Brittany Shaughnessy, Eliana DuBosar, Myiah J. Hutchens, Ilyssa Mann
{"title":"An attack on free speech? Examining content moderation, (de-), and (re-) platforming on American right-wing alternative social media","authors":"Brittany Shaughnessy, Eliana DuBosar, Myiah J. Hutchens, Ilyssa Mann","doi":"10.1177/14614448241228850","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/14614448241228850","url":null,"abstract":"Contemporary research on social media looks different than it did in the late 2010s, with users facing a high-choice social media environment as new platforms emerge. Subsequently, alt-right sites have experienced a rise in users—sometimes those who have experienced content moderation by traditional social media sites. As such, scholars have investigated the impact of this content moderation (e.g. de-platforming) on users and the content posted on new alt-right platforms. This work seeks to expand extant research through analyzing a survey of Gab, Parler (now defunct), Truth Social, and Rumble users ( N = 427) who have experienced content moderation on other social media sites. While we find that those temporarily or permanently banned from traditional sites are unlikely to leave the platform altogether for a right-wing alternative social media (RWASM) site, there are active users on these sites worth studying.","PeriodicalId":508039,"journal":{"name":"New Media & Society","volume":"33 9","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-02-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139863804","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":"Digital communication and social support for disadvantaged youth: A social network survey of youth experiencing homelessness","authors":"Will Marler, Hsun-Ta Hsu, Laura Petry, Eric Rice","doi":"10.1177/14614448241227851","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/14614448241227851","url":null,"abstract":"Digital technologies provide people new means for exchanging social support, though the extent to which disadvantaged populations benefit is unclear. Youth experiencing homelessness (YEH) are a vulnerable population with a range of support needs who are active digial media users. We examined the core networks of 621 YEH in the United States to assess how digital-only communication compared with any other form of contact in terms of the social support youth reported receiving. Participants were more likely to receive emotional support, as well as find role models and support for their personal goals, though not material support, through contacts that were digital-only (internet, phone, or social media) in the last month. YEH appear to rely on—and in some cases prefer—digital-only communication to tap into resources for survival and advancement. We discuss the implications for research on ICT use by disadvantaged populations and for interventions to support YEH.","PeriodicalId":508039,"journal":{"name":"New Media & Society","volume":"13 6","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-02-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139864001","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":"Digital communication and social support for disadvantaged youth: A social network survey of youth experiencing homelessness","authors":"Will Marler, Hsun-Ta Hsu, Laura Petry, Eric Rice","doi":"10.1177/14614448241227851","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/14614448241227851","url":null,"abstract":"Digital technologies provide people new means for exchanging social support, though the extent to which disadvantaged populations benefit is unclear. Youth experiencing homelessness (YEH) are a vulnerable population with a range of support needs who are active digial media users. We examined the core networks of 621 YEH in the United States to assess how digital-only communication compared with any other form of contact in terms of the social support youth reported receiving. Participants were more likely to receive emotional support, as well as find role models and support for their personal goals, though not material support, through contacts that were digital-only (internet, phone, or social media) in the last month. YEH appear to rely on—and in some cases prefer—digital-only communication to tap into resources for survival and advancement. We discuss the implications for research on ICT use by disadvantaged populations and for interventions to support YEH.","PeriodicalId":508039,"journal":{"name":"New Media & Society","volume":"8 24","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-02-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139804296","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}
Brittany Shaughnessy, Eliana DuBosar, Myiah J. Hutchens, Ilyssa Mann
{"title":"An attack on free speech? Examining content moderation, (de-), and (re-) platforming on American right-wing alternative social media","authors":"Brittany Shaughnessy, Eliana DuBosar, Myiah J. Hutchens, Ilyssa Mann","doi":"10.1177/14614448241228850","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/14614448241228850","url":null,"abstract":"Contemporary research on social media looks different than it did in the late 2010s, with users facing a high-choice social media environment as new platforms emerge. Subsequently, alt-right sites have experienced a rise in users—sometimes those who have experienced content moderation by traditional social media sites. As such, scholars have investigated the impact of this content moderation (e.g. de-platforming) on users and the content posted on new alt-right platforms. This work seeks to expand extant research through analyzing a survey of Gab, Parler (now defunct), Truth Social, and Rumble users ( N = 427) who have experienced content moderation on other social media sites. While we find that those temporarily or permanently banned from traditional sites are unlikely to leave the platform altogether for a right-wing alternative social media (RWASM) site, there are active users on these sites worth studying.","PeriodicalId":508039,"journal":{"name":"New Media & Society","volume":"11 24","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-02-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139804025","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}
Emma Beuckels, L. Hudders, I. Vanwesenbeeck, Elisabeth Van den Abeele
{"title":"Work it baby! A survey study to investigate the role of underaged children and privacy management strategies within parent influencer content","authors":"Emma Beuckels, L. Hudders, I. Vanwesenbeeck, Elisabeth Van den Abeele","doi":"10.1177/14614448231218992","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/14614448231218992","url":null,"abstract":"Nowadays, parents are increasingly drawn to establish a successful influencer status on social media. Being a parent influencer offers an alluring work environment, allowing them to combine devotion to their children and generating a considerable income. However, both scholars and policymakers raise significant concerns regarding the orchestrated and monetized nature of influencer sharenting, which involves sharing children’s personal information online. The present study, which surveyed 89 parent influencers from Belgium and The Netherlands, shows that children are omnipresent in their parents’ influencer content. The findings do not only uncover the underlying motivations driving influencer sharenting, but also reveal a low sharenting risk awareness. Building on parent influencers’ safe sharenting strategies, this study identifies three parent influencer types: reckless, safe, and authoritarian safe sharenters. This classification contributes to a better understanding of the heterogeneity of the parent influencer landscape and will foster the development of protective measures in favor of children’s wellbeing.","PeriodicalId":508039,"journal":{"name":"New Media & Society","volume":"50 23","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-01-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139594691","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":"Which recommendation system do you trust the most? Exploring the impact of perceived anthropomorphism on recommendation system trust, choice confidence, and information disclosure","authors":"Yanyun (Mia) Wang, Weizi Liu, Mike Yao","doi":"10.1177/14614448231223517","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/14614448231223517","url":null,"abstract":"Recommendation systems (RSs) leverage data and algorithms to generate a set of suggestions to reduce consumers’ efforts and assist their decisions. In this study, we examine how different framings of recommendations trigger people’s anthropomorphic perceptions of RSs and therefore affect users’ attitudes in an online experiment. Participants used and evaluated one of four versions of a web-based wine RS with different source framings (i.e. “recommendation by an algorithm,” “recommendation by an AI assistant,” “recommendation by knowledge generated from similar people,” no description). Results showed that different source framings generated different levels of perceived anthropomorphism. Participants indicated greater trust in the recommendations and greater confidence in making choices based on the recommendations when they perceived an RS as highly anthropomorphic; however, higher perceived anthropomorphism of an RS led to a lower willingness to disclose personal information to the RS.","PeriodicalId":508039,"journal":{"name":"New Media & Society","volume":"55 7","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-01-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139603300","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}
L. Muselli, Mathieu O’Neil, Fred Pailler, Stefano Zacchiroli
{"title":"Subverting or preserving the institution: Competing IT firm and foundation discourses about open source","authors":"L. Muselli, Mathieu O’Neil, Fred Pailler, Stefano Zacchiroli","doi":"10.1177/14614448231222249","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/14614448231222249","url":null,"abstract":"The data economy depends on digital infrastructure produced in self-managed projects and communities. To understand how information technology (IT) firms communicate to a volunteer workforce, we examine IT firm and foundation employee discourses about open source. We posit that organizations employ rhetorical strategies to advocate for or resist changing the meaning of this institution. Our analysis of discourses collected at three open source professional conferences in 2019 is complemented by computational methods, which generate semantic clusters from presentation summaries. In terms of defining digital infrastructure, business models, and the firm-community relationship, we find a clear division between the discourses of large firm and consortia foundation employees, on one hand, and small firm and non-profit foundation employees, on the other. These divisions reflect these entities’ roles in the data economy and levels of concern about predatory “Big Tech” practices, which transform common goods to be shared into proprietary assets to be sold.","PeriodicalId":508039,"journal":{"name":"New Media & Society","volume":"40 14","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-01-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139603293","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}
Elisabeth Van den Abeele, L. Hudders, I. Vanwesenbeeck
{"title":"Managing authenticity in a kidfluencers’ world: A qualitative study with kidfluencers and their parents","authors":"Elisabeth Van den Abeele, L. Hudders, I. Vanwesenbeeck","doi":"10.1177/14614448231222558","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/14614448231222558","url":null,"abstract":"Though kidfluencer marketing is becoming more prevalent, research into children as senders of commercial messages is scarce. Considering the roles of parents, followers and commercial partners, this study is the first to conceptualise and explore kidfluencers’ authenticity management. In total, 19 in-depth interviews with kidfluencers (aged 7–12 years) and their parents show that kidfluencer profiles are not an authentic representation of the children’s true digital selves, but rather a representation of how parents wish to present their children’s digital identities. This is achieved by parents balancing their own wishes against those of their children, followers and commercial parties. A privacy (openness) paradox thereby occurs and parents undertake measures in attempt to guard against the potential risks.","PeriodicalId":508039,"journal":{"name":"New Media & Society","volume":"40 13","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-01-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139603294","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":"Visual bordering: How refugee-serving organizations represent refugees on Instagram","authors":"Anya Jhoti, William L Allen","doi":"10.1177/14614448231220856","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/14614448231220856","url":null,"abstract":"Theories of symbolic bordering highlight how xenophobic media coverage and humanitarian messaging create boundaries between migrants and receiving communities partly based on deservingness. Contrasting with studies of mainly text-based representations of refugees, we examine refugee-serving organizations’ visual communications work on Instagram. Using a discourse-centered online ethnographic approach, we collected 191 posts made in early 2021 by five UK-based organizations. Then, we applied quantitative content and qualitative semiotic analysis to these posts, complemented by two semi-structured interviews with communications staff members. We show how visual choices invoke divisions between posts’ refugee subjects and their intended audiences, while rendering some refugees legible and particularly worthy of protection or empathy. These choices include using stereotypical elements, obscuring identifiable people, and explicitly attributing quotations to refugees. We also identify “takeover” posts where refugees had controlled organizations’ social media accounts. Our study contributes understanding of how symbolic bordering occurs visually online and has implications for humanitarian communications practice.","PeriodicalId":508039,"journal":{"name":"New Media & Society","volume":"122 35","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-01-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139605484","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}
L. R. Herrenkohl, Jiyoung Lee, Everet Wang, Tammy Tasker, Denise Jones, Paola Nkwuzor, Chris Batalon, Francisco Parra Camacho, Peter Siciliano, Elizabeth A Davis, Angela Calabrese Barton
{"title":"Data in the making, political struggle, and epistemic (in)justice: Asian and Asian Americans as early responders to the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States","authors":"L. R. Herrenkohl, Jiyoung Lee, Everet Wang, Tammy Tasker, Denise Jones, Paola Nkwuzor, Chris Batalon, Francisco Parra Camacho, Peter Siciliano, Elizabeth A Davis, Angela Calabrese Barton","doi":"10.1177/14614448231226400","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/14614448231226400","url":null,"abstract":"The COVID-19 pandemic exposed the limits of big data to guide decision-making in times of crisis. As people navigated daily life, they were confronted with the reality that data were often not yet material but rather in-the-making. Drawing upon critical and feminist lenses and participatory methodologies, this study investigates the data stories of nine people of Asian descent living in the United States. Findings illustrate how participants navigated within and across time, space, activity, media, epistemology, race, and politics to produce lively data assemblages. These data stories guided social-distancing and mask-wearing weeks before official US policy even as participants lived in constant fear of dehumanizing racist and xenophobic violence. This study advances theorizing about data practices for human knowing and learning with media, racial and epistemic (in)justice, and community action. It also advances participatory research as a site of epistemic resistance and activism.","PeriodicalId":508039,"journal":{"name":"New Media & Society","volume":"13 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-01-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139602874","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}