Digital Activities Research Articles

Analysis of Political Communication on The Role of Social Media Towards the 2024 General Election

This research was conducted to analyze the role of social media that discusses political communication towards the 2024 election. Political communication towards elections with social media is one of the channels of political communication to reach voters, especially the public. Much research contributes to digital campaigns, but it remains unclear how candidates use social media platforms as a form of digital campaigning during elections. This research will focus on discussing the role of social media ahead of the Presidential election in Indonesia in 2024 and the political strategies used by each candidate. Through four social media platforms Facebook, Tiktok, Twitter, and Instagram. This research will also examine the issues, conflicts and obstacles discussed in the four media platforms we have mentioned earlier. This research uses a qualitative approach and the data is analyzed using qualitative methods. A qualitative approach is used to analyze data obtained from various social media and other reliable sources. With the existence of social media, various news has been prepared as an official source in disseminating programs and ideas to voters through available social media platforms. In this analysis we will examine whether social media has a big influence if hoaxes or news that spread can influence people to remain committed to their choices or even believe in what is seen on social media. The results of this study will provide ideas or memories about the journey to the General Election and the results of this study will also include various moments that often occur on social media ahead of the 2024 election. That way, this research contributes to telling or giving a better understanding in social media.

Innovative Marketing Strategies in the Digital Era: Systematic Literature Review Analysis

Running a business in the modern era is different from business in the past. Business today is greatly influenced by technological advances, for those who master the touch of technology in marketing, they are the ones who can market products, especially in the current digital era. This research aims to gain an understanding of marketing strategies in the digital era. For this reason, we reviewed several studies that we obtained with evidence that we examined from various sources, including scientific papers, especially marketing strategies. Based on the analyzed data and discussion, it can be concluded that online marketing is successful by following the right steps for digital media, mapping marketing, choosing appropriate digital media, and implementing all internet-based marketing activities. Consumers are adopting an increasingly active role in co-creating marketing with their respective companies and brands. In turn, companies and organizations are looking to online social marketing programs and campaigns in an effort to reach consumers where they 'live' online. However, the challenge many companies face is that although they recognize the need to be active on social media, they do not really understand how to do it effectively, what performance indicators they should measure, and how they should measure it. Furthermore, as companies develop social media strategies, platforms such as YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter are too often treated as stand-alone elements rather than as part of an integrated system. This article offers a systematic way to understand and conceptualize online social media, as an ecosystem of related elements involving digital and traditional media. We highlight best practice case studies from organizations' successful efforts to leverage social media to reach important young consumer audiences. Then, we conclude with some insights and lessons related to the strategic integration of social media into a company's marketing communications strategy. The internet has brought disruptive changes to the business landscape through the creation of a number of digital marketing tactics. However, with these new tactical options, marketing managers need to (1) prioritize what they want to achieve and (2) determine which digital marketing tactics to invest in. In this article, we consider these issues from the perspective of four business strategies: explorer, analyzer, low-cost defender, and differentiated defender. In this article, we provide marketing managers with insight into how businesses pursuing various strategies approach these digital marketing issues, with the ultimate goal of assisting managers in the efficient and effective implementation of their corporate strategies.

How Do Students Develop Creativity and Curiosity? The Role of Out-of-School Activities

Purpose This study investigates the degree to which students’ participation in out-of-school activities promotes their curiosity and creativity. In doing so, this study addresses the question of whether various out-of-school activities function differently in the development of students’ curiosity and creativity. Design/Approach/Methods This study sampled 3,647 students for the younger cohort and 3,621 students for the older cohort from the city of Suzhou, China. Findings Both younger and older students who participated in artistic activities and sports consistently rated their creativity and curiosity higher than those who did not. After controlling for family socio-economic status and gender, students’ participation in outdoor socially-oriented activities (e.g., meeting with friends outside school) and indoor activities (e.g., reading books) contributed to the development of creativity and curiosity. In contrast, participation in Internet-based activities negatively predicts adolescents’ creativity and curiosity. Originality/Value Creativity and curiosity are related to students’ academic performance and future success. Therefore, cultivating students’ creativity and curiosity should be of interest to educators and policymakers. This study examines the roles of different out-of-school activities on students’ creativity and curiosity, revealing a potential path for educators.

Bringing the campaign closer to the voters: Facebook in partisan-managed campaigning in France

Abstract During presidential campaigns, party members often operate Facebook pages or groups concurrently with the official communications of their respective political parties. However, there is limited evidence regarding the true motivations of these partisans, and how their efforts supplement the online strategies of the parties. Our study is based on interviews conducted with party members who ran Facebook pages to support a candidate during the 2022 French presidential campaign. It sheds light on how they managed their Facebook pages, often autonomously, to serve as supplementary tools to their grassroots tactics and ultimately to bring the campaign closer to the voters. This finding highlights the emergence of a hybrid model of online campaign organization, the partisan-managed campaigning model, which challenges both the traditional top-down model, in which the campaign is managed by the central party, and the more recent citizen-initiated campaign model.

Female Leadership Roles: Subjectivity and Self-Representation

Abstract This article delves into the impact of digital activism on the leadership style of female-led non-governmental organisations operating under restricted access to opportunities. The focus is on Muslim sisterhood activism, examining the shift from offline to online activism led by the younger generation. The article analyses the barriers that have historically prevented Muslim sisterhood activists from playing leadership roles within the Muslim Brotherhood group and compares offline and online leadership roles using the case study of the Revolutionary Coalition for Egyptian Women from 2014 to 2023, with a focus on 2014. The study reveals that the younger generation of Muslim women has adopted a language that prioritises self-representation and body politics over religious discourse, indicating a heightened awareness of gender politics during the period between 2014 and 2023. To overcome state-imposed restrictions, the younger generation of the Muslim sisterhood has contradicted their well-established values on women’s roles and focused their political agendas on regaining popularity in Egyptian society. By exploring the impact of different political opportunities on women’s leadership roles through the political process paradigm, this article bridges a gap in the literature on resistant politics, feminism, leadership, and digital activism. The study shows that the younger generation of Muslim women is spearheading a strategic change in the resistant activist discourse, utilising the new digital space for activism to promote their cause.

Climate Change Cyber Activism- Visual Communication Content Analysis of Youth Activist Greta Thunberg’s Instagram

On August 14, 2019, Greta Thunberg sailed across the Atlantic Ocean to attend the United Nations Climate Summit in New York City. The purpose of this study was to explore the messaging behind youth Cyber activist Greta Thunberg’s Instagram account during her journey. We used an arts based visual content analysis approach and the following research questions guided the study: a) How did Thunberg share her climate activist journey with her Instagram followers? and b) How did Thunberg’s Instagram followers respond to posts she made during her climate activist journey? We collected posts from August 14 to 28, 2021. Images, captions, and the first ten comments of the posts shared by Thunberg’s Instagram account were qualitatively coded. Themes that emerged from the arts-based visual and textual analysis included: 1) Thunberg shared her experience through journey storytelling and voiced ongoing activism and 2) Thunberg’s audience members’ top comments indicated a primarily negative response to her journey. We highlight themes from the posts and discuss implications for online cyber activists and communication professionals.

Discourse, digitisation and women’s rights groups in Nigeria and Ghana: Online campaigns for political inclusion and against violence on women and girls

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. The study further assesses the roles of social media in the campaign programmes of the women’s rights groups. Two groups each from Nigeria and Ghana are selected for the study. These are among the most active ones in the two countries with an efficient online presence. Findings show that the women movements adopt discourse-pragmatic acting strategies such as reporting, directing, demanding and identifying with women’s rights to seek redress to perceived gender injustice.

Adapting bandit algorithms for settings with sequentially available arms

Many real-world applications involve a sequential decision-making process where the options presented simultaneously. However, other applications, such as, Internet campaign management and environmental monitoring, the available options are presented sequentially to the decision-maker who, at each time, is asked to select the proposed option or not. This scenario is defined as the Sequential Pull/No-Pull setting The present study aims at developing a meta-algorithm, namely Sequential Pull/No-pull for MAB (Seq), to adapt any classical MAB (Multi-Armed Bandit) policy for this setting both in the case of regret minimization (RM) and best-arm identification (BAI) problems. This is achieved by exploting the sequential nature of the these settings allowing to select multiple arms and gather more information compared to classical policies. The proposed Seq meta-algorithm provides the same theoretical guarantees as the MAB policy employed, but was shown to provide improved performance compared to several classical MAB policies in RM and BAI problems employing real-world data. In particular, in the RM scenario regarding Internet advertising optimization, Seq-adapted algorithm resulted, on average, in ≈10% lower regret during the whole time horizon than using classical MAB policies. When tested in a BAI problem involving the identification of the time of the day characterized by the highest concentration of pollutants in a water monitoring scenario, Seq identified the correct time in less than 4 days and 28 measurement.

Networked framing of GMO risks and discussion fragmentation on Chinese social media: a dynamic perspective

Genetically modified organisms (GMOs) have been highly controversial in China and beyond. The burgeoning of social media has created an online activist field where participants utilize networked framing practices to engage in connective actions related to GMO risks. However, a dynamic perspective on the co-production of GMO risk discourses has yet to be fully explored, and it is still under debate whether such a collective interpretation is fragmented. To address this gap, this study investigates the risk-invoked GMO controversy by longitudinally exploring the structural characteristics and discursive power structures in the networked framing of GMO risks on social media. This study examines 356,227 GMO risk posts from 2010 to 2020 on the Chinese social media platform Weibo. A longitudinal social network analysis and computational text-mining approach are used to construct representation networks among participants based on their joint sponsorship framing practices of GMO risks. The findings suggest that there is a multipolar discussion fragmentation in the networked framing of GMO risks. However, the temporal evidence shows that the risk discussion has become increasingly interconnected and less structurally fragmented over time. In addition, this study highlights the unequal distribution of discursive power among participants; nevertheless, the analysis reveals that this inequality has shown signs of easing over the study period. Overall, this study provides a comprehensive analysis of the GMO controversy from a risk perspective and sheds light on the dynamics of networked framing practices and discursive power structures on social media.

Hate-Speech Countering by Immigrant and Pro-Immigrant Associations in Almeria (Spain)

In recent years, there has been an exponential increase in anti-immigrant hate speech on social media. Drawing on interviews with 15 immigrant associations and 11 pro-immigrant associations in the southern Spanish province of Almería, as well as digital ethnography, this article explores strategies used by immigrant and pro-immigrant associations to counter hate speech. The rise of this hate speech, disseminated mainly by far-right parties, has occurred at a time when many immigrant associations have little or no access to social media platforms. However, members of all these associations (immigrant and pro-immigrant) are aware of the perverse effects of these discourses, as they have either received them on their personal social media platforms or experienced abhorrent hate-speech attacks against their members and/or users. Despite their difficulties in navigating the “glocaline political arena”, they have participated in a number of projects and developed tools that allow them to generate a counter-discourse. We identify and explore the richness and diversity of these online campaigns and activities, highlighting the difficulties that immigrant associations—compared to pro-immigrant ones—face in navigating the glocaline political arena.

AUDIENCE ENGAGEMENT AND THE DYNAMICS OF ONLINE ACTIVISM: FAR-RIGHT MOBILIZATION ON FACEBOOK*

Far-right activists have recently used social media to attract audiences of unprecedented scale. This paper argues that this online popularity can be explained by processes endogenous to social media, specifically engagement from online audiences such as likes, shares, and comments. A case study of the far-right, anti-Muslim group Britain First and its online activism on Facebook is used to test this hypothesis. The relationship between audience engagement and Britain First’s activity, recruitment, and support on Facebook is modeled using time-series regressions, controlling for other relevant factors, including protests, framing, and exogenous events. The results show that changes in audience engagement are associated with long-term shifts in online activism, resulting in feedback loops where engagement begets further engagement. The findings demonstrate how the incentive structures of social media platforms can enable and constrain contemporary activism and how activists can develop tactics to exploit these systems to their advantage.

Online public health promotion at the local level: An evaluation of four local authority-led marketing campaigns.

Local authority-led online campaigns offer the possibility of targeted health promotion to connect local services and residents. This study assesses the evidence for medium (e.g., click-trhoughs) and high (off-line behaviour change) levels of public engagement with four local authority-led campaigns across a variety of public health promotions (sexual health, weight loss, and vaccination), online marketing approaches (social media marketing, search engine marketing, and programmatic marketing) and target demographics (language, gender, age, income, ethnicity) undertaken by a London borough local authority. Employing quasi-experimental and observational study designs, engagement with local health services during the course of the campaigns was evaluated. The first three campaigns were evaluated based on an interrupted time series model of intervention assessment comparing outcome variables of interest during the campaign to periods before and after the campaign period. The results of the fourth campaign, an observational case-study, are discussed using descriptive statistics only. The analyses of the high engagement data for two of the three campaigns statistically assessed clearly supported the effectiveness of the campaigns. While the effect of high engagement could not be determined in the other two campaigns, they provide data that may be useful in online campaign design. The evidence assessed in this study across a variety of platforms, health promotion initiatives, and population targets suggests that local authority-led online marketing campaigns for health promotion may be useful for increasing participation in public health programmes.

Transnational Political Activism and Imagined Identities: The Case of Larubi F Mirikan

This article examines the intersection of transnational political activism and identity formation in the YouTube videos of ChafikOmerani a Moroccan activist based in America,known online as "Larubi f Mirikan." Unlike many digital activists who focus solely on online engagement, Larubi’s activism aimstocreatetangible political change in Morocco by mobilizing citizens in his homeland. This article explores Larubi's dual Moroccan-American identity and how he employs symbols, language, and rhetoric to engage with his Moroccan audience. By analyzing his content, which tackles issues such as political corruption, human rights abuses, and the Moroccan Arab Spring,the study highlights how Larubi seeksto bridge the gap between digital activism and real-world political impact. Additionally, it assesses how his American citizenship influences his activism, offering both protection and a platform for criticism of Moroccan authorities. This investigation sheds light on the complexrelationship between diaspora activism, transnational identity, and digital media within the framework of global political movements

“#THISBILLISNOTMINE” online activism and engagement in digital social network sites

Resumo Este trabalho busca compreender melhor sobre a produção de sentidos no contexto do ativismo online. A partir de uma investigação de natureza qualitativa, interpretativa e exploratória, procurou-se examinar o percurso da campanha ativista “Cedae, essa conta não é minha”, da organização Meu Rio, no contexto da crise de abastecimento de água à população metropolitana do Rio de Janeiro, no início de 2020. O estudo analisa estratégias diferenciadas de mobilização e engajamento nas redes sociais digitais e interpreta a interpretação de sujeitos, a partir de uma teia de interações à procura de significados. A investigação dá-se sob a égide de uma categoria interpretativa maior que é a sustentabilidade, à medida que as transformações que se deseja ver no mundo dependem de ações que envolvem mobilização social pela mudança. O ativismo revela-se, assim, como uma atividade emergente e fundamental para o desenho e a capilarização das práticas de comunicação em desenvolvimento sustentável.

Nurturing Tomorrow's Antibiotic Stewards: An Innovative School Campaign to Combat Antimicrobial Resistance in Delhi.

Antimicrobials are lifesaving medicines, but their misuse drives antimicrobial resistance. Schools, as educational hubs wield transformative potential in fostering responsible antimicrobial behavior among students and the broader community. An online campaign targeted Delhi schools, training teachers as master trainers who, in turn, educated 359,940 students. Significant pre- to post-test score improvements were observed among teachers (6.98-8.14; P < 0.01) and students (5.20-6.56; P < 0.01). The campaign received excellent feedback (85%), with 966 students participating in the "IDEAthon" competition. While a single session improved knowledge, continuous engagement and activities are imperative for sustained behavioral change in antibiotic usage.

Creating Collaboration: How Social Movement Organizations Shape Digital Activism to Promote Broader Social Change

Social movement organizations (SMOs) have increasingly embraced digital activism, using social media and networking tools to advocate for a cause, to mobilize globally distributed consumers and pressure businesses to change their practices. Past research primarily focuses on how SMOs have used viral social media posts to prompt businesses to take immediate action on an issue. This article proposes a shift in the discourse to explore how SMOs’ digital activism can promote broader social change through collaborative agreements rather than merely demanding narrow concessions or compliance. We examine the online campaigns of a large international SMO and show how the campaigns influenced three global businesses to alter their environmental practices and industry standards. We find that the SMO used contrasting combinations of content positioning and social networking strategies to mobilize consumers, ultimately achieving collaboration agreements by influencing businesses’ risk perceptions and the potential strategic gains from collaboration with the SMO. The comparative analysis yields insights into how SMOs may vary their digital activism strategies depending on consumers’ loyalty to a business and its offerings, including its products and services. We develop a theoretical perspective that explains why and how consumer loyalty can shape SMOs’ selection of digital activism strategies and the process of achieving collaboration agreements. The findings also advance the literature on digital activism strategies by introducing the notion of ambivalent content positioning and emphasizing the significance of social networking for risk management and sustaining SMOs’ digital activism.

The Influence of Online Campaigns on Interest in Visiting Jakarta Aquarium

The Influence of Online Campaigns on Interest in Visiting Jakarta Aquarium

“#ESSACONTANÃOÉMINHA” ativismo online e engajamento nas redes sociais digitais

Abstract This paper seeks to better understand the production of meanings in the context of online activism. Based on an interpretative and exploratory qualitative investigation approach, we seek to examine the path of the activist campaign “Cedae, this bill is not mine”, by the organization Meu Rio, in the context of the crisis of water supply to the metropolitan population of Rio de Janeiro, in early 2020. The study analyzes different strategies for mobilization and engagement in digital social networks and interprets the interpretation of people, from a web of interactions in search of meanings. The investigation takes place under the aegis of a larger interpretive category, sustainability, as the transformations that one wants to see in the world depend on actions that involve social mobilization for change. Activism thus reveals itself as an emerging and fundamental activity for the design and expansion of communication practices in sustainable development.

TRACING MEDIA SOLIDARITIES WITH MUSLIMS: CONTESTING ISLAMOPHOBIA ON TWITTER

Solidarity has been cited as a necessary prerequisite for transformational structural change and therefore contains revolutionary potential (Featherstone, 2012). This paper examines the role and evolution of mediated solidarities, which have become increasingly central to an analysis of social movements with the advent of participatory technologies, by drawing on data from a project on anti-Islamophobic counter-narratives. Online platforms have the affordances to contest Islamophobic hate speech as demonstrated by the dynamics of #stopIslam following the Brussels terror attack, 2016. In this instance, the hashtag gained its prominence through the contestations of users who sought to question, critique and undermine its original message (reference redacted). However, research has also shown the limitations of social media for online activism, in particular for creating meaningful debates or change (Schradie, 2019). This paper examines data from a large-scale study that used methods of computational, quantitative, and qualitative analysis to examine the dynamics of discourse about Muslims on Twitter in the case of Brexit, the Christchurch terror attack and Covid. We will examine whether the high incidence of solidarity discourses in this dataset are limited to acts of counter-speech (and other acts of weak solidarity) or if they contribute to sustainable counter-narratives that have implications for wider discursive formations related to Islam. Rather than reinforce existing binary arguments regarding the potentials and limitations of Twitter as a platform for solidarity, we wish to demonstrate the contradictory dynamics of the solidarities that arise from the logics of Twitter which relies on and produces these entanglements.

#STOPMENSTRUALSHAMING: XIAOHONGSHU USERS’ ONLINE ADVOCACY FOR WOMEN’S ISSUES IN CHINA

This paper investigates how social media users advocate for women's issues in China, focusing on the activism against menstrual shaming on the social media platform Xiaohongshu, a culturally significant but understudied platform used primarily by women. With women accounting for 90.41% of active users, Xiaohongshu provides a unique social media environment that shapes the way users engage with feminist issues. However, despite the growing literature on digital feminism in China and the surging popularity and significance of Xiaohongshu in the Chinese social media ecosystem, no studies so far have examined the feminist activism on this platform. Our study contributes to this gap by exploring the discourse around menstrual shaming on Xiaohongshu, as a lens into the dynamics of activism on this female-oriented platform. Analyzing 329 posts and 10,336 comments under the hashtag #StopMenstrualShaming on Xiaohongshu, our study foregrounds the salient role of Xiaohongshu in helping women express their feminist values in an online space that they perceive as safe and intimate. In doing so, we employ the conceptual framework of hashtag activism, which refers to the development and spread of online activism with tangible results in the physical and digital worlds. Shining a spotlight on this significant but understudied platform, we illuminate the dynamics of Chinese digital feminism, especially the formation of solidarity, relatability and collective identity on a female-oriented social media platform.