Social Media Practices Research Articles

Identity in Interaction: Language Practices and Attitudes of the Newest Ukrainian Diaspora in Canada

The present study focuses on processes and transformations in language practices and attitudes in the newest wave of the Ukrainian diaspora in Canada, notably following the 2014 Revolution of Dignity in Ukraine. Specifically, multilingual language practices in social media and in off-line environments (Ukrainian, Russian, English), participants’ beliefs about language(s), and participants’ views about the language question are analyzed. The analysis also relates the speakers’ practices and beliefs to issues of identity construction and negotiation that are observable in the context of this diasporic community.The socio-cultural approach to studying identity in interaction developed by Bucholtz and Hall is used as the premise for the main theoretical foundation of the study. In this framework, identity is defined as “the social positioning of self and other” and is best studied at an interactional level because it is in interaction that language resources gain social meaning.Basing the analysis on the “discourse-centered online ethnography” approach (Dailey-O’Cain), the data were collected from two sources: one social media communication network and in-person interviews with this network’s members. Therefore, the analysis combines a study of multilingual interaction in social media communication with an investigation of how participants report on their language practices overall, including their views about the language question. The domains of language and discourse about language constitute the organizational core of the analysis, as both contribute to the discussion of language attitudes and speakers’ shaping and reshaping of their identities. The domain of language incorporates a study of code-switching, including language choice and language practices of the participants, observed or reported. A discourse about language focuses on the importance of the language question to the participants, their positioning toward language(s), and/or language practices, as well as participants’ associations with and disassociations from particular languages, concepts, or entities. The discussion relates the functions of different languages in the studied community to larger questions of the diaspora studied. The prominence of “real” and “ideal” code-switching phenomena are highlighted. The code-switching, along with language choice and language practices, as well as discourse about language, are all shown to be resources employed by the speakers to position themselves in specific associations or disassociations. Overall, the study investigates the newest Ukrainian diasporic community, demonstrating how language practices in human interaction display and construct identity(ies) and signal participants’ negotiations of their own identities and those of others.

The influence of extramural access to mainstream culture social media on ethnic minority students’ motivation for language learning

AbstractThe educational potentials of social media both in the formal and informal learning contexts have been widely acknowledged. However, how social media use in the informal contexts might influence students’ learning in the formal contexts is still underexplored. Path analysis of 141 survey responses from secondary school ethnic minority students in Hong Kong revealed that voluntary access to Chinese social media in daily life influenced these students’ ideal L2 self and motivated efforts in learning Chinese both directly and indirectly via bicultural integration identity and bicultural competence. The findings confirmed that social media practices in the informal contexts may influence students’ motivated efforts in learning in the formal contexts. The study suggests promoting ethnic minorities’ extramural use of mainstream culture social media to influence their acculturation into the dominant culture and motivation in learning the dominant culture’s language. It further highlights the importance of equipping ethnic minority students with the necessary socio‐cultural and communication skills to facilitate positive intercultural engagement on these sites so as to safeguard the positive influences of informal social media use on students’ motivation for learning.

NEOLIBERAL EPISTEMOLOGY AND THE TRUTH IN FAKE NEWS (SELF-WRITING/SELF-ENTERPRISE/SELF-CONTROL)

Taking cues from Michel Foucault’s late work on ancient cultures of self-care, this article argues that the success of neoliberalism is bound up with an epistemological critique of modernity forged by the movement’s founding theorists. This critique takes aim at three distinct intellectual currents – the socialist, the rationalist, and the pastoral – and thus marks a tripartite break from modern techniques of power and subjectivation. I contend that a Hellenistic model of self-cultivation – exemplified especially in Epicurean, Cynic, and Stoic discourses and scrutinized meticulously by Foucault in his late lectures – becomes reactivated in late twentieth-century American economic and social thought. The second half of the article considers modes of digital writing as “technologies of the self.” Taking the case of “fake news” as my central reference point, I argue that common practices of social media “sharing” constitute an emerging practice of curatorial self-writing that makes one an especially favorable target for neoliberal strategies of social control.

Emoji hashtags // hashtag emoji: Of platforms, visual affect, and discursive flexibility

This paper examines the communicative functions of emoji in concert with hashtags, comparing two platform-specific approaches to combining hashtags and emoji: emoji hashtags as discursive markers on Instagram, and platform-directed hashtag emoji on Twitter. These approaches offer key insights into the dynamics between the platforms and their users, from user-led practices on Instagram to the commercial partnerships over-riding user intentionality on Twitter. Such different means of combining emoji and hashtags then demonstrate how platforms variously support and restrict their users’ platform vernaculars and discursive creativity within their everyday social media practices.

The challenge facing existing airport campaign groups when incorporating social media into their campaign: A social network analysis of Airport Watch’s social media utilisation

Social media has enabled people to do things differently across different campaigning spheres. For campaign groups, social media provides frequent interaction and an ability to quickly disseminate information (Harrington and Lewis, 2014; Poell and Van Dijck, 2015). But the incorporation of social media can cause challenges for existing campaign groups. This paper uses social network analysis to explore the challenges created by social media’s incorporation through an anti-airport expansion group associated with the ongoing campaign against Heathrow airport expansion; Airport Watch. NodeXL and Twitonomy were used to extract social media data and interviews were undertaken with the social media coordinator of Airport Watch to answer questions resulting from the social network analysis findings. The results demonstrate a difference in interaction within its Twitter social media networks whilst its Facebook page provides a clear indication of Airport Watch dominating influence and power over other users. Furthermore, the interviews enabled an understanding behind the reasons for the utilisation of social media as an information dissemination platform and how the chairperson and volunteer base do not have the experience to operate social media and thus cannot always respond instantly or even at all; something which is a requirement on social media. The implications of these results are also discussed in relation to future social media practice.

Internet-Memes als Zugang zu multimodalen Konstruktionen

AbstractThe adaptation of Internet memes is an important practice in social media that is an excellent subject of investigation to explain (the instantiation of) multimodal constructions with regard to social-cognitive processes. In this article, we would like to plead for paying more attention to Internet memes as linguistic research object. By using a qualitative-quantitative corpus-pragmatic approach, we worked out the multimodal character of selected constructions being instantiated within adaptations of the so called Merkel-Meme (n=632). We discuss two constructions, which can only be thought of through the interplay of a pictorial component that shows a gesture and varying linguistic elements. This is on the one hand the construction [[so*adjektiv]AdjP+ Ausprägungsgrad anzeigende Armgeste] and on the other the construction [[so*artikel(adjektiv)nomen]NP+ Umfang anzeigende Armgeste]. Therefore, it becomes evident that the pictorial component influences the linguistic part of the Internet meme.

Local Cuisine and Tourists Experience in Bali Through Social Media Practices

Balinese local cuisine has enriched the culinary dictionary for tourists who want to experience the culture and heritage of Bali. Popularity of tourist destination nowadays can be defined by the popularity of the local cuisine as the tourist image brand and image. The purpose of this article is to describe the involvement of local cuisine gradually in tourist experience quality as the integral part of food tourism in Bali. In aims of determining the tourists’ experience in seeking local cuisine and the perception of Balinese local cuisine, specifically nasi campur Bali and ayam betutu in creating food tourism in Bali. In order to develop the exploratory study, the author using exploratory descriptive methodology in this small-scale research. This study is just a beginning and an introduction to the food tourism in Bali although the practices has been experienced long ago before it is written in hospitality literature like nowadays. Keywords: local cuisine, holiday experience, food tourism, social media

A sharper conversation: book publishers’ use of social media marketing in the age of the algorithm

This article explores developments in book publishers’ use of social media (SM) as a marketing tool, particularly the rise of customer-focused marketing. Surveying the literature about publishers’ engagement with SM marketing (SMM), we argue that discourse modes of publishers’ SM practice, and the larger marketing ecologies of which this practice forms a part, have been transformed by contextual changes in the mediascape wherein publishing professionals are implicated through their sustained SMM activities. These changes include the rise of algorithmic filtering and paid-for content on Facebook and Twitter, industry’s embrace of data analytics, and the connection between them. The article explores the growing divide between small and large publishers in terms of their financial and cultural investment in data analytics, and concludes that the notion of SM as an equal-opportunity marketing tool in book publishing has proven demonstrably false because of this divide. The authors offer further avenues for much-needed research in this field.

Cities at risk? Exploring the synergies between smartphones and everyday vulnerabilities

Smartphones present new forms of spatiality and sociality for cities worldwide. The sudden outburst in smartphone technologies has revolutionised human relations creating new possibilities of encounter and connectivity. This paper examines people's smartphone usage patterns and highlights how this is increasing human vulnerabilities in cities with resultant wider societal implications. Drawing on the theory of vulnerability, Hofstede's cultural dimension theory and carrying out semi-structured interviews in the United Kingdom and Ghana, the paper reveals that the current scale of usage and addiction to smartphones and social media are fostering emerging forms of everyday vulnerabilities. Victimisation, privacy breach, home emergencies and road accidents are prevalent vulnerabilities in both Accra and London. By comparing participants' smartphone usage patterns and their motives for adopting or ignoring certain social media practices, the study illustrates how the concept of attitudinal vulnerability extends our understanding of Hofstede's theory of collectivism and individualism. While the finding from Accra complicates Hofstede's collectivism label as there seems to be a loss of genuine sense of care and people-centeredness among participants it confirms individualism tendencies among the participants in London though some tendencies of ‘virtual collectivism’ were observed. In conclusion, the study emphasises how significant behavioural changes among smartphone users can reduce human-induced vulnerabilities in cities. By so doing, we add weight to the literature that focuses on the importance of developing context-specific cutting-edge ICT policies vis-à-vis building smart, safe and sustainable cities.

Cyber Kartini: Aktivitas Pendidik Perempuan di Media Sosial

The existence of Indonesia women through media has been pioneered by R.A Kartini who is known for hes ability in voicing his opinions and thoughts into her writing ability through letters. These letters in the present transformed into social media that became the medium of self-actualization of women. This Article focuses on how women educators in Makassar activity in the Facebook and Whatsapp. The study indicates that there are two main reasons why Facebook and Whatsapp are the preferred informative social media in this research, both of which are the most popular (because they are mostly used by one’s networking) and practical social media (because people can be easily found and to be found through these two social media and because of the facilities of these social media, they can share (like photos, documents, videos, etc.), and interact in various forms (such as video call, online games, etc.). Facebook and Whatsapp are used to connect each other, as the source of information, as an online shopping venue, a place hobby channeling, as well as a space to share moments. Their activities on Facebook and Whatsapp can be classified into silent readers, commentators, broadcasters, promoters, and owners of the stage. In fact, social media users are inversely proportional to the ability to understand Facebook and Whatsapp as ‘private spaces’ rather than as ‘public spaces’ where content are shared openly.

Journalist social media practice in China: A review and synthesis

The growing influence of social media on journalistic work has attracted scholarly attention worldwide in recent years. However, due to cultural and language barriers, we lack comprehensive understanding of the journalist social media practice in non-Western countries. To help fill this gap, this study offers a review and synthesis of existing scholarship on journalist social media practice in China. The authors systematically analyzed recent research studies published in both English-language journals in the West and Chinese-language journals in Mainland China. Drawing on Bourdieu’s field theory, the synthesis provided a comprehensive review of the patterns of practice as well as key tensions that social media use helped amplify and with which Chinese journalists had to contend.

Trolling Free Speech Rallies: Social Media Practices and the (Un)Democratic Spectacle of Dissent

Trolling Free Speech Rallies: Social Media Practices and the (Un)Democratic Spectacle of Dissent

The Contribution of Attachment and Social Media Practices to Relationship Development

This study tested the hypothesized directional relationship that college students (N = 717; 10.1% response rate to an online survey) who score higher on measures of insecure attachment and social media practices would have lower relationship development quality scores. Structural equation modeling results indicated that participants with greater insecure attachment had lower relationship development quality (large effect size), whereas individuals with greater social media practices had higher relationship development quality scores. Implications for counselors are presented.

Blogging for Sustainability: The Intermediary Role of Personal Green Blogs in Promoting Sustainability

ABSTRACTThe rise of social media radically broadens the sources and platforms used for environmental communication. Especially personal green blogs are worthy of study as they are spaces of everyday cultural politics through which people make sense of sustainability issues, and because they entail a radical break from conventional media in terms of legitimacy, form, and content of environmental communication processes. This paper studies the representation of sustainability on personal green blogs, and the communication processes through which these representations are constructed. It does so through a qualitative study of Swedish-language blogs. We study three blogs in-depth: a living experiment blog on sustainable food practices; a lifestyle blog centered around green family life; and a blog about consuming green beauty products. The analysis shows that all three blogs translate the complex landscape of sustainability to individual everyday practices. Yet, what these sustainability practices entail differs considerably between the blogs, ranging from a-political and doable lifestyle choices to an onset to radical redefining of consumption. Also, the communication processes on the blogs differ in quality and quantity. The paper uses these insights to reflect on the debates about how environmental communication is shaped by blogging and social media practices.

APLIKASI 17 LIVE VIDEO STREAMING MENJADI SARANA AKTUALISASI DIRI BAGI GENERASI MILLENIAL

The development of advanced technology helps a lot towards an increasingly practical, efficient and dynamic of life. Social media has also become the choice of many people to be a practical social media. For millennia, social media is a very important thing. Many are enabled to have social media accounts, as these generations are using more social media. Applications 17 Live is one of the live streaming applications that really help users to make streaming video capture and then directly watched by many people without the process of downloading. To express their own existence, millennial generations often use live streaming video applications to upload them with the aim of attracting people's attention through videos they upload and becoming famous. This application is also one means of self-actualization.
 Keywords: Applications 17 Live Video Streaming, Self Actualization, Millennial Generation

Alts and Automediality: Compartmentalising the Self through Multiple Social Media Profiles

Alts and Automediality: Compartmentalising the Self through Multiple Social Media Profiles

An Interdisciplinary Perspective of Incorporating Social Media into Teaching Practice

The ability to use social media as a job skill among several industries is growing increasingly prevalent. From social media managers to digital content coordinators to fan engagement specialists, graduating students have tremendous opportunity to thrive professionally due to the popularity and ubiquity of social media. In collegiate and professional settings alike, a clear emphasis on the importance of effective social media management is now critical. As a result, educators are now challenged to find creative and innovative ways to prepare students through theoretical knowledge and practical experience relating to the ever-changing landscape of both the technical and industrial demands. This article presents a critical review of existing information on the use of social technologies in the classroom, a discussion on relevant perceptions, techniques, recommendations for interdisciplinary classroom implementation and student engagement, and considerations for educators incorporating social media practice into their curricula.

Didn’t roger that: Social media message complexity and situational awareness of emergency responders

This study investigates the role of social media in situational awareness in the emergency response domain. It builds a theoretical model to that effect, the first such effort to the best of our knowledge, and empirically investigates one of the components of the model, text complexity. The empirical analysis was performed on a dataset of 999,243 messages from 997 Facebook pages of US police departments in 2009—2016. Messages were classified into four categories based on their utilitarian or hedonic nature: emergency preparedness, emergency response, post-emergency and user engagement. Three measures of complexity were used, each capturing different aspects of text. Contrary to the hypothesis formulated in the study, messages in the post-emergency and the emergency response categories were found to be the most complex. With text complexity on social media being an underexplored area, these results suggest a need for an explicit study of the link between social media messages and situational awareness, and indicate a need for practitioners to revisit social media practices.

Social media in education contexts: implicationsfor critical media literacy and ethical challenges for teachers and educational institutions in Namibia

The proliferation of social media and its use by students has raised a lot of research interest in attempts to seek ways of appropriating these new technologies for instructional and learning purposes. Critical media literacy deals with the critical analysis of various popular culture media in terms of their ideological and power implications, as well as the meaning of their messages. Although critical media literacy views new media as beneficial in their democratised nature, concerns remain about students’ ability to decipher and analyse the content that they both consume and create through social media. The two can be termed critical consumption and creation respectively. Similarly, social media poses potential ethical challenges for the teaching profession and for educational institutions. This is a qualitative research that employed the Phenomenography method where data was collected through focus group interviews. The paper sheds light on student teachers’ current social media practices. Analysing student teachers’ social media practices through the lens of critical media literacy, the paper highlights potential ethical challenges that are encountered while using social media in educational contexts. Recommendations include critical and ethically considerate approaches to using social media in educational contexts, as well as methods of incorporating the teaching critical media literacy skills in teacher education curricula.

The Emergence, Convergence, and Resurgence of Intergroup Communication Theory in Computer-Mediated Communication

ABSTRACT This article describes the emergence, application, development, and refinement of intergroup communication theory to explain the social effects of computer-mediated communication. It highlights the social identification-deindividuation model as a critique and alternative to models of computer-mediated communication based on interindividual and interpersonal perceptions. The article chronicles how tensions between interpersonal and intergroup approaches led to reevaluations of research methods, to measures, and to critical tests of the perspectives, and how these developments ultimately led to reformulations and the evolution of explanatory models from both the intergroup and interpersonal domains. Recent developments in social media and their challenges and opportunities for continuing and expanding applications of intergroup conceptualizations are discussed, concluding with recommendations for the resurgent vitality of intergroup approaches to help explain new social media practices and problems.