The Social Exclusion Bench Tool (SEBT): A visual way of assessing interpersonal social exclusion

People usually prefer to appear with an inclusive and positive attitude to others’ eyes. For this reason, the self-report scales assessing social exclusion intentions are often biased by social desirability. In this work, we present an innovative graphical tool, named Social Exclusion Bench Tool (SEBT), for assessing social exclusion not influenced by social desirability. The tool is based on the consistency between social distance and physical distance evaluation. The results showed that in two samples of adults from Italy (N = 252) and the UK (N = 254), the SEBT positively correlated with self-report measures of social exclusion, but not with the social desirability measure. The tool has been preliminarily evaluated in the context of social exclusion toward migrant people, but it appears a promising instrument for assessing social exclusion intentions toward different social groups. • The self-report scales assessing social exclusion intentions are often biased by social desirability. • The Social Exclusion Bench Tool (SEBT) is an innovative visual instrument for assessing social exclusion that seems not to be influenced by social desirability. • The tool appears a promising instrument for assessing social exclusion intentions toward different social groups

Calling Out the Trolls: Responses to Witnessing Use of the “Troll” Label as a Defense in an Online Group Context

Although the term “troll” has existed since the 1980s, its meaning has shifted in recent years as social media use has increased. People provide contrasting and imprecise definitions for what constitutes “trolling,” and often apply the term subjectively to describe online discussants who are uncivil, who are deviant, and who and present counter-attitudinal opinions. Exposure to deviance, counter-attitudinal information, and incivility often leads to unwanted psychological effects. In theory, labeling an uncivil, counter-attitudinal deviant as a “troll” proposes that their intention is to disrupt the conversation and upset other discussants, which provides a reason for why incivility is used, and diminishes the threat of counter-attitudinal exposure. Participants were placed into an online discussion about transgender identities; while participants believed they were discussing with real people, they were actually interacting with a scripted computer program. All discussion comments were pro-attitudinal, save one. A 2 X 3 between-subjects design was employed to examine the effects of the civility of the counter-attitudinal comment (civil vs. uncivil) and the label used against this counter-attitudinal discussant (no label vs. rude label vs. troll label). Incivility exposure overall produced higher ratings of anger, attitude certainty, intentions to participate, and identification with the discussion group. The rude label overall decreased attitude certainty, while the troll label overall increased identification with being a person with their pre-existing attitude. In the uncivil condition, participants were marginally more willing to participate again when the troll label was applied, when compared to the two other label conditions. The intersecting influences of gender, pre-existing attitudes, and suspicions about the deception used are discussed

Violence and Trolling on Social Media

'Trolls for Trump', virtual rape, fake news - social media discourse, including forms of virtual and real violence, has become a formidable, yet elusive, political force. What characterizes online vitriol? How do we understand the narratives generated, and also address their real-world - even life-and-death - impact? How can hatred, bullying, and dehumanization on social media platforms be addressed and countered in a post-truth world? This book unpicks discourses, metaphors, media dynamics, and framing on social media, to begin to answer these questions. Written for and by cultural and media studies scholars, journalists, political philosophers, digital communication professionals, activists and advocates, this book makes the connections between theoretical approaches from cultural and media studies and practical challenges and experiences 'from the field', providing insight into a rough media landscape

Recreational nastiness or playful mischief? Contrasting perspectives on internet trolling between news media and avid internet users

The term “internet trolling” has come to encompass a wide range of disparate behaviours: ranging from abusive speech and computer hacking to sarcastic humour and friendly teasing. While some of these behaviours are clearly antisocial and, in extreme cases, criminal, others are harmless and can even be prosocial. Previous studies have shown that self-identified internet trollers tend to credit internet trolling’s poor reputation to misunderstanding and overreaction from people unfamiliar with internet culture and humour, whereas critics of trolling have argued that the term has been used to downplay and gloss over problematic transgressive behaviour. As the internet has come to dominate much of our everyday lives as a place of work, play, learn, and connection with other people, it is imperative that harmful trolling behaviours can be identified and managed in nuanced ways that do not unnecessarily suppress harmless activities. This thesis disambiguates some of the competing and contrary ideas about internet trolling by comparing perceptions of trolling drawn from two sources in two studies. Study 1 was a content analysis of 240 articles sampled from 11 years of English language news articles mentioning internet trolling to establish a ”mainstream” perspective. Study 2 was a series of in-depth, semi-structured interviews with 20 participants who self-identified as avid internet users familiar with internet trolling as part of their everyday internet use. Study 1 found that 97% of the news articles portrayed internet trolling in a negative light, with reporting about harassment and online hostility being the most common. By contrast, Study 2 found that 30% of the 20 participants held mostly positive views of trolling, 25% mostly negative, and 45% were ambivalent. Analysis of these two studies reveal four characteristics of internet trolling interactions which can serve as a framework for evaluating potential risk of harm: 1) targetedness, 2) embodiedness, 3) ability to disengage, and 4) troller intent. This thesis argues that debate over the definition of “trolling” is not useful for the purposes of addressing online harm. Instead, the proposed framework can be used to identify harmful online behaviours, regardless of what they are called

Linguistic variation across Twitter and Twitter trolling

Trolling is used to label a variety of behaviours, from the spread of misinformation and hyperbole to targeted abuse and malicious attacks. Despite this, little is known about how trolling varies linguistically and what its major linguistic repertoires and communicative functions are in comparison to general social media posts. Consequently, this dissertation collects two corpora of tweets – a general English Twitter corpus and a Twitter trolling corpus using other Twitter users’ accusations – and introduces and applies a new short-text version of Multi-Dimensional Analysis to each corpus, which is designed to identify aggregated dimensions of linguistic variation across them. The analysis finds that trolling tweets and general tweets only differ on the final dimension of linguistic variation, but share the following linguistic repertoires: “Informational versus Interactive”, “Personal versus Other Description”, and “Promotional versus Oppositional”. Moreover, the analysis compares trolling tweets to general Twitter’s dimensions and finds that trolling tweets and general tweets are remarkably more similar than they are different in their distribution along all dimensions. These findings counter various theories on trolling and problematise the notion that trolling can be detected automatically using grammatical variation. Overall, this dissertation provides empirical evidence on how trolling and general tweets vary linguistically

Through the Eye of a Needle: Craftivism as an Emerging Mode of Civic Engagement and Cultural Participation

There has been a grassroots revival of craftivism leading up to, and following the 2016 U.S. presidential election. This qualitative dissertation explores the experiences of women within three craftivist groups to facilitate a deeper understanding of their conceptions of craft, activism and feminism, the salience of older women within these communities, and how the affordances of new media are potentially reshaping craftivism. Drawing on interview data, as well as offline and online participant observation, this study found that craftivists have highly diverse personal trajectories and understandings of feminism and activism, that older women—many with a lifelong history of activism—play a significant role in craftivist groups, and that participation in craftivism, supported through extensive use of social media and online communication, provides a gateway to civic expression and engagement. Beyond deepening our understanding of craftivism in the current political climate, this research makes significant contributions to scholarship on participatory culture, activism, and civic engagement. While these bodies of research have traditionally been youth-centric, this dissertation adds value by shedding light on the participatory practices of older women in creative online sites

Social media “talk” & gender violence: discourses of gender violence on facebook by audiences of e-tv’s scandal

Abstract : Violence against women is common, serious, and takes many forms. These forms include physical, sexual, and emotional abuse. These forms also have profound implications for every aspect of women’s lives. This study is about what we can learn from studying how society talks, on social media, about battered women. This phenomenon is described as “social media talk”. The study sought to establish the evolution of social discourse in the age of digital networks by examining the phenomenon of social media talk in relation to regimes of representation of gender violence. Data was collected from Facebook threads relating to six purposively sampled episodes of a local soap opera, Scandal, which depict different forms of intimate partner violence perpetrated against the character of Gloria, by her second husband, Obakeng. Soap opera is the “hook”, the trigger, to the social media talk. Methodologically, the study utilised an emerging online research method, netnography, that enabled the researcher to immerse on the social media platform to gain a deeper insight into the social media chat. The study is grounded in a feminist theoretical framework that places women at the centre. What does “social media talk” reveal in terms of participants’ awareness of intimate partner violence? The thesis turned on this central research question. Crucially, the study demonstrates that talk, discourse and conversation are moving more and more onto social media platforms, and hence social justice activism – if it is to remain relevant – will have to follow the conversation. It foregrounds how we can, as it were, follow the conversation, and what we can learn from such following of the conversation. At the same time, it sheds light on the possibilities and limits of, on the one hand, social media talk and, on the other hand, representation of gender violence. The study thus represents a new paradigm of attending to social discourse. The study also found that soap opera audiences on social media talk in a diversity of ways that may or may not conform to Facebook’s terms of service and to the needs of soap opera marketing teams. At the same time, the social media talk demonstrated differences in expressive styles as well as differing perspectives and differences of opinion. The platform could be used to express tame or dissenting views. The main finding suggests that we need to pause and engage in a deeper conversation and reflection about the quality and direction of the conversation on social media. The impressive conclusions about social media talk stood in stark contrast to the realities of gender violence on the ground.D.Litt. et Phil. (Communication Studies

Investigating Online Electioneering in the UK General Election of 2010

This research project is an analysis of the use of digital propaganda by the three major parties in the UK 2010 General Election. In addition to this empirical aim, the study also employs the discipline of memetics to generate a theoretical and methodological approach with which to study digital propaganda. Memetics is an evolutionary theory of culture based around the concept of the ‘meme’ or cultural replicator. This study contends that propaganda can be understood as an evolutionary phenomenon, with the ethical implications of its use specifically addressed in each instance, rather than assumed as part of its definition. The memetic ‘methodological toolkit’ which is used to analyse the data on the 2010 election is a means by which key concepts from within the literature on memetics can be practically deployed. As part of the study this ‘toolkit’ is presented and the testing of it is continually evaluated in order to improve upon the initial design, something which also has implications for the use of memetic concepts within thematic textual analysis. The election itself was not an ‘Internet election’ in the way that the 2008 Presidential Election in the USA might be characterised. Such an election can be identified by a convergence of factors from within the party campaign structures and the wider political environment on a specific subject or individual – commonly a candidate for office – resulting in a high degree of spontaneous online participation and organisation amongst citizen supporters. This study argues that the UK 2010 election did not produce such a convergence due to low levels of voter enthusiasm, uneven social and financial resources and an inability by the major parties to capitalise on the potential opportunities for digital campaigning which arose