Who do they think they're talking to? framings of the audience by social media users

This paper examines the understandings and meanings of personal information sharing online using a predominantly symbolic interactionist analytic perspective and focusing on writers’ conceptions of their relationships with their audiences. It draws on an analysis of in-depth interviews with 23 personal bloggers. They were found to have limited interest in gathering information about their audiences, appearing to assume that readers are sympathetic. A comprehensive and grounded typology of imagined relationships with audiences was devised. Although the blogs of those interviewed were all public, some appear to frame their blogging practice as primarily self-directed, with their potential audiences playing a marginal role. These factors provide one explanation for some forms of potentially risky self-exposure that have been observed among social media user

Blogging on the ice: Connecting audiences with climate-change sciences

Scientists working in Antarctica have recognized the need to counteract problems associated with mainstream media's treatment of the climate-change crisis. For this reason, several of them have assumed the role of citizen journalists in order to report on the effects of global warming first-hand. More specifically, they have chosen to communicate directly with the general public through official or personal blogs. In so doing they are capitalizing on the way the Internet is changing science news and journalism. This article draws on an analysis of more than 50 Antarctic blogs published during the International Polar Year (2007-08), as well as data from e-interviews with a broad selection of bloggers, in order to examine how scientists 'on the ice' act as citizen journalists. The article explores the idea of citizen journalism as education and the extent to which the scientists achieve an unmediated form of communication through their blogging efforts. It concludes by suggesting this new form of citizen journalism, beyond raising people's awareness of the climate-change crisis, also signals an important way in which mainstream environmental reporting can be reinvigorated. © 2013 Intellect Ltd Article

Networked Publics, Networked Politics: Resisting Gender-Based Violent Speech in Digital Media

This dissertation is a qualitative study of digital media that identifies and analyzes feminist responses to violent speech in networked environments across Canada and the United States between 2011 and 2015. Exploring how verbal violence is constitutive of and constituted by power relations in the feminist blogosphere, I ask the following set of research questions: How do feminist bloggers politicize and problematize instances of violent speech on digital media? In what ways are their networked interactions and self-representations reconfigured as a result of having to face hostile audiences? What modes of agency appear within feminist blogging cultures? This work engages with feminist theory (hooks, 2014; McRobbie, 2009; Stringer 2014), media studies (boyd, 2014; Lovink, 2011; Marwick 2013) and their intersections in the field of feminist media studies (Jane 2014; Keller, 2012). Drawing on interviews with the key players in the feminist blogosphere and providing a discursive reading of selected digital texts, I identify networked resistive strategies including digital archiving, public shaming, strategic silence and institutional transformations. I argue that feminist responses to violent speech are varied and reflect not only long-standing concerns with community building and womens voices in public context, but also emerging anxieties around self-branding, professional identity and a control over one's digital presence. This research underscores the importance of transformative capacities of networked feminist politics and contextualizes agentic modes of participation in response to problematic communication

Rhetorical Strategies of Consumer Activists: Reframing Market Offers to Promote Change

Consumer researchers have most frequently looked at the influence the marketplace has on consumers’ identity projects, while the reverse process – how consumers’ identity projects influence the marketplace and general culture – is an important issue that has received less attention. Aiming to contribute to the development of this literature, we conduct a qualitative netnographic investigation of the Fat Acceptance Movement, an online-based movement led by consumer-activists who attempt to change societal attitudes about people who are fat. Our main goal is, therefore, to investigate how consumer activists who congregate online, that is, cyberactivists, reframe market offers while attempting to promote market and cultural change. We identify several rhetorical strategies employed by online consumer activists in their quests to change themselves, other consumers, and the broader culture. Our findings advance consumer research on how consumers may mobilize resources to initiate and promote self-, market-, and cultural transformations

Mapping the travel blog : a study of the online travel narrative

This thesis examines the discursive tension between travel and tourism and analyses how narrative techniques negotiate this in travel blogs. This discursive analysis uses various theories of narrative and self-presentation, particularly Bakhtin’s heteroglossia, polyphony, and speech genres, Goffman’s theories of self-presentation, and Graham Dann’s framework for tourist discourse. It finds that the underlying discursive tensions in travel blogs indicate a need for a more flexible approach to defining and analysing this form of communication

Journal of Applied Communications vol. 98 (3) Full Issue

Journal of Applied Communications vol. 98 (3) - Full Issu

The new curators : bloggers, fans and classic cinema on Tumblr

textThis study examines the role of social media in maintaining interest in classic cinema in today’s media culture. Ethnographic analyses and case studies were performed within a robust classic cinema fan network on the social media blogging site Tumblr. The practices of these bloggers and their online platform are framed against the traditional structure of the curator and museum, indicating that they serve many of the cultural functions attributed to these institutions. This study further demonstrates that these Tumblr networks serve as a resource for young people to discover, share, and create communities relating to classic cinema. Due to the networking capabilities of Tumblr’s youth-oriented platform, these fan activities reach a broad range of individuals, exposing them to scenes and actors from classic cinema, stimulating interest in and acceptance of the cinematic framework of classic films. This content visibility and distribution potentially draws those outside the community into the extant fan network. These communities and practices represent previously unexplored methods by which classic cinema appreciation may develop and thrive within the fast-paced media culture of the 21st century.Radio-Television-Fil

Blogging Our Criminal Past: Social Media, Public Engagement and Creative History

Rather than asking should historians use social media - a question frequently posed online and increasingly discussed in seminars and conferences - this article explores how historians currently use blogging and micro-blogging, and how these media are transforming the ways we think and write about history. Blogging, the article argues, has the potential to ‘turn history upside down’ by breaking down traditional hierarchies separating amateur and professional, young and old, theorist and practitioner, reader and writer. Where early blogger-historians tended to be associated with large-scale digital projects and concerned with digital humanities methodologies, the article detects the emergence of a new generation, led by postgraduates and early careers researchers, committed to writing accessible ‘history from below’. Social media is not simply a tool to reach a larger audience for, as a medium, its visual, interactive and open-ended features allow us - encourage us even - to be more creative and reflective. Consequently, the article proposes, blogging is becoming an integral and dynamic part of the research process, not simply a supplement to scholarly publication or a work-in-progress version of it

Building a Blog/Building a Brand: Public Relations Campaign for Goodwill Hunting Fashion Blog

The ability to consistently and cohesively communicate a brand\u27s identity is the central focus of a public relations campaign. This project chronicled the creative and promotional efforts put forward to effectively communicate the brand of Goodwill Hunting - a fashion blog based on the thrift adventures of a 21-year-old college student. Exploring concepts embedded in branding, authenticity, blogging and social media; this campaign was able to establish and maintain a brand identity for Goodwill Hunting through the intentionality of content creation and promotional activity. Goodwill Hunting\u27s blog site and Instagram account was ran for four months and the efforts of the campaign resulted in a 1,300+ page view increase, a steady increase of 100 followers a month on social media, and an offer to the blogger to consistently blog for the Goodwill industries. This campaign reflected upon how when all public relations activities serve to consistently and cohesively communicate a brand, it results in a well-established brand identity that an audience supports and identifies with

Poetics of Early YouTube : Production, Performance, Success

This study is an exploration of early YouTube culture. It offers an analysis of the most subscribed YouTube channels of the years 2005 and 2006 with methods of film and media studies. The aspects in focus are users’ backgrounds and motivations for using YouTube, video production, settings, modes of performance, cinematography, editing, the overall form of videos, and the activities of the contributing users and of others with regards to the videos once uploaded to YouTube. Is today’s professional and commercial YouTube culture the downfall of a ‘participatory culture’ in which there were no lines between producers and consumers and the approval of the ‘YouTube community’ was revenue enough? This study argues otherwise and challenges the participatory culture and social media paradigms which have been predominant in the research thus far. It shows that dedicated video production mattered already in the early years of the platform. It shows how YouTube users employed their performing bodies, cinematography, and editing in creative ways to produce videos that would turn out successful and generate revenues on and off YouTube. How is YouTube an extension, transformation, or break from media like film and television? How can YouTube videomaking be situated with regards to other cultural practices? This study offers novel insights by introducing audiovisual analysis into YouTube research