Looking at the Nose: Gender, Jewishness, and the Politics of Visual Mediation

Government Surveillance and Counter-Surveillance on Social and Mobile Media: The Case of Iran (2009)

The Promises, Problems, and Possibilities for Alt-Networks Introduction Social media has become a central facet of contemporary life and that centralization has narrowed our perspectives and lessened our possibilities (Pariser, 2011; Vaidhyanathan, 2018). This centralizing of social media networks happens for their individual users, but also at the level of how social media informs our discourses through journalistic practice, government institutions, industry sectors. Because of the role that social media now play, we have become acutely aware of their shortcomings. Their platforms not only host but actively cultivate toxic and abusive environments for many of its users. In addition to their functions of interaction, they also provide avenues for increasing governmental control through surveillance or gatekeeping. Given the lack of adequate response from tech companies to these long standing issues, it was inevitable that something had to happen. In response to these conditions, tech advocates, activists, students, and scholars have launched numerous alternatives to mainstream social networks. These networks rethink what social media can and should do in times of over reliance on monolithic digital platforms. Some networks redesign the user’s experience to lessen or eliminate harassment; some networks focus on data privacy responsibilities; some create spaces where non-centralized networks can persist even against oppressive governmental regimes. Given the rise and differentiation of alt-networks, there is a need to study and examine the proliferation of alt-networks. This panel offers four presentations varied in objects, different in methodological approaches, and diverse in their claims. In examining alt-networks, this panel will explore how these redesigned digital platforms respond to demands of scalability, how political activists develop and deploy alt-networks for protests, how researchers could cultivate a games theory approach to studying alt-networks and, finally, how the lack of certain features in alt-networks may doom their survival. The methods being explored will include critical theory, social science research, methodological discussion, and critical analysis through a rhetorical lens. Ultimately, our panel hopes to join in on emerging conversations about the ecology of networks and contribute valuable insights for internet research. A Network of Alt-Networks These papers have been carefully assembled to represent a substantial spectrum of the promises, problems, and possibilities for Alt-Tech today. In the first presentation, the paper develops a games theory approach to studying alt-networks, in this case, Mastodon instances. This is an important development as mainstream social media networks have benefited from years of research approaches, new networked objects create new networked questions requiring new methodological considerations. Related to this problem, the second presentation examines how and when alt-networks engage or resist the inevitable need to scale their operations. Such a study is important because mainstream social media impose a will to scale in ways that make it seem natural and unstoppable. The third presentation engages activists and how ad hoc alt-networks allow for platforms that avoid and leverage themselves against oppressive regimes. Finally, the fourth presentation will explore why alt-networks have so far failed alt-right political actors. This argument will look at how micro-interactions on platforms inform and drive a dangerous cycle of political antagonism. As a set, these presentations will give AoIR attendees a comprehensive survey of sites, methods, and sources for engaging and analyzing alt-networks. While the papers all draw heavily on critical theory and analysis, each differs in how they approach their objects of analysis. Using technical approaches, social science methods, speculative means, and rhetorical analysis the papers also demonstrate a wide swath of ways to encounter the alt-network. Finally, the sourcing and discourse engaged by each presentation activates multiple academic discussions while also sticking close to shared themes and concerns. The Possibilities of Alt-Networks This panel builds on recent work concerning the disappointment with mainstream social networks but also the promise of alternatives (Gehl, 2015, Tufekci, 2017). The adherence to tech industry’s unfair labor practices, the inability to respond to users’ needs, the lack of clear and consistent privacy responsibilities, the weak submission to governmental control— these concerns with social media have all been written (Noble, 2018; Roberts, 2019). The rise and proliferation of Alt-Networks is an important development for internet researchers because those innovations rekindle the earliest aims of the internet itself. Namely, the construction of a system whose topological configurations resisted centralization and allowed for its users to develop multiple ways of communicating knowledge to one another.

The Anxieties of History and Memory

Chinese social media platforms are taking the initiative to cultivate relationships with both the government and users by proactively elaborating on platform rules, aiming to enhance the legitimacy of governance. This article seeks to understand the proactive governance of Chinese social media platforms and the underlying power dynamics by analyzing how official administrators construct governance legitimacy through boundary discourse. We conduct a critical discourse analysis of video texts published by official administrators on three large social media platforms: Douyin, Kuaishou, and Bilibili. It is found that official administrators legitimize platform governance by shaping three types of boundary discourse: deviant expulsion, traffic rewards, and community pest clean-up. Proactive governance by official administrators represents efforts by social platforms to balance top-down regulatory pressures with the autonomy of platform governance and to seek ways to legitimize the governance framework in a manner that is more acceptable to users. Going beyond a technology-centric concept of platform governance, the article seeks to understand the governance system of Chinese social platforms through the boundary discourse of official administrators.

Creating the Other in Online Interaction: Othering Online Discourse Theory

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is twofold. First, to explore the intricacies of culture along with the complex contextual factors that affect the selection, implementation and use of social media as an organizational communication channel in emerging markets. Second, by using Hofstede’s dimension of cultural variability as a framework, the paper identifies different variables that impact usage and adoption of social media in emerging markets.Design/methodology/approachA review of literature was employed for this study to glean different factors that influence social media use in less economically developed countries and emerging markets. The selected literature consisted of the following keyword phrases “social media” and “emerging markets.” The term “culture” was used to narrow the scope of the analysis.FindingsThe analysis provides insights about how elements such as context, culture, communication preference, trust, gender and literacy affect social media use of individuals within organizations and merchants operating in emerging markets. The paper, in particular suggests that all social media campaigns contain important cultural considerations for potential users who will interact with the social networks in emerging markets.Research limitations/implicationsThe review of literature may not have been all inclusive. Hence, certain relevant studies may have been excluded based their lack of selected keywords. Furthermore, currently there are not enough published studies in social media usage and emerging markets to fully explore the topic. Therefore, a call for more empirical research utilizing mixed method approach will provide a more comprehensive analysis.Practical implicationsThe paper includes implications for the development of technological and cultural fit in the diffusion of social media technologies in an attempt to achieve desired results in emerging markets.Originality/valueThis paper identifies the need for clarity or understanding of culture when crossing cultural boundaries in particular West vs East through the use of new and social media within emerging markets.

IntroductionSocial media provides nurses with tools to share information, debate healthcare policy and practice issues, and engage in interpersonal interactions. Historically, also in Scandinavia, nurses’ trade unions have taken the lead in defining nursing as a profession and supporting nurses in ‘conducting good nursing’. However, it is unexplored how trade unions guide nurses in social media use.AimTo explore the explicitly formulated guidance documents provided by Scandinavian nurses’ trade unions, specifically focusing on how the trade unions guided nurses’ social media use.Materials and methodsTrade union guidelines for social media use were searched on the Scandinavian nurses’ organisations’ websites. A textual discourse analysis inspired by Fairclough’s critical approach was conducted. The analysis considered three levels: the social practice level, focusing on connections between the texts and the surrounding society; the discursive practice level, focusing on the processes of production and distribution of the texts; and the textual level, capturing how grammatical formulations and single words work in the (re) construction of social structures.ResultsAt the social practice level, the trade union documents guiding nurses’ social media uses were embedded in platfomised public communication, laws about confidentiality and data protection, and ethical codes for nurses. At the discursive practice level, the guidelines were constructed to support nurses’ social media uses in adhering to their profession’s ethical principles. The trade unions’ implicit and explicit representations of nurses blurred the distinction between nurses as professionals and nurses as private persons. At the textual level, the guidelines tapped into the potential risks of using social media and how nurses ought to act on social media. Unlike the Danish and Swedish trade unions, the Norwegian trade union did not develop specific guidelines for nurses’ social media use.ConclusionThe guidelines emphasized risks stemming from social media use that did not adhere to the profession’s politically defined guidelines, norms, and values, although nurses’ conditions are already framed by the national legislations and ethical standards. The study advocates for the development of guidelines that support beneficial uses of social media in relation to nurses and the nursing profession.

#BLACKLIVESMATTER: Using Social Media to Challenge Racist Policing Practices and Mainstream Media Representations is about how the Black Lives Matter movement represents itself and the Black community irrespective (or perhaps because) of how the media frame and represent Black people. By using social media platforms such as Twitter, local BLM chapters respond to the incessant violence against Black people and contest Black stereotypes appearing in the news media. In this chapter, we assess and interpret the rhetorical strategies informing BLM’s social media use. Using a mixed method critical discourse analysis, this chapter uniquely examines tweets appearing in the Twitter feeds of the three most active BLM chapters’ Twitter accounts (Los Angeles, Chicago, and Minneapolis) during their first nationwide campaign, the Black Xmas protests, in the month of December 2015. Specifically, we found that the chapters through their use of social media represented the movement, and Black people generally, in a manner that counters the Black criminality stereotype. In sum, BLM’s use of Twitter constitutes a discursive structure that contests racist representations socially shared in mainstream media; and by doing so, even amid impunity for state-sanctioned violence, it affirms Black lives matter.

How is social media reshaping architecture? What can platforms like Instagram, Twitch, Pinterest, and TikTok tell us about the spaces we inhabit? The Interiors of Social Mediais the first book to explore the relationship between architecture, interiors, and social media, guiding us through today’s digital landscape to reveal where the virtual and physical worlds meet. From influencer bedrooms and gaming setups to humanitarian shelters, pet influencer homes, and porn rooms, Javier Fernández Contreras reveals how social media does not merely depict interiors, but actively scripts new spatial types: homes that are both private and hyper-public, domestic yet performative, and material yet algorithmic. By mapping platform spatialities and tracing the themes that connect them, he examines interiors as sites of consumerism, display, and mediatization—environments that expose the ethical, political, and ecological implications of 21st-century digital culture. Drawing on architecture, media studies, and digital humanities,The Interiors of Social Mediaoffers a critical lens on how online interactions are woven into everyday life—and invites us to rethink architecture in the age of the algorithm. The Interiors of Social Media provides a critical exploration of how social media is influencing contemporary architecture, focusing on interior spaces as sites of consumerism, display, and mediatization. Through a dual-layered methodology— analyzing platform spatialities and tracing transversal topics across them—this book positions interior space as a territory that is simultaneously domestic and performative, private and hyper-public, material and digitized. As illustrated by the interiors of the most-followed accounts on Instagram, Twitch, TikTok, and Pinterest—alongside representations of space in humanitarian crises, adult content platforms, animal domesticities, and gaming environments—social media spaces construct not only human identities but also non-human bodies and environments, often reinforcing asymmetries of power, visibility, and agency. Building on data analytics and digital humanities, The Interiors of Social Media ultimately maps the conteporary interior as both an architectural construct and a societal apparatus in today’s media landscape, shedding light on the ethical, political, and ecological implications of digital platforms.

Analyses of media discourses on judicial verdicts in sexual violence cases offer critical insight into how this topic is mediated. This study explores post-verdict mainstream and social media reaction to two high-profile verdicts in sexual assault cases in Ireland and Spain: #IBelieveHer, launched in March 2018 following the acquittal of four men accused of rape in Belfast, and #YoTeCreo which coalesced online after five men were given a lesser sentence for sexual abuse in Pamplona in April 2018. This study first identifies the stance taken by mainstream media where verdicts were contrary to “popular” opinion. Secondly, it analyses dominant hashtags that emerged on Twitter following both verdicts. Finally, it traces similarities and differences in discourse patterns identified on mainstream and social media platforms across both countries. For analysis, we employed a Critical Discourse Analysis-based theoretical framework (e.g.,KhosraviNik 2017, “Social Media Critical Discourse Studies (SM-CDS).” In Handbook of Critical Discourse Analysis, 582–596) with resources from Framing Analysis (e.g.,Goffman 1974, Frame Analysis: An Essay on the Organization of Experience. Vancouver: Harvard University Press) for methodological purposes. Findings suggest Spanish print media contained greater debate around legal understandings of sexual violence while the Spanish Twitter campaign was outward-oriented and explicitly feminist. #IBelieveHer displayed a narrower focus, with the “celebrity” dimension to this case contributing to a personalised, less nuanced, discourse on social and print media and more polarised discussion.

This paper will analyse women representation in social media discourse by applying Multimodal Critical Discourse Analysis and will investigate how women are represented linguistically and visually on social media platforms like Instagram, Sanpchat, X and Utube. The data has been gathered from verified and unverified social media accounts with the help of convenient random sampling. The material is in the form of photos, written texts, and videos for a thorough examination. The chosen accounts include X handles like Richard Cooper, the Instagram accounts parity_colorism and thesolidaritysisters. The select Snapchat handles include DRESS CODE, Girls Only. Care has been taken that these posts represent both male and female worlds and the researcher will make the case that the social media content is fundamentally ideological, and that regular events, actions, and issues posted on social media articulate dominant (and occasionally alternative) ideological discourses about the prejudiced nature of our society. It shall be argued that gender politics is present in all types of social media comments and platforms, not so much in terms of formal politics but a more banal and everyday kind. The marketing of these accounts is the hidden motivation behind posting such posts and they do not support the idea that these technologies are democratic or impartial by nature. This paper will also investigate the social contexts within which symbolic forms are employed and deployed to determine whether such forms establish or sustain relations of domination and whether ideological analysis of all elements of the social media content come together to tell the same story that is, patriarchal capitalism. Considering the insights that social media discourse is structured by male dominance; that every discourse is historically produced and interpreted and that dominance structures are legitimated by ideologies of powerful groups(male), this paper will specifically consider gender and social media discourses in the broadest sense, to testify overt relations of gender bias and social inequality. It will also dissect sexism and female objectification by using the Dialectical Relational Approach and suggest ways to reduce gender bias through social media.

Social media platforms have changed the behaviour of youth political participation in contemporary Zimbabwe. Given the popularity of technology, social media platforms have facilitated easier and faster ways of sharing and seeking information and political campaigns. This study sought to analyse social media integration and political participation with specific reference to youths in contemporary Zimbabwe. Circulating information on social media can influence one’s political views and participation. Hence, critical analysis was needed to determine how social media affects youths’ political participation in Zimbabwe. The study draws analytical praxes from the political activity theory and technology acceptance model to determine how social media influences youths’ political participation. The researcher used primary and secondary data sources such as journal articles and book chapters to collect data to analyse social media and youth political participation in Zimbabwe. The researcher also used content and thematic analysis to analyse data. Findings presented that perceived ease of use and perceived usefulness promote the use of social media and political engagement. An interesting finding was that social media is used for political campaigns even though the voting process is done through secret ballot. However, a major concern is the challenge of hoax messages, ghost accounts and ghostwriters on social media platforms as the majority of people have become citizen reporters and journalists. Nevertheless, these findings conclude that social media platforms promote online political participation and less offline political participation. The Zimbabwe Electoral Commission (ZEC) has a pressing need to consider online voting to cover the gap between online and offline political participation towards the 2028 elections and beyond.

Being Jacob: Young Children, Automedial Subjectivity, and Child Social Media Influencers

The word “Disruptive” is a very popular word in science and technology at present. Undoubtedly, Disruptive Information also has been changed into a very important conception in the Information and Communications Technology. Every second, a huge amount of data information is coming from the social media of the mobile terminals. Misinformation, disinformation, mal-information, anti-information, fake news and other disruptive information fill social media. As a result, governments, social communities, economic groups and individuals are scattering rich, colorful and disruptive information on social media and portal websites, which have profound economic, political, cultural, social and historical implications. The wide spread of disruptive information on social media would lead to various characteristics mixing up true or false, intentional or unintentional information. Disruptive information, as a very powerful resilience, could not only greatly stimulate the participants' imagination, cohesion, mobility and creativity, but also easily affect their judgment and understanding. Furthermore, disruptive information could also cause belief and trust crisis, leading to blind obedience, confusion, and mental breakdown. This research shows that it is very necessary to establish a traceable identification system, setting an early warning mechanism, publishing special disruptive information report, so as to improve the reporting system of social media platform.

The terms Cewek Kue, Cewek Bumi and Cewek Mamba are currently massively heard on social media Tiktok and Twitter. This term was popularized by Tiktok users @javamassie and refers to the dominance of colors used by women on the outfits worn. This term was originally only used among Tiktok users, but after reaching 3 million viewers on the videos he uploaded on Tiktok, this term then spread on another social media, namely Twitter. The users of the Tiktok and Twitter accounts then began to identify themselves as Cewek Kue, Cewek Bumi or Cewek Mamba by using similar captions "so it turns out that sofar w is a wkwk earth girl" based on the outfits they use. This becomes interesting when this identificationis pinned by the owner of the @javamassie account who is a man, to female Tiktok and Twitter users for using the word "cewek". The use of language cannot be judged as it is, nor can the use of the terms cewekkue, cewek bumi and cewek mamba. This study uses Norman Fairclough's critical discourse analysis tosee how the term influences gender discourse in social practice. The result of this research is that social media no longer builds its own reality, no longer forms its own virtual world, but at that time the virtual world and reality are intertwined with each other. The discourse present in social media can no longer beunderestimated, what happens in social media, no longer stays in social media. Discourse that is present and moves in social media also influences discourse in reality life. Social media is no longer a safe place and an intact public space, when the practice of power persists. Keywords: Tiktok; Twitter; Critical Discourse Analysis; Gender; Norman Fairclough