Social Media for Social Change: Social Media Political Efficacy and Activism in Student Activist Groups

Social media activism has become very relevant for many student activist groups. How can political use of social media be motivated? The concept of Social Media Political Efficacy was proposed to resolve inconsistencies in prior theories of social media activism. A survey (n = 222) of members of 3 student activist groups showed that social media political efficacy was positively related to successful experiences using social media for activism. The relationship between social media political efficacy and social media activism was stronger than that between the concept of political efficacy employed in prior research and social media activism. Theory and social media activism implications are discussed.     

“To Ferguson,Love Palestine”: mediating life under occupation

In Ferguson, Missouri, Palestinian activists and black protesters created a transnational collective identity defined by what some scholars call a “community of feeling” following the murder of Michael Brown in August 2014. This paper focuses on the transnational politics of the Ferguson Movement through a textual analysis of digital media discourse and interviews with local community activists. Findings reveal that activists generated a transnational collective identity based on their shared experiences of oppression and resistance, which activists made visible across various digital platforms, including social media, blogs, and livestreaming. Informed by the literature on social movements, collective identity, and affect, the authors move beyond theoretical analyses that emphasize activists’ communicative practices as strategic; instead, this article underscores the affective linkages that led to the development of a transnational collective identity within the movement.     

Theorizing Community as Discourse in Community Informatics: “Resistant Identities” and Contested Technologies

Community informatics (CI) is a form of activism that involves the application of information and communication technologies in pursuit of community development within localities. This article draws on discourse theory (DT) to re-evaluate activists’ self-interpretations that rely on community, and to make sense of the political struggles at the heart of CI. It is argued that activists’ community discourse constructs, through articulation, locally “resistant” collective identities and an associated collective agency capable of appropriating technology in pursuit of unfulfilled social demands. However DT also suggests that the socially progressive nature of CI is not guaranteed by recourse to the social ideal of community.     

Social media,legacy media and gatekeeping: the protest paradigm in news of Ferguson and Charlottesville

ABSTRACT

This study investigates the site of intersection between legacy and social media, whereby it asks how local legacy media (St Louis Post-Dispatch and Richmond Times-Dispatch) invoked social media (Facebook and Twitter) discourse within their coverage of the Ferguson (2014) and Charlottesville (2017) events. It thus explores how gatekeeping is manifested and, consequently, how the protest paradigm emerged in a news landscape of proliferating social media. Thematic textual analysis indicates that coverage of Charlottesville and Ferguson clearly relied on indulging the social media sphere in important ways. Common themes of social media as multipurpose platforms, as interfacing with law and order, and as reconciling material and digital modes culminating in social activism were revealed. The study shows that the protest paradigm that has long characterized legacy media’s coverage of social protest is not as “pure” as it may once have been, since a social media component is helping define the contours and content of legacy media’s landscape.     

Time's up. Or is it? Journalists’ Perceptions of Sexual Violence and Newsroom Changes after #MeTooIndia

ABSTRACT

The #MeToo movement, which engulfed much of India's news and entertainment industry in October 2018, was projected by many as a watershed moment for Indian journalism. Driven largely through social media activism, it created significant public discourse and outcry, leading to the “outing” and resignation of many journalists. This paper explores the perception of #MeTooIndia in regional and national newsrooms. Drawing on Manuel Castells's ideas of networked social movement, we consider the origins of #MeTooIndia, including its mediation on private and social networks. We then draw on 257 semi-structured interviews with journalists working in 14 languages across India to explore the “cause” of the campaign—the prevalence of sexual harassment and sexual violence in workspaces—before turning our attention to the impact, or potential for impact, that journalists saw in it. We find most journalists felt the movement was “good”, but did not think it influenced their environment or newswork in any meaningful manner. Regional journalists expressed more pessimism about the #MeTooIndia, men more so than women.     

Online Media and Political Participation: The Case of Malaysia

This study is based on a survey of 526 adult Malaysians who were interviewed shortly before the 2008 national election about online media use, levels of political participation, and voting intentions. The goal was to document the role of online media in a society that controls political information in traditional media and, in turn, compels citizens to seek alternative news sources online. As predicted, the findings indicated that online media use was positively associated with higher levels of political participation among Malaysian voters. The use of and exposure to social networking sites, political blogs, political online videos, party websites, and political ads on cell phones showed strong associations with political activism. However, the use of political online media did not predict voters’ likelihood of voting.     

Broadcasting Queer Feminisms: Lesbian and Queer Women Programming in Transnational,Local, and Community Radio

Notable radio scholars including Christine Ehrick, Phylis A. Johnson, and Caroline Mitchell have explored critical challenges of gender and sexuality radio research and its importance in relation to communities. A major issue faced in studying the early years of women’s history in broadcast is the ephemeral nature of the medium as many of the voices are lost in the ether, unrecorded or once deemed inessential to archive. Web-based radio and podcast archives provide renewed avenues for listening to lesbian and queer women’s radio across transnational borders yet many long running shows in Canada such as The Lesbian Show on Vancouver Co-Op Radio have only recently begun to surface as digital collections. As personal and institutional archives of lesbian and queer women radio begin to reach a public audience, analysis of radio works across decades of LGBTQ2+ activism and feminisms must be traced to understand the role of radio and digital radiogenic media in creating space and identity for queer activism. A turn to the past brings forward questions of analog and digital futures for radio and podcasting space as place to construct and shape queer and especially lesbian communities and identities in the North American broadcasting industry. Through research of notable live and pre-produced content including Dykes on Mykes on CKUT 90.3 FM, and The Lesbian Show on Vancouver Co-Op Radio, this work offers an exploration of radio and radiogenic media’s role in creating sonic space for queer and feminist subjectivities.     

“It’s On Us.” The Role of Social Media and Rape Culture in Individual Willingness to Mobilize Against Sexual Assault

Stopping sexual violence has become a key issue in the public and media agenda. This study examines the role of social media and bystander intervention in predicting an individual’s willingness to engage in collective action against sexual violence. Two surveys were conducted in fall 2014 and early 2015 examining young adults’ views of social networking sites, rape culture, and collective action. Results indicated that gender and bystander intervention were key predictors of willingness to engage in collective action, along with the privacy concerns of social network users. Views supporting rape culture were found to have a negative association. Implications are discussed.     

Shareholder communication and issue salience: corporate responses to ‘social’ shareholder activism

This study focuses on corporate engagement when shareholder activists raise concerns about social issues during annual shareholder meetings. Building upon strategic communication, social activism, and management research, the study combines Stakeholder Salience Theory (SST) and Issues Management Theory to explain corporate responses to shareholder activism. The researchers constructed a dataset of 844 shareholder actions in the U.S., all concerning environmental issues from 2006 to 2014. The analyses revealed that the urgency of the shareholder requests was the main driver of saliency. Moreover, shareholder activism strategies that engage corporations in private negotiations appeared to be effective in eliciting positive corporate responses. The findings contribute to applied communication theory and research by advancing SST with an issues management perspective in the context of shareholder activism.     

When Athlete Activism Clashes With Group Values: Social Identity Threat Management via Social Media

On November 30, 2014, five African American St. Louis Rams players locked hands and displayed a “hands-up” gesture during player introductions in response to racial tensions in Ferguson, Missouri, emanating from the Michael Brown case. This act generated significant media attention and prompted discussions via Facebook and Twitter. Two notable venues on social media for these conversations were the “Boycott the St. Louis Rams” Facebook page and the Twitter hashtag #BoycottRams. A thematic analysis of 1,019 user-generated Facebook comments and 452 tweets was conducted through the lens of social identity threat management. Six primary themes emerged: (a) renouncing fandom, (b) punishment commentary, (c) racial commentary, (d) general criticism, (e) attacking other group members, and (f) presenting the “facts” of the case. The results suggest that social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter serve as forums where group members discuss and debate challenges to group values and promote action steps that can mitigate social identity threats. This form of protest holds implications for minority athletes’ activism efforts and sport organization administrators.     

Making professional development more social: A systematic review of librarians' professional development through social media

To maintain relevancy with the ever-increasing competencies required of them, librarians on the job have frequently turned to professional development (PD) opportunities. One outlet that could potentially address barriers librarians face when accessing PD is social media, which can help librarians communicate across distances, are used at low to no cost, and can be accessed asynchronously as needed. Drawing from 25 studies conducted in 21 countries, this systematic literature review explored the empirical themes evident in the current research on librarians' adoption of social media for PD purposes. This review found (1) there is considerable potential in adopting social media for PD across contexts; (2) studies focused on the affordances provided by social media in areas where there is limited infrastructure, support, and resources for PD; (3) in congruence with prior research pertaining to the Technology Acceptance Model, librarians who felt more tech-savvy were more likely to adopt social media for PD; and (4) social media was viewed as democratic in creating a platform where diverse voices could participate. The paper concludes with a discussion of the implications for practitioners and recommendations for future research directions.     

Understanding government social media users: an analysis of interactions on Immigration,Refugees and Citizenship Canada Twitter and Facebook

Social media is being adopted at a rapid pace by governments around world and across different levels of government. In Canada, federal, provincial and municipal governments created social media accounts in 2000s and are now using them to interact with the public. Studies to date, however, focus primarily on social media strategies and practices of government agencies while government social media users' behaviors and perspectives remain understudied. This study analyzes experiences of government social media users and how they interact on Twitter and Facebook accounts maintained by a Canadian federal government agency – Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC). It also explores why users chose to interact on social media as well as their perspectives. The findings suggest that Canadian immigration agencies are using social media as a customer services tool, and migrant social media users are turning to government social media to hear directly from the government agencies and are expecting personalized answers.     

Historians, archivists, and social activism: benefits and costs

This article explores how activism by historians and archivists relates to and affects their work and how their work affects their activism. The findings are based on a survey of 195 historians (including educators) and archivists who self-identified as “someone who takes part in activities that are intended to achieve social or political change, especially someone who is a member of an organization.” The respondents participate in a wide variety of causes. Typically, their activities as activists reflect their professional skills and concerns, with a large majority involved in collecting and preserving the records of activist organizations. The article examines the benefits and costs for employers of employee activism, concluding the benefits outweigh the costs. The article also examines how activism affects the relationship between employers and their activist employees. While many activists receive recognition and other benefits from their employers for their activism, a minority suffers negative consequences up to and including firing and a substantial number feel inhibited from activism by their employers. The article also explores the effects of activism for the different occupational groups, determining that they are relatively similar but with some differences.     

Producing PSAs on consumer culture: youth reception of advertising

This study is a qualitative analysis of Public Service Announcement (PSA) storyboards produced by 177 fourth and sixth-grade students as part of a Media Literacy Education program on advertising and commercial culture. The program curriculum addressed the ubiquity and hidden nature of ads, as well as gender portrayals, violence, and nutritional messages in advertising content. Textual analysis revealed differing patterns in student reception of the varied lesson topics. Students called for specific behavioral changes in PSAs for the topics of nutrition and gender, although most were limited to non-media-related behaviors such as improving eating habits and encouraging fluidity across roles more traditionally associated with masculinity or with femininity. The analysis also suggested responsibility for the problems students identified with advertising were largely based on individual, consumerist perspectives rather than on collective or social, citizen-based terms. Fourth graders’ storyboards especially indicated an apparent mimicry of mainstream commercial productions and practices. The analysis further explores these fourth and sixth graders’ underlying orientations toward the U.S. commercial media system as well as the potential strengths and limitations of a production component in MLE programs to promote outcomes associated with critical media literacy.     

“The FEMEN body can do everything”: Generating the agentic bodies of social movement through internal and external rhetorics

ABSTRACT

Recent theorizing recognizes the body’s importance in resistant performances characterizing the streets and screens of contemporary activism. In this essay, we examine how the transnational feminist organization FEMEN constructs embodied agencies through material and mediated means. Rather than focusing only on public appearances, we draw from fieldwork with FEMEN, utilizing participatory critical rhetoric to also examine the internal rhetorics shaping protest activities. Analyzing how FEMEN’s training prepares and produces individual, collective, and entangled bodies extends the communicative study of social movements by attending to corporeal molding behind the scenes. FEMEN constructs a gestural routine that enables activists to reexperience their bodies through rhetorics of powerful vulnerability, challenging gendered discourses while increasing rhetorical agency through enacted resistance and embodied solidarities.     

(Hyper) local news aggregation: Designing for social affordances

Being able to debate, reflect, form opinions, consider counter evidence and make informed decisions is a foundation of civic life in democratic societies. Government benefits from broad participation in collective decision making in terms of sustainable outcomes (e.g., greater consensus) and quality of life in our cities and communities. These collective decision making capabilities are undermined by a strange combination of diminishing (or extinct) local print media, especially local newspapers, and by its obverse, a plethora of information and communication opportunities that are scattered across numerous disparate and decentralized websites and resources (e.g., webpages, RSS feeds, social network software, email, listservs, podcasts, tweets). To address this problem, a number of news aggregators have emerged that capture local content from dispersed sites. To facilitate civic engagement, these sites also need to support social interaction and information exchange. In this paper we review the state of the art in local news aggregation in the U.S. and their support for social affordances (social trust, networks and interaction) that are essential to civic participation. We present a system we call the Virtual Town Square (VTS) that we have developed for local news aggregation that supports social affordances. We summarize briefly the design strategies and techniques (e.g., algorithms) we used to cluster topics and user generated content derived from existing local sources. This system should lead to a replicable model for other U.S. communities.     

Maintaining and Sharing a Haudenosaunee Identity: Onondaga Collective Memory and Social Media

In this article, I survey the Onondaga Nation's social media outlets in the light of collective memory theory. The article identifies several core topics of the nation's identity narratives which, all together, are perceived as an expression of Onondaga functional memory. The role of wampum belts as medial cues to that memory is highlighted as well as the role of social media in the struggle against the negative effects of native media invisibility.     

Collective Trolling as a Form of Organizational Resistance: Analysis of the #Justiceforbradswife Twitter Campaign

This case study analyzed Twitter posts from the #JusticeForBradsWife campaign against the Cracker Barrel (CB) restaurant chain. Participants in the counterinstitutional movement employed diverse message strategies of humor and resistance in using social media as a site for discourse. Thematic analysis of the most influential users revealed humor strategies including: connecting to popular culture, political comic relief and using hyperbole. Participants’ resistance strategies included: making calls for action, critiquing CB products and business partners, attacking CB patrons, critiquing CB’s social media management, and offers of support from outside organizations. These strategies reflected collective trolling, where trolling behaviors created a hidden and public hybrid form of collective resistance from nontraditional stakeholders who had contradictory goals. Implications and directions for future research are discussed.     

BETWEEN POLITICS AND PROFESSION

This article examines the key factors shaping the opportunities for feminist journalism in large, mainstream media organizations. It shows how journalists' notions about gender, different professional journalistic ideals, and feminist media activism advance or hinder feminist journalism at different levels of media production. The impact of these factors is explored further in the particular contexts of the post-authoritarian societies of contemporary Serbia and Croatia. While individual Serbian and Croatian pro-feminist journalists were often able to pursue socially committed journalism in their day-to-day choice of topics, sources and approaches, their opportunities to affect programme, departmental or channel policy were more limited. Such opportunities depended on a constellation of the following factors: the strength of women's non-governmental organizations' media activism; media management's support for gender equality initiatives and/or critical forms of journalism; and the broader political developments concerning gender and media politics in the two countries.