Beyond the hashtag : circumventing content moderation on social media

Social media companies make important decisions about what counts as “problematic” content and how they will remove it. Some choose to moderate hashtags, blocking the results for certain tag searches and issuing public service announcements (PSAs) when users search for troubling terms. The hashtag has thus become an indicator of where problematic content can be found, but this has produced limited understandings of how such content actually circulates. Using pro-eating disorder (pro-ED) communities as a case study, this article explores the practices of circumventing hashtag moderation in online pro-ED communities. It shows how (1) untagged pro-ED content can be found without using the hashtag as a search mechanism; (2) users are evading hashtag and other forms of platform policing, devising signals to identify themselves as “pro-ED”; and (3) platforms’ recommendation systems recirculate pro-ED content, revealing the limitations of hashtag logics in social media content moderation

Hashtagging depression on Instagram: Towards a more inclusive mental health research methodology

Heavily used hashtags on Instagram and other platforms can indicate extensive public engagement with issues, events, or collective experiences. This paper extends existing research methods to paint a fuller picture of how people engage collectively with public issues online. Focusing on Instagram content often deemed 'problematic', we develop and test what we call a 'hashtag practice' approach. This approach targets the hashtag #depressed, but also moves beyond it to: a) incorporate the posts immediately preceding and following a root post, b) more inclusively sample content associated with the hashtag to combat filtering bias, c) consider collocated hashtags, and d) draw on contextual cues in the interplay between posts' visual content, captions and profile management. The method shows the prevalence and significance of aesthetic and memetic practices, and caution in embodiment in mental health posts, revealing more diverse forms of engagement with mental health on Instagram than previous research suggests

Correlations of mesospheric winds with subtle motion of the Arctic polar vortex

This paper investigates the relationship between high latitude upper mesospheric winds and the state of the stratospheric polar vortex in the absence of major sudden stratospheric warmings. A ground based Michelson Interferometer stationed at Resolute Bay (74°43' N, 94°58' W) in the Canadian High Arctic is used to measure mesopause region neutral winds using the hydroxyl (OH) Meinel-band airglow emission (central altitude of ~85 km). These observed winds are compared to analysis winds in the upper stratosphere during November and December of 1995 and 1996; years characterized as cold, stable polar vortex periods. Correlation of mesopause wind speeds with those from the upper stratosphere is found to be significant for the 1996 season when the polar vortex is subtly displaced off its initial location by a strong Aleutian High. These mesopause winds are observed to lead stratospheric winds by approximately two days with increasing (decreasing) mesospheric winds predictive of decreasing (increasing) stratospheric winds. No statistically significant correlations are found for the 1995 season when there is no such displacement of the polar vortex

Communicating feminist politics? The double-edged sword of using social media in a feminist organisation

Media coverage of violence against women and girls (VAWG) has increased in recent years, due to high-profile investigations such as the 2012 Jimmy Savile case in the UK, and in response to the #MeToo movement in the USA. Feminist organisations are likely to be asked for comment by the media as a result, but journalistic interest in case details rather than systemic causes of VAWG means that political messages focused on ending VAWG remain difficult to communicate. In contrast, social media is frequently celebrated as a channel through which the politics of feminist organisations can be promoted more directly, bypassing mainstream media agendas. In this article, we present the results of participatory research that explored the tensions inherent in social media use by one UK feminist organisation, Rape Crisis England & Wales (RCEW). The findings challenge the utopian view of social media as a panacea for news media shortcomings. Rather than being unequivocally positive, integrating social media into a feminist organisation’s communication work is a double-edged sword, bringing significant challenges that users must negotiate on a daily basis

Groupies, fangirls and shippers: the endurance of a gender stereotype

The purpose of this special issue is to offer new perspectives on fan cultures which respond to changes and controversies that have happened since the last American Behavioral Scientist special issue on fandom was published, in 2005. But the aim of my contribution is to argue that, sadly, derisive-gendered discourses like ‘fangirls’, ‘groupies’ and ‘shippers’ are still alive and well. Returning to the kind of research conducted in the 1980s – when women’s experiences of feminized popular cultures began to be taken seriously – reminds us that their pleasures are no less derided or controversial four decades on. My findings also suggest that the enduring presence of older stereotypes within teen drama fandoms – particularly the ‘groupie’ – signals the agility of sexism, as the term can now be understood as more of a generational designation rather than a medium-specific one. This article is the product of three years of qualitative empirical research with ‘teen girl’ fandoms of three popular television shows: Pretty Little Liars, Revenge and The Vampire Diaries. The data it discusses includes Skype audio and video interviews, written interviews conducted via email and Facebook Messenger, along with overt social media observations

Introduction to the data power special issue : tactics, access and shaping

Guest editorial

Transverse Shifts in Paraxial Spinoptics

The paraxial approximation of a classical spinning photon is shown to yield an "exotic particle" in the plane transverse to the propagation. The previously proposed and observed position shift between media with different refractive indices is modified when the interface is curved, and there also appears a novel, momentum [direction] shift. The laws of thin lenses are modified accordingly.Comment: 3 pages, no figures. One detail clarified, some misprints corrected and references adde