Social Media Ecology Research Articles

Social media ecology in an influencer group: Intersection between Fiji's media and social media

Social media use in Fiji has expanded in recent years and has become a ubiquitous feature in wider society. Social media ecology focusses and examines the dimensions of an online environment and its interplay with human experiences in user engagement. These dimensions with human experiences in user engagement, can provide an insight into how influential social media groups can become in shaping discourses and views. To examine and discuss the social media ecology of an influencer group, the article details one of Fiji’s largest and most influential online groups. To do this, the article uses digital ethnography, supplemented with social media analytics. This study provides key findings in the social media ecology of influencer groups and online behavior. These findings may have implications for further research in media, citizen journalism, viral content creation and online political campaigning.

Remembering a disastrous past to imagine catastrophic future(s) on social media: The expected Istanbul earthquake

This article explores how collective memory of the 1999 Marmara earthquake frames collective thinking of “the expected Istanbul earthquake” through numerous catastrophic earthquake scenarios posted on the prominent Turkish social media platform called Ekşi Sözlük for nearly two decades. The article first integrates memory, media, and disaster studies to theorize how a looming catastrophe is (re)imagined in retrospect. It then analyzes earthquake scenarios using representative samples to illustrate how the oscillatory dynamics and acts of disaster memory shape the future thinking of a not-yet-come threat within a Turkish social media ecology.

Research on the Impact of Perfect Diary Brand Strategy

The arrival of the new media era has brought new publicity ideas to enterprises, enriched marketing methods and channels, and allowed brand and product information to be delivered to consumers in a more comprehensive and rapid manner, thereby achieving more efficient and comprehensive marketing. Effect. Through digital means, brands can better find target audiences, provide personalized interactive experiences, and achieve precision marketing. Among them, social media platforms are the main platform for Perfect Diary brand communication. Perfect Diary can be said to be a successful example of social media marketing. Through short videos, grass planting notes, combination of pictures and text, and social marketing, it has been widely used on Douyin, Kuaishou, Xiaomi, etc. Conduct all-round publicity on social media such as Red Book and WeChat to cater to the viewing habits and consumption habits of the younger generation on social media, communicate more directly with users, understand consumer psychology and needs, provide products that meet user requirements in a timely manner, and fully penetrate The social media ecology of the younger generation establishes deeper connections with consumers through social media.

An Initial Conceptualization of Algorithm Responsiveness: Comparing Perceptions of Algorithms Across Social Media Platforms

Human–algorithm interaction has emerged as a pressing area in social media research because algorithms curate and govern most communication on social media. In the present study, we focus on the perceptions people have of algorithms as it relates to their identity and goals. Bridging interpersonal communication theory into human–algorithm interactions, we explicate the concepts of perceived algorithm responsiveness (PAR) and perceived algorithm insensitivity (PAI). In two preregistered studies, we examine PAR and PAI across the social media ecology, finding that TikTok has a higher PAR and lower PAI compared with Facebook and Instagram. Data suggest that algorithm awareness is only weakly correlated with PAR or PAI, and that PAR was a significant predictor of people’s social media enjoyment. These results contribute to research on human–algorithm interaction by conceptualizing and testing two new theoretical concepts to explain the algorithm responsiveness process.

Using big data to understand the online ecology of COVID-19 vaccination hesitancy

AbstractWith a large population of people vaccinated, it is possible that at-risk people are shielded, and the coronavirus disease is contained. Given the low vaccine uptakes, achieving herd immunity via vaccination campaigns can be challenging. After a literature review, we found a paucity of research studies of vaccine hesitancy from social media settings. This study aims to categorise and create a typology of social media contents and assess the priority of concerns for future public health messaging. With a dataset of 43,203 YouTube comments, we applied text analytics and multiple regression analyses to examine the correlations between vaccine hesitancy factors and vaccination intention. Our major findings are (i) Polarized views on vaccines existed in the social media ecology of public discourse, with a majority of people unwilling to get vaccinated against COVID-19; (ii) Reasons behind vaccine hesitancy included concerns about vaccine safety, potential side-effects, lack of trust in government and pharmaceutical companies; (iii) Political partisan-preferences were exemplified in vaccine decision-making processes; (iv) Anti-vaccine movements with amplified misinformation fuelled vaccine hesitancy and undermined public confidence in COVID-19 vaccines. We suggest public health practitioners engage in social media and craft evidenced-based messages to online communities in a balanced and palatable way.

Contextualizing Social Media Ecology and Its Pedagogical Affordances: The Perspective of High School Teachers

The potential of social media technology has made its use a daily habit among individuals, institutions, and communities. However, several studies on technology adoption, especially social media use in education, focus more on its impact on the student than the teacher, who is generally perceived as a key stakeholder. This study used purposive sampling to select teachers who taught grades 7–10 and had used social media in their teaching activities. In-depth interviews were carried out with participating teachers to get their opinions and perspectives about how they used social media in their teaching activities (N=11). Inductive and deductive coding were used for the latent content analysis and four categories emerged: (1) SM technology in the classroom, (2) positive perceived contextual affordances, (3) negative perceived contextual affordances, and (4) support for social media. Results of the study show that, besides the schools’ learning management systems, YouTube was the major SM app that was regularly used by participants in their lessons. Also, all participating teachers expressed their interest in teaching with social media. However, they cited some challenges as weaknesses towards social media use in teaching.

Reaching for the stars: DingTalk and the Multi-platform creativity of a ‘one-star’ campaign on Chinese social media

This study explores mediated forms of creativity and multi-platform affordances used by Chinese social media users and producers in a ‘one-star’ rating campaign aimed at DingTalk, an online teaching platform. In February 2020, in response to delays to resuming in-person instruction due to the COVID 19 pandemic, DingTalk launched a new feature called ‘Zaixianxuexi’(online learning) which was then used across the country. However, users became increasingly critical of the platform and mounted a ‘one-star’ campaign through the Apple’s App Store rating system to try to have the platform removed. In response, the producers of DingTalk released a short-animated video and promotion campaign through Weibo and Bilibili, rather than the DingTalk platform. The video literally begged users to give it more stars. Adopting a social semiotic multimodal analytical approach, we examine the mediated interaction between users and the producers of DingTalk across three Chinese social media platforms. In particular, we examine the mediated forms of creativity and technological affordances across multiple social media platforms during the three stages of the event. The analysis focuses on the creative strategies adopted by both users and the producers of DingTalk as they engaged with each other across platforms. The study highlights Chinese social media as rich spaces where technological and cultural resources are creatively co-ordinated across platforms. In situating modality within a cross-media environment, the research underscores the creativity that characterises Chinese social media within an interconnected multi-platform social media ecology.

Right-wing immigration narratives in Spain: A study of persuasion on Instagram Stories

Ephemeral media has become a staple of today’s social media ecology. This study advances the first exploratory analysis of Instagram Stories as a format for political communication. Through an initial content analysis of 832 stories in three verified Vox accounts and a secondary content and discourse analysis of 114 stories, we delve into the strategies used by right-wing party Vox in Spain to portray immigration as an issue for ideological positioning. The findings shed light onto the ways in which the representation of migrants is employed as an instrument for anti-migratory policy support, through the construction of a very specific profile of a migrant in terms of age and gender and the exclusion of significant migrant populations from the argument. Moreover, the party employs the content creation functionalities of Instagram Stories to construct arguments and storylines where diverse information sources converge, effectively bypassing traditional media and reaching their supporter base directly.

Greta Thunberg’s iconicity: Performance and co-performance in the social media ecology

Greta Thunberg’s meteoric rise from lonely school striker in August 2018 to global icon is one of the most remarkable political phenomena in recent decades, and one full of paradoxes. Thunberg started out with no resources, a child of 15 with limited experience and a history of Asperger’s. Thunberg’s iconic performance seems to have been able to turn these weaknesses into strengths. To understand how this happened, we must situate her analysis within the social media ecology. Two things distinguish this environment from previous phases: iconic protagonists now have wide degrees of control over their own performance, and audiences are no longer mere receptors of iconic performance, but active co-performers. Greta Thunberg is one of the first major political icons to have been fully formed within the new social media ecology. This article provides the first systematic analysis of this dynamic.

Mutual affordances: the dynamics between social media and populism

In a recent contribution to this journal Paolo Gerbaudo has argued that an ‘elective affinity’ exists between social media and populism. The present article expands on Gerbaudo’s argument and examines various dimensions of this affinity in further detail. It argues that it is helpful to conceptually reframe the proposed affinity in terms of affordances. Four affordances are identified which make the social media ecology relatively favourable to both-right as well as left-wing populism, compared to the pre-social media ecology. These affordances are neither stable nor uniquely fixed: they change in concordance with ongoing technological developments and in response to political events. Even though these dynamics can be quick-moving, a fairly stable alliance of interests between social media and populism seems to have emerged over the last decade. This raises the plausibility that as long as the current social media ecology persists, populist tendencies will remain prevalent in politics.

Deplatforming: Following extreme Internet celebrities to Telegram and alternative social media

Extreme, anti-establishment actors are being characterized increasingly as ‘dangerous individuals’ by the social media platforms that once aided in making them into ‘Internet celebrities’. These individuals (and sometimes groups) are being ‘deplatformed’ by the leading social media companies such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and YouTube for such offences as ‘organised hate’. Deplatforming has prompted debate about ‘liberal big tech’ silencing free speech and taking on the role of editors, but also about the questions of whether it is effective and for whom. The research reported here follows certain of these Internet celebrities to Telegram as well as to a larger alternative social media ecology. It enquires empirically into some of the arguments made concerning whether deplatforming ‘works’ and how the deplatformed use Telegram. It discusses the effects of deplatforming for extreme Internet celebrities, alternative and mainstream social media platforms and the Internet at large. It also touches upon how social media companies’ deplatforming is affecting critical social media research, both into the substance of extreme speech as well as its audiences on mainstream as well as alternative platforms.

Editors' Note

Editorial| December 01 2019 Editors' Note Robin James; Robin James Search for other works by this author on: This Site PubMed Google Scholar Eric Weisbard Eric Weisbard Search for other works by this author on: This Site PubMed Google Scholar Journal of Popular Music Studies (2019) 31 (4): 1–2. https://doi.org/10.1525/jpms.2019.31.4.1 Views Icon Views Article contents Figures & tables Video Audio Supplementary Data Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Tools Icon Tools Get Permissions Cite Icon Cite Search Site Citation Robin James, Eric Weisbard; Editors' Note. Journal of Popular Music Studies 1 December 2019; 31 (4): 1–2. doi: https://doi.org/10.1525/jpms.2019.31.4.1 Download citation file: Ris (Zotero) Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search nav search search input Search input auto suggest search filter All ContentJournal of Popular Music Studies Search At the time we wrote this Editors' Note, Lil Nas X's “Old Town Road” was in its record-setting nineteenth straight week atop the Billboard Hot 100. This song's unprecedented success was made possible, at least in part, by Lil Nas X's mastery of memes and video-based social media. Wayne Marshall talks about this new dimension of popular music's social media ecology in his contribution to this issue's Amplifier section. Studying the circulation of black social dances, such as the Floss and the Milly Rock, on the massively popular interactive online game Fortnite, Marshall raises several concerns about the meme-like circulation of black dance on social media, such as cultural appropriation, digital... © 2019 by the Regents of the University of California. All rights reserved. Please direct all requests for permission to photocopy or reproduce article content through the University of California Press's Reprints and Permissions web page, https://www.ucpress.edu/journals/reprints-permissions.2019 You do not currently have access to this content.

Regulating terrorist content on social media: automation and the rule of law

AbstractSocial-media companies make extensive use of artificial intelligence in their efforts to remove and block terrorist content from their platforms. This paper begins by arguing that, since such efforts amount to an attempt to channel human conduct, they should be regarded as a form of regulation that is subject to rule-of-law principles. The paper then discusses three sets of rule-of-law issues. The first set concerns enforceability. Here, the paper highlights the displacement effects that have resulted from the automated removal and blocking of terrorist content and argues that regard must be had to the whole social-media ecology, as well as to jihadist groups other than the so-called Islamic State and other forms of violent extremism. Since rulebylaw is only a necessary, and not a sufficient, condition for compliance with rule-of-law values, the paper then goes on to examine two further sets of issues: the clarity with which social-media companies define terrorist content and the adequacy of the processes by which a user may appeal against an account suspension or the blocking or removal of content. The paper concludes by identifying a range of research questions that emerge from the discussion and that together form a promising and timely research agenda to which legal scholarship has much to contribute.

Brand yourself, design your future: Portfolio-building in the social media age

While the portfolio-building narrative has long been established as central to work in the creative industries, the evolving form of the creative portfolio as a key component of the self-brand and the implications on creative work in the age of social media have been comparatively underexplored. This empirical project draws on a year-long qualitative study composed of in-depth interviews of 56 graphic design professionals about their use of social media platforms that cater to creative professionals. This study identifies the social media logics of the design portfolio as multi-platformed, connected, and temporally dynamic, suggesting a new pace, constancy, and subjectivity of what it means for cultural producers to build, maintain, and distribute their portfolio of projects to sustain their creative careers. As the portfolio becomes digitally distributed across a social media ecology, the labor of portfolio production for creative aspirants becomes never-ending and requires an intensified performative of “always designing.”

THE SOCIAL MEDIA ECOLOGY OF SPATIAL INEQUALITY IN CAPE TOWN: TWITTER AND INSTAGRAM

While the international community considers Cape Town a ‘modern city’, high levels of inequality persist as a consequence of post-independence apartheid practices. The legacy of apartheid spatial polarisation—gentrification, infrastructural inequalities and affordable housing, has sparked ongoing debate in mainstream media with Cape Town finding itself at the centre of the contention. Cape Town-based activists, organisations and campaigners have opted to use social media platforms to advertise and coordinate protest action for the desegregation of urban land. This paper identified Reclaim the City, Ndifuna Ukwazi and Future Cape Town as the key actors using social media to campaign for spatial equality in Cape Town. As Juris (2012) argues, social media has contributed to an emerging logic of aggregation involving the assembling of masses of individuals from diverse backgrounds to come together in physical spaces. Social media platforms, therefore, become a “temporary performative terrain,” a space for activists to make their struggles visible and to mobilise “crowds of individuals” through viral communication flows (Juris, 2012 : 267). Over the past decade and a half, social media platforms like Twitter, Facebook and Instagram have become an integral part of contemporary communicative practices, providing personal, political, entertainment, sport, technological and scientific information to local communities, often before conventional media outlets like radio, television and print. “The quick rise of social media platforms in the first decade of this century was part of a more general networked culture where information and communication got increasingly defined by the affordances of web technologies” (Van Dijk & Poell, 2013: 5) . Focusing on three of the most popular social networking sites in South Africa: Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, this paper explores how social media has been used to foster awareness, share information and initiate discourse around spatial inequality in Cape Town. Using a combination of quantitative data scraping approaches and qualitative content analysis, this paper explores the central question: What are the prevailing narratives on social media around spatial inequality (including issues related to affordable housing) in Cape Town? The paper argues that the social media ecology of spatial inequality is complex and cosmopolitan due to the interconnectivity and global reach of social media platforms. In order to connect the local agenda to the immediate community and foster international awareness, activists, organisations and campaigners have choreographed their own cohesive narrative that they frequently promote in public social media spaces.

Disrupting Daesh: Measuring Takedown of Online Terrorist Material and Its Impacts

This article contributes to public and policy debates on the value of social media disruption activity with respect to terrorist material. In particular, it explores aggressive account and content takedown, with the aim of accurately measuring this activity and its impacts. The major emphasis of the analysis is the so-called Islamic State (IS) and disruption of their online activity, but a catchall “Other Jihadi” category is also utilized for comparison purposes. Our findings challenge the notion that Twitter remains a conducive space for pro-IS accounts and communities to flourish. However, not all jihadists on Twitter are subject to the same high levels of disruption as IS, and we show that there is differential disruption taking place. IS’s and other jihadists’ online activity was never solely restricted to Twitter; it is just one node in a wider jihadist social media ecology. This is described and some preliminary analysis of disruption trends in this area supplied too.

Locked down apps versus the social media ecology: Why do young people and educators disagree on the best delivery platform for digital sexual health entertainment education?

This article reports on focus groups exploring the best way to reach young men with vulgar comedy videos that provide sexual health information. Young people reported that they found the means by which the material was presented – as a locked down app – to be problematic, and that it would better be delivered through social media platforms such as YouTube. This would make it more ‘spreadable’. By contrast, adult sex education stakeholders thought the material should be contained within a locked down, stand-alone app – otherwise it might be seen by children who are too young, and/or young people might misunderstand the messages. We argue that the difference in approach represented by these two sets of opinions represents a fundamental stumbling block for attempts to reach young people with digital sexual health materials, which can be understood through the prism of different cultural forms – education versus entertainment.

Places going viral: Twitter usage patterns in destination marketing and place branding

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to analyse how Twitter is utilized by five prominent American destination marketing projects (Illinois, San Francisco, Idaho, Texas, and Milwaukee) to understand the overall trends and usage patterns of microblogging, and the relation of social media ecology and place branding. Design/methodology/approach – This is a comparative study of five Twitter accounts belonging to five destination marketing offices (@enjoyillinois, @onlyinsf, @visitidaho, @texastourism, and @visitmilwaukee). This research looks at two different types of communication activities on Twitter: one-way communication (i.e. broadcasting messages), and two-way communication (i.e. conversing with other users). A total of 5,582 tweets created between October 10, 2011 and October 10, 2012 were analyzed in terms of main topics and subjects covered, and main communication activities engaged. Findings – The research found that destination marketing projects tend to use Twitter pre-dominantly to share about events – such as festivals, concerts, and fairs – taking place in their jurisdiction with their followers. These projects do not necessarily make use of interpersonal communication and networking capabilities of Twitter. Rather, this social media platform is used to distribute information online. Originality/value – The findings of this research have practical and theoretical implications. On the practical side, this research sheds light on how Twitter is utilized, and creates recommendations on how destination marketing projects can widen the broadcasting of messages and reach target audiences. On the theoretical side, this research tests the explanatory powers of Kavaratzis' influential city branding framework.

Social media and the transformation of activist communication: exploring the social media ecology of the 2010 Toronto G20 protests

How does the massive use of social media in contemporary protests affect the character of activist communication? Moving away from the conceptualization of social media as tools, this research explores how activist social media communication is entangled with and shaped by heterogeneous techno-cultural and political economic relations. This exploration is pursued through a case study on the social media reporting efforts of the Toronto Community Mobilization Network, which coordinated and facilitated the protests against the 2010 Toronto G-20 summit. The network urged activists to report about the protests on Twitter, YouTube, and Flickr, tagging their contributions #g20report. In addition, it set up a Facebook group and used a blog. The investigation, first, traces the hyperlink network in which the protest communication was embedded. The hyperlink analysis provides a window on the online ecology in which this communication unfolded. In addition, the examination interrogates how the particular technological architectures, related user practices, and business models of the various social platforms steered communication. This investigation shows that the use of social media brings about an acceleration of activist communication, and greatly enhances its visual character. Moreover, as activists massively embrace corporate social media, they increasingly lose control over the data they collective produce, as well as over the very architectures of the spaces through which they communicate.

Prepaid social media and mobile discourse in South Africa

Abstract Broad adoption of social network sites and mobile messaging in South Africa has made many-to-many communication increasingly accessible. This article tackles ongoing issues of differentiated access to and use of mobile communication, and particularly the specific digital materialities involved in mobile-centric access to the Internet. Specific local patterns of adoption and participation are sketched, in particular the influence of differential commodification of mobile communication, the tiered functionality of phones and cost saving through avoidance of high prepaid data tariffs. We present three distinctive case studies of mobile political discourse during The Spear controversy in May 2012 – activists’ MXit profiles, a popular Facebook group, the New Political Forum, and Facebook status updates posted from mobile applications. Both community dynamics in the Facebook group and the limited use of mobile link-sharing in the status updates suggest that commodified communication can stifle certain kinds of mobile participation in public discourse. While mobile use has expanded access to online political discourse, computer and smartphone users occupy a strategic position in a broader social media ecology, where Facebook updates connect with instant messaging, everyday talk and Google and Facebook rankings, where increasingly the question is not only ‘who speaks’, but also ‘who gets heard’.