Social Media Practices Research Articles

The Role of Platforms in Fulfilling the Potential of Crowdfunding as an Alternative Decentralized Arena for Cultural Financing

Abstract This study considers cultural crowdfunding as a heterogeneous system that allows money and attention to flow from backers to founders of cultural projects in diverse cultural sectors and focuses on the nature of the standards governing it. It analyzes Kickstarter’s corporate blog since the platform’s launch and finds indications that social media practices are increasingly naturalized as integral to crowdfunding and that social media architectures are increasingly adopted by the crowdfunding platform. This, I argue, has a potential exclusionary effect. At the same time, the analysis finds evidence that Kickstarter is striving to develop an independent capacity to set aesthetic standards, which might moderate that effect and help constitute crowdfunding as an alternative decentralized arena for the funding of culture.

Imaginative Agency: New Possibilities

This article presents imaginative agency as a new theoretical concept with great potential for life writing studies, especially digital life writing. It draws on a wide range of concepts and contexts to discuss selective histories and workings, proposing ways in which imaginative agency can fit into philosophical and aesthetic debates about capability, performativity, ethics and artificial intelligence. I argue for making a distinction between imaginative agency and creativity, owing to the monetizing of much creative activity. I explore agency in relation to aesthetic human capability, through comparison to the non-human, particularly whether bots can demonstrate imaginative agency in art and literature, and through questions of ethical agency in online practices like trolling and malware. Contexts relevant to imaginative agency in digital and social media practices, such as algorithms, crowdsourcing and augmented reality, are explored in terms of political considerations which tie cultural creation to wealth creation— a shackling from which imaginative agency can provide some liberation.

New Media, Political Discourse and Public Opinion: A Theoretical Analysis of Social Media Intertextuality and Discursivity and its Effect on Governance in Devolved Political Units in Kenya

Social media is an essential aspect of socialisation in Kenyan society. Within the context of political discourse, it plays an important role in expanding the democratic space by allowing citizens the space to have their voices heard. Counties are the emerging frontiers for economic and social development in the country. Therefore, it is critical for all citizens to participate equally in governance issues affecting the counties. This research sought to establish the level of citizen engagement in political discussion on social media and how this impacted on governance in the counties. It used a theoretical research approach to examine the various theories and practices of social media in political engagement. Engagement of local citizenry on social media was also assessed. The research was pegged on Herbamas Theory on the Public Sphere which posits that, for a public sphere to be adequate and fit-for-purpose for a democratic polity, it must have the capacity for quality interaction and discourse and quantity participation. Key findings: discursivity and intertextuality within the social media environment vastly improve the quality of political participation for citizens. The performance of public spheres within social media sites in the counties says a lot for increased participation of women, youth and minorities in political discourse at the grassroots. Recommendations: social media be inculcated in public policy at the grassroots by including it as a primary conduit of information and civic engagement.

Refugee resettlement, social media and the social organization of difference

AbstractSocial media platforms allow refugees separated by distance to share information, provide support and exchange resources across borders. This connection has the potential to transform resettlement experiences as people maintain significant and ongoing relationships with transnational networks. Yet, since refugee resettlement programmes generally only scale up to the national imagination, integration remains a normative framework in most policy spheres. This article presents a 12‐month digital ethnography of 15 refugees settled in New Zealand with a view to examining their transnational practices of social media and its influence on integration and belonging. Drawing on a conceptual framework based on the social organization of difference, it contains a discussion on how online global networks increasingly inform the domains of encounters, representations and configurations. The role of social media for refugee resettlement futures and its implications for integration at times of rapid political, technological and social change concludes the article.

Family involved or left behind in migration? A family-centred perspective towards Estonia-Finland cross-border commuting

ABSTRACTThe aim of this paper is to find out how the active cross-border mobility of one family member changes the communication patterns inside the family and how it impacts those who stay behind. Concentrating on the case study of Estonian men working in Finland, this paper examines how families are maintaining relationships with people close to them and what kind of new practices are created to overcome the geographical distance. The importance of both active real-life and mediated communication, media usage, and social-media practices, but also new travelling practices are stressed. The perspectives of both the mobile members of the family and those who stay behind are covered with a focus on how all family members are involved in the migration processes. The fieldwork demonstrates that the mobility of one member of the family can influence the partner and children to take a more active position in maintaining communication during the period of working abroad. Through media usage and international visits, the partner and children gain a special kind of transnational lifestyle.

The value of social networking sites in hotels

PurposeDespite the rapid growth of social networking sites (SNSs), research demonstrating the marketing application of these technologies is lacking. Consequently, this paper aims to explore the impact of SNSs on hotel marketing activities.Design/methodology/approachAn exploratory study was used. Adopting a key informant approach, in-depth interviews were conducted with 14 respondents in the hotel industry, who use SNSs as part of their hotel marketing efforts.FindingsNetworked interactions facilitated by SNSs can influence the marketing activities of hotels in many ways. This extends to deeper connections and co-creating value with customers to enhance the market offerings and promotional activities of the firm. Not all interviewees capitalised upon the capabilities offered by SNSs.Practical implicationsSNSs act as a key knowledge resource that can be used by practitioners to create and deliver superior customer value. However, the extent to which this is achieved depends on who is responsible for implementing it. Specifically, those with a more proactive attitude and approach towards marketing on SNSs tend to reap greater benefits.Originality/valueUsing the service-dominant logic as a guide, this paper offers greater insight into the theory and practice of social media marketing in the hotel industry, an under-studied and fragmented research area.

Die Buribunken as science fiction: the self and informational existence

ABSTRACT This paper takes Die Buribunken seriously as good science fiction. It is argued that it is good science fiction as it provides tropes, images and narratives through which the technological present and possible futures can be comprehended. Specifically, the Buribunks who confidently archive the self, present as a cypher for informational existence. Through learning about the Buribunks’ institutional organisation and deep motivations the various ways that the self becomes recorded in the digital can be mapped. However, the present is not Buribunkian, the self and its data-doubles are fragmented and conflicted, generated by surveillance, the data serfdom of worker-nodes, curatorial social media practices and ‘dark’ activities that try to hide personal responsibility. Nevertheless, the Buribunks drive to master the archive, encapsulates a tendency in the digital towards correspondence and unity within data repositories of the self.

Plastic Surgery and Social Media: Examining Perceptions.

Social media play an important role in plastic surgery, yet there are limited studies in the literature to guide plastic surgeons' social networking practices. To address this deficiency and provide further insight, the authors set out to investigate the public's attitude toward plastic surgery using Twitter, a popular social media platform. The authors examined a large body of messages (tweets) related to plastic surgery using novel techniques of natural language processing and sentiment analysis. The authors collected over 1 million tweets with the keywords "plastic," "cosmetic," "aesthetic," and "reconstruction" surgery spanning from 2012 to 2016 from the Twitter Gardenhose feed. Using hedonometrics, the authors extracted the average happiness/positivity (havg) of tweets and created word-shift graphs to determine the most influential words. The positivity scores for keywords "plastic," "cosmetic," "aesthetic," and "reconstruction" surgery were 5.72, 6.00, 6.16, and 6.09, respectively. In relation to "plastic," keywords "cosmetic" and "aesthetic" were more positive because they lacked antagonistic words, such as "fake," "ugly," "bad," "fails," or "wrong." The keyword "reconstruction," however, was more positively associated than the term "plastic" because of an increase in positive words, such as "honor," "amazing," "successful," and "respect." Tweets containing the term "plastic" surgery trended toward negativity, and may be explained by the increase in unfavorable, associative words. Conversely, related terms such as "aesthetic," "cosmetic," and "reconstruction" were more favorably regarded because of the lack of antagonistic words and the presence of supportive words. The authors' results are informative and may serve to guide plastic surgeons' social media practices.

Mundane Content on Social Media: Creation, Circulation, and the Copyright Problem

This article examines the practices of social media users and explores how people value, protect, and circulate content on social media platforms. Legal scholarship shows us that much of the mundane online distribution and consumption of media infringes copyright law and as a result raises complex questions around the distribution and circulation of content. Through exploring this misalignment between copyright law and everyday social media practices, this article identifies existing norms on social media platforms and asks whether they could provide guidance for a future copyright reform agenda. Drawing on a series of group interviews with people who identified as regular users of social media, we explored emergent norms of attribution and circulation. Applying a grounded theory approach, an emergent thematic analysis of the data uncovered a range of responses coalescing around the themes of attribution, platform norms, and commercialization. The data show that people make complex and nuanced decisions around when they should attribute content, seek permission to use content, or allow others to use their content. We suggest that these decisions are informed by the vernaculars of each platform and a critical assessment of the broader commercial logics of social media, which results in many people placing a greater importance around attribution. The authors conclude by proposing that rather than stretching the logic of a legal framework that is increasingly not fit for purpose for everyday social media content distribution, policymakers should take into account these emergent practices on social media platforms when considering reform opportunities.

Like a “Frog in a well”? An ethnographic study of Chinese rural women’s social media practices through the WeChat platform

In the Chinese context, prior research has investigated internal migrants’ and rural residents’ uses of information and communication technologies (ICT), but studies on rural women’s social media practice are rare. Moreover, the role that social media platforms, such as WeChat, play in rural women’s everyday lives and their transformations based on their online interactions lack a qualitative nuanced account. Based on an original study that explored the use of WeChat by 25 rural women aged from 40 to 52 years in Hanpu Town in south-central China, the data explored in the present study were collected during a 5.5-month period in 2015. Contextualizing this sample of rural women’s platformized interests within the socio-political framework of Chinese government Internet Plus strategies, the discussion considers how the women used (and were likely to continue to use) WeChat to engage in online activities related to their offline experiences, thus aligning them with entrenched Chinese socio-cultural values. An ethnographic fieldwork methodology and a social constructionist theoretical framework were used to investigate these rural Chinese women’s daily experiences in using WeChat. The findings provide evidence of their knowledge-building, business acumen, emotive communicating, and new levels of self-awareness through using WeChat.

Understanding Social Media: Opportunities for Cardiovascular Medicine

Cardiology professionals have used social media platforms such as Twitter to gain exposure to new research, network with experts, share opinions, and engage in scientific debates. The power of social media to communicate openly, with wide-reaching access worldwide, and at a rate faster than ever before makes it a formidable force and voice. However, evolving individual and institutional use has resulted in uncertainty for all parties on how to optimally advance this newer digital frontier. Thus, the purpose of this paper is to: 1) introduce the basics of social media usage (with the focus on Twitter); 2) provide perspective on best social media practices in academic and clinical cardiovascular medicine; and 3) present a vision for social media and the future of cardiovascular medicine.

User engagement and gratifications of NSO supporters on Facebook

Purpose Building on the findings of previous related literature, this paper adopts the uses and gratifications (U&G) theory to analyze how social media users engage with content posted by European football associations (FAs). The purpose of this paper is to identify various post attributes that would aid national sports organizations (NSO) in reaching their online audiences and excelling their media presence. Design/methodology/approach A coding framework was designed to differentiate Facebook posts by topic, post design and content type. A sample of 2,450 posts from the official Facebook accounts of 49 FAs was collected. Engagement was measured using three metrics: likes, comments and shares. The derived categories of content were coded as dichotomous dummy variables and ran through a multivariate OLS regression analysis. Three regression analyzes were conducted, where each of the engagement metrics served as the dependent variable. Findings The findings of this paper show that relevance of post topics has a significant effect on engagement. Users interacted most with posts related to the male national A-team, while club football news had a negative response from the followers. Graphic elements such as images and videos positively impact an FA’s ability to generate post likes. Exclusive and behind-the-scenes content made users react extremely well, affecting all engagement metrics. Raw news (match reports, team line-ups) was of little interest to Facebook users. Originality/value U&G theory has yet to have been applied to social media studies in the NSO context. Previous studies have either looked at specific case studies of a single NSO or NSOs within a single country, while this paper reviewed the social media practices of 49 NSOs under the umbrella of a single continental sports federation.

Public Sphere, Virtualization, Rhizome: Communicative Practices of Runet Social Media

In the present work, the interrelation of social media with the philosophical thought of poststructuralism is investigated. The nature of the manifestation of this connection, the reasons for its actualization, the main one being the crisis of confidence in traditional media, is largely related to poststructuralist world outlook and attitude. Particular attention is paid to the structure of social media, the emphasis is on their nonlinearity. The image of the rhizome, described by J. Deleuze and F. Guattari, helps to reveal the peculiarities of the text functioning within the social media space and the formation of an interpretative-commentary complex around it.The latter is capable of changing the initial intentions in many ways, and here correlation with the poststructuralist idea of the "death of the author" is traced. Semantic dominants of this non-linear system are associated both with public expectations and with the activities of certain political actors and business structures. As a result, the interpretative-commentary complex acquires the features of a poly-subject, affecting the subject-object dichotomy, which underlies the classical models of communication. The relationship of social media with the philosophical thought of poststructuralism is also studied in the context of the public sphereideas. Modern interactive media are distinguished by the interpenetration of collective social and individual personal beginnings: the topics that the public and certain social groups consider most relevant are revealed here. In addition, a large number of interpretations are allowed. At the same time, the discussion is mainly limited to the presentation of certain views without establishing common ground, so we cannot yet talk about the space of the classical public sphere. Separately, the issue of increasing image symbols within the communicative space of social media is raised, it is considered in the context of the theory of simulacra by J. Baudrillard. Social media simultaneously acts as a product of the virtual environment, and as a reaction to it, where network activity correlates with other types of activity. In the present work, a conclusion about the complex nature of relationship between social media and modern philosophical thought is made. A systematic study of constructs that have an impact on the communicative practices of social media provides the most objective ideas about this phenomenon.

Effecting factors of knowledge integration through social media in small medium enterprises environment

Knowledge Integration (KI) has been significant concern in analyzing the organization performance. KI also has been challenged by the emergence and continued development technologies that have made new sources of information and knowledge available to Small Medium Enterprises (SMEs). Social media are widely adopted by organizations to enhance the effectiveness of KI practices. The purpose of this study to investigate the factors that influence of KI through social media. Based on the 11 selected papers, this review has established 12 factors that may influence of knowledge integration through social media. Hence, this research contribute to the practice and research of KI and social media and its effectiveness towards the organizational performance.

Konglish? Or Multilingual Practice? An Investigation of Subtitles in Korean TV Shows

ABSTRACT This is a sociolinguistic study that investigates how multilingual subtitles in Korean TV shows represent linguistic and cultural ideologies. Subtitles are not only used for translating or supplementing meanings, but they also have various discursive functions, including conveying connotations, exaggerating meanings, and maximizing effects. This study investigates the ways that English is used in Korean subtitles as a mixed form of codes. Particularly, it examines the roles of subtitles and motivations for creating multilingual subtitles in Korean TV shows. This study also discusses the ideological and local cultural dimensions of multilingual subtitling practices in social media. The talk shows “Ssulzun” (“War of Words”) and “Talk to you,” which aired from August 2015 to January 2016, are the subject of this analysis. Taking a social-constructivist perspective that views language ideologies as interpretive frames and posits that language ideologies are multiple (Kroskrity, 2004; Ricento, 2000), this study examines the social functions of subtitles as well as their symbolic meanings. Considering multilingualism as a main ideological construct, this study additionally investigates how Korean and English mixings are created in subtitles. The findings show that, tlinguistic and cultural ideologies are embedded in TV subtitles, and the examples in this study help illustrate the multicultural linguistic landscape of Korea.

Cultural journalists on social media

This article investigates the use of social media among a particular group of journalists: cultural journalists. Combining research on social media journalism with research on cultural journalism and applying a mix-method approach, the study shows that use of social media is still a fairly random practice in cultural newsrooms. It also shows that cultural journalists use their Twitter and Facebook accounts interchangeably as tools for professional communication in their daily work and for personal communication in their daily lives. In other words, their social media practices blur the boundaries between institutional interests and professional identities, and more private interests and personal identities. While this may be a challenge to most journalists, it resonates well with the professional logics of cultural journalists. They have long practiced their work in a grey-zone between the public and the private, and the objective and subjective. Through their social media practices, they promote the media institution they work for and their own ‘personalised’ professional brand.

Use of social media in Canadian public administration: opportunities and barriers

AbstractMany government agencies in Canada are using social media to communicate with various audiences. Some research, however, shows that government uses social media to publish content available on its websites and does not engage in two‐way interactions. This article examines interaction on Twitter between Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) and Twitter users. It explores established government social media practices and under‐researched experiences and perspectives of government social media users. Although some of the findings are IRCC specific, users’ experiences and perspectives offer valuable insights for any government agency that uses social media.

Consumer’s Purchase Intention towards Luxury Retailer’s Social Media Advertisements —A Case Study of a Shoe Retail—UAE-Dubai Mall

Digital marketing is considered the preferred method comparing to traditional marketing nowadays [1], but is it true for luxury and expensive products? Since the perception prevails that the concepts “luxury” and “digital” are quite incompatible [2], this paper aims to explore the effectiveness of digital marketing advertisements of luxury retailers, while also exploring consumer’s purchasing intent based on the viewing of such promotions. The overall goal is to provide a model of luxury purchase behaviour through harnessing social media. As a constructionist ontology-based researcher, I believe in multiple versions of reality which can evolve based on my target consumer experiences [3]. My epistemological stance is interpretivism with a subjective approach, inductively interacting with consumers to better understand what this “truth” means to them, incorporating textual material to support the analytical interpretations [4]. It is hoped this paper will inform fashion brands marketers about social media practice to achieve creation of purchase intention and ultimately achieve target sales. The paper is useful to both practitioners and academics in the fields of social media marketing and purchase intention. The research provides some initial insights into consumer perspectives of social media ads and online purchase behaviour.

Hotel guests’ perceptions of environmental friendly practices in social media

Despite hotels’ managers spend substantial time and money on environmental initiatives; they are not sure whether their guests perceive their green efforts appropriately. The purpose of this study is to analyze guests’ perceptions of hotels’ environmental practices expressed through social media. Main results suggest that even though customers perceive green efforts regarding six items: Energy, Water, Purchasing, Waste, Site and Education & Innovation, they do not discern hotels' level of environmental commitment. Moreover, guests' perceptions of hotel efforts in environmentally friendly practices do not significantly differ by the mode of travel nor by the reviewer's experience in travel platforms. A relevant implication is that the communication about environmentally friendly practices needs to be redesigned and intensified by hotel managers in order to take advantage of these efforts.

Big Data, Big Brother, Big Profit?

Chinese social media and big data represent an important share of the global Internet, but have received relatively less attention. This editorial examines three dominant discourses based on China’s distinctive and complex political, economic and social realities: “Big Data” (technical focus), “Big Brother” (political focus), and “Big Profit” (economic focus). We argue that the prevailing discourse and practice of big data in China is largely technocentric, decontextualized and nonreflexive, and much less attuned to the social, political, cultural, epistemological, and ethical implications of big data that a human-centric approach would demand. Second, the authoritarian Chinese state poses incredible political challenges to big data research and practice. Third, the practice of Chinese social media and big data is imbued with a discourse of technological nationalism, driven by a handful of monopolistic “national champions.” Despite contention, the state and market players have formed a largely mutually beneficial symbiotic relationship to maximize their political and economic gains. We argue a comparative perspective to foster a global conversation on social media and big data is necessary in order to formulate collective responses to such challenges.