{"title":"Paid, but not a partner: Monetization without standing in Facebook’s Performance Bonus Program","authors":"Rebecca C. Hains","doi":"10.1177/14614448261498621","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/14614448261498621","url":null,"abstract":"Platform revenue-sharing programs both pay and govern creators. Drawing on interviews with 18 participants in Facebook’s Performance Bonus Program (PBP) and the author’s own participation, this study examines how monetization reshaped creators’ platform governance expectations. PBP’s onboarding, which addressed recipients as “valued creators” and promised earnings of “up to $30,000 a month,” combined with early recurring payouts to cultivate expectations of continuity and institutional responsiveness, particularly among participants new to monetization. When enforcement errors, payout volatility, and support failures followed, participants discovered that payment had not conferred meaningful access to explanation, human review, or recourse. This article theorizes that condition as <jats:italic toggle=\"yes\">monetization without standing</jats:italic> : a governance arrangement in which creators are compensated and governed as laborers while denied the procedural recognition typically associated with paid work. This arrangement constitutes a breach of the psychological contract generated by monetization, producing durable behavioral constraint, disparate impacts on marginalized creators, and creator attrition.","PeriodicalId":19149,"journal":{"name":"New Media & Society","volume":"105 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":5.0,"publicationDate":"2026-11-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"149304406","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Fuck You, Pay Me: Payment apps, review platforms, and ambivalent resistance in the influencer industry","authors":"Sarah Edwards","doi":"10.1177/14614448261493408","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/14614448261493408","url":null,"abstract":"This article critically examines emerging intermediaries in the influencer industry that aggregate anonymous reviews of brands and allow influencers to report how much they were paid. Turning to four intermediaries (Fuck You Pay Me, Willa, Hashtag Pay Me, and Clara for Creators), I argue that although these emerging intermediaries represent an important step toward creating more equity, these efforts are a double-edged sword and represent a form of ambivalent resistance to broader structures governing the influencer industry. While these intermediaries are used to resist the precarity of platformized and branded cultural production, these transactions have the potential to be co-opted—used for surveillance and data tracking by brands, platforms, and corporations—potentially blunting emerging forms of collective action and solidarity. Ultimately, these intermediaries provide an opportunity to theorize forms of resistance to precarity as neither “top-down” nor “bottom-up,” but rather a means of negotiating and navigating power from limited and precarious positions.","PeriodicalId":19149,"journal":{"name":"New Media & Society","volume":"7 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":5.0,"publicationDate":"2026-11-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"149304405","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Ambivalence and antagonism: The intertwinement of gossiping and public shaming on social media","authors":"Hanna-Kaisa Lassila","doi":"10.1177/14614448261500889","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/14614448261500889","url":null,"abstract":"The vernacular practices of public shaming and gossiping on social media function both as entertainment and as disciplinary mechanisms. This article investigates two Finnish subreddits on Reddit, where gossiping and public shaming practices are closely intertwined. On these subreddits, screenshots of Finnish social media content creators’ posts are intensely circulated, scrutinised and dissected. This article examines how the gossiping practices are tied to the vernacular practices of public shaming on social media and what these practices are affixed to within the discourses created on these subreddits. The study found that the entertainment and judgement derived from these practices are tethered to themes of unpredictability, ambivalence and community building. These create moral discourses about non-normative ways of self-presentation and public conduct, both in corporal and online realms. Moreover, this study exemplifies that when gossiping and public shaming on social media intertwine, the line between disciplining and bullying becomes easier to cross.","PeriodicalId":19149,"journal":{"name":"New Media & Society","volume":"10 9 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":5.0,"publicationDate":"2026-11-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"149304403","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Guardians of the cyberverse: Dispositional, attitudinal, and autobiographical correlates of user engagement against misogynist digital hate","authors":"Rinat Meerson,Kevin Koban,Jörg Matthes","doi":"10.1177/14614448261492098","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/14614448261492098","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":19149,"journal":{"name":"New Media & Society","volume":"96 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":5.0,"publicationDate":"2026-10-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"149226217","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Stress and self-efficacy under artificial intelligence disruption: A mixed-methods study on the usage of artificial intelligence among Finnish workers","authors":"Atte Oksanen, Teo Keipi, Moona Heiskari, Iina Savolainen","doi":"10.1177/14614448261488700","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/14614448261488700","url":null,"abstract":"Rapid workplace integration of artificial intelligence (AI) is reshaping work practices and challenging employees’ self-efficacy and well-being. This mixed-methods study examines these experiences using national survey data ( <jats:italic toggle=\"yes\">N</jats:italic> = 2109) and qualitative interviews ( <jats:italic toggle=\"yes\">N</jats:italic> = 54) with Finnish workers. Frequent AI use, AI-induced identity threat, and organizational AI deployment are associated with higher AI strain, whereas AI self-efficacy relates to frequent use, positive AI attitudes, and subjective well-being. Identity threat moderated several of these associations, highlighting the role of professional identity in AI-related experiences. Analysis drawing on Greimas’ semiotic modalities (must, can, know, and want) explains how these patterns are interpreted and negotiated in practice, revealing tensions between perceived self-efficacy and pressures to integrate AI. AI use was often described as voluntary. However, participants anticipated increasing competence demands and responsibility. The findings emphasize the need for organizational strategies that address identity-related challenges and support employee well-being in AI-driven work transformations.","PeriodicalId":19149,"journal":{"name":"New Media & Society","volume":"292 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":5.0,"publicationDate":"2026-10-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"149199008","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Praise, rent, and the platform: Substack and the enclosure of blog culture","authors":"Will Riley","doi":"10.1177/14614448261488694","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/14614448261488694","url":null,"abstract":"This article situates Substack within the platformisation of blogging and the enclosure of cultural production within proprietary infrastructures. Tracing the genealogy of blogging as a decentralised practice that carried within it the seeds of citizen journalism and informal intellectual life, I argue that Substack does not restore an apparently lost cultural practice but renegotiates and interpolates blogging into a platformised logic. Framed as a return to independent, writer-led publishing, Substack instead, as I argue, renders free-labour interaction as a source of rent. I analyse the rhetoric and revolving discourse around Substack’s internal curatorial project, ‘The Substack Post’. Drawing on Jodi Dean’s account of blogs as displaced mediators alongside theories of digital labour and platform capitalism, and approaching Substack as a simultaneously platformised and infrastructuralised formation, I argue that praise operates as a platform-specific form of commodity fetishism, animating the platform while obscuring the labour relations that sustain it.","PeriodicalId":19149,"journal":{"name":"New Media & Society","volume":"13 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":5.0,"publicationDate":"2026-10-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"149130338","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Platformed affective withdrawal: Quiet quitting and the refusal of gendered emotional labour on TikTok","authors":"Aybüke Büyükkağnıcı","doi":"10.1177/14614448261488701","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/14614448261488701","url":null,"abstract":"This article examines #quietquitting on TikTok as a platform-mediated articulation of gendered affective withdrawal. While organisational research interprets quiet quitting as reduced discretionary effort or declining work engagement, this study examines how quiet quitting is articulated as a digitally circulated refusal of feminised emotional labour. Drawing on feminist theories of affective labour and critical platform studies, the analysis explores how workers renegotiate expectations of emotional availability within algorithmically structured visibility regimes. The study is based on a qualitative-dominant mixed-methods analysis of 586 TikTok videos shared under #quietquitting between 2020 and 2026. Combining thematic discourse analysis with descriptive engagement indicators, the findings show that creators frequently frame quiet quitting as a refusal of unpaid relational mediation, emotional management, and workplace care. The article introduces the concept of platformed affective withdrawal to explain how narratives of workplace disengagement circulate through algorithmic visibility systems that amplify and individualise gendered labour inequalities.","PeriodicalId":19149,"journal":{"name":"New Media & Society","volume":"39 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":5.0,"publicationDate":"2026-10-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"149130337","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Carlos Entrena-Serrano, Trisha Meyer, Emilia Gómez, Jo Pierson
{"title":"“ In a way, I want TikTok to tell me what I want. . . ” Users’ experience of TikTok as a televisual algorithmic flow","authors":"Carlos Entrena-Serrano, Trisha Meyer, Emilia Gómez, Jo Pierson","doi":"10.1177/14614448261477680","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/14614448261477680","url":null,"abstract":"This article revisits Williams’s concept of flow, Firth’s notion of algorithmic flow, and Picone et al.’s concept of Small Acts of Engagement (SAOE) to examine how users experience TikTok’s algorithmic flow. SAOE are understood as low-effort, everyday acts through which users negotiate their identities and shape their digital consumption. While SAOE have been a valuable lens for understanding user agency on earlier social media platforms, we argue that TikTok’s interface design and cultural framing introduce new challenges. The platform’s design, together with users’ perception of TikTok’s algorithmic flow as a televisual experience, reduces their SAOE to a minimal expression: a rhythm of <jats:italic toggle=\"yes\">watch, scroll, repeat</jats:italic> , discouraging other forms of intentional, identity-driven engagement. Through a mixed-methods study combining interviews and analysis of participants’ donated TikTok data, we show how our participants experience TikTok as a place for effortless entertainment and continuous consumption, closely resembling the experience of traditional television flow.","PeriodicalId":19149,"journal":{"name":"New Media & Society","volume":"19 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":5.0,"publicationDate":"2026-09-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148946800","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Josephine Lukito, Yini Zhang, Bin Chen, Stephen Prochaska, Meredith L. Pruden, Yunkang Yang, Wei Zhong, Megan A. Brown, Ross Dahlke, Jason Greenfield, Jiyoun Suk, Porismita Borah
{"title":"Cross-platformization: How U.S. right-leaning media curate their posts on Twitter and Truth Social","authors":"Josephine Lukito, Yini Zhang, Bin Chen, Stephen Prochaska, Meredith L. Pruden, Yunkang Yang, Wei Zhong, Megan A. Brown, Ross Dahlke, Jason Greenfield, Jiyoun Suk, Porismita Borah","doi":"10.1177/14614448261470889","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/14614448261470889","url":null,"abstract":"This study examines how seven right-leaning media organizations utilize cross-platformization strategies to reach audiences across multiple platforms; in this case, Twitter and Truth Social. Focusing on both content volume and story packaging, we collect right-leaning media organizations’ social media posts and content from the 2022 U.S. midterm election. Combining computational and qualitative methods, we find that outlets posted only a small share of total stories across the two platforms and were selective in their content, often posting only on Twitter or Truth Social. For content posted on both platforms, the outlets posted content that ideologically aligned with the users of that platform. More specifically, right-leaning outlets on Truth Social tailored their posts to ideologically aligned users.","PeriodicalId":19149,"journal":{"name":"New Media & Society","volume":"34 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":5.0,"publicationDate":"2026-09-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148899427","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Lisette Yip, Emma F. Thomas, Hawa Muhammad Farid, M. Noor Tahir
{"title":"Are they virtue-signalling or sincere? The impact of perceived motives on the effectiveness of online collective action","authors":"Lisette Yip, Emma F. Thomas, Hawa Muhammad Farid, M. Noor Tahir","doi":"10.1177/14614448261475059","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/14614448261475059","url":null,"abstract":"Social media is an important tool used by supporters of modern social movements to persuade others to participate. However, people who engage in online collective action often face speculation about their motives and may be perceived as acting for self-serving reasons. How do these perceptions impact the effectiveness of collective action? In three experiments ( <jats:italic toggle=\"yes\">N</jats:italic> = 916), participants viewed posts (Study 1) or an immersive social media feed (Studies 2–3) where a user encouraged them to take action for a political cause. They stated that they acted out of genuine concern (autonomous motivation), to avoid guilt and social disapproval (controlled motivation), or did not specify (baseline). Participants who viewed controlled-motivated posts perceived the user as less autonomously motivated and were therefore less likely to socially identify as supporters or take collective action. Thus, movements will be more effective at mobilising (online) support when they are seen to arise from autonomous motives.","PeriodicalId":19149,"journal":{"name":"New Media & Society","volume":"1 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":5.0,"publicationDate":"2026-09-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148899426","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}