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From the auction block to the Tinder swipe: Black women’s experiences with fetishization on dating apps New Media & Society (IF 5.31) Pub Date : 2024-03-16 Jasmine Banks, Mel Monier, Miranda Reynaga, Apryl Williams
The digital has been celebrated for its objectivity and lack of bias, yet digital media scholars have addressed the ways that inequity is embedded in technology. What is often missing from this discourse is the voices of Black women. Drawing on interviews with 20 self-identified Black and African American women, aged 18–30, who have used dating apps in the preceding 6 months, we invited participants
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The game of Ride-Pass in platform work: Implementation of Burawoy’s concept of workplace games to app-mediated ride-hailing industry in Poland New Media & Society (IF 5.31) Pub Date : 2024-03-15 Bartosz Mika, Dominika Polkowska
The article provides an argument that the platform is the site of Burawoy’s workplace games. The game observed on the platform used a pattern quite similar to one diagnosed by Burawoy, successfully employing coercion and consent to control the workforce. Control on the platform has a general nature which combines technological, organisational and normative aspects. Work on the app is coordinated by
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‘Conspiracy theories should be called spoiler alerts’: Conspiracy, coronavirus and affective community on Russell Brand’s YouTube comment section New Media & Society (IF 5.31) Pub Date : 2024-03-15 Robert Topinka
This article examines how conspiracy theories anchor affective communities through an analysis of the YouTube comment section for the actor and comedian turned political influencer, Russell Brand. Comparing videos before and after Brand’s shift to covid scepticism, I explore like counts, reply networks and other commenting patterns in a dataset of 217,157 comments and conduct an in-depth analysis of
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Making events: How anticipatory infrastructures produce shared temporalities New Media & Society (IF 5.31) Pub Date : 2024-03-15 Megan Finn, Mike Ananny
Anticipatory infrastructures assemble sensors that are ready to detect, networks primed to share data, scientists prepared to confirm events, and news organizations poised to tell stories. This article explains how public time is articulated through sensor-mediated communications by examining two anticipatory infrastructures. Each infrastructure uses similar earthquake data to detect, report on, and
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The Infopolitics of feeling: How race and disability are configured in Emotion Recognition Technology New Media & Society (IF 5.31) Pub Date : 2024-03-14 Kerry McInerney, Os Keyes
In this article, we argue that facial emotion recognition technology (facial ERT) reproduces historical forms of pseudoscience based on the concept of quantifiable and unequally distributed emotional capacity. Drawing on Kyla Schuller’s Biopolitics of Feeling and Colin Koopman’s theory of infopower, we put forward the term ‘the infopolitics of feeling’ to describe how facial ERT encodes culturally
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Exploring responses to mainstream news among heavy and non-news users: From high-effort pragmatic scepticism to low effort cynical disengagement New Media & Society (IF 5.31) Pub Date : 2024-03-12 Sora Park, Caroline Fisher, Richard Fletcher, Edson Tandoc, Uwe Dulleck, Janet Fulton, Agata Stepnik, Shengnan Pinker Yao
Research shows the growth of online information has led to a decline in audience trust in mainstream news. However, how this lowered trust in the news affects different audiences’ attitudes and news consumption behaviour is less understood. Our thematic analysis of 40 semi-structured interviews with Australian heavy and non-news users of mainstream news shows that responses vary with respect to the
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Blaming the smurf: Using a novel social deception behavior in online games to test attribution theories New Media & Society (IF 5.31) Pub Date : 2024-03-12 Charles K Monge, Nicholas L Matthews
Despite their popularity, online video games possess pervasive toxicity. However, players do not categorically judge toxic behaviors as wrong. Attribution theories are well suited to disambiguate such judgment variance, but debate exists on the usefulness of motivated versus socially regulated blame perspectives. By exploring a new, potentially toxic behavior called “smurfing,” we innovate on methodological
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Picture me in person: Personalization and emotionalization as political campaign strategies on social media in the German federal election period 2021 New Media & Society (IF 5.31) Pub Date : 2024-03-12 Stephanie Geise, Katharina Maubach, Alena Boettcher Eli
Due to the possibilities of direct communication with voters, politicians successfully use social media for personalization and emotionalization in election campaigns. However, since much of the research is based on text-centered analyses of individual platforms, we examine multimodal strategies of personalization and emotionalization of political candidates across platforms. Through a qualitative
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‘Taking the router shopping’: How low-income families experience, negotiate, and enact digital dis/connections New Media & Society (IF 5.31) Pub Date : 2024-03-11 Kate Mannell, Estelle Boyle, Jenny Kennedy, Indigo Holcombe-James
Within digital media scholarship, there are significant bodies of literature investigating forced disconnection (‘digital exclusion’) and voluntary disconnection (‘digital disconnection’) but there is little research addressing entanglements between them. This article explores how bringing together these bodies of literature through an empirical study offers new pathways and considerations for both
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Children’s, parents’ and educators’ understandings and experiences of digital resilience: A systematic review and meta-ethnography New Media & Society (IF 5.31) Pub Date : 2024-03-11 Simon P Hammond, Gainfranco Polizzi, Claire Duddy, Y’etsha Bennett-Grant, Kimberley J Bartholomew
Supporting children to be digitally resilient when facing online adversity is an increasingly important developmental task. However, conceptual knowledge underpinning digital resilience and how this operates among children and across their home, community and societal contexts is embryonic. A systematic review and meta-ethnography of research focusing on the understandings and experiences of digital
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How do we speak about algorithms and algorithmic media futures? Using vignettes and scenarios in a citizen council on data-driven media personalisation New Media & Society (IF 5.31) Pub Date : 2024-03-08 Ranjana Das, Yen Nee Wong, Rhianne Jones, Philip JB Jackson
‘New’ media and algorithmic rules underlying many emerging technologies present particular challenges in fieldwork, because the opacity of their design, and, sometimes, their real or perceived status as ‘not quite here yet’ – makes speaking about these challenging in the field. In this article, we use insights from a three-stage citizens council investigating citizens’ views on developments in data-driven
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The silicon future New Media & Society (IF 5.31) Pub Date : 2024-03-08 John Cheney-Lippold
This article proposes the concept of the silicon future—a privileged temporal position that functionally precedes the present—to argue for an increased focus on temporality and the role it plays in technodeterminist discourse. By interpreting how Silicon Valley firms employ this silicon future as an inevitability that they themselves have already reached, the article describes a temporal paternalism—a
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Rethinking #thedress: On the social aesthetics of viral ambiguity illusions New Media & Society (IF 5.31) Pub Date : 2024-03-07 Jordan Schonig
The social media phenomenon known as #thedress, a photograph of a dress that appeared to be either blue and black or white and gold, has been called one of the most viral debates of the twenty-first century. While many scientific explanations have been offered to explain the image’s mysterious color ambiguity, this article analyzes #thedress as an example of a broader genre that I call viral ambiguity
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Curating hope in chronocracy: TikTok creation and the offline lives of young men from Pakistan in Greece New Media & Society (IF 5.31) Pub Date : 2024-03-07 Rachael Lindsay
This article investigates the disparity between the everyday lives of young men from Pakistan living in Greece and the impressions created through their TikTok profiles. It asks how creating and curating TikTok content counters the multifarious temporal exclusions, or chronocracy, they experience as they work undocumented and attempt to stay under the radar of the authorities. By shedding light on
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Social media and the mediation of everyday violence: A study of Colombian young adults’ experiences New Media & Society (IF 5.31) Pub Date : 2024-03-06 Esteban Morales
Social media is a critical element of contemporary ecologies of violence, especially in countries with a long-standing history of armed conflicts – such as Colombia, the setting of this study. In this context, this article explores how violence is mediated through and within social media platforms among Colombian young adults. More specifically, by drawing on Jesús Martín-Barbero, this study explores
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A different playbook for the same outcome? Examining Google’s and Meta’s strategic responses to Australia’s News Media Bargaining Code New Media & Society (IF 5.31) Pub Date : 2024-03-06 Diana Bossio, Andrea Carson, James Meese
In March 2021, Australia enacted the News Media Bargaining Code (NMBC) legislation, which compels Google and Meta to pay for third-party news content on their platforms. To date, Australian newsrooms have made deals with both platforms totalling approximately AUD$200 million (US$126.4 million). The 1-year review of the Code has prompted questions about not just the legislation but also the lack of
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Building resilience to misinformation in communities of color: Results from two studies of tailored digital media literacy interventions New Media & Society (IF 5.31) Pub Date : 2024-02-29 Angela Y Lee, Ryan C Moore, Jeffrey T Hancock
Interventions to build resilience to misinformation should consider the needs of communities of color, who experience (mis)information in unique ways. We evaluated digital media literacy interventions to improve misinformation resilience among four communities of color in the United States (Black, Latino, Asian American/Pacific Islander, Native American), which were designed by the nonprofit PEN America
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Serial mediation effects of ubiquity and notification on the relationship between habitual social media checking behaviors and self-control failures New Media & Society (IF 5.31) Pub Date : 2024-02-29 Hyun Jee Park
This study investigated the correlation between habitual checking behavior and self-control failure during social media use among South Korean university students. The study also examined how the ubiquity of and immediate responses to social media notifications affect this relationship, both independently and serially. An online survey was conducted with 400 undergraduate students at South Korean universities
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Beyond extraction: Data strategies from the Global South New Media & Society (IF 5.31) Pub Date : 2024-02-26 Heather A Horst, Adam Sargent, luke gaspard
This article draws upon a desk-based review and expert interviews with practitioners in the Global South to understand the diverse forms of data mediation that have become increasingly visible in the wake of the global coronavirus disease-19 pandemic. In contrast to accounts that frame the Global South solely as a site for the extraction of data and cheap, unskilled digital labor, we explore alternative
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Where are the pandemic drones? On the ‘failure’ of automated aerial solutionism New Media & Society (IF 5.31) Pub Date : 2024-02-26 Anna Jackman, Michael Richardson, Madelene Veber
In the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, excitement broke out around the potential for drones to generate aerial solutions to devilish pandemic problems. But despite the hype, pandemic drones largely failed to take to the sky and far from the scale initially imagined. This article pursues the failure of the pandemic drone to materialise, showing how it nevertheless functioned as a locus of experimentation
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Disaster, facial recognition technology, and the problem of the corpse New Media & Society (IF 5.31) Pub Date : 2024-02-26 Christopher O’Neill
The overlapping disasters of the Australian 2019–2020 bushfire season and the COVID-19 pandemic, figured alongside the imaginary of projected future disasters, have provided a space of legitimation to experiment with controversial facial recognition technologies (FRTs). Drawing upon interviews conducted with senior Australian government administrators and researchers, I argue that FRTs are being used
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Acting like a bot as a defiance of platform power: Examining YouTubers’ patterns of ‘inauthentic’ behaviour on Twitter during COVID-19 New Media & Society (IF 5.31) Pub Date : 2024-02-26 Ariadna Matamoros-Fernández, Louisa Bartolo, Betsy Alpert
This article examines YouTubers’ ‘bot like’ behaviour on Twitter and conceptualises it as a defiance of platform power in delimiting the boundaries of ‘authenticity’. This entrepreneurial capture of ‘botness’ is understudied and deserves attention. We focus on a platform with a clear monetisation scheme, YouTube, and on patterns of ‘inauthentic’ behaviour in how people shared YouTube videos on Twitter
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Future notification: Living and breathing in post-pandemic climate change New Media & Society (IF 5.31) Pub Date : 2024-02-26 Sarah Pink, Yolande Strengers, Hannah Korsmeyer
In a post-pandemic context, everyday life, technology and media have become increasingly focused in the home. This has implications for how people will live with automated and smart technologies in possible futures, for electricity demand, transition to net zero emissions and ultimately planetary health. Here, we explore these unfolding circumstances through the prism of notifications, and their capacity
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The artificial intelligence divide: Who is the most vulnerable? New Media & Society (IF 5.31) Pub Date : 2024-02-26 Chenyue Wang, Sophie C Boerman, Anne C Kroon, Judith Möller, Claes H de Vreese
This study investigates users’ artificial intelligence (AI)-related competencies (i.e., AI knowledge, skills, and attitudes) and identifies the vulnerable user groups in the AI-shaped online news and entertainment environment. We surveyed 1088 Dutch citizens over the age of 16 years and identified five user groups through the latent class analysis: the average users, the expert advocates, the expert
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Granular biopolitics: Facial recognition, pandemics and the securitization of circulation New Media & Society (IF 5.31) Pub Date : 2024-02-26 Mark Andrejevic, Chris O’Neill, Gavin Smith, Neil Selwyn, Xin Gu
The COVID-19 pandemic has provided opportunities for facial recognition technology and other forms of biometric monitoring to expand into new markets. One anticipated result is the wholesale reconfiguration of shared and public space enabled by the automated identification and tracking of individuals in real time. Drawing on data from several industry trade shows, this article considers the forms of
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Automated responses to the coronavirus disease-19 pandemic: An overview New Media & Society (IF 5.31) Pub Date : 2024-02-26 Mark Andrejevic, Chris O’Neill
The pandemic response was a thoroughly mediated phenomenon – one that paired digital information technologies with automated logistical systems to address inter-related crises of circulation. In the logistical sphere, automated media were used to manage flows of people, commodities and even (in the case of ‘smart’ ventilation systems) air itself. In the media realm, automated systems played a role
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Supermarket ‘dark jobs’ and rapid grocery delivery: Transformations in labour, technology and logistics New Media & Society (IF 5.31) Pub Date : 2024-02-26 Lauren Kelly
As demand for rapid grocery delivery surged during the COVID-19 pandemic, Australia’s supermarket duopoly set about transforming relations of labour, technology and logistics to secure dominance in the growing sector. I consider the rise of ‘dark jobs’ of the supermarket and what this means for affected workers. My research encompasses in-depth interviews with 17 supermarket workers, including personal
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Beyond the ‘critical incident’: COVID-19, data journalism and the slow road to editorial automation in Australian newsrooms New Media & Society (IF 5.31) Pub Date : 2024-02-26 Silvia X Montaña-Niño, Jean Burgess
This article draws on a qualitative interview-based study and the framework of the ‘critical incident’ to explore whether, how and for whom the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic saw an increased uptake of data-driven automation in Australian newsrooms and with what implications for the field. Our findings show that, while news workers combined and adapted existing technologies to meet increased demands
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QR codes and automated decision-making in the COVID-19 pandemic New Media & Society (IF 5.31) Pub Date : 2024-02-26 Gerard Goggin, Rowan Wilken
In this article, we explore Quick Response (QR) codes (machine-readable optical labels that link to information) and how, after a period of having fallen out of favor, they have been reactivated and have come to underpin COVID-19 automation and contact-tracing efforts. During the pandemic, they were used especially for “safe entry” and other kinds of check-in to locations to facilitate contact tracing
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Digital citizenship and disability in the covid era New Media & Society (IF 5.31) Pub Date : 2024-02-26 Georgia van Toorn, Lloyd Cox
The covid-19 crisis has accelerated automation and digitalization in many aspects of social life. Social distancing and lockdowns, combined with the imperative to preserve economic activity, have seen much work and education move online, while the digitalization of government services has intensified. These developments slowed the spread of covid-19 but their broader effects, both positive and negative
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No sweat: How wet bodies negotiate wearables as repairables New Media & Society (IF 5.31) Pub Date : 2024-02-24 Rachel Plotnick
As embodied technologies, wearable devices—from fitness trackers to virtual reality head-mounted displays—interact not only with wearers’ movements but also interface with their skin and temperature. In so doing, people sweat. Perspiration occurs during physical activity and from close bodily contact and can culturally signify productive body-work or generate “grossness” and disgust. Wearable manufacturers
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“It’s weird for the people who aren’t used to it. And I want to make it less weird”: Blindness community bloggers as legitimate voices of their lived experiences New Media & Society (IF 5.31) Pub Date : 2024-02-23 Ibrahim Helmy Emara, Beth A Haller
In this study, 19 bloggers from the blindness community discuss the meaning of blogging both for themselves and for other persons within this community. Bloggers with visual impairments, their relatives, and blog editors of blindness organizations are interviewed to answer the following questions: (1) What motivates people from the blindness community to still use blogs? (2) How does blogging enable
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Online discourse and chronotopic identity work: A longitudinal digital ethnography on WeChat New Media & Society (IF 5.31) Pub Date : 2024-02-23 Luyao Li, Jing Huang
This article presents a sociolinguistic analysis of online identity construction through the lens of chronotope. Based on a longitudinal digital ethnography spanning 2019–2022, we examined 253 WeChat Moments posts collected from a participant referred to as ‘Green’. Our aim is to understand how individuals with migration experiences tactically draw on multimodal and translingual resources to construct
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Calls to (what kind of?) action: A framework for comparing political actors’ campaign strategies across social media platforms New Media & Society (IF 5.31) Pub Date : 2024-02-23 Anders Olof Larsson, Hedvig Tønnesen, Melanie Magin, Eli Skogerbø
Politicians can use social media to prompt citizens to engage by means of calls to action—statements, often in imperative form, that explicitly encourage audiences to take immediate action. This study makes a twofold contribution to this field: (1) Theoretically, we relate three factors shaping social media campaigns (audiences, affordances, genres) to calls to action related to three main campaign
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Setting the misinformation agenda: Modeling COVID-19 narratives in Twitter communities New Media & Society (IF 5.31) Pub Date : 2024-02-23 Ali Unlu, Sophie Truong, Nitin Sawhney, Tuukka Tammi
This research investigates the dynamics of COVID-19 misinformation spread on Twitter within the unique context of Finland. Employing cutting-edge methodologies including text classification, topic modeling, social network analysis, and correspondence analysis (CA), the study analyzes 1.6 million Finnish tweets from December 2019 to October 2022. Misinformation tweets are identified through text classification
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Technology is a wish your heart makes: How Disney harnesses practical magic discourse to legitimize MyMagic+ New Media & Society (IF 5.31) Pub Date : 2024-02-23 Kelley Cotter, Priya Kumar, Ankolika De, Ryan Tan
This article explores how Disney employs magical discourse to legitimize its MyMagic+ system. Through an analysis of the Disney Parks blog, we introduce the concept practical magic discourse, which entices users to indulge in the fantasy of transcending the constraints of reality, while obscuring the labor involved in the system’s development and maintenance. Practical magic discourse differs from
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Geek nostalgia: The reflective and restorative defence of white male geek culture New Media & Society (IF 5.31) Pub Date : 2024-02-23 Andreas Ottemo, Maria Berge, Heather Mendick, Eva Silfver
During recent decades, geek culture has become increasingly visible, and the geek has left the cultural margins, becoming more popular than ever. At the same time, nostalgia has emerged as a central component of geek culture. Framed by a post-structural understanding of gender and race and drawing on cultural theorist Svetlana Boym’s distinction between reflective and restorative nostalgia, this article
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Platform visibility and the making of an issue: Vernaculars of hereditary cancer on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok and Twitter New Media & Society (IF 5.31) Pub Date : 2024-02-19 Stefania Vicari, Hannah Ditchfield
We investigate the relationship between platform visibility and meaning making. Drawing on a quanti-quali investigation of hashtag practices in a cross-platform dataset, we explore how hereditary cancer is constructed, as an issue, on social media. Our findings provide strong evidence of significant variations across Instagram, TikTok and Twitter, with hashtag practices on these platforms tapping into
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How to grow a transnational field: A network analysis of the global fact-checking movement New Media & Society (IF 5.31) Pub Date : 2024-02-15 Laurens Lauer, Lucas Graves
The worldwide fact-checking movement has grown rapidly over the last decade and achieved remarkable prominence. This study investigates that global movement as a case of deliberate institution-building to consolidate a new transnational field. We use a comprehensive network analysis of the first eight years of the annual Global Fact conference to ask how fact-checkers grew their young field, examining
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Flagging as a silencing tool: Exploring the relationship between de-platforming of sex and online abuse on Instagram and TikTok New Media & Society (IF 5.31) Pub Date : 2024-02-12 Carolina Are
This article investigates Instagram and TikTok’s approach to malicious flagging through users’ experience. Similar to liking, commenting and sharing, flagging is a reaction social media platforms allow users to highlight content that potentially violates community guidelines. However, flagging’s influence on moderation remains opaque: users who flag are largely unaware about the success of their reports;
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The politics of tech responsibility: Understanding companies’ responsibility as representative claims New Media & Society (IF 5.31) Pub Date : 2024-02-07 Anke Sophia Obendiek
This article explores responsibility claims by private tech companies. While the business literature has extensively discussed the notion of corporate social responsibility, it does not fully grasp the political significance of responsibility claims. This article proposes a novel conceptual understanding of responsibility by drawing on the concept of representative claims. It argues that by claiming
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Does high-quality news attract engagement on social media? Mediatization, media logic, and the contrasting values that shape news sharing, liking, and commenting on Facebook New Media & Society (IF 5.31) Pub Date : 2024-02-07 Jieun Shin, Seth C Lewis, Soojong Kim, Kjerstin Thorson
Despite the concern over deteriorating news quality on social media, few studies have empirically examined how much high-quality news is rewarded on social media. Guided by the mediatization literature, we compared the extent to which normative values (i.e. factual reporting and public importance) in news stories as opposed to social media values (i.e. popularity) contribute to actual engagement such
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Transferred expectations of human presence: Folk theories among older adults who are inexperienced users of online services New Media & Society (IF 5.31) Pub Date : 2024-02-07 Hilde Sakariassen, Brita Ytre-Arne
This study analyses the expectations of older adults who are inexperienced users of online media and services, examining their sense-making processes when using the internet for informational and practical purposes. Research on older users often focuses on access and abilities, but this study instead explores older adults’ expectations of what it means to interact online. We apply a ‘folk theory’ framework
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An attack on free speech? Examining content moderation, (de-), and (re-) platforming on American right-wing alternative social media New Media & Society (IF 5.31) Pub Date : 2024-02-05 Brittany Shaughnessy, Eliana DuBosar, Myiah J. Hutchens, Ilyssa Mann
Contemporary research on social media looks different than it did in the late 2010s, with users facing a high-choice social media environment as new platforms emerge. Subsequently, alt-right sites have experienced a rise in users—sometimes those who have experienced content moderation by traditional social media sites. As such, scholars have investigated the impact of this content moderation (e.g.
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Digital communication and social support for disadvantaged youth: A social network survey of youth experiencing homelessness New Media & Society (IF 5.31) Pub Date : 2024-02-05 Will Marler, Hsun-Ta Hsu, Laura Petry, Eric Rice
Digital technologies provide people new means for exchanging social support, though the extent to which disadvantaged populations benefit is unclear. Youth experiencing homelessness (YEH) are a vulnerable population with a range of support needs who are active digial media users. We examined the core networks of 621 YEH in the United States to assess how digital-only communication compared with any
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Digital mourning in tweets: Multimodal analysis of image-based grieving practices among gang-affiliated Black youth New Media & Society (IF 5.31) Pub Date : 2024-01-30 Nathan Aguilar, Aviv Y Landau, Kauai A Taylor, Shana Kleiner, Desmond U Patton
In the 21st century, social media has been utilized to connect youth to peers who share their experiences and provide support. Research shows how gang-affiliated youth use social media to present bravado and express feelings of grief. However, the research focusing on how gang-affiliated youth utilize photos online to memorialize the deceased and convey feelings and experiences of grief and loss is
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The host in the shell: Constructing female identity in the embodied animated media New Media & Society (IF 5.31) Pub Date : 2024-01-30 Manting Chen, Rocco Juanlei Hu
Digitally created Virtual YouTubers (VTubers) have gained great popularity around the globe. The VTuber genre has allowed human actors to endow virtual female characters with a level of agency through real-time voice processing and motion-capture technology. Although some studies have begun to explore this emerging phenomenon, there is still a lack of clarity regarding how human actors of digital female
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From #Rona to #Omarion: Black Twitter’s hashtag activism and critical discourse of COVID-19 pandemic New Media & Society (IF 5.31) Pub Date : 2024-01-30 Rachel Grant, Yewande O Addie, Diane Ezeh Aruah
Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, social media was one of the key digital spaces for community and information. As cases and deaths rose within US Black communities, Black Twitter continued to serve as a counterpublic for humor, health commentary, and hashtag activism. This study will examine the techno discourses of Black Twitter’s usage of hashtag activism during the COVID-19 pandemic. We argue that
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Into the meme stream: The value and spectacle of Internet memes New Media & Society (IF 5.31) Pub Date : 2024-01-30 Tyson Mitman, Jack Denham
This article ‘tracks’ memes, forms of networked, pictorial/caption humour and social commentary – as well as cultural labour, through a process of value change: the ‘meme stream’. This is a process of incorporation of cultural resistance and labour into, and by, the dominant forces of capital that facilitate them: social media networks and their advertisers. We use Marcuse’s Repressive Tolerance alongside
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Who will govern the metaverse? Examining governance initiatives for extended reality (XR) technologies New Media & Society (IF 5.31) Pub Date : 2024-01-30 Ben Egliston, Marcus Carter, Kate Euphemia Clark
It is increasingly common to see policymakers, industry and regulators calling for governance of the ‘metaverse’ – often envisioned as a technological stack supported by extended reality (XR) technology. This article reports on a content analysis of calls to govern XR, published between March 2020 and May 2023 ( n = 181), aiming to understand who is calling for XR governance, what is being governed
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Work it baby! A survey study to investigate the role of underaged children and privacy management strategies within parent influencer content New Media & Society (IF 5.31) Pub Date : 2024-01-27 Emma Beuckels, Liselot Hudders, Ini Vanwesenbeeck, Elisabeth Van den Abeele
Nowadays, parents are increasingly drawn to establish a successful influencer status on social media. Being a parent influencer offers an alluring work environment, allowing them to combine devotion to their children and generating a considerable income. However, both scholars and policymakers raise significant concerns regarding the orchestrated and monetized nature of influencer sharenting, which
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Data in the making, political struggle, and epistemic (in)justice: Asian and Asian Americans as early responders to the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States New Media & Society (IF 5.31) Pub Date : 2024-01-24 Leslie Rupert Herrenkohl, Jiyoung Lee, Everet Wang, Tammy Tasker, Denise Jones, Paola Nkwuzor, Christopher Batalon, Francisco Parra Camacho, Peter Siciliano, Elizabeth A Davis, Angela Calabrese Barton
The COVID-19 pandemic exposed the limits of big data to guide decision-making in times of crisis. As people navigated daily life, they were confronted with the reality that data were often not yet material but rather in-the-making. Drawing upon critical and feminist lenses and participatory methodologies, this study investigates the data stories of nine people of Asian descent living in the United
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Managing authenticity in a kidfluencers’ world: A qualitative study with kidfluencers and their parents New Media & Society (IF 5.31) Pub Date : 2024-01-23 Elisabeth Van den Abeele, Liselot Hudders, Ini Vanwesenbeeck
Though kidfluencer marketing is becoming more prevalent, research into children as senders of commercial messages is scarce. Considering the roles of parents, followers and commercial partners, this study is the first to conceptualise and explore kidfluencers’ authenticity management. In total, 19 in-depth interviews with kidfluencers (aged 7–12 years) and their parents show that kidfluencer profiles
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Visual bordering: How refugee-serving organizations represent refugees on Instagram New Media & Society (IF 5.31) Pub Date : 2024-01-23 Anya Jhoti, William L Allen
Theories of symbolic bordering highlight how xenophobic media coverage and humanitarian messaging create boundaries between migrants and receiving communities partly based on deservingness. Contrasting with studies of mainly text-based representations of refugees, we examine refugee-serving organizations’ visual communications work on Instagram. Using a discourse-centered online ethnographic approach
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Which recommendation system do you trust the most? Exploring the impact of perceived anthropomorphism on recommendation system trust, choice confidence, and information disclosure New Media & Society (IF 5.31) Pub Date : 2024-01-23 Yanyun (Mia) Wang, Weizi Liu, Mike Yao
Recommendation systems (RSs) leverage data and algorithms to generate a set of suggestions to reduce consumers’ efforts and assist their decisions. In this study, we examine how different framings of recommendations trigger people’s anthropomorphic perceptions of RSs and therefore affect users’ attitudes in an online experiment. Participants used and evaluated one of four versions of a web-based wine
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Subverting or preserving the institution: Competing IT firm and foundation discourses about open source New Media & Society (IF 5.31) Pub Date : 2024-01-23 Laure Muselli, Mathieu O’Neil, Fred Pailler, Stefano Zacchiroli
The data economy depends on digital infrastructure produced in self-managed projects and communities. To understand how information technology (IT) firms communicate to a volunteer workforce, we examine IT firm and foundation employee discourses about open source. We posit that organizations employ rhetorical strategies to advocate for or resist changing the meaning of this institution. Our analysis
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Discourse, digitisation and women’s rights groups in Nigeria and Ghana: Online campaigns for political inclusion and against violence on women and girls New Media & Society (IF 5.31) Pub Date : 2024-01-17 Innocent Chiluwa
This study examines aspects of online activism by women’s rights groups in Nigeria and Ghana, especially by exploring their online campaign approaches. Applying the new social movement theories and methods in linguistic pragmatics and discourse analysis, the study examines and analyses how gender issues such as political participation and violence against women and girls are mediated discursively.
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Super-appification: Conglomeration in the global digital economy New Media & Society (IF 5.31) Pub Date : 2024-01-10 Fernando N van der Vlist, Anne Helmond, Michael Dieter, Esther Weltevrede
‘Super apps’ are on the rise. This study explores the characteristics, origins, and manifestations of these apps worldwide, presenting the concept of ‘super-appification’ to describe processes of conglomeration in the global digital economy. Super apps aim to become deeply integrated into people’s everyday lives, capturing and monetising essential activities. By analysing 41 super apps, we identify
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Bypassing digital literacy: Marginalized citizens’ tactics for participation and inclusion in digital societies New Media & Society (IF 5.31) Pub Date : 2024-01-02 Alexander Smit, Joëlle Swart, Marcel Broersma
This article asks what digital literacy tactics low-literate Dutch adults employ to bypass their low-literacy to be able to participate in digital society, and what the consequences are for their socio-digital exclusion and inclusion. It contributes to a better understanding of the impact of digitalization for low-literate citizens, and the linguistic and digital barriers encountered in everyday life
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“Is everyone alive?”: Smartphone use by Ukrainian refugee children New Media & Society (IF 5.31) Pub Date : 2023-05-15 Natalia Khvorostianov
By giving voice to 15 Ukrainian refugees, aged 10–14, who sheltered in a refugee camp in Poland in March 2022, this qualitative study reveals how and why they used smartphones, to cope with the cha...