A Dataset of State-Censored Tweets

Many governments impose traditional censorship methods on social media platforms. Instead of removing it completely, many social media companies, including Twitter, only withhold the content from the requesting country. This makes such content still accessible outside of the censored region, allowing for an excellent setting in which to study government censorship on social media. We mine such content using the Internet Archive's Twitter Stream Grab. We release a dataset of 583,437 tweets by 155,715 users that were censored between 2012-2020 July. We also release 4,301 accounts that were censored in their entirety. Additionally, we release a set of 22,083,759 supplemental tweets made up of all tweets by users with at least one censored tweet as well as instances of other users retweeting the censored user. We provide an exploratory analysis of this dataset. Our dataset will not only aid in the study of government censorship but will also aid in studying hate speech detection and the effect of censorship on social media users. The dataset is publicly available at https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.4439509Comment: Accepted to ICWSM 202

Demarginalizing Interdisciplinarity in IS Research: Interdisciplinary Research in Marginalization

This paper reports on the second Workshop of a World University Network (WUN) Research Development Funded project on “The trans-nationalization of Indigenous movements: The role of digital technologies” at the University of Southampton, UK. The workshop explored interdisciplinarity and how interdisciplinary collaboration can help scholars study complex social phenomenon, such as the ways in which marginalized Indigenous communities use and shape digital technologies (such as social media) to enhance their cause. The workshop brought together scholars from diverse disciplines to engage in a critical debate. In addition to scholars from information systems, scholars from history, political science, geography, literature, arts, and anthropology came together to discuss how marginalized Indigenous communities can use digital media. The workshop highlighted the need for more interdisciplinary research and called for more critical approaches to bring such marginalized topics to the forefront of research in information systems. We consider three broad areas of inquiry in this paper: demarginalizing methodology for interdisciplinary research, interdisciplinary perspectives for demarginalization, and interdisciplinary contexts for demarginalization

Examining social networking site narratives between government and youth on entrepreneurship : the case of relationship development in Egypt

Analysis of the ways in which SNS (Social Networking Sites) are used by governments, organisations and everyday users has over the past ten years been of significant interest to academic researchers. Part of this analysis of use has included understanding how in the Middle East, SNS were used in the series of anti-government protests known as the Arab Spring. Specifically, in Egypt, during the January 25 Revolution, a large number of youth users went on SNS such as Facebook to disseminate information, create conversations and raise awareness of their perspectives and concerns. Whilst use in protest and demonstration may result in aspects such as a drop in public trust of government agents, SNS could also contribute to significant relational outcomes such as relationship development and trust.This study takes Egypt as its foci in investigating the outcomes of SNS interaction between Government agencies and Youth users. This study aims to understand the role of the topic about which conversations are occurring in communicating with the citizens. Additionally, this study places emphasis on the role of the government agency in changing the perceptions of the Government through SNS interactions.This study contributes to the burgeoning domain of SNS studies by providing a non- traditional approach to its theoretical background. It specifically achieves this by adopting three areas of focus; first, SNS which includes a site and user perspective. Second, the political context which includes Marketing theory and government studies. Third, relationship development and trust which includes a multi theory lens into theorising the outcomes of SNS interactions. Therefore, it is the first study to apply Political Marketing Theory in Egypt in a non-electoral context. Using novel applications of Relationship Marketing and Public Relations theory, this study presents an understanding of the relationship orientation in the interaction between GOFE and Youth on SNS. Furthermore, the analysis regarding trust development in this study is developed through a framework that highlights both the users’ perspective of trust and the organisations' efforts towards achieving trust.This study adopts a social constructivist approach. Therefore, this investigation embraces qualitative inductive methods. Due to the rich culture and high interaction of the context investigated, the research problem at hand was addressed through the application of netnography. The Netnographic package includes; firstly, an online observation of Facebook pages followed by textual analysis. Secondly, it includes two sets of interviews with a sample of the users (i.e. Youth) and the organisations (i.e. GOFE). Using Thematic Analysis ten different themes were extracted from the three sources of data (i.e. Facebook data, GOFE interviews and Youth interviews).The findings from this study suggest that GOFE SNS representation is not yet mature. However, findings demonstrate that GOFE are in the process of becoming a generalisable model of government SNS representation. This could occur with the drop in control over engagement and movement to engagement strategies beyond those targeted primarily at publicity alone. Indeed, this study confirms the significant influence of SNS in fostering positive relational outcomes between the Government and Youth, while confirming the role of the topic and agency. These findings are discussed in light of theoretical contribution and practical implication to the government sector. Whereas previous studies have focused on one aspect of the communication process, this study is the first conducted in the public sector domain in Egypt that focuses on the observed behaviours of GOFE on SNS, perceived behaviours of GOFE by Youth and the strategic intent of GOFE by being present on SNS. This study concludes with limitations incurred and recommendations for practice and future studies. Finally, this study argues that with a further optimised SNS representation, there is indeed hope in developing relationships and achieving trust between Government and citizens in Egypt through SNS interaction

Global Platform, Local Labour: Precarious YouTubing in Ireland and Turkey

This thesis investigates creative digital labour practices of Irish and Turkish content creators within the hybrid space of YouTube. It frames YouTube creators who generate or aspire to earn income via the platform as cultural workers in the platform economy by acknowledging the similarities in their working conditions with other platform workers. It also addresses how their media production practices are negotiated and shaped in particular underrepresented national contexts that take place in peripheral economies. Rather than macro-level industry-based approaches, the study employs mixed methods to provide micro-level explanations of platformed content creation. First, it employs methods from ethnography such as semi-structured interviews with YouTube creators and observations in their workplaces to trace the dynamics of production as a culture, to listen to the voices of labourers and to capture creators’ own realities in their working lives. Second, it benefits from the walkthrough method to put subjective interpretations of creators into the context of the platform affordances and regulatory frameworks and considers how these factors shape or constrain the activity of creators. This study demonstrates that YouTubing has a precarious nature which shapes creators’ working lives and how they form and maintain their professional identities inside or outside YouTube careers. The thesis examines this precarious nature by contextualising creators’ media production and distribution practices in the platform architecture; more significantly it draws attention to the complexity of the relationships between platforms, content creator labour and local contexts, which influences the precariousness of creative digital labour. Thus, the study contributes to the dominant literature on YouTube which neglects YouTube creators as shaped by specific economic, political, cultural, and linguistic contexts of nation-states, instead of assuming them to be a homogeneous group under a global platform