Emillie de Keulenaar, João C Magalhães, Bharath Ganesh
{"title":"Modulating moderation: a history of objectionability in Twitter moderation practices","authors":"Emillie de Keulenaar, João C Magalhães, Bharath Ganesh","doi":"10.1093/joc/jqad015","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/joc/jqad015","url":null,"abstract":"With their power to shape public discourse under unprecedented scrutiny, social media platforms have revamped their speech control practices in recent years by building complex systems of content moderation. The contours of this tectonic shift are relatively clear. Yet, little work has systematically documented, examined, and theorized this process. This article uses digital methods and web history to trace the evolution of objectionable content on Twitter content moderation policies and practices between 2006 and 2022. Its conclusions suggest that, more than abandoning an Americanized view of freedom of speech, Twitter has aimed at building a crisis-resistant speech architecture that can withstand external shocks, criticisms, and shifting speech norms. This kind of modulated moderation, as we term it, hinges on a form of normative plasticity, whose goal is not necessarily adjudicating content as more or less acceptable, but moderating it on the basis of evolving and ever contingent public conceptions of objectionability.","PeriodicalId":48410,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Communication","volume":"11 2","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":7.9,"publicationDate":"2023-06-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"50165011","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}
Xuanjun Gong, Richard Huskey, Allison Eden, Ezgi Ulusoy
{"title":"Computationally modeling mood management theory: a drift-diffusion model of people’s preferential choice for valence and arousal in media","authors":"Xuanjun Gong, Richard Huskey, Allison Eden, Ezgi Ulusoy","doi":"10.1093/joc/jqad020","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/joc/jqad020","url":null,"abstract":"Mood management theory (MMT) hypothesizes that people select entertainment content to maintain affective homeostasis. However, this hypothesis lacks a formal quantification of each affective attributes’ separate impact on an individual’s media content selection, as well as an integrated cognitive mechanism explaining media selection. Here we present a computational decision-making model that mathematically formalizes this affective media decision-making process. We empirically tested this formalization with the drift-diffusion model using three decision-making experiments. Contrary to MMT, all three studies showed that people prefer negatively valenced and high-arousal media content and that prevailing mood does not shape media selection as predicted by MMT. We also discovered that people are less cautious when choices have larger valence differences. Our results support the proposed mathematical formalization of affective attributes’ influence on media selection, challenge core predictions drawn from MMT, and introduce a new mechanism (response caution) for media selection.","PeriodicalId":48410,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Communication","volume":"10 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":7.9,"publicationDate":"2023-06-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"50165012","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":"Motivations underlying Latino Americans’ group-based social media engagement","authors":"Muniba Saleem, Dana Mastro, Meagan Docherty","doi":"10.1093/joc/jqad013","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/joc/jqad013","url":null,"abstract":"Guided by the Social Identity Model of Collective Action, the current research utilizes a three-wave longitudinal study collected pre and post the 2020 U.S. Presidential election to examine the motivations underlying Latino Americans’ group-based social media engagement (N = 1,050). Results revealed that Time 1 group (Latino) identity increased Time 2 perceptions of social media as efficacious in improving group outcomes, which in turn increased Time 3 group-based social media engagement. Although T1 Latino identification was not significantly associated with T2 perceptions of personal or group-based injustice, the former (but not the latter) increased T3 group-based social media engagement. Our findings reflect that marginalized group members engage with social media in part because they believe it is efficacious in improving their disadvantageous group status. This may be an especially attractive strategy for those who face individual experiences of unjust treatment.","PeriodicalId":48410,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Communication","volume":"8 9","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":7.9,"publicationDate":"2023-05-25","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"50165014","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":"Metrics in action: how social media metrics shape news production on Facebook","authors":"Subhayan Mukerjee, Tian Yang, Yilang Peng","doi":"10.1093/joc/jqad012","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/joc/jqad012","url":null,"abstract":"Social media metrics allow media outlets to get a granular, real-time understanding of audience preferences, and may therefore be used to decide what content to prioritize in the future. We test this mechanism in the context of Facebook, by using topic modeling and longitudinal data analysis on a large dataset comprising all posts published by major media outlets used by American citizens (N≈2.23M, 2015–2019). We find that while the overall effect of audience engagement on future news coverage is significant, there is substantial heterogeneity in how individual outlets respond to different kinds of topics. A handful of right-wing media outlets are more likely to respond to audience engagement metrics than other outlets, but with partisan politics topics and not with entertainment-oriented content. Our research sheds new light on how social media platforms have shaped journalistic practices and has implications for the future health of journalism in the United States.","PeriodicalId":48410,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Communication","volume":"116 8","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":7.9,"publicationDate":"2023-04-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"50165167","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":"Misperceptions in sociopolitical context: belief sensitivity’s relationship with battleground state status and partisan segregation","authors":"Qin Li, Robert M Bond, R Kelly Garrett","doi":"10.1093/joc/jqad017","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/joc/jqad017","url":null,"abstract":"Numerous studies have shown that individuals’ belief sensitivity—their ability to discriminate between true and false political statements—varies according to psychological and demographic characteristics. We argue that sensitivity also varies with the political and social communication contexts in which they live. Both battleground state status of the state in which individuals live and the level of partisan segregation in a state are associated with Americans’ belief sensitivity. We leverage panel data collected from two samples of Americans, one collected in the first half of 2019 and the other during the 2020 U.S. presidential campaign season. Results indicate that the relationship between living in battleground states and belief sensitivity is contingent on political ideology: living in battleground states, versus in Democratic-leaning states, is associated with lower belief sensitivity among conservatives and higher belief sensitivity among liberals. Moreover, living in a less politically segregated state is associated with greater belief sensitivity. These relationships were only in evidence in the election year.","PeriodicalId":48410,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Communication","volume":"116 3","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":7.9,"publicationDate":"2023-04-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"50165168","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":"Tweeting the Holocaust: social media discourse between reverence, exploitation, and simulacra","authors":"Motti Neiger, Oren Meyers, Anat Ben-David","doi":"10.1093/joc/jqad010","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/joc/jqad010","url":null,"abstract":"This article explores the uses and abuses of traumatic memory within the context of the multifaceted discursive representation of the Holocaust on social media. Combining computational, quantitative, and qualitative methodologies, the article offers a comprehensive mapping of the mnemonic spectrum extending beyond memory work conducted during official commemorative occasions. To do so, we examined a unique case: the Twitter manifestations of one Hebrew expression—“and their collaborators” (ATC)—which echoes the Israeli “Law for punishing Nazis and their collaborators.” In contrast to the complete phrase, the truncated collocation appears in a variety of contexts across Hebrew Twitter. Thus, our investigation shows that alongside traditional awe-inspiring commemorative (“good”) uses of ATC, the conjunction between social media affordances and user practices brings to the discursive forefront exploitative political (“bad”) ATC uses and misuses that contribute to political polarization; and a plethora of playful and ironic (inappropriate-“ugly”) uses, that call for moral and aesthetic scrutiny.","PeriodicalId":48410,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Communication","volume":"31 2","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":7.9,"publicationDate":"2023-04-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"50165406","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}
Xuanjun Gong, Richard Huskey, Haoning Xue, Cuihua Shen, Seth Frey
{"title":"Broadcast information diffusion processes on social media networks: exogenous events lead to more integrated public discourse","authors":"Xuanjun Gong, Richard Huskey, Haoning Xue, Cuihua Shen, Seth Frey","doi":"10.1093/joc/jqad014","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/joc/jqad014","url":null,"abstract":"Understanding information diffusion is vital to explaining the good, bad, and ugly impacts of social media. Two types of processes govern information diffusion: broadcasting and viral spread. Viral spreading is when a message is diffused by peer-to-peer social connections, whereas broadcasting is characterized by influences that can come from outside of the peer-to-peer social network. How these processes shape public discourse is not well understood. Using a simulation study and real-world Twitter data (10,155 users, 18,000,929 tweets) gathered during 2020, we show that broadcast spreading is associated with more integrated discourse networks compared to viral spreading. Moreover, discourse oscillates between extended periods of segregation and punctuated periods of integration. These results defy simple interpretations of good or bad, and instead suggest that information diffusion dynamics on social media have the capacity to disrupt or amplify both prosocial and antisocial content.","PeriodicalId":48410,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Communication","volume":"30 3","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":7.9,"publicationDate":"2023-04-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"50165408","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}
Abdullah S Salehuddin, Jesse King, Tamara D Afifi, Walid A Afifi
{"title":"Resilience as a predictor for why some marital relationships flourished and others struggled during the initial months of COVID-19","authors":"Abdullah S Salehuddin, Jesse King, Tamara D Afifi, Walid A Afifi","doi":"10.1093/joc/jqad011","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/joc/jqad011","url":null,"abstract":"Using the theory of resilience and relational load, this study examined how married individuals’ baseline communal orientation (CO) and relational load (RL) at the beginning of the pandemic predicted their stress, conflict, mental health, and flourishing during quarantine. Using a Qualtrics Panel, married individuals (N = 3,601) completed four online surveys from April to June 2020. Results revealed the initial levels of CO brought to quarantine predicted less stress and conflict, and better mental health and flourishing at baseline, and these outcomes remained relatively stable across the next 3 months. RL at baseline did the exact opposite for these outcomes, making coping more difficult. We also hypothesized CO and RL moderate the impact of stress (T1) on mental health 3 months later by reducing conflict. Rather than serving as buffers, CO and RL at baseline directly affected conflict (T2/T3) and mental health (T4) throughout quarantine.","PeriodicalId":48410,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Communication","volume":"26 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":7.9,"publicationDate":"2023-04-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"50165417","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":"Visual misinformation on Facebook","authors":"Yunkang Yang, Trevor Davis, Matthew Hindman","doi":"10.1093/joc/jqac051","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/joc/jqac051","url":null,"abstract":"We conduct the first large-scale study of image-based political misinformation on Facebook. We collect 13,723,654 posts from 14,532 pages and 11,454 public groups from August through October 2020, posts that together account for nearly all engagement of U.S. public political content on Facebook. We use perceptual hashing to identify duplicate images and computer vision to identify political figures. Twenty-three percent of sampled political images (N = 1,000) contained misinformation, as did 20% of sampled images (N = 1,000) containing political figures. We find enormous partisan asymmetry in misinformation posts, with right-leaning images 5–8 times more likely to be misleading, but little evidence that misleading images generate higher engagement. Previous scholarship, which mostly cataloged links to noncredible domains, has ignored image posts which account for a higher volume of misinformation. This research shows that new computer-assisted methods can scale to millions of images, and help address perennial and long-unanswered calls for more systematic study of visual political communication.","PeriodicalId":48410,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Communication","volume":"14 3","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":7.9,"publicationDate":"2023-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"50165622","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}
Matthew Grizzard, C Joseph Francemone, Rebecca Frazer, Kaitlin Fitzgerald, Charles K Monge, Christina Henry
{"title":"A comprehensive experimental test of the affective disposition theory of drama","authors":"Matthew Grizzard, C Joseph Francemone, Rebecca Frazer, Kaitlin Fitzgerald, Charles K Monge, Christina Henry","doi":"10.1093/joc/jqac053","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/joc/jqac053","url":null,"abstract":"Using a three-act written narrative, a preregistered 2 (Act 1 Moral/Immoral Character Behavior) × 2 (Act 3 Moral/Immoral Character Behavior) × 2 (Positive/Negative Narrative Outcome) study provides a comprehensive test of affective disposition theory (ADT) that simultaneously manipulates disposition formation and outcome evaluation processes. We convert ADT’s conceptual hypotheses into testable path models. Consistent with theory, we find (a) moral behavior creates positive dispositions which predict hopes for positive outcomes and (b) dispositions interact with outcomes to predict affect, liking of ending, and narrative enjoyment/appreciation. Consistent with Raney’s ADT extension, participants wanted liked/moral characters to engage in immoral actions that increase the odds of a positive outcome for the character. Findings also indicate variance in ADT’s predictive power: ADT better explained immediate responses (liking of ending) as compared to holistic responses (narrative enjoyment/appreciation). Our results contribute to work on enjoyment/appreciation by identifying areas where enjoyment and appreciation are more/less distinguishable.","PeriodicalId":48410,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Communication","volume":"13 6","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":7.9,"publicationDate":"2023-02-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"50165625","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}