scholarly journals Tumblr as counterpublic space for fan mobilization

2018 ◽  
Vol 27 ◽  
Author(s):  
Natalie Chew

When the animated TV shows Young Justice (2010–) and Green Lantern: The Animated Series (2011–13) were canceled, fans of the shows campaigned together to have both shows renewed. I refer to this campaign as #saveYJandGLTAS, a hashtag frequently used on internet posts related to the campaign. This case study investigates how Tumblr served as a counterpublic space for this movement, while other social media platforms served as the more public face of this campaign. Through my analysis, I draw conclusions about how fandoms operate and the changes occurring as a result in the relationships between the media industry, creators, and consumers.

Author(s):  
Maurice M. “Mo” Krochmal

In just over five years, the growth of mobile communication has changed the practice and teaching of journalism in higher education as well as practice in the media industry. New devices and tools are released and adopted in rapid cycles. Social-media platforms thrive in the mobile environment. Journalists and journalism organizations are forced to explore new practices, while higher education works to integrate new methods into its curriculum. The author, an early adopter of mobile tools in practice, training and in higher education, examines the changes that have led to the mobile era, the new jobs now available, and how industry and academia are adapting.


2018 ◽  
Vol 18 (2) ◽  
pp. 77 ◽  
Author(s):  
János József Tóth

A kutatás során az európai népszavazások tudományos folyóiratokban és a szociális médiában megjelent médiareprezentációinak geográfiai eloszlását vizsgálom. A vizsgálatot egy 85 Scopus-indexált, európai első vagy egyszerzős, 2010 és 2016 közt megjelent, népszavazásokra fókuszáló cikkből, valamint több mint 70 ezer, a 2017-es Katalán Függetlenségi Népszavazáshoz kapcsolódó szociális média említésből álló mintán végeztem el. Az eredményeket az információs- és a platform-imperializmus elméleti keretein belül értelmezem. Első lépésben bemutattam, hogy az európai népszavazások médiareprezentációja során alkotott szövegek nyugati vállalatok tulajdonában lévő platformokon jelennek meg, és ezeken keresztül fejtik ki hatásukat; mind a tudományos, mind pedig a szociális média platformok esetében. E szövegek presztízse és elérése elválaszthatatlanul és tartalomtól függetlenül összefonódik a közvetítésükre használt platformmal, megmutatva, hogy a technológiailag mediált tér felosztásában néhány erős nyugati ország transznacionális cégeinek dominanciája érvényesül. A tudományos szövegek esetében ez a dominancia plurálisabb, megosztottabb: az észak-amerikaiak mellett a nagy akadémiai kereskedelmi kiadók közt jelentős nyugat-európai szereplők is megtalálhatóak, az indexáló szolgáltatások esetén pedig 2016-tól jelentős ázsiai érdekeltségekről is beszélhetünk. A szociális média említések esetében ellenben az egyesült államokbeli platformok eltéveszthetetlen hegemóniájával találjuk szemben magunkat, amik totálisan uralják a közönséghez vezető csatornákat. --- Platform-imperialism in science and social media: A case study of texts produced on European referendums between 2010 and 2017 In this research I examine the geographical distribution of media representations of European referendums published in scientific journals and social media. The examination was conducted on a sample consisting of 85 SCOPUS-indexed articles with European first or single authors focused on referendums and published between 2010 and 2016, and of more than 70k social media mentions of the Catalan independence referendum of 2017 from the same year. I interpreted the results within the theoretical framework of information- and platform imperialism. At first, I demonstrated that texts crafted for the media representation of European referendums are published on, and exert their influence through platforms owned by Western companies; both in the case of scientific and social media platforms. The prestige and reach of these texts are inseparably interwoven with the mediating platform, showing that transnational companies from a few Western countries dominate the division of the technologically mediated space studies during the research. In the case of scientific texts, the dominance is more diverse and plural. Besides big North-American players, there are major commercial academic publishers from Western Europe, and if abstracting and indexing services are considered then it can be observed that Asia has had a significant share in this business, at least since 2016. However, when social media references are considered an unmistakable hegemony of platforms from the United States, totally dominating audience reach can be observed. Keywords: platform-imperialism, science imperialism, European referendums, spatial scientometrics, mention analysis


2019 ◽  
Vol 16 (31) ◽  
Author(s):  
Carsten Stage

Cancer narratives shared on social media platforms have received increased academic interest over the last decade but often without sufficiently acknowledging the media specific narrative affordances of these platforms. The article will address this problem, by first presenting a ‘small stories’ approach to studying illness narrative on social media and then putting the approach to work in a case study of a Danish cancer patient’s Instagram profile (@jannelivsnyder66). The paper argues, that the storytelling practices on the profile can be analytically approached by focusing on the interplay between three co-constitutive levels of interaction: 1) a level of the desired illness narrative and position that the narrator, influenced by available cultural discourses and interaction with followers, hopes to be able to tell; 2) a level of sharing everyday posts, which can either support or disturb the desired narrative; 3) a level of follower responses, where relations between the desired narrative and singular posts are monitored through processes of liking and commenting. Followers of social media cancer narratives should in light of this not be understood as an audience witnessing an individual telling his/her “own” story, but rather as crucial contributors to the social interaction and co-creation of desired narratives, subject positions, narrative progress and tellability. In conclusion, the article thus stresses that cancer storytelling on social media, despite the strong biological connection of the disease to an individual body, emerges through inherently social processes of reading, liking, commenting, monitoring and co-deciding narrative practices.


Information ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 11
Author(s):  
Andrés Barrios-Rubio

The pandemic and lockdown forced the media and its agents to transform and think differently. The situation brought with it the reinvention of productive routines and revitalized the information consumption agenda of audiences immersed in screen devices. The operational change of the Colombian media industry, at a time of conjuncture, is approached by this research from a mixed, quantitative and qualitative methodology, with the aim of evaluating the response of the national news company to citizens’ news expectations during lockdown. The case study outlines a digital characterization of the public’s relationship with the media and communication. The corpus of analysis is made up of the actions of the main news agencies in Colombia—press (2), radio (5), television (2)—and their actions on social media—Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, YouTube—in the period between 1 January and 31 May 2020. The result of this study denotes a mediamorphosis of analogue media that revitalizes and integrates them into a 360° consumption chain, focusing on content that gives way to a creative culture that adapts to the demands of the market and imposes a see now, share now strategy to expand its market penetration.


2019 ◽  
pp. 488-514
Author(s):  
Maurice M. “Mo” Krochmal

In just over five years, the growth of mobile communication has changed the practice and teaching of journalism in higher education as well as practice in the media industry. New devices and tools are released and adopted in rapid cycles. Social-media platforms thrive in the mobile environment. Journalists and journalism organizations are forced to explore new practices, while higher education works to integrate new methods into its curriculum. The author, an early adopter of mobile tools in practice, training and in higher education, examines the changes that have led to the mobile era, the new jobs now available, and how industry and academia are adapting.


Author(s):  
Carsten Stage

Cancer narratives shared on social media platforms have received increased academic interest over the last decade but often without sufficiently acknowledging the media specific narrative affordances of these platforms. The article will address this problem, by first presenting a ‘small stories’ approach to studying illness narrative on social media and then putting the approach to work in a case study of a Danish cancer patient’s Instagram profile (@jannelivsnyder66). The paper argues, that the storytelling practices on the profile can be analytically approached by focusing on the interplay between three co-constitutive levels of interaction: 1) a level of the desired illness narrative and position that the narrator, influenced by available cultural discourses and interaction with followers, hopes to be able to tell; 2) a level of sharing everyday posts, which can either support or disturb the desired narrative; 3) a level of follower responses, where relations between the desired narrative and singular posts are monitored through processes of liking and commenting. Followers of social media cancer narratives should in light of this not be understood as an audience witnessing an individual telling his/her “own” story, but rather as crucial contributors to the social interaction and co-creation of desired narratives, subject positions, narrative progress and tellability. In conclusion, the article thus stresses that cancer storytelling on social media, despite the strong biological connection of the disease to an individual body, emerges through inherently social processes of reading, liking, commenting, monitoring and co-deciding narrative practices.


2019 ◽  
Vol 25 (1&2) ◽  
pp. 39-51
Author(s):  
Sri Krishnamurthi

Commentary: The second Fiji General Election in 12 years, since the fourth coup in 2006, took place on 14 November 2018, and once again the key players were the three parties that gained seats in Parliament in the 2014 election. The three parties: FijiFirst, the incumbent government led by the 2006 coup leader Voreqe Bainimarama; the preeminent opposition, Social Democratic Liberal Party (SODELPA), whose leader was the instigator of the first two coups, Sitiveni Rabuka; and the National Federation Party (NFP) which was led by former University of the South Pacific economics academic Professor Biman Prasad. The 2018 election was widely seen as another sign of progress for Fiji’s fragile democracy and both the significant protagonists were former military commanders and coup leaders seemingly committed to democracy. The media remained cowed, a legacy of the 2010 Media Industry Development Decree (MIDD, 2010), giving rise to using other forms of media such as social media platforms, with Facebook being the most popular. This commentary reflects on the experience of a journalist on a postgraduate assignment to report on the 2018 election.


2020 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
pp. 75-102
Author(s):  
Ramasela Semang L. Mathobela ◽  
Shepherd Mpofu ◽  
Samukezi Mrubula-Ngwenya

An emerging global trend of brands advertising their products through LGBTIQ+ individuals and couples indicates growth of gender awareness across the globe. The media, through advertising, deconstructs homophobia and associated cultures through the use of LGBTIQ+s in commercials. This qualitative research paper centres the advancement of debates on human rights and social media as critical in the interaction between corporates and consumers. The Gillette, Chicken Licken‘s Soul Sisters and We the Brave advertisements were used to critically analyse how audiences react to the use of LGBTIQ+ characters and casts through comments posted on the brands‘ social media platforms. Further, the paper explored the role of social media in the mediation of significant gender issues such as homosexuality that are considered taboo to engage in. The paper used a qualitative approach. Using the digital ethnography method to observe comments and interactions from the chosen advertisement‘s online platforms, the paper employed queer and constructionist theories to deconstruct discourses around same-sex relations as used in commercials, especially in quasiconservative. The data used in the paper included thirty comments of the brands customers and audiences obtained from Twitter, Facebook and YouTube. The paper concludes there are positive development in human rights awareness as seen through advertisements and campaigns that use LGBTIQ+ communities in a positive light across the world.


2021 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 205630512110213
Author(s):  
Brooke Erin Duffy ◽  
Annika Pinch ◽  
Shruti Sannon ◽  
Megan Sawey

While metrics have long played an important, albeit fraught, role in the media and cultural industries, quantified indices of online visibility—likes, favorites, subscribers, and shares—have been indelibly cast as routes to professional success and status in the digital creative economy. Against this backdrop, this study sought to examine how creative laborers’ pursuit of social media visibility impacts their processes and products. Drawing upon in-depth interviews with 30 aspiring and professional content creators on a range of social media platforms—Instagram, YouTube, TikTok, Pinterest, and Twitter—we contend that their experiences are not only shaped by the promise of visibility, but also by its precarity. As such, we present a framework for assessing the volatile nature of visibility in platformized creative labor, which includes unpredictability across three levels: (1) markets, (2) industries, and (3) platform features and algorithms. After mapping out this ecological model of the nested precarities of visibility, we conclude by addressing both continuities with—and departures from—the earlier modes of instability that characterized cultural production, with a focus on the guiding logic of platform capitalism.


2020 ◽  
Vol 4 (Supplement_1) ◽  
pp. 694-694
Author(s):  
Tammy Mermelstein

Abstract Preparing for or experiencing a disaster is never easy, but how leaders communicate with older adults can ease a situation or make it exponentially worse. This case study describes two disasters in the same city: Hurricane Harvey and the 2018 Houston Texas Ice Storm and the variation in messaging provided to and regarding older adults. For example, during Hurricane Harvey, the primary pre-disaster message was self-preparedness. During the storm, messages were also about individual survival. Statements such as “do not [climb into your attic] unless you have an ax or means to break through,” generated additional fear for older adults and loved ones. Yet, when an ice storm paralyzed Houston a few months later, public messaging had a strong “check on your elderly neighbors” component. This talk will explore how messaging for these events impacted older adults through traditional and social media analysis, and describe how social media platforms assisted people with rescue and recovery. Part of a symposium sponsored by Disasters and Older Adults Interest Group.


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