{"title":"Imagining permanence on the web: Tracing the meanings of long-term preservation among the subjects of web archives","authors":"Kieran Hegarty","doi":"10.1177/14614448231187031","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/14614448231187031","url":null,"abstract":"This article explores how web archiving impacts the online communication practices of individuals whose personal websites have been archived by major public libraries. Drawing on interviews with website creators and analysis of their written reflections on the archiving process, it demonstrates how web archiving alters the meanings people attach to their online activity. In most cases, the preservation of their website in a national web archive sees individuals perceive their communication practices as having wider cultural and historical significance. These meanings are shaped by the distinctive interaction between archiving and archived actors and propelled by imaginaries surrounding the culture and history of the collecting institution. Based on these findings, this article argues that web archiving can be productively understood as an intervention in the dynamics of online sociality and calls for reflexive archival and research practices that attend to the short- and long-term impacts of altering the visibility of online material.","PeriodicalId":443328,"journal":{"name":"New Media & Society","volume":"1 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-07-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"130514822","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
M. Nouwen, Janne Mascha Beuthel, Verena Fuchsberger, B. Zaman
{"title":"Communication between grandparents and young grandchildren over distance: Establishing contact with constitutive nonhumans","authors":"M. Nouwen, Janne Mascha Beuthel, Verena Fuchsberger, B. Zaman","doi":"10.1177/14614448231183703","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/14614448231183703","url":null,"abstract":"Physical items are often taken for granted in mediated communication between grandparents (GP) and young grandchildren (GC). This article puts “constitutive nonhumans” at the center of inquiry to understand the potential of physical items and communication technologies to communicate over distance. The notion of phaticity operationalizes the role of constitutive nonhumans to establish and maintain contact over distance, which might have pleasurable or unpleasurable outcomes. A relational view on agency supports the entanglement of humans and nonhumans when they cooperate to communicate over distance. The article reports on a two-phase qualitative study that was conducted in two European countries with 10 GP (aged 60–75 years) and 10 GC (aged 6–11 years). The results identify how the entanglement between constitutive nonhumans conflates emotional connection and contact. Furthermore, the results suggest that the condition of familiarity can direct contact to pleasant or unpleasant outcomes that might differ across mediated and co-located communication.","PeriodicalId":443328,"journal":{"name":"New Media & Society","volume":"17 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-07-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"122992233","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Julia Jakob, Chung-hong Chan, Timo Dobbrick, Hartmut Wessler
{"title":"Discourse integration in positional online news reader comments: Patterns of responsiveness across types of democracy, digital platforms, and perspective camps","authors":"Julia Jakob, Chung-hong Chan, Timo Dobbrick, Hartmut Wessler","doi":"10.1177/14614448231183704","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/14614448231183704","url":null,"abstract":"Online discourse integration, or the degree to which online user comments are responsive, that is, address or refer to other debate participants, is a normatively valued yet neglected quality dimension of online discussions. This preregistered study features the first cross-country/cross-platform investigation of online discourse integration, using manual and computational content analysis ( N = 9835 and N = 30,753 positional news reader comments). Unexpectedly, about one quarter of the comments was responsive in both majoritarian and consensus-oriented democracies (Australia/United States vs Germany/Switzerland) and on platforms that separate or mix public and private contexts (websites vs Facebook pages of mainstream media), even though other deliberative quality criteria were previously shown to vary by country and platform. Comments that are responsive to fellow commenters in the opposing perspective camp were more likely to contain negative evaluations of those addressed, whereas comments responsive within the same perspective camp were more likely to contain positive evaluations.","PeriodicalId":443328,"journal":{"name":"New Media & Society","volume":"15 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-07-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"133990259","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"‘Neither work nor leisure’: Motivations of microworkers in the United Kingdom on three digital platforms","authors":"J. Muldoon, Paul Apostolidis","doi":"10.1177/14614448231183942","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/14614448231183942","url":null,"abstract":"This article examines the experience of microworkers living in the United Kingdom. Based on a survey of 1189 microworkers and 17 in-depth interviews, the article explores the experiences of UK-based microworkers on three digital platforms: Prolific, Clickworker and Amazon Mechanical Turk. The article draws on the theoretical framework of self-determination theory to analyse workers’ motivations for performing microwork. It reveals that workers’ relatively high satisfaction with otherwise low-paying and low-status work was possible because workers conceptualised their activity as occupying an ambiguous space and time in their lives, blurring traditional distinctions between work and leisure. These findings contribute to our understanding of how microworkers experience their relationship to work in the United Kingdom.","PeriodicalId":443328,"journal":{"name":"New Media & Society","volume":"111 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-07-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"133443253","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Brent Lucia, Matthew A. Vetter, Isaac Kwabena Adubofour
{"title":"Behold the metaverse: Facebook’s Meta imaginary and the circulation of elite discourse","authors":"Brent Lucia, Matthew A. Vetter, Isaac Kwabena Adubofour","doi":"10.1177/14614448231184249","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/14614448231184249","url":null,"abstract":"Despite pushback from regulatory and non-governmental entities, Meta’s control over the public narrative remains consistent. Using a method of corpus analysis, this study investigated the company’s sociotechnical imaginary as it circulates in media artifacts (428) responding to Zuckerberg’s 2021 Metaverse announcement. Analysis of how these artifacts respond to issues related to identity, security, and connectivity revealed that the majority amplify Meta’s corporate messaging, empowering its elite discourse and solidifying its socio-technological power. As it relates to user privacy, however, this study uncovered a limited number of artifacts in which journalists challenged rather than repeated Meta’s rhetoric. As an implication of this finding, future tech journalism should consider privacy as a starting point for critiques that also interrogate the underlying logic of surveillance capitalism and user exploitation. Ultimately, this article addresses the rhetorical functions deployed in the circulation of elite discourse while acknowledging the dynamism of sociotechnical imaginaries.","PeriodicalId":443328,"journal":{"name":"New Media & Society","volume":"31 4 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-07-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"128351053","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"A new solution to political divisiveness: Priming a sense of common humanity through Facebook meme-like posts","authors":"Gina M. Masullo","doi":"10.1177/14614448231184633","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/14614448231184633","url":null,"abstract":"This two-study package examines sense of common humanity—a subcomponent of the psychological construct of self-compassion—in relation to political divisiveness. Study 1 ( n = 1010) employs a survey with a probability sample representative of the US population to show that sense of common humanity—recognizing that feeling bad about oneself is a common human experience—is associated with feeling competent to form relationships with those one disagrees with politically. This finding paved the way for Study 2, an experiment ( n = 955) that showed sense of common humanity can be primed using meme-like posts on Facebook, and, as a result, lead people to have more positive attitudes toward their political outgroup. From a theoretical perspective, this study demonstrates the relevance of using self-compassion as a framework for addressing political divisiveness, and that a sense of common humanity can be primed in the computer-mediated space of Facebook.","PeriodicalId":443328,"journal":{"name":"New Media & Society","volume":"40 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-07-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"117192301","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Does aggressive commentary by streamers during violent video game affect state aggression in adolescents?","authors":"D. Lacko, Eliška Dufková, H. Machácková","doi":"10.1177/14614448231182620","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/14614448231182620","url":null,"abstract":"In the past 10 years, live-streaming services have gained huge popularity. Streamers usually play video games and complement their performance with commentary. We examine the role of this streamer commentary on state aggression in Czech adolescents who were randomly assigned into one of the three experimental groups (i.e. aggressive commentary, non-aggressive commentary, no commentary). The findings suggest that a short-term streamer’s commentary has no effect on affective and cognitive state aggression. In addition, the experimental conditions did not moderate any effects of personal traits (i.e. aggression, empathy) and long-term environmental factors (i.e. exposure to violence, watching violent streams, playing violent video games) on state aggression. We found that trait aggression, trait affective empathy and long-term exposure to violence were positively associated with state aggression, whereas trait sympathy was negatively associated with state aggression. The findings enrich the research with evidence for the lack of influence of streamer commentary on viewer aggression.","PeriodicalId":443328,"journal":{"name":"New Media & Society","volume":"105 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-07-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"124748213","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The tension between connective action and platformisation: Disconnected action in the GameStop short squeeze","authors":"Michael Vaughan, Johannes B. Gruber, A. I. Langer","doi":"10.1177/14614448231182617","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/14614448231182617","url":null,"abstract":"Although the Reddit-led short squeeze of GameStop shares in 2021 drew comparisons with Occupy Wall Street, this article focuses on one key area of difference: where Occupy exemplified the theoretical model of connective action through its discursive and technological openness, mobilisation around the short squeeze followed a different pattern characterised by discursive and technological disconnections, which we argue partly reflects the intervening decade of platformisation. Our case shows how platforms can establish boundaries as well as brokerage points in contentious politics, with particular regard to repertoires of action, collective identities and discourses. We show how in our case, these boundaries impeded discursive and technological connections, instead organising users into relatively disconnected zones and ultimately reducing their power and impact over broader discursive systems. Our argument is explored using three data sets from Reddit, Twitter and legacy news media outlets, using a combination of non-negative matrix factorisation (NMF) topic modelling and manual content analysis.","PeriodicalId":443328,"journal":{"name":"New Media & Society","volume":"109 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"115547941","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Decolonizing the pocket monster: Smartphones, Pokémon Go and generational conflict in Malaysian Borneo","authors":"Asmus Rungby, P. Bala","doi":"10.1177/14614448231181620","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/14614448231181620","url":null,"abstract":"This article analyzes the generational politics of smartphones in the Malaysian state of Sarawak in the context of Bornean history and contemporary Sarawakian political economy. We respond to a global north bias in the standing literature on smartphone media and suggest approaches to improve representation of global south perspectives. Concretely, we propose three programmatic maxims as a methodological guide to incorporate perspectives and concerns from the global south more fully. Drawing on long-term ethnographic research in Sarawak, we demonstrate the value of these suggestions by framing smartphones in the perspective of Bornean history as tools for maintaining instrumental social networks more than exchanging information across spatial disjunction. These tools are used differently by young urbanites and older rural populations. This leads us to show how Pokémon Go refracts generational conflicts by becoming the cultural touchstone of the changing political economic conditions of Malaysian urbanization.","PeriodicalId":443328,"journal":{"name":"New Media & Society","volume":"95 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-06-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"124265892","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Not all skepticism is “healthy” skepticism: Theorizing accuracy- and identity-motivated skepticism toward social media misinformation","authors":"Jianing Li","doi":"10.1177/14614448231179941","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/14614448231179941","url":null,"abstract":"Fostering skepticism has been seen as key to addressing misinformation on social media. This article reveals that not all skepticism is “healthy” skepticism by theorizing, measuring, and testing the effects of two types of skepticism toward social media misinformation: accuracy- and identity-motivated skepticism. A two-wave panel survey experiment shows that when people’s skepticism toward social media misinformation is driven by accuracy motivations, they are less likely to believe in congruent misinformation later encountered. They also consume more mainstream media, which in turn reinforces accuracy-motivated skepticism. In contrast, when skepticism toward social media misinformation is driven by identity motivations, people not only fall for congruent misinformation later encountered, but also disregard platform interventions that flag a post as false. Moreover, they are more likely to see social media misinformation as favoring opponents and intentionally avoid news on social media, both of which form a vicious cycle of fueling more identity-motivated skepticism.","PeriodicalId":443328,"journal":{"name":"New Media & Society","volume":"38 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-06-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"127747829","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}