of fans' online data-making behavior from a collective action perspective. Based on survey data from 588 respondents with fandom experiences online in China, this study (1) distinguished two types of online data-making (operational and monetary); (2) suggested that celebrity worship and civic engagement intention were antecedents of online data-making; and (3) found that fan communities facilitated by social media bridged the effects of sociopsychological factors and data-making behavior. This research introduced the collective action perspective and constructed a quantitative path model to test the underlying mechanism and impetus of fans' data-making practices in China, adding quantitative support to the knowledge of the hybrid pattern of collective actions embedded in the datafication world. It contributes to the understanding of Chinese youth culture and civic engagement through social media. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Alarmist narratives about online misinformation continue to gain traction despite evidence that its prevalence and impact are overstated. Drawing on research examining the use of big data in social science and reception studies, we identify six misconceptions about misinformation and highlight the conceptual and methodological challenges they raise. The first set of misconceptions concerns the prevalence and circulation of misinformation. First, scientists focus on social media because it is methodologically convenient, but misinformation is not just a social media problem. Second, the internet is not rife with misinformation or news, but with memes and entertaining content. Third, falsehoods do not spread faster than the truth; how we define (mis)information influences our results and their practical implications. The second set of misconceptions concerns the impact and the reception of misinformation. Fourth, people do not believe everything they see on the internet: the sheer volume of engagement should not be conflated with belief. Fifth, people are more likely to be uninformed than misinformed; surveys overestimate misperceptions and say little about the causal influence of misinformation. Sixth, the influence of misinformation on people's behavior is overblown as misinformation often "preaches to the choir." To appropriately understand and fight misinformation, future research needs to address these challenges. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the role of Facebook and YouTube in potentially exposing people to COVID-19 vaccine–related misinformation. Specifically, to study the potential level of exposure, the article models a uni-directional information-sharing pathway beginning when a Facebook user encounters a vaccine-related post with a YouTube video, follows this video to YouTube, and then sees a list of related videos automatically recommended by YouTube. The results demonstrate that despite the efforts by Facebook and YouTube, COVID-19 vaccine–related misinformation in the form of anti-vaccine videos propagates on both platforms. Because of these apparent gaps in platform-led initiatives to combat misinformation, public health agencies must be proactive in creating vaccine promotion campaigns that are highly visible on social media to overtake anti-vaccine videos' prominence in the network. By examining related videos that a user potentially encounters, the article also contributes practical insights to identify influential YouTube channels for public health agencies to collaborate with on their public service announcements about the importance of vaccination programs and vaccine safety. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Cyberbullying on social media continues to pose a significant problem for children and young people, and platforms increasingly rely on artificial intelligence (AI) to address it. Nonetheless, little is known about children's views as to the effectiveness of AI-based interventions; and how these interventions impact their rights to protection, privacy, and freedom of expression, as afforded to them in the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC), which applies in a digital environment. This study is the first to ask children about their perceptions as to how AI-based proactive content moderation of cyberbullying impacts their rights. We have designed a set of AI-based interventions into cyberbullying that build on proactive content take-down, based on social learning and social norm theories; we solicited children's views via focus groups and in-depth interviews as to their perceived effectiveness and impact of such interventions on children's rights (children from Ireland, age 12–17, N = 59). We discuss how youth social norms can limit the effectiveness of the interventions and the need to involve youth in platform decisions regarding AI design. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Social media are an important marketing platform for emerging tobacco products. Heated tobacco products (HTPs) have been introduced in a limited number of local test markets in the United States as potentially reduced-exposure tobacco products. HTPs can be used to heat tobacco as well as marijuana. However, due to growing digital media promotion of these products, it is possible that public knowledge and purchasing opportunities extend beyond test markets. Research on HTP social media promotion is sparse. The objective of the present study is to assess the amount and characterize the content of HTP-related messages on Twitter. We used keyword rules to collect HTP-related posts from the Twitter Historical Powertrack from 1 August 2016 to 31 July 2021. Posts were coded for type (organic, commercial), promotional strategies (e.g., discounts, event promotion), and marijuana co-use mentions using a combination of machine learning methods and human coding. Keyword filters captured 121,012 relevant tweets posted over the period of data collection, with 46,013 (38.02%) tweets featuring commercial content. Findings revealed that there was a two-fold increase in the monthly volume of messages from August 2016 to July 2021. The proportion of organic tweets increased from 29% of all tweets in August 2016 to 73.5% in July 2021. Approximately 20.6% of tweets included mentions of marijuana, and 5,243 posts (4.3%) contained links to online retailers. Promotional tweets featured event promotion, discounts, reduced harm appeals, and fashion appeals. Tobacco control and substance use prevention initiatives should include efforts to monitor the role of social media in promoting organic word-of-mouth and normalizing novel tobacco products. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article reports on a thematic content analysis of 486 newsroom posts published between 2016 and 2021 by five prominent digital platforms (Facebook, Tinder, YouTube, TikTok, and Twitter). We aimed to understand how these platforms frame and define the issues of harm and safety, and to identify the interventions they publicly report introducing to address these issues. We found that platforms respond to and draw upon external controversies and media panics to selectively construct matters of concern related to safety and harm. They then reactively propose solutions that serve as justification for further investment in and scaling up of automated, data-intensive surveillance and verification technologies. We examine four key themes in the data: locating harm with bad actors and discrete content objects (Theme 1), framing surveillance and policing as solutions to harm (Theme 2), policing "borderline" content through suppression strategies (Theme 3), and performing diversity and inclusion (Theme 4). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Social media have become primary venues for pubic conversations, but we know very little about how and where holy places are discussed in social media and who participates in these conversations. To address these questions, we look at the Temple Mount, one of the most significant places to the three ancient monotheistic religions, which is of great importance in political, national, and other contexts. The research question is twofold: In what contexts are discussions taking place in the Hebrew Facebook-sphere around the Temple Mount? And, what are the leading social media venues where the Temple Mount is discussed? Data collection took place in 2017, when Israel celebrated 50 years since capturing the mount, and experienced a major security event—the "metal detector crisis," followed by major clashes between Jews and Palestinians. We found that the Temple Mount is portrayed prominently in three contexts: national, religious, and security and that " ordinary " social media interest in it is limited to groups of mostly nationalist and religious Jews who demand prayer rights on the mount and rarely cross to become an issue for the broader Israeli social media public until a major security development initiates an " extraordinary " discourse involving many more individuals and groups. In one sense, the discourse about the Temple Mount is reminiscent of a "dormant volcano" that does not erupt regularly, but when it does, no one knows how the eruption will end. Lessons for the representation of holy places in social media are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Increasing attention has been placed to the societal downsides of social media, and appropriately so. Less attention has been paid to the qualities to which social media should aspire. We contend that this is critically important. Not only must social media, and social media scholars, identify and reduce negative outcomes, but we must also critically engage with what is desirable. The purpose of this theoretical essay is to propose a normative framework for digital public spaces. We lay out four categories, and 14 sub-categories, of normative ideals to which social media could aspire. It is our hope that chronicling these qualities will allow scholars to more critically reflect on their normative assumptions when they research social media and will encourage practitioners to think about how social media could be built with these ideals in mind. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With the shift of social interaction to online venues, do women still conform to existing gender norms? This article examines the online performance of professional women in urban China and their interactions with workplace colleagues on WeChat, a popular Chinese social media app that is an important venue for workplace interaction. As interviews showed, workplace interactions on WeChat perpetuated traditional gender norms of hegemonic masculinity, and professional women accommodated to those existing gender norms by using particular "personas." Three major personas were identified: one that emphasized professional identity and downplayed gender identity; another that accentuated femininity and downplayed professional identity; and a third that performed femininity to please male workplace supervisors by confirming their masculinity. Persona is used as an analytical term to capture the WeChat activities of these professional women because, compared to online self-presentation, the persona represented a strategic conformity to existing norms and the women distanced themselves from their assumed personas. The use of social media, therefore, reproduced and reinforced conformity to existing gender norms because the online gendered persona constituted a comprehensive and enduring constraint. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Large social media platforms are generally designed for scalability—the ambition to increase in size without a fundamental change in form. This means that to address harm among users, they favor automated moderation wherever possible and typically apply a uniform set of rules. This article contrasts scalability with restorative and transformative justice approaches to harm, which are usually context-sensitive, relational, and individualized. We argue that subsidiarity—the principle that local social units should have meaningful autonomy within larger systems—might foster the balance between context and scale that is needed for improving responses to harm. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the wake of the US 2016 Presidential Election, concerns about misinformation traversing on social media have heightened. Since then, much of the public discourse has been on developing effective strategies to combat the spread of misinformation online. While several studies have focused on the effects of a mixed/hybrid regime of information channels on political participation and campaigns, we know little about how the existence of a hybrid media system exposes people to misinformation during an election cycle. Using a nationally representative survey administered during the 2019 Indonesian election (N = 1,820), we find evidence for the prominence of traditional media as well as face-to-face discussions: political use of traditional media such as newspapers and TV as well as sharing of political information through face-to-face discussions are found to be positively associated with at least one measure of misinformation exposure. As for the social media communicative pathways, only political use of WhatsApp and Instagram are found to be positively associated with misinformation exposure; that no similar effects are observed for Facebook and Twitter attests, to some extent, to the efficacy of strategies aimed at combating misinformation implemented on such platforms. By considering social media, traditional media, and face-to-face communication in a context of a less digitalized hybrid media environment, this article provides a more comprehensive framework and novel empirical data to study misinformation exposure beyond the context of Western democracies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]