Hashtagging for Inclusion: Complex Identities in Singaporean Gay Men’s Social Representation on Instagram

IF 5.5 1区文学 Q1 COMMUNICATION

Social Media + Society Pub Date : 2024-08-12 DOI:10.1177/20563051241269299

Langcheng Zhang, Edson C. Tandoc

引用次数: 0

Abstract

Beyond indexing content and creating networks, hashtags can also convey social meanings. From the perspective of social representation, this article investigates how gay men in Singapore use various hashtags to represent their complex identities and create a shared meaning of being gay in Singapore. Through a textual analysis of identity-related posts generated by gay Instagram users in Singapore, we identified two patterns of using gay-related hashtags: habitual and contextual. Both patterns rely on and demonstrate the identity complexity of gay users. The patterns suggest the users’ identity management online while engendering different forms of social representation for Singaporean gay men. By using non-gay hashtags and juxtaposing them with gay ones, the users could disseminate outreach information, establish social connections, and improve the digital inclusion of their group. We also found unusual exclusions of gay hashtags, suggesting the potential conflict between gayness and some traditional values/roles in Singapore.

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Hashtagging促进包容：新加坡男同性恋在 Instagram 上的社交表现中的复杂身份

除了索引内容和创建网络，标签还能传达社会意义。本文从社会表征的角度出发，研究了新加坡男同性恋如何使用各种标签来代表他们复杂的身份，并创造出在新加坡成为同性恋的共同意义。通过对新加坡男同性恋 Instagram 用户发布的与身份相关的帖子进行文本分析，我们发现了使用与男同性恋相关的标签的两种模式：习惯性和情境性。这两种模式都依赖于同性恋用户身份的复杂性，并展示了这种复杂性。这两种模式表明了用户在网上的身份管理，同时也为新加坡男同性恋带来了不同形式的社会表征。通过使用非同性恋标签并将其与同性恋标签并列，用户可以传播外联信息，建立社会联系，提高其群体的数字包容性。我们还发现了同性恋标签被排斥在外的异常现象，这表明同性恋与新加坡的某些传统价值观/角色之间存在潜在冲突。

本文章由计算机程序翻译，如有差异，请以英文原文为准。

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来源期刊

Social Media + Society COMMUNICATION-

CiteScore

9.20

自引率

3.80%

发文量

111

审稿时长

12 weeks

期刊介绍： Social Media + Society is an open access, peer-reviewed scholarly journal that focuses on the socio-cultural, political, psychological, historical, economic, legal and policy dimensions of social media in societies past, contemporary and future. We publish interdisciplinary work that draws from the social sciences, humanities and computational social sciences, reaches out to the arts and natural sciences, and we endorse mixed methods and methodologies. The journal is open to a diversity of theoretic paradigms and methodologies. The editorial vision of Social Media + Society draws inspiration from research on social media to outline a field of study poised to reflexively grow as social technologies evolve. We foster the open access of sharing of research on the social properties of media, as they manifest themselves through the uses people make of networked platforms past and present, digital and non. The journal presents a collaborative, open, and shared space, dedicated exclusively to the study of social media and their implications for societies. It facilitates state-of-the-art research on cutting-edge trends and allows scholars to focus and track trends specific to this field of study.