Social Media Representation Research Articles

The role of literacy education in preventing the impact of fake news on government policies and socio-political Stability

The aimed of this study is to explore how fake news through the media can disrupt socio-political stability and impede the implementation of various government policies that are being introduced, and how significant efforts are being made by all parties to ensure that hoax coverage does not spread through all lines of social life by providing a literacy education formula in the context of knowledge challenges that are difficult to address. It also analyzes how social media are used to construct strategies that can cloud the atmosphere of socio-political life and public morality, which seem to give priority to pro-people ethics, as is the case in Indonesia. In this study, a qualitative approach and post-truth theory are used as analytical perspectives in the interpretation of topics such as Covid-19 news and details in the presidential election contest of 2019. This study will also document how, through the mediation of hoax reporting through social media, online social media representations such as Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, and other personal messaging applications are explored. So, of course, based on the findings of the preliminary observations, there needs to be a strategy for creating new, shifting narratives about different government policies based on relevant references, since modern media have an influence on the social, cultural, and political landscape of life. A proper media literacy and literacy analysis must also be carried out to see if offline communities with limited internet connectivity no longer accept the notion of 'hoax opinion' established in Indonesia. Therefore, literacy education would be able to reveal false knowledge that has spread through society and will correct any myths in social life.

Representation of African American Patients in Social Media for Breast Reconstruction.

Social media use by plastic surgeons may contribute to the overall increase in breast reconstruction in the United States. However, recent data show a concerning decrease in breast reconstruction in African American women. The purpose of this study was to analyze the inclusion of African American women in social media posts for breast reconstruction, with the premise that this may be a possible contributing factor to decreasing rates of breast reconstruction in this population. Data from several social media platforms were obtained manually on December 1, 2019. Each image was analyzed using the Fitzpatrick scale as a guide. A total of 2580 photographs were included that met the authors' criteria. Only 172 photographs (6.7 percent) were nonwhite. This study surveyed 543 surgeons, 5 percent of whom were nonwhite. The analysis of the results from the random sample of the top plastic surgery social media influencers showed that only 22 (5 percent) of the photographs uploaded were nonwhite patients. Furthermore, 30 percent of surgeons did not have any photographs of nonwhite patients uploaded. Numerous factors can contribute to the disparity between the growing trend of white patients seeking reconstructive surgery compared to the decreasing trend of African American patients, one of which may be the disparity in their representation in social media, particularly among common platforms and social media influencers. This study highlights the evolving factors that may impair African American breast cancer patients' access to safe, effective breast reconstruction, which must be identified and resolved.

Awka Residents’ Perception of Social Media Representation of Family Values in the Era of Insecurity in Nigeria

Apart from the civil war that was pronounced, Nigeria has never had it so bad in terms of insecurity and violence. In searching for a solution to this wedge to our national development, all factors, including family life of Nigerians became subject of examination. In pursuit of this, the researchers studied Awka resident’s perception of social media representation of family values in the era of insecurity in Nigeria. The study was anchored on social learning and agenda setting theory. Employing a survey research method, a sample size of 399 was arrived at. Questionnaire was also used as an instrument for data collection. From the data analysed, the researchers found that a greater percentage of Awka residents use social media. That they perceive social media representation of family values as negative. Concluding, the researchers observed that despite the positive roles of social media, that it also serves as an “evangelization ground” for new converts into violence and criminality which culminates in insecurity. The researchers recommended that efforts should be made to promote virtuous contents on social media. Also, that the family institution should intensify the inculcation of family values on their children who will grow to become responsible members of the larger society.

Visual Representations of Indigenous Tourism Places in Social Media

This article focused the analysis on social media representations of Sápmi using the hashtags #visitsápmi and #visitsapmi, which nuance official, top-down versions of the place communicated in other contexts, but simultaneously are more focused on visitors and their experiences. The results show that the making of the Sápmi region as a place and a tourism destination through social media content is an ongoing process of interpretation and reinterpretation of what indigenous Sámi culture is and how it connects to specific localities. Future research should look at the broader understanding of places that can be accessed through social media analysis. The main argument is that visual communication is a very important tool when constructing the brand of a destination. Considering the growing role of social media, the process of place-making through visual communication is explored in the case of the destination VisitSápmi, as it is coconstructed in online user generated content (UGC). From a theoretical viewpoint, we discuss the social construction of places and destinations as well as the production of meaning through coconstruction of images and brands in tourism contexts. The focus is on how places are created, branded, and made meaningful by visualizing the place in a framework of tourism experiences, in this case specifically examined through indigenous tourism. We use a content analysis of texts, photographs, and narratives communicated on social media platforms. Regardless of negotiated brand management's efforts at official marketing, branding, and tourism planning, the evolution of Sápmi as a place to visit in social media has its own logic, full of contradictions and plausible interpretations, related to the uncontrollable and bottom-up processes of UGC.

Deep Attentive Multimodal Network Representation Learning for Social Media Images

The analysis for social networks, such as the socially connected Internet of Things, has shown a deep influence of intelligent information processing technology on industrial systems for Smart Cities. The goal of social media representation learning is to learn dense, low-dimensional, and continuous representations for multimodal data within social networks, facilitating many real-world applications. Since social media images are usually accompanied by rich metadata (e.g., textual descriptions, tags, groups, and submitted users), simply modeling the image is not effective to learn the comprehensive information from social media images. In this work, we treat the image and its textual description as multimodal content, and transform other metainformation into the links between contents (such as two images marked by the same tag or submitted by the same user). Based on the multimodal content and social links, we propose a Deep Attentive Multimodal Graph Embedding model named DAMGE for more effective social image representation learning. We introduce both small- and large-scale datasets to conduct extensive experiments, of which the results confirm the superiority of the proposal on the tasks of social image classification and link prediction.

Social Media Representations of the Pilgrimage to Mecca

Abstract In this article, we compare representations of the pilgrimage to Mecca posted on Facebook and Youtube by ‘ordinary’ pilgrims from Morocco and (semi)professional bloggers of Moroccan parentage in the Netherlands. We discuss how such posts challenge representations that circulate in the mainstream media in both countries about Islam in general and the hajj in particular. For Morocco we demonstrate that this kind of digital mediation of pilgrimage contests the ways in which the state-organized hajj is framed in Morocco’s national media. For the Netherlands, we argue that bloggers deconstruct dominant images of the Muslim ‘other’ in their self-presentations as specifically Dutch Muslim pilgrims by connecting the meanings they attribute to the pilgrimage to Mecca to universal issues.

Using Twitter for Nursing Research: A Tweet Analysis on Heat Illness and Health.

To provide an example of a tweet analysis for nurse researchers using Twitter in their research. A content analysis using tweets about "heat illness + health." Tweets were pulled from Twitter's application programming interface with premium access using Postman and the key words "heat illness + health." All data cleaning and analysis was performed in R Version 3.5.2, and the tweet set was analyzed for term frequency, sentiment, and topic modeling. Principal R packages included LDAvis, tidytext, tm, and zyuzhet. 6,317 tweets were analyzed with a date range of April 6, 2009, to December 30, 2019. The most common terms in the tweets were heat (n = 4,532), illness (n = 4,085), and health (n = 2,257). Sentiment analysis showed that the majority of tweets (55%) had a negative sentiment. Topic modeling showed that there were three topics within the tweet set: increasing impact, prevention and safety, and symptoms. Twitter can be a useful tool for nursing researchers, serving as a viable adjunct to current research methodologies. This practical example has facilitated a deeper understanding of the social media representation of heat illness and health that can be applied to other research. Twitter serves as a tool for collecting health information for multiple groups, ranging from clinicians and researchers to patients. By utilizing the plethora of data that comes from the platform, we can work towards developing theories and interventions related to numerous health conditions and phenomena.

Understanding GI Twitter and Its Major Contributors

Understanding GI Twitter and Its Major Contributors

The impact of social media on self-evaluations of men striving for a muscular ideal.

This paper describes an innovative approach combining a content analysis of commentary and images on a Facebook page with a thematic analysis of the subjective experience expressed in interviews of those impacted by the text and images. Interview participants were asked about their perceptions of the representation of the muscularity-focused identity on social media, including the specific Facebook page. Content analysis of the Facebook page comments showed that very muscular male images attracted predominantly negative feedback from the public, a trend supported by the interview participants. Thematic analysis of the interviews indicated that a negative social media representation and commentary can affect young men's self-esteem and increase body concern. Some men represented on the Page found it humorous, which could serve as a form of bonding for the muscularity-focused online community. Other young men acknowledged how harmful such negative feedback can be on their self-evaluations and body image, consistent with the sociocultural framework whereby negative representations can lead to increased body dissatisfaction.

The Space of an Image Existence. What do the Internet the Ancient City and the Medieval Temple Have in Common?

Introduction.The article discusses various historical examples of symbolic spaces – spaces of the existence of an image – to consider how representation systems are arranged in them and how they set the tone for the complex process of creating an image of a person. The author does not consider the image as a conscious construct, which is completely dependent on this external system, but supposes that it is important to research it for a deeper understanding of the modern version of symbolic space and all complex and interrelated processes in it. Thus, the article provides theoretical grounds for a legitimate comparison of practices of the Internet and social media representation with the practices of the past which unfolded in specific, semiotic toposes: Egyptian murals in tombs, the ancient city, a medieval temple, and a European text of the Modernity.Methodologyandsources.The theoretical basis of this research is on the contact of a number of approaches to the analysis of the image and image systems: representationst, phenomenological, philosophical-anthropological, (post)structuralist. The author uses works in historical, cultural and art studies in the respective eras as soursces of information on individual spaces of representation of the past (B. Manley, M. Bird, D. Yu. Dorofeev, V. Svetlov, S. Zotov, M. Maizuls, M. Foucault and others). The author relies on detailed descriptions of public spaces, identifies and compares their characteristic features. Resultsanddiscussion.Having examined the main features of a number of symbolic spaces of the past, the author shows how they inevitably affect the process of building an image, creating the system of representation. In this sense, both “city” and “text” are presented in the article as concepts, semantic fields and structures, and not as physical objects. The author comes to the conclusion that there is no so much novelty of the modern processes of symbolic exchange on the Internet, as it is usually declared. Most of the actual space`s features which today are called new are found in other spaces and other times. Polyphony, the visual component, one-to-many and many-to-many message addressing, active use of “ready-made” markers and symbolic “blanks”, the iconic character of the signs used – these features of modern communication in the Internet space seem to be new only in comparison with communication within the framework of the New European text. These features are quite applicable to the ancient city and to the medieval temple.Conclusion.The author shows a strong similarity of the modern Internet precisely with an ancient city and a medieval temple, while the text of the Modernity differs from them, and that creates the “novelty” of the current situation. This does not diminish interest in modern practices of representation since their specificity does not necessarily have to be built through the position of innovation which was valuable in the culture of the Modernity.

Social Media Representations of Law Enforcement within Four Diverse Chicago Neighborhoods

The perception of excessive use of force by law enforcement towards minorities has become an increasing focus of attention in the national media and public consciousness. With greater ability to record conflicts using smartphones and dissemination of videos via social media, the public may more readily judge the circumstances of law enforcement interactions. The purpose of this study was (a) to understand the general sentiment about law enforcement on social media among communities of color in Chicago, (b) to see if local or national incidents of police conflicts with people of color were mentioned, and (c) identify key themes within these social media posts. Publicly available social media posts were collected from four ethnically and socioeconomically diverse neighborhoods in Chicago. Using a five-person team and keyword searches, the posts were reviewed for content and abstracted if they pertained to law enforcement. They were then analyzed in stages of open, axial, and selective coding methods. Eight main themes were identified. These included the following: (a) law enforcement participation in the community, (b) law enforcement activity in the neighborhood, (c) posts regarding criminal activity, (d) immigration, (e) political protests against police, (f) African American men and law enforcement, (g) sympathy with Sandra Bland case, and (h) #Blacklivesmatter. There appears to be chasm of trust between law enforcement and communities of color. Our findings may help inform law enforcement, public policy-makers, and social workers in their efforts to better address these issues and to institute policies and interventions that not only bridge this gap but also strengthen and empower these communities.

Picturing Auschwitz. Multimodality and the attribution of historical significance on Instagram (Imaginando Auschwitz. La multimodalidad y la atribución de significado histórico en Instagram)

ABSTRACT As social media have become a prime means of communication among students, so too are they increasingly used to give meaning to the past. But while history education scholars tend to conceptualize historical meaning-making as acts of narrative emplotment, social media are multimodal by nature, and some platforms — like Instagram — prioritize images over written text. This article focuses on the question of how Instagram users attribute historical significance in posts that feature the Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial and Museum, by analysing the various ways in which they combine images and captions to give meaning to the past. Subsequently, the potential of multimodal social media representations for history education is explored.

"Soldiering On": Social Media Representations of Infertility and Assisted Reproduction as Patient Narratives.

Literary narratives treating infertility metaphorically or thematically abound, but stories about women's individual experiences with infertility and assisted reproduction are less scrutinized by literature scholars. Acknowledging the role of online writing in the proliferation of such stories in the post-in vitro fertilization era, this article applies the tools of narrative analysis to a set of social media narratives authored by women undergoing Assisted Reproduction Therapy. I argue that examining the guiding metaphors and central conflicts of such texts reveals their significant interventions into traditional narratives about childbearing as well as their complicated complicity in the raced and classed elements of the contemporary fertility industry.

Social media representation of female genital cutting: A YouTube analysis.

Introduction:Female genital cutting is a practice that has incited controversy and conflicting discourses across the international community. There is a need to analyze social media data on the portrayal of the practice in order to gather insights and inform strategic planning and interventions design. This study aims to explore and describe the portrayal of female genital cutting in the comments section of YouTube comment posts.Methods:This mixed-method study employs a content analysis approach with a sequential exploratory design. A total of 150 YouTube comment posts were analyzed through qualitative content analysis and quantitative descriptive content analysis on NVivo 11 and Microsoft Excel, respectively.Results:Salient subthemes from the qualitative component included likening female genital cutting with male genital cutting, differentiating female genital cutting from male genital cutting, branding female genital cutting as a harmful and unethical practice, branding female genital cutting as a normal tradition, contribution of religion and culture to female genital cutting, gender inequality issues, and the need for education or cultural relativism to change or cope with the practice. The quantitative component identified neutral, positive, mixed, and neutral tones; and formal, colloquial, and mixed language types; as well as targets of stigma with patterns in the themes.Conclusion:The portrayal of female genital cutting in the YouTube comment posts revealed the range of perceptions, beliefs, and opinions of users with various stances on the practice. Study findings are useful for strategic planning and the development of interventions with informative goals. Study findings can also help to gage and evaluate the effectiveness of existing programs that aim to reduce misinformation about female genital cutting or aim to reduce stigmas surrounding the practice.

Tourism frontiers: Primitive accumulation, and the “Free Gifts” of (Human) nature in the South China Sea and Myanmar

One of the first industries developed in frontier regions, tourism opens new land and commodity frontiers through practices of primitive accumulation that can radically disrupt the reproduction of social relations of production. However, very little work explicitly addresses the role of tourism in frontier‐making practices. This paper brings political economy and critical geopolitics to bear on the role of tourism in the development of new land and commodity frontiers in the South China Sea and Myanmar. Geopolitical ambitions are played out under the guise of tourism development and are obscured by the assemblage of institutions, discourses, and practices (e.g., photographic surveillance, social media representations, place branding) that aid in the appropriation of the “free gifts” of not only nature, but also human nature. The state is integral to the extraction of use values of non‐human and human nature: territorialisation, dispossession, and enclosure are all fundamental to this process. Additionally, as people and places (e.g., beaches, cultural practices, ethnic identities) become legible as commodities, so too do they become alienated from the products of their labour. This paper sheds analytical light on the ways in which powerful mechanisms of the tourism industry legitimise the creative creation of new land and commodity frontiers.

Digital identity and the online self: Footprint strategies – An exploratory and comparative research study

Reflecting on the thousands of diverse research studies of social media representation and digital privacy, this article presents a comprehensive summary of online personal strategies. First, the evolution of academic concepts about digital identity and the online self is summarised. Then, the article investigates the key dynamics of personal strategies and control issues in detail with ideas, experiences, stories and metaphors taken from 60 qualitative interviews from Central and Eastern Europe and Southeast Asia. According to the key findings of this article, the universal patterns of online personal strategies follow mostly conscious decisions, resulting in users maintaining 70% control of their digital footprints. However, the remaining 30% of online activities are unconscious floating with digital dynamics and resulting in a wide range of non-expected consequences from identity theft to kidnapping. In summary, an intercultural and intergenerational model highlights the complexity and diversity of the studied field, providing a reference framework for future studies. The closing section presents a discussion of those findings of this study that are inconsistent with commonplace assumptions and conclusions present in the academic literature, promoting for study those subjects that still need to be extended or explored.

Bottom-up nationalism and discrimination on social media: An analysis of the citizenship debate about refugees in Turkey

This study analyzes social media representations of refugees in Turkey and discusses their role in shaping public opinion. The influx of millions of Syrian refugees in Turkey has created heated debates about their presence and future in the country. One of these debates was triggered by President Erdoğan’s statement that Turkey would issue citizenship rights to Syrians in July 2016. Due to a lack of critical voices about refugee issues in Turkey’s mass media sphere, social media has become a key platform for citizens to voice their opinions. Through a discourse analysis of tweets about the issue of refugees’ citizenship, I will map different perceptions of refugees in Turkey. I argue that despite contesting discourses about Syrians, the debate on social media reinforces nationalism and an ethnocentric understanding of citizenship in Turkey. As the number of refugees and migrants increases rapidly worldwide, they become the new ‘others’ of national imagined communities. Social media becomes a key communication space where the nation is discursively constructed in a bottom-up manner through manifestations of ‘us’ and ‘them’. The analysis shows that social media contributes to trivialization and normalization of discrimination and hatred against Syrian refugees through disseminating overt discourses of ‘Othering’. Social media also enables more covert forms of discrimination through ‘rationalized’ arguments that are used to justify discrimination through the basis of false/non-verified information. Thus, Twitter becomes a space for critical, bottom-up, yet nationalistic and discriminatory statements about refugees.

Seeking intimacy: queer agency, normativity, and emergent identities

ABSTRACTThis paper provides a small snapshot of some of the issues regarding LGBTIQ+ experiences and identities. Of particular importance are the political and personal agencies of personhood and expression – how do individuals perform and experience gender and sexuality outside both heteronormativity and homonormativity? This paper analyses fluidity across geographies and mobilities, with a specific emphasis on age, categorization and identity expression. It also looks at sexual expression in individuals outside of dominant Western culture, as well as post-modern expressions of queerness and social media representations. Most importantly, the paper focuses on homonormativity, non-normativity, and divergent ways of being, interrogating the same-sex marriage debates and legislation in Australia.

Yes Homo: Gay influencers, homonormativity, and queerbaiting on YouTube

ABSTRACTThis paper provides a small snapshot of some of the issues regarding LGBTIQ+ experiences and identities. Of particular importance are the political and personal agencies of personhood and expression – how do individuals perform and experience gender and sexuality outside both heteronormativity and homonormativity? This paper analyses fluidity across geographies and mobilities, with a specific emphasis on age, categorisation and identity expression. It also looks at sexual expression in individuals outside of dominant Western culture, as well as post-modern expressions of queerness and social media representations. Most importantly, the paper focuses on homonormativity, non-normativity, and divergent ways of being, interrogating the same-sex marriage debates and legislation in Australia.

Self Representation In Social Media

Editorial