Information Communication & Society

Jung, Hoyong; Lee, Sangwon

doi: 10.1080/1369118X.2023.2214597pmid: N/A

As social media has become a means of information sharing, knowledge dissemination, and social interactions, it follows that its use significantly influences the formation of attitudes and social norms. Existing literature has raised significant concerns about social media causing political polarization. This study examines whether the use of social media causes polarized attitudes on redistribution by applying the instrumental variable (IV) estimation to the Asian Barometer Survey (14 countries). We find that informational and expressive social media use contributes to citizens’ diverging redistributive attitudes, and these effects are more pronounced in countries that are perceived as less democratic. Based on our findings, we discuss policy implications regarding the role of social media in forming redistributive attitudes.

Ou, Chuyue; Sandel, Todd; Lin, Zhongxuan

doi: 10.1080/1369118X.2023.2214607pmid: N/A

This study demonstrates the importance of the approach of dis(playing) families in analyzing and conceptualizing mediated filial norms in Chinese cross-border/transnational families. Based upon two years of ethnographic fieldwork in Macao, the study develops a conceptual framework – dis(playing) mediated filial norms – to examine how Chinese cross-border students use WeChat to reconstitute their long-distance filial practices. Findings point to a double dynamic of dis(playing) filial norms, in which mediated filial norms shape their displays of emotions and bodies, whereas playing with filial norms battles the conflicts and burdens behind filial ideals. This study contributes to understanding the practices of mediated filial norms from parent–child dynamic interactions on social media, from multiple-audience perspectives, and from the uniqueness of WeChat in Chinese transnational domesticity. It also offers a conceptual explanation for the contradictions between connected and disconnected intimacy within filial practices.

Jiang, Xinxin

doi: 10.1080/1369118X.2023.2216767pmid: N/A

In this study, I consider the practice of sharenting mixed-blood children on Douyin as a particular case to explore how a racialized discourse facilitates and complicates the mechanism of sharenting in the Chinese context. Through digital ethnography and a qualitative content analysis of short video and audience comments on selected hunxue’er accounts, I explore how three racialized sharenting strategies – performances of Eurasianness, Chineseness, and cosmopolitanism, built around the concept of hunxue, or mixed-blood, are in fact forms of racialized digital labor for increasing visibility and monetizing creativity. The findings demonstrate that through a seemingly agentic and definitely conscious play of mixed identities, these sharenting strategies, exclusive to hunxue’er accounts, justify a distinctive use of children’s digital labor in Chinese society. This study also shows that in Douyin’s landscape, sharenting children from Chinese-Caucasian families appears to be more visible and favored, which not only reveals the insidious logic of global racial hierarchies but also reinforces the structures of dominance in the digital sphere.

Hagen, Sal; Venturini, Tommaso

doi: 10.1080/1369118X.2023.2216769pmid: N/A

In this article we propose a new theoretical framework to conceptualise Internet memes and to trace their temporal variation on 4chan/pol/. We draw from literature on primary and secondary orality to conceptualise the repetition-with-variation of Internet memes as a form of memecry, which we argue is specifically pertinent to the collectivity of online subcultures. We operationalise its study through formulas: mnemonic phrases that encapsulate important elements of oral cultures, which have arguably regained prominence in ephemeral and fast-paced online environments. While Internet memes have often been studied as single images or words, formulas provide a more complex unit for tracing variation and not only circulation. We offer a quali-quantitative protocol to investigate memecry and visualise the spread and variability of 65 prominent formulas on 4chan/pol/, a far-right space known for its reliance on memes. By discussing several cases, we demonstrate how 4chan’s collective identity indeed features typical of secondary oral cultures, while revealing how the memecry of its formulas is entwined with reactionary sentiments and a subcultural struggle for distinction.

Suk, Jiyoun; Sun, Yibing; Sun, Luhang; Li, Mengyu; Farías, Catalina; Kwon, Hyerin; Ghosh, Shreenita; Borah, Porismita; Mini, Darshana Sreedhar; Correa, Teresa; Garlough, Christine; Shah, Dhavan V.

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Hawkins, Ian; Chinn, Sedona

doi: 10.1080/1369118X.2023.2219724pmid: N/A

The growth of populist movements in the US necessitates further understanding of how they use social media and evaluate elites. Work on populist attitudes suggests skepticism of elites is not limited to political domains but extends into online and scientific spaces. This study draws on the recently articulated concept of science populism as well as social media usage to examine Alt-Right and institutional partisans’ attitudes toward scientific elites. Using an online survey our findings are threefold: first, Alt-Right supporters hold stronger science populist beliefs than Republicans/Democrats; second, heavy social media use bridges the gap in partisans’ science populist beliefs, as Democrats come to hold more populist attitudes with increased social media use; and third, science populist beliefs are associated with maladaptive health behaviors through lower COVID-19 vaccine intentions. We discuss implications for understanding how political affiliation and social media use are associated with populist attitudes and their potential to cause individual and societal harms.

Németh, Renáta; Sik, Domonkos; Zaboretzky, Bendegúz; Katona, Eszter

doi: 10.1080/1369118X.2023.2222168pmid: N/A

The article aims at exploring the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the lay discourses of depression emerging in online mental health forums. The narrative framing of depression plays a central role not only because it affects the instrumental strategies of depressed people (e.g., preferred therapy), but also because it is a constitutive element of the identity of depressed people, thus affects the process of recovery itself. COVID-19 had a serious impact on people living with mental disorders (especially depression and anxiety), thus our research aimed at mapping the consequences of these transformations on a discursive level. A textual dataset of English language online health forums was collected (n = 339,550 publicly available entries posted between 15 February 2016 and 31 December 2020). Structural topic modelling was used to explore the various discursive patterns characterizing the pre-pandemic and pandemic era. Our results show that the pandemic did not take over the discursive space of depression forums, yet it transformed many aspects of it: a new horizon of critique opened up; the biomedical authority was reinforced; the ego-centric perspectives were refined; the previously unquestionable discursive frames become fragmented; and the horizon of emergency overshadowed the previous risk perspective.

Blackburn, Kate G.; LeFebvre, Leah E.; Brody, Nick

doi: 10.1080/1369118X.2023.2223257pmid: N/A

The Relationship Dissolution Model (RDM) was used to analyze what and why virtual possessions people retain or delete after a romantic relationship breakup. Participants (N = 406) completed online open-ended survey questions to understand their decision-making process for retaining or deleting relationship possessions. Upon completing an emergent thematic analysis, findings showed that people retained and deleted virtual possessions for a variety of reasons, including documenting memory, documenting emotion, managing the past – moving on, and managing the present – emotional regulation. Based on these findings, the RDM was adapted to include a relationship curation process, which describes the management of relationship memories tied to virtual possessions. The implications offer a foundation for expanding on memory management processes.

Ashuri, Tamar

doi: 10.1080/1369118X.2023.2227667pmid: N/A

Changes associated with Internet technologies, including mobile devices, ubiquitous computing, and big data, have altered the basic mechanics whereby human knowledge is produced and circulated. This article discusses newfangled data-driven knowledge agents which emerged in the wake of these major transformations and which are termed here ‘Shadowy Knowledge Infrastructural Platforms’ (SKI). SKI, are conceived as data-driven infrastructural platform firms that have attained the scale and social utility that renders them vitally important to millions of individuals and to major institutions that have become dependent on the epistemic products and services they provide. The focus is on two representative examples of such enterprises, Waze and Moovit, both of which have rapidly fledged out into major producers and disseminators of human knowledge in the field of transportation and cartography. The article identifies the distinctive characteristics of these entities, points out to their obscure practices, and reveals the mechanism that governs their meteoric growth. The analysis demonstrates the high stakes involved when Shadowy Knowledge Infrastructural Platforms, having accumulated individual and institutional data for commercial purposes, establish forms of sovereign power over the creation and distribution of knowledge, on which both individuals and institutions become dependent.

Pentzold, Christian; Knorr, Charlotte

doi: 10.1080/1369118X.2023.2227673pmid: N/A

This article unpacks the short-lived but momentous buzz around big data. Although talk about big data was once widespread, little is known about the efforts animating its semantics. Tracing this sociotechnical imaginary, we revisit how business insiders and IT commentators fueled the ephemeral yet potent excitement around the term. Our genealogical examination rests on a selection of publications from 2013 to 2017. We employ methods from critical discourse analysis to interrogate how big data was written into being and hyped into a topic of concern. In this aspirational discourse, tech evangelists and writers extrapolated from contexts in which large troves of data were already being harnessed to suggest that inescapable transformations were imminent. They sought to concretize abstract and unfathomable quantities while simultaneously overwhelming their readers with a sense of vastness that exceeds all contexts and outruns the most exuberant expectations. The term may have lost this luster, but big data technologies and practices are an integral part of today’s technological infrastructures.