Social Media + Society最新文献

{"title":"Belonging and Social Media: Latinx Teenagers’ Experiences in a YPAR Study","authors":"Holland P. Kowalkowski, Angela D. R. Smith","doi":"10.1177/20563051251319577","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/20563051251319577","url":null,"abstract":"Drawing on figured worlds and geographies of selves frameworks, we use critical ethnographic methods to explore three Latina teenagers’ experiences and ideas about social media and identity that were expressed throughout a Youth Participatory Action Research (YPAR) project. While their discussions show a clear awareness that these sites are often inaccurate and biased, teenagers still admit to comparing themselves with others online and feeling disconnected. By sharing stories about racial and linguistic discrimination in virtual spaces, participants highlight how many social inequities are being reproduced online. However, they also express optimism that social media has potential to offer new ways to connect with their communities and express multifaceted identities. Their experiences highlight a need for intentional opportunities in our schools and communities to critically reflect on ways that technology positions us and explore our power to redefine these roles.","PeriodicalId":47920,"journal":{"name":"Social Media + Society","volume":"17 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":5.2,"publicationDate":"2025-02-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143462243","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":"Tensions, Confrontations, and Consensus: WhatsApp Use in Kenyan Electoral Politics","authors":"Job Allan Wefwafwa, Bob Wekesa, Iginio Gagliardone","doi":"10.1177/20563051251315252","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/20563051251315252","url":null,"abstract":"Social media has enhanced culturally grounded debates and ethnicity-based exclusionism during Kenya’s WhatsApp group deliberations. These practices are often more pronounced during elections when WhatsApp becomes a social media platform of choice for various groups. Exclusionism takes at least two vectors. On the one hand, tensions and confrontations emerge as electoral deliberations proceed. On the other hand, consensus on WhatsApp spaces also emerges during the electoral deliberations as in-groups forge common ground. To analyze the splits in elections-based deliberations on WhatsApp, the article starts with an interrogation of how history and culture inform the Kenyan people’s use of WhatsApp space for electoral deliberations. Among others, the people use the platform to resolve perceived and real political injustices perpetrated in the society by previous governments, resulting in tensions and confrontations. The article argues that the origin of the tensions is the fact that most African people have dual “citizenship,” whereby they simultaneously belong to their ethnic communities while being part of the broader Kenyan nation. It theoretically engages Ekeh and Langmia to argue that the people concurrently fall into the primordial publics and civic publics, leading to dialectical tensions, confrontation, and consensus between the two categorizations. These tensions, confrontations, and consensuses spill over into the WhatsApp groups, with electoral deliberations registering the peak in these splits. The case of the Bungoma County and its linkage to the broader Kenyan nation serve as the site for empirical data. The method for data collection is qualitative. The article uses participant observation and face-to-face interviews to investigate how the people’s historical and cultural values inform their use of WhatsApp space during electoral deliberations. The findings reveal how the people’s historical and cultural values shape their use of WhatsApp space. The implication of the research is to explore the African people’s cultural adaptation of technology and to invite more Afrocentric theorization on technology adaptation in African societies.","PeriodicalId":47920,"journal":{"name":"Social Media + Society","volume":"89 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":5.2,"publicationDate":"2025-02-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143462242","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":"“An Archipelago of Signifiers”: Caribbean Genetic Test Reveal Videos and the Resistance of the Creole Imagination","authors":"S. Nisa Asgarali-Hoffman","doi":"10.1177/20563051251319576","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/20563051251319576","url":null,"abstract":"This article presents an analysis of YouTube videos wherein creators reveal the results of their direct-to-consumer genetic ancestry tests. I analyze these reveal videos, their comment threads, and the role of YouTube in hosting these videos, to capture the popular discourse around the relationship between DNA and racial identity. By employing critical technocultural discourse analysis (CTDA), I explore how Caribbean content creators discuss racial identity, and how online discourses negotiate, codify, or disrupt neoliberal notions of racial authenticity. I focus on videos made by creators who self-identify as being from the Caribbean or of the Caribbean diaspora. By bringing the Caribbean existentialist thought of Stuart Hall and Édouard Glissant into my analysis, I explore how Caribbean creators employ what C. Rhonda Cobham-Sander deems “the Creole imagination” to interrogate notions of racial authenticity while de-/re-constructing racial identity in digital spaces.","PeriodicalId":47920,"journal":{"name":"Social Media + Society","volume":"51 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":5.2,"publicationDate":"2025-02-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143434903","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":"Jalaiah Effect: A Story of a Stolen Dance on TikTok and Trans-Platformization of Ignorance","authors":"Mariam Betlemidze","doi":"10.1177/20563051251317765","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/20563051251317765","url":null,"abstract":"This article explores how ignorance becomes a cultural affordance of trans-platformization, focusing on the Renegade dance’s evolution into a viral sensation that fueled TikTok’s rise and launched new teenage influencers. Employing new materialist feminist theory, Actor-Network Theory, and Critical Technocultural Discourse Analysis, this article operationalizes the concept of trans-platformization. It examines race-technology entanglements as they manifest during trans-platformization, highlighting the illusory progress in recognizing Black creators and the resistance against a predominantly White, techno-capitalist patriarchy. The tensions arising from these complexities intensify the demand for a more nuanced understanding of ignorance as the affordance of trans-platformization and the potential pivot point for speculative hope.","PeriodicalId":47920,"journal":{"name":"Social Media + Society","volume":"46 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":5.2,"publicationDate":"2025-02-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143375318","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":"Viral Justice: TikTok Activism, Misinformation, and the Fight for Social Change in Southeast Asia","authors":"Nuurrianti Jalli","doi":"10.1177/20563051251318122","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/20563051251318122","url":null,"abstract":"This study examines the use of TikTok as a platform for youth activism in Southeast Asia, focusing on Indonesia, Malaysia, and the Philippines. Through a mixed-methods approach that includes qualitative content analysis, semi-structured interviews, systematic fact-checking, and digital trace data, the research explores how activists leverage TikTok’s unique features to promote social justice and mobilize political participation amid democratic backslidings. The findings reveal that activists skillfully adapt to TikTok’s attention economy, using strategies like trend-jacking and meme creation to reach broad audiences. However, they also face significant challenges, including rampant harassment and the precarious nature of algorithmic visibility. The study highlights the complexities of digital activism, where the pursuit of virality can sometimes undermine the depth of political movements. While the research counters the prevalent narrative that digital activism is rife with misinformation, it underscores the importance of maintaining accuracy to protect credibility. The study concludes by calling for further research on integrating online activism with offline organizing and exploring how platform governance can be reformed to better support activists. The insights from this study contribute to a deeper understanding of TikTok’s role in contemporary social movements and the challenges faced by youth activists in the digital age.","PeriodicalId":47920,"journal":{"name":"Social Media + Society","volume":"12 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":5.2,"publicationDate":"2025-02-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143375317","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":"Performing Not-Not-Me in SoMe: A New Theatrical Typology of Self-Presentation Online","authors":"Anne-Britt Gran","doi":"10.1177/20563051251315256","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/20563051251315256","url":null,"abstract":"Erving Goffman’s dramaturgical model in The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life (1959) is frequently used to analyze online self-presentations in social media (SoMe) and other social network sites (SNS). The term “self-presentation” seems to be here to stay. We argue that Goffman’s dramaturgical model belongs to another era, and that online self-presentation needs new theoretical approaches and new content. Compared to its predominant usage in SoMe research, our approach involves a perspective shift from what do SoMe users present (e.g., social role, identity/identities, idealized self, authentic self, brand) to how they perform it, concerning the style of acting and dressing, the use of props, makeup, symbols and signs, emotions, and expressions. Since participation on SoMe platforms is largely about how SoMe users present themselves and how they want to be received, theatricality and performing arts theories can inform this how with a new and nuanced conceptual apparatus. Therefore, we create a theory-based typology on the concepts of theatricality, simple and complex acting, not-acting, not-not-me, imagined audience awareness, and absorption. We present six types of theatrical self-presentations and conditions, types suitable for analysis of SoMe performances.","PeriodicalId":47920,"journal":{"name":"Social Media + Society","volume":"41 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":5.2,"publicationDate":"2025-02-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143385460","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":"Affordances-in-Practice: How Social Norm Dynamics in Climate Change Publics Are Shaped on Instagram and Twitter","authors":"Nathalie Van Raemdonck, Ike Picone, Jo Pierson","doi":"10.1177/20563051251319066","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/20563051251319066","url":null,"abstract":"Social norms are flexible regulating forces of human behavior. They are shaped by humans, whose actions in turn are shaped by their environment, including the online social spaces they venture into. The objective of this research is to create an understanding of how the affordances of social media platforms shape social norm dynamics in online publics, particularly in climate change publics. For this purpose, we make a comparative analysis of the practices of users on Instagram and Twitter that engage with climate change content. We conducted 22 in-depth interviews with a purposively selected sample of worldwide Twitter and Instagram users. We investigated how each platform’s specific affordances shape the participants’ sense of community and how they participate in social norm enforcement and contestation, also called “callouts.” This “affordances-in-practice” perspective brings observations on the differences in how users can actualize the novel affordances of “interventionability” and “external visibility” on both platforms. This research provides a deeper insight into the socio-technical processes underlying the (self-)organization of social movements and provides a pathway to investigating discursive practices of online publics on other platforms. The study avoids debating which norms should prevail over others in the online climate discussion, but does reflect on the negative impact that certain outcomes of norm enforcement and contestation might have on democratic deliberation on climate change. The main findings are that actualizing these affordances on Twitter anno 2023 makes climate discourse sensitive to group-loyalties, whereas on Instagram it makes it dependent on norm leaders in the form of content creators.","PeriodicalId":47920,"journal":{"name":"Social Media + Society","volume":"41 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":5.2,"publicationDate":"2025-02-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143375319","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":"No Better Than Soup? Comparing Null Experimental Effects of Political Facebook Ads Across Persuasive and Instrumental Measures of Effectiveness","authors":"Bridget Barrett, Shannon C. McGregor","doi":"10.1177/20563051251316117","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/20563051251316117","url":null,"abstract":"Studies on digital advertising effects claim that the primary purposes of online ads are persuasive: They seek to change vote choice or voters’ attitudes toward candidates. But recent scholarship has noted that social media’s unique affordances encourage electoral campaigns to use them in specific ways, such as using Facebook’s ads for email list-building. We conceptualize such strategic campaign goals as instrumental purposes of advertisements. We develop novel measures to test these instrumental effects. In an online survey experiment using Facebook ads from the 2020 Biden and Trump campaigns, we test our theory with list-building, fundraising, and persuasion ads. In a factor analysis, we find that instrumental and persuasive effects are related, but distinct, aspects of candidate support. We also test the effects of these ads on persuasive and instrumental outcomes. Our control treatment was an ad for a can of Progresso soup. We found no main persuasive or instrumental effects of any advertisement type. These ads performed no better than soup.","PeriodicalId":47920,"journal":{"name":"Social Media + Society","volume":"63 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":5.2,"publicationDate":"2025-02-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143191918","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":"“Cash Masters” Coming Out as “Straight”: Social Media and the Changing Dynamics of Gender and Sexuality","authors":"Sozen Basturk","doi":"10.1177/20563051251313662","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/20563051251313662","url":null,"abstract":"This article explores a novel concept called “straight cash master” emerging on social media platforms, especially X. The concept refers to relationships where self-identified straight men act as masters and primarily gay individuals take on the role of slaves. Several factors make this concept worthy of examination. First, these relationships are complex, involving dimensions of financial domination, sexuality, emotionality, and psychology. Second, while elements of sex work, fetishism, and BDSM (Bondage, Discipline, Sadism, and Masochism) culture are present, categorizing these masters solely as sex workers or performers and using a single theoretical framework for analysis may be inadequate. Third, the “straight” identity of these cash masters does not orient them toward the opposite sex but rather involves same-sex interactions. Thus, their “straightness” lacks the opposite sex and can only be articulated if relied on the same-sex slaves, thereby queering the notion of straightness. Finally, while social media perpetuates traditional norms of gender, sexuality, and masculinity, it also enables such relationships to emerge, having a queering effect. Despite its relevance, there is a noticeable gap in the literature addressing the interplay between social media and this concept. Drawing on unstructured, in-depth interview and qualitative content analysis methods, this article represents the first attempt, to the best of the author’s knowledge, to address this gap and offers a queer reading of it.","PeriodicalId":47920,"journal":{"name":"Social Media + Society","volume":"55 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":5.2,"publicationDate":"2025-01-31","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143072430","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":"Truth Default or Generalized Skepticism? The Role of Overconfidence in the Relationship Between Social Media News Use and Traditional Media Use","authors":"Taewoo Kang, Kjerstin Thorson, Chankyung Pak","doi":"10.1177/20563051251315255","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/20563051251315255","url":null,"abstract":"This article examines a model positing that overconfidence in political understanding resulting from social media use for news and politics hampers traditional media use. It confirms a positive relationship between Facebook political information experiences and overconfidence in political understanding. However, contrary to expectations, there is a positive relationship between overconfidence and traditional media use. An exploratory post hoc analysis, viewed through the lens of truth vs. false-default orientations, suggests overconfident users might use traditional news outlets to confirm their sense of knowledge, thereby exhibiting a false-default orientation on social media political information.","PeriodicalId":47920,"journal":{"name":"Social Media + Society","volume":"43 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":5.2,"publicationDate":"2025-01-31","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143072126","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}