Digital Social Media Platforms Research Articles

The Application of Animation Expression Design for Social Media of China

The study investigates the application of animation expression design for social media in China. While analysing the application of animation expression and the dynamic interplay between social media engagement, visual communication and animation, it appeared that visual communication plays an important role in engaging users with the proliferation of digital social media platforms and China’s digital media landscape significantly dominated by a platform such as Douyin. Weibo, and WeChat, each employ animations to increase user interactions. However, there exist gaps in understanding the animation design's impact on visual communication along with user engagement in the chinese context. Additionally, challenges associated with animated design’s influence on multiple sectors remain unexplored. In order to address these gaps, a mixed method appeared to be appropriate for gathering relevant information. and these involve the observation phase, survey phase, and visualize phase. By combining these methods, this research aims to give comprehensive insights into the effective application of animation design for social media in China. Further, the findings are expected to contribute to increasing understanding of the way animations can optimise communication strategies as well as increase user engagement on the digital platforms in China.

The Renewal of the Webcomic in the Era of Platformization: The Case of 9Gag on Instagram

This article addresses the place that the webcomic occupies as valuable content within the repertoire of consumable options in digital social media platforms. For the new digital generations, these new media spaces of light entertainment are spaces of encounter and interaction. Taking as a case study the Instagram profile of 9Gag, this article analyzes the level of engagement of 9Gag audiences with the webcomics published in that profile during the year 2022. The hypothesis defended in this text is to consider that these new spaces of consumption and interaction between users and content are especially relevant when considering the reach that the webcomic has as a format or content of interest for younger audiences. The results obtained after the data analysis show, even considering its possible exploratory nature of the study, that the webcomic is an attractive content for centennial audiences, although its formal and discursive concreteness remains far from the linguistic innovations that the digital comic promoted in its first manifestations.

Dynamic media technologies in the inclusive socio-cultural environment

There are constant social changes in the social structure and socio-cultural models in society. Social changes in communities are carried out with the help of new forms or elements from which positive socio-cultural transformations are expected. The dissemination of information by mass media in a socio-cultural environment affects both social changes in society and the formation of the principles of media justice and inclusiveness in it. Information can be perceived by people in different ways, depending on their interests and the ability of society to use information that is dynamically entering the media space. The very concepts of “inclusion in the media space” and “media justice” are hardly always felt and perceived by people in the process of interacting with the media. In turn, digital social media platforms contribute to the creation of various communities. The logic of the study conducted by the author leads to the conclusion that the development of communities of various interests, the media should focus on mentoring, sponsorship, inclusiveness and advocacy.

Information Warfare and Digitalization of Politics in a Globalized World

Online media of digital methodology has transformed human behaviors from sociocultural and political backing, interest, and participation to sharing supposition or resistance and has transfigured the approach of interaction and thinking—a serious issue for digital anthropology that centeres on internet-related changes of social marvels, a configuration of chaotic pluralism. With the prime argument that digital social media platforms implant feebleness, insecurity, and instability into social and political life, this paper investigates the risks that online media impose on democracy. Based on auxiliary secondary data, the methodology incorporates qualitative verifiable, and analytical methods. The paper's findings contend that the politico-techno-driven political economy of digital innovation has chopped social and democratic institutions and has destabilized worldwide social relations and politics, democracy has been fumed, stormed, and hacked. Social media has created a modern world order of amazing befuddling filter bubble impact where cyber-violence is misogynistic--social media is just like a redirection of Chinese whispers. Subsequently, with, private on-screen characters, governments' data dispersal, and so-called security and safeguarding of citizens' democratic rights, allegorically, George Orwell’s nightmare of 'Animal Farm' unfurling. In a bourgeois populist science of the 'digital panopticon' of technological colonialism, state surveillance, and bourgeois information, humankind is becoming more divided and unsecured and in the future citizens' will be deprived of numerous sociopolitical rights. Future people may fade under the pressure of high-tech colonialism which concurs with the normalization approach that 'offline field' powerful people are powerful 'online' too. Upcoming democracy is probable to be a discreetly 'high-hat' elitist endeavor. Current endeavors and legislations are romanticized as a glass half empty with very few tools to control cyberspace. It is pivotal to invigorate and fortify citizens’ digital agency and self-determination in society, politics, well-being, and economy, otherwise, societies/countries are probable to be more totalitarian.

Review of “Speculative Communities: Living with Uncertainty in a Financialized World”

Based on the title, I hoped that by reading this book, I might learn something about how speculators in financial markets dealt with uncertainty, or perhaps how people in a financialized society managed their everyday lives. But in fact, I did not learn very much about these things. Instead, I learned a lot concerning how the author speculates about these and many other topics. I learned that the author is erudite, fond of word play and rhetorical flourishes, writes aphoristically, and likes to pull together authors as wide ranging as Theodore Adorno, Virginia Woolf, Pascal, Cornelius Castoriadis, Nancy Fraser, and Arlie Hochschild. Fans of modern social theory will enjoy the kind of playful intellectual bricolage Komporozos-Athanasiou performs. I was pleased to see Guy Debord, a figure from my undergraduate years, brought back into the discussion (and how could he not, having written the Society of the Spectacle). I valued the author’s engagement with Benedict Anderson. I learned that the world is filled with paradoxes and contradictions, puzzles and ironies, all linked together via hidden and visible connections, and that the author is busy trying to connect all the dots. I appreciated that the author has read a fair amount about financialization but not as much as he should (the financial history presented in Chapter 2 is often simplistic and sometimes wrong). He has a great interest in digital social media platforms, and phenomena like “fake news,” and so discusses Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Tiktok, and Tinder at length. The latter is the centerpiece of such baffling questions as: “What are the implications of this immersive surrender to the uncertain space of Tinder’s infinite swipe?” (p. 87). Of course, put that question in its context and the reader gets some help about what it means. But not a lot. And if one doubts he is au courant with the latest in popular culture, the discussion of Love Island and use of the term “weaponize” will allay any suspicions.

A relação público/privada na juventude mediada pelas plataformas de redes sociais digitais

Abstract This article aims to discuss, through exploratory and bibliographic research, the relationships between the public and the private in the life of young people mediated by digital social media platforms. Initially, the article approaches the main characteristics of this population, and then throws light on digital social media platforms and their algorithms. The last part of the text addresses the public/private relationship for urban youths in their digital social media. The main result is an in-depth discussion about the conflicting relationship between capitalist platforms of digital social media and the young mind that barely manages to perceive the difference between public and private.

Social Media Algorithms

The need and desire to communicate information, ideas, and emotions has been strong in humans. It has evolved from traditional forms such as story-telling, plays, paintings, carvings, community gatherings to digital forms of communication. As digital social media platforms are growing at a rapid pace and are touching billions of people worldwide, it becomes important to understand how these platforms work and their effect on users and the society. The present paper analyzes social media algorithms, how they rank content, and how Machine Learning drives these algorithms. The shortcomings of social media algorithms and their future are also discussed.

Synthesis of human and artificial intelligence: Review of “How to stay smart in a smart world: Why human intelligence still beats algorithms” by Gerd Gigerenzer

AbstractArtificial intelligence, due to being heavily researched and funded, reaches new peaks of performance by the hour. In his new book, Gigerenzer (2022) addresses the predominantly positive perspective on AI with an advocacy for the uniqueness of the human intellect. He outlines strengths of human intelligence and the failures as well as dangers of AI. While the book presents an enlightening case for human intelligence, the author misses out on exploring a more productive approach: The synthesis of human intelligence and AI. In the present review, I introduce strengths and weaknesses of both types of intelligence and focus on the potential of synthetic cooperation between them. I support my plea for cooperation with two recent research ventures, namely, the regulation of digital social media platforms and predicting the societal effects of emerging innovations.

Using social media in Kenya to quantify road safety: an analysis of novel data

BackgroundRoad traffic injuries are a large and growing cause of morbidity and mortality in low- and middle-income countries, especially in Africa. Systematic data collection for traffic incidents in Kenya is lacking and in many low- and middle-income countries available data sources are disparate or missing altogether. Many Kenyans use social media platforms, including Twitter; many road traffic incidents are publicly reported on the microblog platform. This study is a prospective cohort analysis of all tweets related to road traffic incidents in Kenya over a 24-month period (February 2019 to January 2021).ResultsA substantial number of unique road incidents (3882) from across Kenya were recorded during the 24-month study period. The details available for each incident are widely variable, as reported and posted on Twitter. Particular times of day and days of the week had a higher incidence of reported road traffic incidents. A total of 2043 injuries and 1503 fatalities were recorded.ConclusionsTwitter and other digital social media platforms can provide a novel source for road traffic incident and injury data in a low- and middle-income country. The data collected allows for the potential identification of local and national trends and provides opportunities to advocate for improved roadways and health systems for the emergent care from road traffic incidents and associated traumatic injuries.

No Free Tickets

No Free Tickets

Social media influencer marketing to build a counter-narrative for promoting sexuality education

Abstract Background A recent cross sectional community readiness assessment carried out in Islamabad, Pakistan indicated that the community is at the denial or resistant stage for implementing school-based sexuality education in Pakistan. The resistance was attributed to lack of awareness and prevalent misconceptions regarding sexuality education. This study aims at qualitatively exploring strategies for targeting misconceptions and increase awareness regarding sexuality education with stakeholder involvement. Methods 35 in-depth interviews and a focus group discussion was conducted to discuss the results of the readiness assessment comprising of community members, researchers, NGO representatives, and social media influencers. Discussion guide included topics on engagement strategies, intervention modes of delivery, target audience, misconceptions, community support, and optimizing sexuality education in local context. Qualitative content analysis was conducted for analyzing the data. Results Results indicate that current community support is usually passive in nature and digital or social media platforms are mostly used to talk about sexuality education. Participants believed social media can be used as a platform for disseminating information by involving social media influencers with careful narrative building around sexuality for rebranding the topic, as talking about sexuality is seen as a taboo in the society. Targeting misconceptions through counter narratives and scientific evidence was considered as a way forward for increasing community acceptability and readiness. Violence, staying safe, and age appropriateness were identified as some of the key features of sexuality education that need to be highlighted for garnering community support. Conclusions For promoting sexuality education in Pakistan, it is essential to tackle resistance by sensitizing the community and digital social media platforms offer an opportunity to do this through influencer marketing. Key messages Digital and social media offer an opportunity for promoting sexuality education in conservative settings like Pakistan. Social media influencer marketing might be useful in building counter narrative and for community engagement.

Physicians’ knowledge about palliative care in Bangladesh: A cross-sectional study using digital social media platforms

Palliative care is still a new concept in many developing countries like Bangladesh. Basic knowledge about palliative care is needed for all physicians to identify and provide this care. This study aims to assess the preliminary knowledge level and the misconceptions about this field among physicians. This cross-sectional study was conducted among 479 physicians using a self-administered structured questionnaire adapted from Palliative Care Knowledge Scale (PaCKs) on various digital social media platforms from December 2019 to February 2020. Chi-square, Fisher's extract test, and the Monte Carlo extract test was done to compare the knowledge level with the study subjects' demographic variables. An almost equal number of physicians of both genders from four major specialties and their allied branches took part in the study (response rate 23.9%). The majority (71%) of the respondents had an average to an excellent level of knowledge about palliative care, with a median score of 11.0. Although most physicians had average knowledge about the primary goals and general concepts of palliative care, misconceptions are highly prevalent. The commonly present misconceptions were that palliative care discourages patients from consulting other specialties (88.9%), refrains them from taking curative treatments (83.1%), and this care is only for older adults (74.5%), cancer patients (63%), and the last six months of life (56.4%). Age, educational qualifications, and specialties had significant relationships (P<0.05) with the level of knowledge. Despite having average or above knowledge about palliative care, the physicians' prevailing misconceptions act as a barrier to recognizing the need among the target populations. So, proper education and awareness among the physicians are necessary to cross this field's barrier and development.

The Impact of the Digital Age and Social Media on Connecting the Clubfoot Community.

BackgroundInternet chat rooms played an important role in the late 1990s promoting the Ponseti method as the preferred initial treatment for congenital clubfoot. The social media boom has created multiple new methods for caregivers to seek support from a global community using a variety of platforms that are now easily available. This study assesses the reach of information shared across social media platforms about congenital clubfoot and analyzes topics most commonly discussed among members in these groups.MethodologyPosts and pages across Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and TikTok were evaluated to identify the top clubfoot-related hashtags and accounts. In addition, content themes were analyzed for posts across all platforms.ResultsThere were 122 clubfoot-focused Facebook groups for parent support, and the five Facebook groups with the highest number of posts during the study period were found to frequently discuss the following topics: successful treatment stories, questions about casting, bracing, relapse, and commercial items compatible with clubfoot treatment. Twitter pages contained information about live webinars, educational resources for parents and providers, and the impact of the coronavirus disease 2019 pandemic on clubfoot treatment. A search across visual platforms using “#clubfoot” yielded over 59,000 cumulative posts on Instagram and over 34.7 million total views on TikTok.ConclusionsParents of clubfoot patients are increasingly connecting through digital social media platforms, relying on them for information on clubfoot, and utilizing them as a network for social support. Clubfoot physicians should be aware of this content on social media to promote education and discussion that addresses parent concerns, provides accurate information, and guides expectations.

Trans* media ecology: The emergence of gender variant selfies in print

Despite having become more visible in popular and academic discourses over the last half decade, trans* selfies are not new. In this article, I examine an early set of trans* selfies featured in a sexploitation periodical published in the United States during the early 1960s. I show how numerous media, including bodies, clothing, cosmetics, photographs and magazines, produced a socio-technical environment through which trans* subjects composed alternative gender expressions and identities, formed intimate networks and created conditions of possibility for the eventual re-emergence of trans* selfies via digital social media platforms. Merging trans* theory with media ecology, I develop trans* media ecology as a conceptual frame from which to locate the always imbricated – but never complete – becoming of gendered bodies and media. Methodologically, trans* media ecology adopts three guiding principles: (1) genders are media, (2) genders depend on media and (3) genders and media change.

Education and the dislike society: The impossibility of learning in filter bubbles

As we begin to witness a new phase in the integration of digital social media platforms with educational institutions, we ought to ask how learning exchanges may be altered as a result. Looking to transformations in knowledge exchanges outside of formal education, we find that these technologies have already modified the ways in which communities engage with each other. Gerlitz and Helmond explain that the Like Economy built into all major social media platforms flattens exchanges between users to engagement metrics. With online communities increasingly isolated from each other thanks to inscrutable recommendation algorithms, the most frequent cross-community exchanges manifest in outbursts of rage, producing a so-called ‘Dislike Society’. Practitioners would rather briefly unite to tear down other ways of living than to build new ones. Within the Dislike Society, any form of knowledge that could shape new communities is lost to the governance of algorithms in what Bernard Stiegler calls ‘proletarianisation’. To re-apply knowledge to the improvement of life, as suggested by Whitehead, the attention of learners needs to be shaped in response to new technological conditions. This is best achieved within the educational institutions that now face a reorganisation by the same companies that brought us the Dislike Society.

Human behavior, trustworthiness, and attitude during COVID-19 lockdown in Indian modern societal and cultural antiquity

ABSTRACT A slaughterer or killer wave of lenient COVID-19 pandemic disease breaks the normal rhythm of global socio-economic and cultural livelihood. This research attempts to evaluate trustworthiness toward God, Doctor, Politician, and Administrator along with attitude and behavior of Indian people during such global emergency. Around 323 respondents have sent their opinion through digital social media platforms like Google Forms, Zoom Cloud Meeting, WhatsApp Group Chat for such perception study. The multivariate statistical techniques like Hierarchical Cluster Analysis (HCA), Wilcoxon signed-rank test, and Principal Component Analysis (PCA) have been performed using IBM SPSS (v 25) statistical software to analyze the trustworthiness, attitude, and behavior of respondents during COVID-19 lockdown. Result shows that maximum people express their faith to God or Prophets or Spiritual leader during COVID-19 pandemic. This belief or trust is transmitted in the blood of Indian people by generation after generation through cultural antiquity. This study is also focused that the people also undergo through various situations like anxiety, tension, fears of infection, anger, mental disorder, isolation and cohabitation stress, stigmatization, domestic violence etc. due to long-time detention in the sealed concrete walls as well as curbed cubicles.

A human-machine partnered approach for identifying social media signals of elevated traumatic grief in Chicago gang territories.

There is a critical need to improve trauma-informed services in structurally marginalized communities impacted by violence and its associated traumatic grief. For community residents, particularly gang-associated youth, repeated exposure to traumatic grief causes serious adverse effects that may include negative health outcomes, delinquency, and future violent offenses. The recent proliferation of digital social media platforms, such as Twitter, provide a novel and largely underutilized resource for responding to these issues, particularly among these difficult-to-reach communities. In this paper, we explore the potential for using a human-machine partnered approach, wherein qualitative fieldwork and domain expertise is combined with a computational linguistic analysis of Twitter content among 18 gang territories/neighborhoods on Chicago’s South Side. We first employ in-depth interviews and observations to identify common patterns by which residents in gang territories/neighborhoods express traumatic grief on social media. We leverage these qualitative findings, supplemented by domain expertise and computational techniques, to gather both traumatic grief- and gang-related tweets from Twitter. We next utilize supervised machine learning to construct a binary classification algorithm to eliminate irrelevant tweets that may have been gathered by our automated query and extraction techniques. Last, we confirm the validity, or ground truth, of our computational findings by enlisting additional domain expertise and further qualitative analyses of the specific traumatic events discussed in our sample of Twitter content. Using this approach, we find that social media provides useful signals for identifying moments of increased collective traumatic grief among residents in gang territories/neighborhoods. This is the first study to leverage Twitter to systematically ground the collective online articulations of traumatic grief in traumatic offline events occurring in violence-impacted communities. The results of this study will be useful for developing more effective tools—including trauma-informed intervention applications—for community organizations, violence prevention initiatives, and other public health efforts.

Transparency Requirements for Digital Social Media Platforms: Recommendations for Policy Makers and Industry

This paper sets out a framework for transparency on the part of the larger digital social media companies in connection with their content moderation activities and the algorithms and data that involve the distribution of problematic content on their systems. It departs from the movement in many countries for content regulation and mandated take-downs, preferring instead to focus on creating a balanced and clear legal structure for disclosure that can help to restore public trust in digital platforms and provide assurances that they are operating in the public interest. It recommends a tiered system of transparency. Disclosures about content moderation programs and enforcement procedures and transparency reports are aimed at the general public. Disclosures about prioritization, personalization and recommendation algorithms are provided to vetted researchers and regulators. Vetted researchers are also given access to anonymized data for conducting audits in connection with content moderation programs, while personal data and commercially sensitive data are available only for regulators. This recommended transparency approach could be started through voluntary measures undertaken by the larger social media companies in conjunction with public interest groups and researchers, but its natural home is within a comprehensive system of regulation for the larger social media companies overseen by a government agency.

East Asian pop music idol production and the emergence of data fandom in China

This article traces the formation of popular music idol industries in China and the emergence of data fandom. It charts the growth of digital platforms and historicizes the commercial and geopolitical itinerations linking cultural production in Japan, South Korea, and China. It locates data fandom as an integral part of the popular music industries reconfigured by digital social media platforms; a structural change from the production-to-consumption ‘supply chain’ model of the recording era towards emergent circuits of content that integrate industries and audiences. Data fans understand how their online activities are tracked, and adopt individual and collective strategies to influence metric and semantic information reported on digital platforms and social media. This article analyses how the practices of data fans impact upon charts, media and content traffic, illustrating how this activity benefits the idols they are following, and enhances a fan’s sense of achievement and agency.

Mobile Video Production

Smartphone ownership has become ubiquitous (International Telecommunication Union, 2017), but also fragmented by the variety of manufacturers and models available. In particular there are significant differences between the two major smartphone platforms (iOS and Android). This workshop is designed to provide participants with a cross-platform toolkit for implementing BYOD user-generated mobile video content in higher education contexts (Cochrane &amp; Sinfield, 2019). Grounded on the concepts of learner-generated contexts, heutagogy or self-determined learning (Blaschke &amp; Hase, 2019), and authentic learning (Burden &amp; Kearney, 2016), the workshop facilitators will outline a framework for user-generated mobile video production (Sinfield, 2018). The workshop will illustrate the framework by examples of BYOD student projects, and will introduce participants to a hands-on exploration of an ecology of resources for mobile collaborative video production and sharing via digital social media platforms.&#x0D; &#x0D; Schedule (100 mins)&#x0D; &#x0D; Introductions (5 min) &#x0D; Participant survey (5 min)&#x0D; &#x0D; &#x0D; Overview of collaborative mobile video production technologies (10 min)&#x0D; &#x0D; Hardware&#x0D; Student project examples &#x0D; &#x0D; Mobile video activities (20 min) &#x0D; &#x0D; &#x0D; &#x0D; Adobe Premier Clip App&#x0D; LG360 Cam’s&#x0D; &#x0D; Support&#x0D; Streetview&#x0D; YouTube360&#x0D; &#x0D; &#x0D; Collaborative Video project development (45 min) &#x0D; Participants choose a topic to work on as a mobile video production team, for example:&#x0D; &#x0D; &#x0D; &#x0D; Autumn (Albert Park)&#x0D; Construction&#x0D; Transportation&#x0D; Time Lapse&#x0D; &#x0D; Sharing and review of participant projects (Upload to YouTube and share) (10 min)&#x0D; Reflections – sharing of project URLs and reflections via Twitter and the #SOTELNZ hashtag (5 min)&#x0D; END&#x0D; &#x0D; References&#x0D; &#x0D; Blaschke, L. M., &amp; Hase, S. (2019). Heutagogy and digital media networks: Setting students on the path to lifelong learning. Pacific Journal of Technology Enhanced Learning, 1(1), 1-14. doi:https://doi.org/10.24135/pjtel.v1i1.1&#x0D; Burden, K., &amp; Kearney, M. (2016). Conceptualising Authentic Mobile Learning. In D. Churchill, J. Lu, K. F. T. Chiu, &amp; B. Fox (Eds.), Mobile Learning Design: Theories and Application (pp. 27-42). Singapore: Springer Singapore.&#x0D; Cochrane, T., &amp; Sinfield, D. (2019, 4 July). Mobile Video Production Workshop: Exploring a BYOD development framework and toolkit. Paper presented at the HERDSA Conference 2019: Next Generation, Higher Education: Challenges, Changes and Opportunities, University of Auckland.&#x0D; International Telecommunication Union. (2017). ICT facts and figures 20172017(April). Retrieved from https://www.itu.int/en/ITU-D/Statistics/Documents/facts/ICTFactsFigures2017.pdf&#x0D; Sinfield, D. (2018). The Boundaries of Education: Using mobile devices for connecting people to places. Research in Learning Technology, 26(Special collection on Mobile Mixed Reality). doi:https://doi.org/10.25304/rlt.v26.2121