Catherine E. Slavik, N. Yiannakoulias, Charlotte Buttle, J. Darlington
{"title":"‘Vaccinfluencers’: a study of influential voices criticizing COVID-19 vaccination efforts and negative vaccine information discourse on Twitter","authors":"Catherine E. Slavik, N. Yiannakoulias, Charlotte Buttle, J. Darlington","doi":"10.1080/10714421.2023.2214057","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/10714421.2023.2214057","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT In late 2020, the large-scale rollout of COVID-19 vaccines to combat the global pandemic ignited a firestorm of debates and media discourse on vaccines. We conducted a discourse analysis of tweets (n = 875) criticizing the COVID-19 vaccination process and/or containing negative vaccine information (NVI) authored by influential Twitter accounts receiving the highest user engagement. Results showed news media and private citizens to be important influencers of NVI discourse criticizing the COVID-19 vaccination process on Twitter. The most frequently expressed beliefs centered around ineffective vaccine policies and inadequate government responses. A content analysis revealed that on average, tweets criticizing a broader inadequate public health response were the most retweeted. Statistically significant differences in vaccine discourse were found between Canada and the United States, underscoring the importance of local context-specific factors that influence how Twitter users construct issues related to COVID-19 vaccination. Our results suggest that satisfaction with the leaders in charge of the rollout of COVID-19 vaccines may have depended more on how those leaders acted rather than actual vaccination rates. Studying concerns and criticisms toward vaccination and NVI are key to identifying areas of change in vaccine policies and programs that citizens and other actors want to see implemented.","PeriodicalId":46140,"journal":{"name":"COMMUNICATION REVIEW","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.9,"publicationDate":"2023-05-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44047974","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":"“Maybe I should get rid of it for a while…”: Examining motivations and challenges for social media disconnection","authors":"M. Nguyen","doi":"10.1080/10714421.2023.2195795","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/10714421.2023.2195795","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT This study explores the motivations for why people disconnect from social media and the challenges they experience in doing so. Drawing on 30 in-depth interviews with current and past social media users aged 21–39, the study finds that people discontinue, take breaks from, or change their use of social media for various reasons (e.g., lack of interest, overuse and overload, privacy concerns, social influences, keeping a work-life balance), but disconnection experiences vary greatly across individuals as well as within individuals over time. Notably, disconnection does not always follow negative experiences with social media, but can also be triggered by important life transitions or broader lifestyle choices. People also experience various practical, social, and societal challenges, making disconnection not always desirable or possible. Ultimately, this study gives insight into the factors that contribute to people’s complex and ambivalent relationship with social media. Thereby, it extends our understanding of the ever-evolving uses and perceptions of social media in a time where digital media is omnipresent.","PeriodicalId":46140,"journal":{"name":"COMMUNICATION REVIEW","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.9,"publicationDate":"2023-04-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47206363","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 “Great Awokening”: Racial narratives in reporting on the working class in White leftist and Black newspapers during the 2016 United States presidential election","authors":"M. C. Thornton, Jeff Tischauser","doi":"10.1080/10714421.2023.2194229","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/10714421.2023.2194229","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT Recent events in the United States galvanized by race have purportedly had a significant effect on the wider society’s appreciation of systemic racism, some calling this the “Great Awokening.” Some social commentators assert that it is now the norm for “leftists” to reveal “not a strain of racism,” while others argue that they are now farther left than average Black voters. We critique this assertion of a new metamorphosis among White people by exploring how White leftist print media contrasts with Black newspaper reporting on the shape of working class people during the 2016 United States presidential race. Using textual analysis, we examined articles culled from Ethnic NewsWatch (424 articles) and the Alternative Press Index (303) and found two fundamentally divergent patterns about race’s role. We found that the left-wing White press used a color-blind rhetoric to narrate stories about a racially homogenized working class, a distinctly downtrodden sector of America oppressed by elites. In utilizing a color-blind frame, the reporting failed to confront how systemic racism was a fundamental context to understanding the election. In contrast, Black newspapers described a working class world that was multiracial and actively resistant to structures of oppression.","PeriodicalId":46140,"journal":{"name":"COMMUNICATION REVIEW","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.9,"publicationDate":"2023-04-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43308278","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":"Racialized Media: The Design, Delivery, and Decoding of Race and Ethnicity","authors":"Maryann Erigha Lawer","doi":"10.1080/10714421.2023.2189397","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/10714421.2023.2189397","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":46140,"journal":{"name":"COMMUNICATION REVIEW","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.9,"publicationDate":"2023-03-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45127602","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":"Reviewing the impact of Facebook on civic participation: The mediating role of algorithmic curation and platform affordances","authors":"Venetia Papa, Nikandros Ioannides","doi":"10.1080/10714421.2023.2186680","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/10714421.2023.2186680","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT Datafication changes variables of our society within the political and cultural realms. In this study, we argue that platform affordances and algorithmic curation can impact users’ civic participation through filtering and classifying users’ online political content. Scholars from various disciplines – among them communication, computational studies, and political science – are working on different concepts in order to understand such effects. What we already know is that users’ civic participation is often mediated by algorithmic curation on the one hand, and by the platform’s built-in logic – often referred as mechanisms of affordances – on the other. Few works are cited across the field pointing out the significance of algorithmic personalization in the making of civic participation. One question that still plagues the research is how the impact of Facebook on civic participation is mediated by algorithmic curation and platform affordances. This paper responds to this need by locating existing scholarship within a common conceptual framework using as a starting point: algorithmic curation, civic participation, and platform affordances. This provides a logical structure that facilitates connections between concepts and disciplines that might otherwise be difficult to discern on an interdisciplinary basis.","PeriodicalId":46140,"journal":{"name":"COMMUNICATION REVIEW","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.9,"publicationDate":"2023-03-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41513452","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":"What we talk about when we talk about digital Holocaust memory: A systematic analysis of research published in academic journals, 2010–2022","authors":"Noam Tirosh, Roni Mikel-Arieli","doi":"10.1080/10714421.2023.2177489","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/10714421.2023.2177489","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT In recent years, digital technologies have presented new opportunities for innovative Holocaust commemoration and education. Accordingly, scholars across disciplines have focused on “digital Holocaust memory” as a new frontier in both research and practice. But what exactly do they mean when they use this term? This article provides a systematic analysis of the literature regarding digital Holocaust memory as published in leading academic journals between 2010 and 2022. We position the digitalization of Holocaust memory within the context of the global evolution of memory culture and differentiate between the Holocaust’s “master narrative” and alternative, more peripheral Holocaust-related themes and perspectives. Scholars perceive the digitalization of Holocaust memory as enabling a new focus on marginal Holocaust-related narratives, but we demonstrate that they nevertheless tend to remain in the comfort zone of well-established Holocaust narratives while ignoring digital commemoration and education taking place at geographic and thematic margins. By focusing on the traditional master narrative of the Holocaust, we argue that the extant literature regarding digital Holocaust memory primarily serves to preserve the centrality of this narrative.","PeriodicalId":46140,"journal":{"name":"COMMUNICATION REVIEW","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.9,"publicationDate":"2023-02-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42285787","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}
C. Pentzold, Conrad Zuber, Florian Osterloh, D. Fechner
{"title":"Redrawing the lines of veracity in the Sharpiegate affair: “Pre-truth” claims in a Post-truth order","authors":"C. Pentzold, Conrad Zuber, Florian Osterloh, D. Fechner","doi":"10.1080/10714421.2023.2182081","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/10714421.2023.2182081","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT Looking back at the 2019 Sharpiegate affair, the article investigates the articulation of “pre-truth,” which became evident when a willful ambivalence toward factual evidence dovetailed with a juxtaposition of provisional, future-oriented truth claims. In general, the maneuver works by taking predictive statements from the past and characterizing them as accurate from the standpoint of the present even when superseded by subsequent evidence. The notion of “pre-truth” adds nuance to conceptions of post-truth by looking more closely at the intertwining of veracity and temporality. Drawing lessons from the Sharpiegate affair, we show how the @realDonaldTrump Twitter account was employed to distort meteorological forecasts and challenge journalism’s privilege to premediate events as they unfold. In turn, legacy media organizations struggled to ward off these attacks. We investigate the snowballing U.S. news story around the affair using tweets and articles and reconstruct the frames bolstering the attempted pushback. None of the frames we found were new. Rather, they reflect yet another moment of public consternation and its limitations in coming to terms with the versatile repertoire of populist truth-tampering.","PeriodicalId":46140,"journal":{"name":"COMMUNICATION REVIEW","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.9,"publicationDate":"2023-02-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44367229","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":"Countering online hate speech through legislative measures: The Ethiopian approach from a comparative perspective","authors":"Temelso Gashaw Getahun","doi":"10.1080/10714421.2023.2177487","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/10714421.2023.2177487","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT It is apparent that the phenomenon of online hate speech is increasing at a meteoric rate. Meanwhile, governments around the world are resorting to legislative measures in an attempt to address this pernicious social problem. Yet, while much of the discourse has been on how these legislative efforts may inadvertently affect individuals’ right to freedom of expression in established liberal democracies, little is known about the collateral costs of similar trends in developing countries with a burgeoning democratic culture. For this reason, it is imperative to assess how and to what extent legal frameworks for the moderation of user-generated online content may portend dire consequences for freedom of speech in non-democratic countries like Ethiopia, where there are distinct media and socio-political environments. Using comparative legal research methodology, this research article seeks to offer an overview of the legislative responses to online hate speech in different jurisdictions, drawing from normatively preferable policy frameworks, to provide some insights into how gaps in the new Ethiopian hate speech and disinformation prevention law can be filled.","PeriodicalId":46140,"journal":{"name":"COMMUNICATION REVIEW","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.9,"publicationDate":"2023-02-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41593042","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":"Dislike-Minded: Media, Audiences, and the Dynamics of Taste","authors":"Mel Stanfill","doi":"10.1080/10714421.2023.2165765","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/10714421.2023.2165765","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":46140,"journal":{"name":"COMMUNICATION REVIEW","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.9,"publicationDate":"2023-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"59939192","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}