Don\u27t Call Me That: A Techno-Feminist Critique of the Term Mommy Blogger

This article argues that although the act of mommy blogging may be empowering, the term itself reinforces women\u27s hegemonic normative roles as nurturers, thrusting women who blog about their children into a form of digital domesticity in the blogosphere. Drawing on 29 blogs posts women wrote debating the term mommy blogger and 649 comments posted on these blogs, the author uses Judith Butler\u27s concept of performativity to rhetorically analyze the term, using a techno-feminist lens and cyber-ethnographic approach. The author asserts that the use of the term mommy blogger continues the culturally ingrained performance of motherhood women learned since childhood, and, in so doing, holds women captive in this subjective norm that may not fit them. The use of mommy, versus mother, highlights the nurturing aspect of motherhood and conjures a prototype of the ideal mother, further marginalizing women by focusing on one attribute that does not apply to all women or even all mothers

How Much Does This Tick You Off? Online Rejection and Criticism Lead to Negative Affect and Retaliatory Aggression

A three-condition (rejection, criticism, control) single-factor experiment (N = 77) on a mock social-networking site similar to Facebook reveals that even a slight rejection - not being allowed to join groups on the site - lead to increases in self-reported negative affect and retaliation against the site and the rejecting groups compared to a control. Subjects who were accepted into the groups but then criticized experienced the same increases in negative affect and retaliatory aggression, as those who were not allowed to join. In addition, men showed heightened retaliatory aggression compared to women and responded differently to criticism than women. However, no significant effects were found by condition in regard to arousal, physiologically measured affect, attempts to restore relational value, triggered displaced aggression, or feelings associated with ostracism. Findings suggest that while rejection and criticism cause emotional pain, they do not hurt as much as ostracism. Results are discussed in relation to the belongingness hypothesis, sociometer theory, the ostracism model, and face theory. Gender differences are explored using social cognitive theory

We Should Not Get Rid of Incivility Online

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.Incivility and toxicity have become concepts du jour in research about social media. The clear normative implication in much of this research is that incivility is bad and should be eliminated. Extensive research—including some that we’ve authored—has been dedicated to finding ways to reduce or eliminate incivility from online discussion spaces. In our work as part of the Civic Signals Initiative, we’ve been thinking carefully about what metrics should be adopted by social media platforms eager to create better spaces for their users. When we tell people about this project, removing incivility from the platforms frequently comes up as a suggested metric. In thinking about incivility, however, we’ve become less convinced that it is desirable, or even possible, for social media platforms to remove all uncivil content. In this short essay, we discuss research on incivility, our rationale for a more complicated normative stance regarding incivility, and what other orientations may be more useful. We conclude with a post mortem arguing that we should not abandon research on incivility altogether, but we should recognize the limitations of a concept that is difficult to universalize

When Journalists go "Below the Line': comment spaces at the Guardian (2006-2017)

Based on a longitudinal research design (2006–2017), this article analyses how Guardian journalists engage in “below the line” comment spaces; what factors shape this engagement; and how this has evolved over time. The article combines a large-scale quantitative analysis of the total number of comments made (n = 110,263,661) and a manual content analysis of all comments made by 26 journalists (n = 5448) and their broader writing practices with 18 semi-structured interviews conducted in two phases (13 in 2012 and 5 repeated in 2017–18). The results show that there is considerable interest in comment spaces amongst readers, with exponential growth in user commenting. Furthermore, there has been significant engagement below the line by some Guardian journalists, and this is often in the form of direct and sustained reciprocity. Journalist commenting has waned in recent years due to difficulties coping with the volume of comments; changes in editorial emphasis; concerns over incivility and abuse; and a decrease in perceived journalistic benefits of commenting, alongside the rise in importance of Twitter. When journalists comment, they do so in a variety of ways and their comments are often substantive, significantly adding to the story by, for example, defending and explaining their journalism practice

New insights into the genetic etiology of Alzheimer's disease and related dementias

Characterization of the genetic landscape of Alzheimer's disease (AD) and related dementias (ADD) provides a unique opportunity for a better understanding of the associated pathophysiological processes. We performed a two-stage genome-wide association study totaling 111,326 clinically diagnosed/'proxy' AD cases and 677,663 controls. We found 75 risk loci, of which 42 were new at the time of analysis. Pathway enrichment analyses confirmed the involvement of amyloid/tau pathways and highlighted microglia implication. Gene prioritization in the new loci identified 31 genes that were suggestive of new genetically associated processes, including the tumor necrosis factor alpha pathway through the linear ubiquitin chain assembly complex. We also built a new genetic risk score associated with the risk of future AD/dementia or progression from mild cognitive impairment to AD/dementia. The improvement in prediction led to a 1.6- to 1.9-fold increase in AD risk from the lowest to the highest decile, in addition to effects of age and the APOE ε4 allele

Losing Face on Social Media: Threats to Positive Face Lead to an Indirect Effect on Retaliatory Aggression Through Negative Affect

A three-condition (rejection, criticism, control) single-factor experiment (N = 78) reveals that even relatively minor face-threatening acts of rejection or criticism on a social-networking site similar to Facebook lead to increases in self-reported negative affect and retaliatory aggression, compared with a control. A mediation model demonstrates that face-threatening acts lead to direct effects on negative affect and an indirect affect on retaliatory aggression through negative affect. Findings are discussed in relations to face theory and politeness theory

Chapter 11 Social Media: From Digital Divide to Empowerment

The Routledge Companion to Media and Race serves as a comprehensive guide for scholars, students, and media professionals who seek to understand the key debates about the impact of media messages on racial attitudes and understanding. Broad in scope and richly presented from a diversity of perspectives, the book is divided into three sections: first, it summarizes the theoretical approaches that scholars have adopted to analyze the complexities of media messages about race and ethnicity, from the notion of "representation" to more recent concepts like Critical Race Theory. Second, the book reviews studies related to a variety of media, including film, television, print media, social media, music, and video games. Finally, contributors present a broad summary of media issues related to specific races and ethnicities and describe the relationship of the study of race to the study of gender and sexuality

Chapter 11 Social Media: From Digital Divide to Empowerment

The Routledge Companion to Media and Race serves as a comprehensive guide for scholars, students, and media professionals who seek to understand the key debates about the impact of media messages on racial attitudes and understanding. Broad in scope and richly presented from a diversity of perspectives, the book is divided into three sections: first, it summarizes the theoretical approaches that scholars have adopted to analyze the complexities of media messages about race and ethnicity, from the notion of "representation" to more recent concepts like Critical Race Theory. Second, the book reviews studies related to a variety of media, including film, television, print media, social media, music, and video games. Finally, contributors present a broad summary of media issues related to specific races and ethnicities and describe the relationship of the study of race to the study of gender and sexuality

College Students\u27 Disclosure Of Location-Related Information On Facebook

This study drew on existing research and three behavioral intention models to develop the beginning of a new model to explain why college students share their locations on Facebook. Findings showed that students were more likely to disclose their location on Facebook if their friends did so, a concept called subjective norm. Results also showed that subjective norm had an indirect effect on whether people disclosed their location, mediated through people’s attitude toward disclosure, while controlling for usefulness of disclosing. Collectively, this model explained 61% of the variance in why college students share locations on Facebook. Findings are discussed in relation to behavioral-intention models, and practical implications for social media companies are offered

Twitter versus Facebook: Comparing incivility, impoliteness, and deliberative attributes

Using two quantitative methods, this study sought to understand whether user-generated posts would vary in frequency of incivility, impoliteness, and deliberative attributes on Twitter versus Facebook. A quantitative content analysis (N = 1458) revealed that posts responding to the White House’s tweets were significantly more uncivil and impolite and less deliberative than responses to White House Facebook posts. Also, comments on posts that concerned sensitive topics (such as same-sex marriage) were more uncivil, impolite, and deliberative than comments regarding less sensitive topics (such as technology). An experiment (N = 198) showed that people were more deliberative when responding to White House Facebook posts, compared with White House tweets, but no differences were found for incivility and impoliteness. Results suggest that both the varying affordances of the two platforms and the fact that the two sites may attract different types of people might explain these results