Public Facebook Group Research Articles

UNEARTHING CONNECTIONS: EXAMINING THE ROLE OF SENSE OF COMMUNITY IN A CONSPIRACY BELIEVERS’ FACEBOOK GROUP

Conspiracy theories have been studied increasingly in recent years, with the main research approach to understanding conspiracy theorists focusing on their personal characteristics. However, research has not yet clarified the role of online communities in the identity and social experience of believers. To address this, this research endeavor examines the social and community dynamics among conspiracy theory believers, focusing on the case study of the public Facebook group "The Flat Earth Community – Israel." Through a qualitative content analysis of posts and comments from within the group, the study reveals the role of a sense of community in the experiences of group participants. Findings reveal that participants seek appreciation and solidarity within the group while engaging in boundary work to maintain the authenticity of group members and defend the group against 'threats from the outside.' This research offers a deeper understanding of how online communities, serving as safe spaces for individuals whose beliefs are marginalized by societal norms, can fulfill a similar function for conspiracy theory believers. Such an in-depth understanding can help researchers to contend with the negative aspects of belief in conspiracy theories, for example through the consideration of alternative mechanisms that could satisfy participants’ need for a sense of community.

Process model for multifactorial characteristics of the sense of place in the case of Budapest (Hungary) District VII

The existence of residential well-being of the locals in the sense of equilibrium-state is a competitive advantage for tourism in a given destination. The rise of overtourism could jeopardize this equilibrium and ultimately the effectiveness of tourism in a vulnerable destination. The research question of the study aimed to answer: what are the spiral dynamics of the multifactorial characteristics of the sense of place that can be mapped under the influence of overtourism. Answering the question draws attention to the sense of place—which can be interpreted as a synonym for local character—of the issues of overtourism and residential well-being. Mapping the mechanism of action of the multifactorial characteristic of locality can help to identify non-supportive functions, to pinpoint the balance point for moving towards a supportive quality, and to answer the “how yes” questions at individual, local and collective levels. The answer to the research question is the result of concluding three district-specific sub-questions. The assessment of the results was based on the content analysis of 251 posts (2017–2021) in the local public Facebook group (supplemented by a questionnaire survey of local residents (2022), 30 in-depth interviews with experts and residents (2022) conducted as part of the cross-sectional research, and 10 additional in-depth interviews with residents (2024) conducted for the last sub-question. The flowchart showing the current state of the district along a negative spiral dynamic, the possibility to turn it in a positive direction, and the mind-map-like summary of local, individual and collective mitigation and solution alternatives supporting the change of direction can be considered as a novel scientific result.

Hernia mesh and social media: misinformation, legal solicitation, and conflict of interest.

Patients often utilize social media platforms as a resource for medical information. Lately, hernia mesh has been surrounded by controversy due to highly publicized mesh recalls. We aimed to assess the rates of misinformation, legal solicitation, and conflict of interest of hernia mesh information on Facebook and YouTube. We conducted a cross-sectional study of Facebook posts and YouTube videos using the search term "hernia mesh." The first 150 public Facebook posts and YouTube videos were initially selected, in addition to the first 30 posts of public Facebook groups. Video/post characteristics and the presence of misinformation, legal solicitation, and conflict of interest were independently recorded by three trained raters. Fleiss' kappa coefficient (ĸ) was calculated to determine Inter-rater agreement. A total of 129 Facebook posts and 108 YouTube videos were analyzed. 29% of posts/videos were uploaded by a law firm and 24% were uploaded by medical professionals. The raters indicated that an average of 11% posts/videos contained misinformation, 17% involved legal solicitation, and 21% included conflicts of interest. Inter-rater agreement was fair for misinformation (ĸ = 0.380-0.382), substantial/almost perfect for legal solicitation (ĸ = 0.780-0.876), and moderate for conflict of interest (ĸ = 0.448-0.505). With regard to hernia mesh, misinformation, legal solicitation, and conflict of interest are somewhat common on popular social media platforms. Trained raters had a high level of agreement on legal solicitation but limited agreement on misinformation. Our findings suggest that recognizing misinformation on social media regarding hernia mesh is difficult.

Exploring Alternative Health Facebook Groups in the COVID-19 Pandemic: An Automated Content Analysis Through Structural Topic Modeling.

Alternative health (AH) has an important role in public health across cultures, as the World Health Organization acknowledges. Using structural topic modeling, we analyzed 25,561 posts from public Facebook groups that contained AH-related content during the COVID-19 pandemic over 3 years. Thirty-one topics emerged, and they were categorized into six major themes, including (1) sharing information regarding AH treatment for COVID-19, (2) spiritual and mental healing in the pandemic, (3) news and information about COVID-19, (4) commercial content related to AH treatment, (5) COVID-19 precautions suggestions, and (6) caution against treating AH as a cure-all. We found that these Facebook groups served as digital spaces for AH content by playing a dual role: (1) disseminating information on COVID-19 and AH for both laypeople and experts and (2) providing spiritual connections and commercial content to alleviate anxiety during the pandemic. While accurate information and social support were shared, a notable part of commercial messages and AH treatments offered for COVID-19 included misleading and unverified claims. Findings shed light on the nature and extent of misleading AH content and why engagement with AH media may contribute to increased belief in health misinformation. We further discuss the complexity and diversity of content on AH media.

People incorrectly correcting other people: The pragmatics of (re-)corrections and their negotiation in a Facebook group

In highly standardized literate cultures, orthographic norms are perceived as socially binding, giving rise to negative evaluations of ‘incorrect’ writing, i.e., writing that deviates from the norm. This is evident in prescriptive practices in interactions on social media including direct corrections of a deviance (*you’re) or comments more or less implicitly referring to it (“would be great if you knew how to spell”). In this study, we focus on a special type of corrections and the reactions to them: incorrect corrections. They are often corrected in so-called re-corrections, which frequently give rise to entire chains of corrections and comments that reflect diverse practices and attitudes both shaped by and towards normativity. By conducting an exploratory case study, we investigate (meta-)pragmatic strategies of stancetaking – such as mocking or doing being an expert – as well as their negotiation in (re-)corrections. Specifically, we focus on three posts taken from the public Facebook group People Incorrectly Correcting Other People consisting of, on the one hand, decontextualized screenshots showing an incorrect correction and ensuing re-corrections framed by the reaction of the poster posting them to the group. On the other hand, given the large number of group members, they include a myriad of additional comments discussing (re-)corrections at a meta-level. Our analysis suggests that re-correcting serves to criticize not a mistake but the positioning of correctors as superior. Thus, it implicitly challenges the normativity of standard language ideologies by exposing the hypocrisy of prescriptive practices.

Protesting the lockdown: geo-indexing a movement publicly opposing Covid-19 policies on Facebook

ABSTRACT The Covid-19 pandemic saw restrictions being implemented to curb the spread of the virus. This seeded anti-lockdown demonstrations across the globe. Leveraging network, quantitative and qualitative textual analysis tools, we scrutinize the expression of opposition to these restrictions on 96 public Facebook groups and pages, and its connection to physical places across the globe. To grapple with this relation, we propose the concept of geo-indexing as the practice of adding meaning to physical places on social media and identify a transnational network of geo-indexed posts. Importantly, this geo-indexed opposition was framed as unified against an unjust and undemocratic imposition of restrictive measures. The language used in some of this communication was conspiratorial, albeit to a lesser degree than expected. Moreover, geo-indexed posts were used to evidence the scale of public mobilization, the cohesion of the protests, to articulate the virtue of transgressing health measures and to extoll those who said or did so, across multiple sites.

An Analysis of Questions from Teachers' Online Groups: Turning the Lens Back to Teacher Education

Background or Context: During the first months of the COVID pandemic, teachers were forced to move to online instruction without the appropriate resources. They resorted to social media to gather expertise and ideas. This study is grounded in an analysis of the questions posed by K–12 teachers on popular Facebook groups. Purpose, Objective, Research Question, or Focus of Study: The authors argue that a close analysis of what K–12 educators are asking and wondering about in online teacher groups at a moment in which much of what they know and trust has been disrupted can be generative as a novel feedback loop to engage in conversations about some common practices in teacher education. Specifically, they ask: How can an analysis of questions posed by educators on public Facebook groups in the early pandemic enter into a productive conversation with teacher education programs beyond the specificities of that context? Research Design: The study performs a thematic analysis based on categories that were inductively coded from 752 questions posed between March and June 2020 by educators in the three most popular public Facebook groups dedicated exclusively to K–12 teaching during the pandemic. The goal is to consider the underlying assumptions and ideas embedded in the questions being asked in these groups, and to place them within the context of the authors’ political understandings of the role of teacher education. Conclusions or Recommendations: Four themes emerged from the analysis: an expanding notion of community, tensions in the understandings of “context,” new positionings of expertise, and a questioning of what counts as legitimate schooling. The themes led to a need for teacher education programs to always consider their students’ professional identities as collectively constructed and to find ways to disrupt universal models of the mind. The authors also invite programs to rethink the location of expertise by taking into account the practices that young teachers are already engaged in when seeking professional knowledge. This opening could potentially lead to perhaps the hardest thing to do within teacher education programs: to provide the conditions to reimagine schooling.

Sharenting and social media properties: Exploring vicarious data harms and sociotechnical mitigations

In this paper, we demonstrate how social media technologies can co-produce data-related harms unless preventative measures are instituted. To this end, we draw on a passive ethnography of a public Facebook group in the UK practicing sharenting which occurs when parents and guardians post sensitive and identifying information about children in their care on social media. Theoretically, we draw on the ‘harm translation’ concept from digital criminology and the ‘seductions of crime’ perspective from cultural criminology. Further we analyse documents on the operations of Facebook's content filtering algorithms published by Meta (Facebook's parent company). With insights from these sources, we demonstrate how platform technologies go beyond facilitation to the inadvertent co-production of harm via embedded mediative properties that shape user perception and action. We show that, in the specific context of sharenting, the properties invite rather than simply facilitate the practice and can also invite subsequent misuses of child-centric data. Through our analysis of these dynamics, we set out an empirical basis for challenging reductive depictions of social media technologies as solely facilitative of human action including harmful conduct. We also outline our vision to integrate insights from the analysis into a new sociotechnical harm prevention framework informed by Natural Language Processing approaches.

Exploration of the Content of Public Facebook Groups of Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) in Bangladesh

Exploration of the Content of Public Facebook Groups of Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) in Bangladesh

“Every Small Action Helps Towards the Greater Cause:” Online Communities Scaling Up Online Community-Led Citizen Science in Addressing Litter Challenges in Scotland

Social media is now a new means of engagement and a catalyst for citizen science; still, less attention has been paid to understanding the influence of online communities on community-led citizen science projects. This study used the Fife Street Champions public Facebook group as a case study to explore how online community-led citizen science projects generate citizen science data to understand littering challenges in Scotland and to examine the impact of the group’s activities and the challenges they face. Data driven-content analysis was used to analyse Facebook user-generated data of 337 posts with comments and images to identify key themes that emerge in the data. Results indicate that group members develop their own data collection tools, share, analyse and present their litter-picking activities to understand the magnitude of littering and the impact of their litter-picking activities. However, the findings highlight inconsistencies in how group members collect and record data from their litter-picking activities. The group also provides informational support, environmental awareness and advocacy, and environmental citizenship. Members also share concerns about eco-anxiety. Lastly, safety and health concerns, COVID-19, and seagulls are challenges experienced by online-based litter pickers. The results contribute to our understanding of the opportunity that social media platforms can provide to build more robust online community-driven citizen science projects that can inform further research. Key stakeholders need to collaborate with such communities to improve on collecting scientifically meaningful data.

Challenges in Job Seeking and the Integration of Ukrainian War Refugee Healthcare Workers Into the Polish Healthcare System: Facebook Content Analysis.

Objectives: The full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine resulted in a refugee crisis. The terms of employment of Ukrainian Refugee background Medical Professionals (UKR-MPs) in the Polish healthcare system were liberalised. The aim of the study was to identify challenges in job seeking and the integration of Ukrainian war refugee healthcare workers into the Polish healthcare system. Methods: A qualitative, descriptive study based on content thematic analysis of Facebook content. We analyzed 1,700 posts published on two public Facebook groups intended for UKR-MPs. Results: The most common problems encountered by UKR-MPs were: 1) lack of easy-to-understand information about the list of documents necessary to apply for a work permit, 2) lack of feedback from those responsible for handling individual cases, and 3) long waiting time for the decision issued by the Ministry of Health. Conclusion: Despite the promptly implemented solutions enabling access to the job market by UKR-MPs, the refugees have encountered considerable administrative difficulties, as well as those arising from insufficient knowledge of the regulations on working as medical professionals in Poland under the EU law.

Vocabulary of Hatred in Social Media

The study focuses on Facebook, one of the most popular socialnetworking sites in our time, given its position in the digital world andthe importance of the verbal component in it. The main objective of theresearch is to investigate whether in a corpus of utterances in Italiancoming from two public Facebook groups, the incitement to hatred man-ifests itself through the use of slurs, the choice of which is delimited byprecise criteria. The presence of the selected words is verified throughautomatic searches with the tools available on Facebook. Moreover, theanalysis is aimed at discovering whether slurs always carry their deni-gratory potential, or whether they can also have a non-denigratory use.Some possible extensions of the research will also be defined.

Robotic animal-assisted therapy as a complementary therapy in clinical practice: Exploring animal-assisted intervention professional perspectives

Backgroundand Purpose: Animal-Assisted Therapy (AAT) is a therapy that incorporates animals to improve the motor, social, behavioral, and/or cognitive functioning of participants. AAT has been shown to be a beneficial intervention for a wide range of populations. Although, researchers have suggested concerns in implementing AAT. The purpose of this study is to gain insight into the perspectives of therapists who incorporate AAT into their programs and to explore benefits and ethical considerations within the field of AAT. This study also aims to seek possible implications for robotic animal-assisted therapy (RAAT). Materials and methodsProfessionals from the Association of Animal-Assisted Intervention Professionals (AAAIP) were recruited, along with members from multiple AAT private and public Facebook groups. Participants completed an anonymous online semi-structured survey, exploring their experience with and perspectives on both AAT and RAAT. Fourteen participants' responses were analyzed using Dedoose software to identify common themes in the responses. ResultsThe results of this study provide various perspectives from professionals in different settings on the benefits of AAT, concerns about AAT, and the implication for the utilization of RAAT. The data indicated that most of the participants have not incorporated RAAT into practice. However, many of the participants believed that RAAT can be an alternative or preparatory intervention when interaction with live animals is not possible. The data collected further contributes to an emerging niche setting.

Digital Narratives of Living With Lupus: Lived Experiences and Meanings for Latin American and Latino Patients and Their Families.

Systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) disproportionately affects Latin American and Latino populations, with worse outcomes compared to nonminority populations. Understanding patients' views is critical to provide culturally competent care. The objective of this research is to analyze lived experiences with SLE from comments made by Latin American and Latino patients, and their relatives and friends, on the public Facebook group "Hablemos de Lupus" (in English: "Let's Talk about Lupus"). Deidentified narratives posted as a reaction to the most popular resources shared by the page were extracted using the Facepager application. We conducted a thematic analysis under an interpretative medical anthropology framework. Five core themes were demonstrated by social media comments: lived experiences with lupus, religious/spiritual thoughts, metaphors, heredity, and experiences of family and friends. Being diagnosed with lupus is perceived as a life-changing event. The fluctuating course of the disease causes uncertainty, and the perception of invisibility within the patient's social circle generates feelings of being misunderstood. Faith and spiritual thoughts are coping strategies. Patients use metaphors about the disease's meaning and their lived experiences (the purple butterfly, not belonging, bellicose metaphors) to communicate with others. Relatives and friends are impacted by their loved one's distress. Patients perceive lupus as an unpredictable illness and use metaphors to foster empathy and communicate their experiences to others. Religion is as important as medical treatment to cope with the disease, and the experience of having lupus extends to family and friends. Findings can be used to improve physician-patient communication and lupus education campaigns in the Latin American and Latino population.

Proč učitelky nechodí na ošetřovačku? Emoční strategie, mikropolitiky a sebepojetí učitelek s malými dětmi v době pandemie

Czechia had one of the longest school lockdowns during the pandemic in 2020 and 2021. Teachers with small children consequently faced a number of emotional dilemmas that primarily stemmed from the conflict between their role as a teacher and their role as a parent, which unfolded in the home as the one and only space in which to perform work, family care, and self-care. The paper is organised around the question of why teachers in this difficult situation did not take advantage of child sick leave, a public policy measure that could have helped them to reduce this conflict and to care for their children and their own mental health. In this study we draw on research into the emotional dimensions of public policies, micropolicies and micropolitics, and the self-conception of teachers. The analysis is based on a data sample of public policy documents, interviews with nine teachers, and discussion threads in a public Facebook group dedicated to teachers. We found that the main reasons teachers did not take child sick leave were their emotionally strongly sense of the imperatives attached to their self-conception as a teacher and supported by the micropolitics of schools, and their perception of child sick leave as representing uncertainty and failure rather than relief. Child sick leave has moreover been recognised as a public policy measure that is anchored in the modern separation of the public (work) and the private (family, care) spheres, which in the conditions of the pandemic crisis revealed its limitations.

Emerging Ideas. Families Together: Supporting family resilience during the COVID‐19 pandemic

AbstractObjectiveThis study evaluated a rapidly developed program designed to support family resilience during the COVID‐19 pandemic.BackgroundGrounded in Walsh's family resilience framework, Families Tackling Tough Times Together (FT) disseminated weekly evidence‐informed content through a public Facebook group, partner organizations, and on a dedicated website.MethodFacebook and website analytics and weekly brief usage surveys (n with at least one = 74) documented program use, and pre‐ and post‐FT surveys (n with at least one = 49) assessed family connectedness, positive outlook, purpose in life, and stress.ResultsThe program was widely used and received favorable feedback. Participants reported less stress in weeks when they engaged in more program activities, and more family connectedness in weeks when they spent more time engaged in program materials. No significant changes were observed, however, in overall family resilience, self‐efficacy, family functioning, or stress.ConclusionThe FT program was widely used and appraised positively. Program involvement was favorably correlated with less stress and family connectedness within weeks, although long‐term changes post‐program were not observed.Implications for Emerging IdeasSocial media can be used as an effective mechanism for reaching families during times of adversity and provides preliminary data that can guide refinement of FT and other disaster‐responsive programs.

Web-Based Perspectives of Deemed Consent Organ Donation Legislation in Nova Scotia: Thematic Analysis of Commentary in Facebook Groups.

The Canadian province of Nova Scotia recently became the first jurisdiction in North America to implement deemed consent organ donation legislation. Changing the consent models constituted one aspect of a larger provincial program to increase organ and tissue donation and transplantation rates. Deemed consent legislation can be controversial among the public, and public participation is integral to the successful implementation of the program. Social media constitutes key spaces where people express opinions and discuss topics, and social media discourse can influence public perceptions. This project aimed to examine how the public in Nova Scotia responded to legislative changes in Facebook groups. Using Facebook's search engine, we searched for posts in public Facebook groups using the terms "deemed consent," "presumed consent," "opt out," or "organ donation" and "Nova Scotia," appearing from January 1, 2020, to May 1, 2021. The finalized data set included 2337 comments on 26 relevant posts in 12 different public Nova Scotia-based Facebook groups. We conducted thematic and content analyses of the comments to determine how the public responded to the legislative changes and how the participants interacted with one another in the discussions. Our thematic analysis revealed principal themes that supported and critiqued the legislation, raised specific issues, and reflected on the topic from a neutral perspective. Subthemes showed individuals presenting perspectives through a variety of themes, including compassion, anger, frustration, mistrust, and a range of argumentative tactics. The comments included personal narratives, beliefs about the government, altruism, autonomy, misinformation, and reflections on religion and death. Content analysis revealed that Facebook users reacted to popular comments with "likes" more than other reactions. Comments with the most reactions included both negative and positive perspectives about the legislation. Personal donation and transplantation success stories, as well as attempts to correct misinformation, were some of the most "liked" positive comments. The findings provide key insights into perspectives of individuals from Nova Scotia on deemed consent legislation, as well as organ donation and transplantation broadly. The insights derived from this analysis can contribute to public understanding, policy creation, and public outreach efforts that might occur in other jurisdictions considering the enactment of similar legislation.

(Re)framing the emerging mobility regime at the U.S.-Mexico borderlands: Covid-19, temporality, and racial capitalism

In this paper, we examine transborder commuters’ experiences (i.e. individuals who commute between U.S. and Mexican border cities frequently) during the Covid-19 pandemic, with keen attention to the links between racial capitalism and temporality. We address two interrelated issues: first, we unpack how the United States framed the pandemic through the metaphor of war and the production of the categories of ‘essential work(er)’ and ‘essential travel’ to ensure racial capitalism’s surplus labor and continuation. These categories function like a double-edged sword, tying racialized populations to racial capitalism’s temporality to exploit them while excluding privileged others. We argue that Covid-19’s temporality conflicts with racial capitalism’s temporality. While the former relies on the deceleration of everyday life, the latter depends on constant acceleration driven by profit-seeking. Using queer and feminist theoretical lenses, we then demonstrate how U.S. Covid-19 border restrictions at land ports of entry exacerbated transborder commuters’ cross-border travels and privileged some based on legal status. As a result, they used public Facebook groups to navigate and comprehend new commuting conditions, disidentifying with the United States’ official pandemic framing and producing their own. This shared experience catalyzed ‘digital transborder kinships’ or temporally-bound socialities rooted in relational care, advocacy, and knowledge production.

How Threats of Exclusion Mobilize Palestinian Political Participation

AbstractDo exclusionary policies mobilize minority political participation? We theorize that the threat of exclusionary policies creates and resurfaces grievances that facilitate mobilization. To test our theory, we leverage Donald Trump's announcement of a peace plan for the Israeli–Palestinian conflict, which posed a threat to the citizenship status of Palestinian citizens of Israel residing in the Triangle area adjacent to the West Bank. First, using more than 170,000 posts from public Facebook groups and pages, we show that Trump's announcement was indeed a more salient political event for Triangle residents. Then, employing locality‐level election data as well as records detailing the origin of citizens’ joining a Jewish‐Arab social movement, we use a difference‐in‐difference design to demonstrate that the threat to citizenship imposed by Trump's plan increased mobilization in the Triangle area. Our evidence from three distinct data sources suggests that threats of exclusion can mobilize minority political behavior.

Determining containment policy impacts on public sentiment during the pandemic using social media data

Stringent containment and closure policies have been widely implemented by governments to prevent the transmission of COVID-19. Yet, such policies have significant impacts on people’s emotions and mental well-being. Here, we study the effects of pandemic containment policies on public sentiment in Singapore. We computed daily sentiment values scaled from −1 to 1, using high-frequency data of ∼240,000 posts from highly followed public Facebook groups during January to November 2020. The lockdown in April saw a 0.1 unit rise in daily average sentiment, followed by a 0.2 unit increase with partially lifting of lockdown in June, and a 0.15 unit fall after further easing of restrictions in August. Regarding the impacts of specific containment measures, a 0.13 unit fall in sentiment was associated with travel restrictions, whereas a 0.18 unit rise was related to introducing a facial covering policy at the start of the pandemic. A 0.15 unit fall in sentiment was linked to restrictions on public events, post lock-down. Virus infection, wearing masks, salary, and jobs were the chief concerns found in the posts. A 2 unit increase in these concerns occurred even when some restrictions were eased in August 2020. During pandemics, monitoring public sentiment and concerns through social media supports policymakers in multiple ways. First, the method given here is a near real-time scalable solution to study policy impacts. Second, it aids in data-driven and evidence-based revision of existing policies and implementation of similar policies in the future. Third, it identifies public concerns following policy changes, addressing which can increase trust in governments and improve public sentiment.