Twitter Campaign Research Articles

#DearSister and #MosqueMeToo: adversarial Islamic feminism within the Western-Islamic public sphere

ABSTRACT In the present paper I define Mona Eltahawy’s viral Twitter campaigns, #DearSister (2017) and #MosqueMeToo (2018), and her broad journalistic activism as a novel form of Islamic feminism, “adversarial Islamic feminism.” Provocative, angry, and highly performative, it is found on social media platforms, representing a new chapter in the articulations of the politics, ethics, and aesthetics of the Muslim female body, often caught between the Scylla of liberal and colonial fantasies of empowerment and emancipation, and the Charybdis of religiously ordained submission to patriarchy. I discuss adversarial Islamic feminism first as a novel intervention in academic and specialized debates within Islamic feminism, and second, I place it within the framework of a transnational, highly mediatized, feminist Western-Islamic public sphere, which is precarious, experimental and utopian. Eltahawy’s utopian project has its radical horizon: the concept of global feminist uprising, visible and orchestrated on social media, led by Muslim women and women of color but articulated in universal language relevant to women everywhere.

Catch the tweet to fight the flu: Using Twitter to promote flu shots on a college campus

Objective: Over the 2018–2019 flu season we conducted a randomized controlled trial examining the efficacy of a Twitter campaign on vaccination rates. Concurrently we investigated potential interactions between digital social network structure and vaccination status. Participants: Undergratuates at a large midwestern public university were randomly assigned to an intervention (n = 353) or control (n = 349) group. Methods: Vaccination data were collected via monthly surveys. Participant Twitter data were collected through the public-facing Twitter API. Intervention impact was assessed with logistic regression. Standard network science tools examined vaccination coverage over online social networks. Results: The campaign had no effect on vaccination outcome. Receiving a flu shot the prior year had a positive impact on participant vaccination. Evidence of an interaction between digital social network structure and vaccination status was detected. Conclusions: Social media campaigns may not be sufficient for increasing vaccination rates. There may be potential for social media campaigns that leverage network structure.

Factors Influencing Engagement Rate Of A Daily Twitter Campaign To Disseminate Exercise Oncology Literature

Twitter is a potential medium for health researchers and practitioners to disseminate research findings to colleagues and the general public. The Clinical Exercise Physiology Lab (CEPL; Vancouver, Canada) led a scientific Twitter campaign (#365Papers) in 2018, involving tweeting daily about one peer-reviewed publication related to cancer/exercise. Features of this campaign included Throwback Thursdays (selected article published prior to 2018) and guest tweeters (selected article chosen by other exercise oncology researchers). PURPOSE: To report on the impact to-date of the #365Papers campaign and explore how engagement rate differed based on publication features (type of research (i.e., systematic review, randomized controlled trial), journal impact factor, Altmetric Attention Score) and campaign features (i.e., Throwback Thursdays, guest tweeters). METHODS: Campaign data were obtained from Twitter Analytics (Twitter, 2020: San Francisco, USA) and summarized using descriptive statistics. Publication information was extracted by screening titles and abstracts. Each publication’s Altmetric Attention Score was obtained using the Altmetric Bookmarklet (Digital Science, Holtzbrinck Publishing Group, 2020: Stuttgart, Germany). RESULTS: As of October 2020, the #365Papers Twitter campaign received a total of 688,117 impressions and 22,124 engagements (median engagement rate = 3.2%), with the majority of engagement from URL clicks (n = 8279; 37%). Engagement rate did not differ based on type of research (p = 0.53), journal impact factor (r = -0.06; p = 0.27), Altmetric Attention Score (r = 0.01; p = 0.80), nor if the tweet was part of a Throwback Thursday (p = 0.97). However, guest tweets had significantly higher engagement rates versus non-guest tweets (median: 3.6% vs. 3.1%; p = 0.01). CONCLUSIONS: A daily scientific Twitter campaign can promote engagement around new scientific publications, especially when prominent figures in the research field are incorporated in the campaign process.

What Are the Real-World Podcast-Listening Habits of Medical Professionals?

IntroductionEducational podcasts are increasingly being utilized by health professionals for continuing education, but how they are being used remains poorly understood. Given their extensive reach, they represent a phenomenal opportunity for researchers to engage in knowledge translation of their scholarly works. The design, study, and effectiveness of these resources should be informed by a deeper understanding of their pragmatic usage. We aimed to prospectively determine the pragmatic, real-world listening habits of health professionals.MethodsWe performed a prospective observational study of a broad, interprofessional sample of participants (medical students, residents, physicians, nurses, physician assistants, and paramedics) recruited through a multimodal social media (Twitter and Facebook) campaign. Recruitment materials included an infographic and study website. Participants listened to eight podcasts and described their use of each in subsequent questionnaires.ResultsA total of 393 participants enrolled in the study, and 241 completed the survey for all eight podcasts. Listening behaviors were consistent across the podcasts with the majority selecting a normal speed of playback and engaging in concomitant activities such as driving. One-third of participants paused the podcasts due to interruption.ConclusionWe describe the prospective use of medical podcasts by a cohort of health professionals. This work should inform the role of podcasts in the communication of medical research.

Truth and Discursive Activism: The Promise and Perils of Hashtag Feminism

Abstract I explore both the potential and the perils of Twitter as a space for constituting a Deweyan public aimed at transforming how “we” (here, I mean not only citizens of the United States but global citizens) affectively receive and thereby respond to and resist sexual violation. In the course of this brief exploration, I operate with a pragmatic notion of “truth,” namely, as democratically formulating a hypothesis concerning the nature of a social problem that enables fruitful amelioration of the problem. I specifically focus on the viral #WhyIDidntReport Twitter campaign provoked by Brett Kavanaugh’s Supreme Court hearing.

The #EndSARS protest, corruption and insecurity debates in Nigeria

The mass protest to end the Special Anti-Robbery Squad (known as the #EndSARS protest) was a decentralized social movement and series of mass protests against police brutality in Nigeria. The protest started in 2017 as a Twitter campaign using the hash tag #ENDSARS to demand the disbanding of the Special Anti-Robbery Squad. This paper argues that the #EndSARS protest in Nigeria was a microcosmic manifestation of the deeply rooted dissatisfaction of Nigerians with the social, economic and political situation of the country. Data was collected using secondary sources such as internet material, journal, research reports and textbooks, and were analyzed using the expository and analytical method of inquiry, the paper demonstrates that the protest was just the avenue the Nigerian youths got to ventilate their frustration, disappointment and anger with the government. The paper asserts that nepotism, tribalism, insecurity and corruption are the underlying issues that fuelled the protest. Restructuring and resource control, which underline the gross inequality in Nigeria, are other current debates that gave rise to the protest. Following the analysis, the paper concludes that nepotism, tribalism, insecurity and corruption are the bane of Nigeria’s economic, political and social ill.

#ArmMeWith: Resources for Teacher Wellbeing

With teacher burnout on the rise in the US, this study explores the resources that teachers report to need to buffer the demands of their job and to increase their experience of wellbeing instead of stress and burnout. The data consists of tweets that teachers posted as a part of the #ArmMeWith Twitter campaign to voice the resource that they need in their job. We used thematic analysis to categorize teacher resource needs from 2,639 tweets. Using the Job Demands-Resources theory (JD-R) of employee wellbeing, we sorted codes into themes (physical, psychological, social, organizational), and investigated resource needs across regions of the United States. In this sample, teachers reported needs in all JD-R resource categories, and we identified an additional theme of institutional resource needs to represent the need for political and social change that teachers reported. In our frequency analysis, the need for physical and organizational resources were the most prevalent, and we found no regional differences. This research contributes to the literature on teacher wellbeing by highlighting resources that have the potential to bolster teacher wellbeing. The research also contributes to the JD-R theory by suggesting that institutional factors may contribute to employee wellbeing.

Shakespeare Lives on Twitter: cultural diplomacy in the digital age

ABSTRACT This article is based on multilingual research that analyses the British Council Shakespeare Lives programme. Based on a study of the global Twitter campaign to promote the programme, and a manual coding and analysis of 4,722 tweets in five languages, we investigate the key Twitter actors, topics and types of engagement generated by the campaign. We reflect on two topics that still largely remain absent in the field of cultural diplomacy: first, global audience reactions to a cultural diplomacy programme, and second, the potential of cultural relations organisations to generate intercultural dialogue, at the same time as measurable returns both on investment and influence. Our findings demonstrate that audiences like to engage with activities that invite their participation in ways that reflect their knowledge of Shakespeare, allowing them to compare his works with their own national/local literary figures and to share ideas about universal themes. While the Twitter campaign garnered significant positive attention from members of the public around the globe, the ambition to boost ‘Brand Britain’ did not appear to materialise. We conclude that dialogic forms of cultural diplomacy that stress the value of open cultural democracy, even if difficult to achieve in practice, are more likely to succeed.

What gets lost in Twitter ‘cancel culture’ hashtags? Calling out racists reveals some limitations of social justice campaigns

Twitter campaigns attacking those who make racist or xenophobic statements are valuable, raising the public profile of opinions that will not tolerate racism in any form. They also indicate how our major institutions are failing to address important matters of social justice. But there is concern that social media, such as Twitter, tends to extremes, moral outrages, lack of nuance and incivility, which shape how issues become represented. In this paper, using Critical Discourse Analysis, we look at three Twitter hashtags calling-out racist behaviour. We ask how racism and anti-racism is represented on these hashtags? We show how these misrepresent fundamental aspects of racism in society, distracting from, what race theorists would argue, is the most important thing these incidents tell us about racism at this present time. The findings have consequences for all such Twitter social justice campaigns.

Becoming Flood: Composing Anxious Assemblages in Flood Wall Street

ABSTRACT This essay identifies anxious assemblages as a powerful rhetorical strategy used by organizers of the 2014 Flood Wall Street protest in New York City’s financial district. Anxious assemblages may disrupt the reduction of protest to acts of individual expression while promoting intra-movement solidarity. Drawing together literatures about assemblages and anxiety, I show how circulating signs and images on social media can propel protests that repeat and modulate pre-existing expressions of anxiety. I then use visual and textual methods to demonstrate how Flood Wall Street emerged from a Twitter campaign to transform protestors into a flood or bodies that predicted global climate chaos and spurred participants’ ongoing agitation against the causes of climate change. This essay provides an important analytical tool for analyzing the repetitive and collective tactics now popular among climate justice organizations, explaining how they promote intragroup solidarity and elicit further agitation.

How Health Care Workers Wield Influence Through Twitter Hashtags: Retrospective Cross-sectional Study of the Gun Violence and COVID-19 Public Health Crises.

BackgroundTwitter has emerged as a novel way for physicians to share ideas and advocate for policy change. #ThisIsOurLane (firearm injury) and #GetUsPPE (COVID-19) are examples of nationwide health care–led Twitter campaigns that went viral. Health care–initiated Twitter hashtags regarding major public health topics have gained national attention, but their content has not been systematically examined.ObjectiveWe hypothesized that Twitter discourse on two epidemics (firearm injury and COVID-19) would differ between tweets with health care–initiated hashtags (#ThisIsOurLane and #GetUsPPE) versus those with non–health care–initiated hashtags (#GunViolence and #COVID19).MethodsUsing natural language processing, we compared content, affect, and authorship of a random 1% of tweets using #ThisIsOurLane (Nov 2018-Oct 2019) and #GetUsPPE (March-May 2020), compared to #GunViolence and #COVID19 tweets, respectively. We extracted the relative frequency of single words and phrases and created two sets of features: (1) an open-vocabulary feature set to create 50 data-driven–determined word clusters to evaluate the content of tweets; and (2) a closed-vocabulary feature for psycholinguistic categorization among case and comparator tweets. In accordance with conventional linguistic analysis, we used a P<.001, after adjusting for multiple comparisons using the Bonferroni correction, to identify potentially meaningful correlations between language features and outcomes.ResultsIn total, 67% (n=4828) of #ThisIsOurLane tweets and 36.6% (n=7907) of #GetUsPPE tweets were authored by health care professionals, compared to 16% (n=1152) of #GunViolence and 9.8% (n=2117) of #COVID19 tweets. Tweets using #ThisIsOurLane and #GetUsPPE were more likely to contain health care–specific language; more language denoting positive emotions, affiliation, and group identity; and more action-oriented content compared to tweets with #GunViolence or #COVID19, respectively.ConclusionsTweets with health care–led hashtags expressed more positivity and more action-oriented language than the comparison hashtags. As social media is increasingly used for news discourse, public education, and grassroots organizing, the public health community can take advantage of social media’s broad reach to amplify truthful, actionable messages around public health issues.

Abolition in the land known as Canada in the wake of COVID-19

ABSTRACT In 2020, while states worldwide were instituting large scale lockdowns and physical distancing in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, those in penal and detention systems remained one of the most invisible and vulnerable populations to its spread. With limited resources and support, exposure for incarcerated and detained persons is heightened within confined spaces, lack of access to protective and sanitizing equipment, and grossly inadequate healthcare. Amid the pandemic, abolition groups and individuals emerged as a community of advocacy, resource, and support for those confined behind the walls. This contemporary comment shares some of the important organizing of abolitionists and anti-carceral groups throughout the land now known as Canada during the pandemic. These initiatives and activities included solidarity strikes and actions, twitter and social media campaigns, fundraising initiatives, news releases, conferencing and interviews, videos and online speaker panels, educational awareness and tools, caravans and rallies, and legal interventions among many others.

The Impact of #365Papers: A Daily Scientific Twitter Campaign to Disseminate Exercise Oncology Literature

Purpose: Many health researchers and practitioners use Twitter to stimulate scientific dialogue and collaboration among peers, as well as the general public. In 2018, the Clinical Exercise Physiology Lab (CEPL) undertook a year-long scientific Twitter campaign (#365Papers) where one peer-reviewed publication related to cancer and exercise/physical activity was tweeted per day. Features of this campaign included Throwback Thursdays (selected article published before 2018) and guest tweeters (article chosen by other exercise oncology researchers). We report on the impact of the #365Papers campaign based on Twitter Analytics data (i.e., engagement rate). We also explore how engagement rate differed depending on publication features (e.g., type of research, journal impact factor, Altmetric Attention Score) and campaign features (i.e., Throwback Thursdays, guest tweeters). Methods: Campaign data were obtained from Twitter Analytics (Twitter, 2020: San Francisco, USA). Publication information (i.e., type of research, journal) was extracted by screening titles and abstracts, while each publication’s Altmetric Attention Score was obtained using the Altmetric Bookmarklet (Digital Science, Holtzbrinck Publishing Group, 2020: Stuttgart, Germany). Twitter Analytics data were summarized using descriptive statistics. Differences in engagement rate were analyzed based on research type (e.g., randomized controlled trial), journal impact factor, Altmetric Attention Score, and if the publication was posted as part of a Throwback Thursday or by a guest tweeter. Results: The #365Papers Twitter campaign received a total of 688,117 impressions and 22,124 engagements, with a median engagement rate of 3.2% and the majority of engagement from URL clicks (n=8279; 37%). The mean monthly increase in CEPL Twitter account followers was 48 (±18). Engagement rate did not differ based on type of research (p=0.53), journal impact factor (r=-0.06; p=0.27), Altmetric Attention Score (r=0.01; p=0.80), nor if the tweet was part of a Throwback Thursday (p=0.97). However, guest tweets had significantly higher engagement rates versus non-guest tweets (median: 3.6% vs. 3.1%; p=0.01). Conclusion: Our findings suggest the potential of a daily scientific Twitter campaign to stimulate peer and public engagement and dialogue around new scientific publications, especially when prominent figures in the research field are incorporated into the campaign process.

Impacts of biomedical hashtag-based Twitter campaign: #DHPSP utilization for promotion of open innovation in digital health, patient safety, and personalized medicine

Abstract The open innovation hub Digital Health and Patient Safety Platform (DHPSP) was recently established with the purpose to invigorate collaborative scientific research and the development of new digital products and personalized solutions aiming to improve human health and patient safety. In this study, we evaluated the effectiveness of a Twitter-based campaign centered on using the hashtag #DHPSP to promote the visibility of the DHPSP initiative. Thus, tweets containing #DHPSP were monitored for five weeks for the period 20.10.2020–24.11.2020 and were analyzed with Symplur Signals (social media analytics tool). In the study period, a total of 11,005 tweets containing #DHPSP were posted by 3020 Twitter users, generating 151,984,378 impressions. Analysis of the healthcare stakeholder-identity of the Twitter users who used #DHPSP revealed that the most of participating user accounts belonged to individuals or doctors, with the top three user locations being the United States (501 users), the United Kingdom (155 users), and India (121 users). Analysis of co-occurring hashtags and the full text of the posted tweets further revealed that the major themes of attention in the #DHPSP Twitter-community were related to the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), medicine and health, digital health technologies, and science communication in general. Overall, these results indicate that the #DHPSP initiative achieved high visibility and engaged a large body of Twitter users interested in the DHPSP focus area. Moreover, the conducted campaign resulted in an increase of DHPSP member enrollments and website visitors, and new scientific collaborations were formed. Thus, Twitter campaigns centered on a dedicated hashtag prove to be a highly efficient tool for visibility-promotion, which could be successfully utilized by healthcare-related open innovation platforms or initiatives.

Twitter made me do it! Twitter's tonal platform incentive and its effect on online campaigning

ABSTRACT Does Twitter trigger negative tones in politicians' digital communication? On social media direct feedback mechanisms such as retweets or likes signal to politicians which message and tone are popular. Current research suggests that negative language increases the number of retweets a single tweet receives, indicating preferences for negativity in the audience on Twitter. However, it remains unclear whether politicians adapt to the logic of Twitter or simply follow the rules determined by the broader political context, namely the state of their electoral race. We use sentiment analysis to measure the tone used by 342 candidates in 97,909 tweets in their Twitter campaign in the 2018 midterm elections for the US House of Representatives and map the ideological composition of each politician's Twitter network. We show that the feedback candidates receive creates an incentive to use negativity. The size and direction of the tonal incentive is connected to the ideological composition of the candidate's follower network. Unexpectedly, the platform-specific incentive does not affect the tone used by candidates in their Twitter campaigns. Instead we find that the tone is mainly related to characteristics of the electoral race. We show that our findings are not dependent on our sentiment measurement by validating our results using hand coding and machine learning.

Investigating the Syrian “Other” in Donald J. Trump’s Twitter Campaign Rhetoric

AbstractThis study investigates the discursive techniques and processes employed by Donald J. Trump to portray Syrian refugees as a negative out-group and threat in tweets during his 2016 election campaign. The article argues that this anti-immigration argument facilitated and materialized not only as a right-wing populist discourse but also as an actual policy as evidenced by the travel ban of 2017. The data are comprised of 32 tweets from Trump’s personal Twitter account between his first available commentary tweets on the Arab Spring situation in November 2011 and his inauguration in January 2017. The article employs the Ideological Square (van Dijk 1992, van Dijk 1995, van Dijk 2013) and proximization theory (Cap 2008, Cap 2010, Cap 2013) to study how Donald J. Trump employs an ideological “othering” of Syrian refugees and constructs threatening representations of them as a political agenda to set himself apart from competitors and advance his election campaign.

SOCIAL MEDIA AND MINORITY LANGUAGES IN EVERYDAY LIFE: A COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS OF TWO TWITTER CAMPAIGNS PROMOTING THE IRISH LANGUAGE

The Irish language (‘Gaeilge’), although the first official language of the Republic of Ireland, is a minority language in public life. In recent years, social media campaigns have been organised to promote the use of Irish online. In this paper, we analyse two such campaigns (#EDL #Gaeilge; and #TrasnaNadTonnta) and explore how participation in them is connected to everyday practices of media use and meaning making, and how this in turn influences minority language promotion in social media. Drawing on sociolinguistics and media and communication studies, we address the following research question: How can everyday life and media use influence participation in Twitter campaigns that aim to promote the Irish language? We find that the success of each campaign was dependent on the participants identifying connections between the campaigns and their everyday lives. #TrasnaNadTonnta found particular salience among the Irish diaspora, for whom the language is a marker of a unique cultural identity. This Twitter campaign provided a platform for Irish-language users to connect with others across Europe, North America, Asia and Australia – places where the Irish language has not been traditionally spoken. Although the same platform was provided in #EDL2017 #Gaeilge, Irish-language Twitter users did not identify with this campaign to the same extent. We further surmise that the unique hashtag created for #TrasnaNadTonnta, reminiscent of a song sung in childhood, had particular semiotic appeal when compared with the more policy-oriented approach of #EDL2017.

Exploring the relationship between global Twitter campaigns and domestic law: methodological challenges and solutions

ABSTRACT This study uses nearly one million Tweets from eight campaigns targeting seven countries to explore the relationship between social media and domestic legal change, specifically in the area of women’s rights. The research is underpinned by a critique of the spiral model of human rights change and second wave normative scholarship. The study focuses on quantifying contextual, independent (online behaviours), and dependent (legal change) variables in order to model the effectiveness of the campaigns. Using the space of social media presents a wide range of opportunities as well as threats. It may be that these campaigns are indeed leading to the change sought after by domestic women and girls, and that, as many posit, the weight of the international attention leads to positive outcomes. Equally, it may be that the campaigns are ineffective or, worse, lead to harmful government backlashes. This research seeks to understand these outcomes in depth, using empirical data to model the effectiveness of campaigns. This article in particular focusses on the methodological challenges and solutions with this kind of large-scale comparative social media research.

Justice Reframed? A Comparative Critical Discourse Analysis of Twitter Campaigns and Print Media Discourse on Two High-Profile Sexual Assault Verdicts in Ireland and Spain

ABSTRACT 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.

"Mischievous Uncles" as Rule Breakers: Intersectional Stereotypes and Risk Perceptions During the Coronavirus Pandemic in Turkey.

Responses to crises can highlight and exacerbate class inequalities. Seemingly neutral policy measures taken during the COVID-19 pandemic that aim to protect high-risk groups can lead to a shift in the public discourse that deprives citizens of their agency based not only on their age but also their class. In this article, we focus on the case of Turkey, one of the countries with the fastest growth of novel coronavirus cases in late March 2020, where the government introduced a curfew for people over the age of 65, while actively encouraging the rest of the working-age population to stay at home. An intersectional analysis of the Twitter campaign #StayatHome (#EvdeKal) and the media outlets’ news coverage of the policy implementation show that both platforms circulated human-interest stories of working-class men who defy the curfew predominantly. Both the stories and Twitter user comments often defined the subjects of those stories as rule-breakers and, therefore, as “mischievous uncles.” They became the scapegoats, while upper and middle classes avoided the label. These findings have implications for the framing of policy outcomes and welfare provisions as well as oppositional politics that push for the expansion of labor protections during the pandemic.