Conceptualizing satirical fakes as a new media genre : an attempt to legitimize 'post-truth journalism'

Pseudo media sites, such as The Onion, ClickHole, TheDailyMash, and Satirewire that publish fabricated “news”, most commonly satirical articles, have emerged as a distinct layer of post-truth new media. Despite the possibility that perplexity and difficulty in grasping messages in disinformation based satire is an issue pertaining to genre development, post-truth satire has not yet been examined from a genre analysis perspective. This paper develops a theoretical basis to conceptualize post-truth satire as a new media genre and identify generic conventions for post-truth satire. The paper suggests that readers’ understanding of deep meanings embedded in fabricated satire is predicated upon their ability to detect explicitness of fabrication. Explicit display of fabrication can invite interpretation, pushing audience beyond merely taking content from face value. Explicit fabrication, as a stylistic approach, can be used to construct post-fact narratives relating to socio-political phenomena. Post-fact truth can serve as a form of ‘constructed truth’ based on intentionally fabricated facts relating to real-world phenomena

Uptake, polymorphism, and memetic construction within #HimToo

Background: The notion of ‘Media events’— grand occasions, such as contests of politics or sports, charismatic missions, and the rites of passage of the great that are televised as they take place, gathering attention universally and simultaneously (Dayan, 2010)— has been applied in many different contexts. In Media Events, Dayan and Katz (1992) frame the notion as a television genre that interrupts normal flows of broadcasting as well as the daily routines of viewers, commanding attention to a ‘ceremonial core’. Sonnevend (2018) argues that Media Events (Dayan & Katz, 1992) has been unfairly labelled a ‘television book’ perhaps due to the fact that the specific focus on live television limited its application across different types of media. Sonnevend argues that such application can be done without compromising its basic tenets. However, scholars have highlighted the need for revisiting media events in the context of digital media. As Couldry and Hepp (2018) note, “what matters is to know whether and why ‘media events’ remain a ‘live’ concept for researching the broadest social and political consequences of media and communications infrastructures and institutions” (p.115). Couldry and Hepp argue that it does remain live, yet they point to the complexity of media events in contexts in which they permeate digital media. Objective: This study conducts a network analysis of the Twitter hashtag #HimToo to initiate development of a notion of networked events as a platform-oriented conception of media events. The study examines whether #HimToo, as a networked event constructed via Twitter uptake, shows a consistent focus (a “centre”) across time frames. Methods: Empirical analysis was conducted based on the argument that #HimToo, a relatively shortlived Twitter hashtag which emerged in response to Brett Kavanaugh hearing (Boyle & Rathnayake, 2019), can be seen as a networked event allowed by Twitter affordances. The ‘broadcast core’ of the event was the live hearing on the 27th of September, 2018. From a strict media events perspective, the live hearing can be seen as a media event in which the broadcast audience does not play a significant role in the construction of the narrative. The hashtag #HimToo was chosen for analysis as it emerged focusing specifically on the Kavanaugh appointment while #MeToo had already sustained for approximately 12 months. The intensity of tweeting was observed and data was gathered covering two periods that showed significant activity level. First, there was a substantial increase in Twitter activity on the day of the hearing. Data collection was started eight days after the broadcast testimony. The API returned a dataset of 112,169 tweets covering the period between 25th of September and 5th of October (T1). As there was a considerable rise in the number of tweets containing #HimToo on the 9th and 10th of April, another sample was obtained for analysis. This second dataset included 250,000 tweets and was obtained on the 12th of December (T2). As the primary emphasis was uptake via retweets, original tweets, @replies, and mentions were removed from analysis. Results: Figure 1 (top) shows a #HimToo retweet network for the first period (T1). This retweet network included 83530 messages (represented by edges) sent by 55562 users (represented by nodes). Partitions within this network were identified by using the community detection algorithm developed by Blondel, Guillaume, Lambiotte, and Lefebvre (2008). A modularity value of 0.521 indicated that the #HimToo retweet network was not highly fragmented. Results also showed that there are 483 communities (clusters) in the network. However, the majority of retweets (51.9% nodes included in the largest component) originated from users taking up tweets sent by the conservative political figure Candace Owens who gathered more than 50% of retweeting activity between 25th of September and 5th of October 2018. Figure 1 (bottom left) shows the partition lead by Candace Owens. As shown in the frequency distribution (Figure 1- bottom right), while Candace Owens attracted more than 50% of users in the network, the rest of the activity was scattered across 482 small clusters

A topic model analysis approach to understand twitter public discourse : Grenfell tower fire case study

There is a line in the feature film The Fifth Estate (2014) attributed to the Guardian journalist Nick Davies, that all societies periodically need people who seek the truth and are prepared to reveal this, whatever the cost. It underpinned a depiction of ‘democracy in crisis’. In this weltanshauung the only way to oblige government to work in the interest of the citizen is to have a new powerful force to hold authority to account principally because the Fourth Estate has slowly begun to fail in its coveted role

'Enclaves of exposure' : a conceptual viewpoint to explore cross-ideology exposure on social network sites

Previous studies indicate mixed results as to whether social media constitutes ideological echo chambers. This inconsistency may arise due to a lack of theoretical frames that acknowledge the fact that contextual and technological factors allow varying levels of cross-cutting exposure on social media. This study suggests an alternative theoretical lens, divergence of exposure – co-existence of user groups with varying degrees of cross-ideology exposure related to the same issue – as a notion that serves as an overarching perspective. We suggest that mediated spaces, such as social media groups, can serve as enclaves of exposure that offer affordances for formation of user groups irrespective of offline social distinctions. Yet social elements cause some of them to display more cross-ideology exchange than others. To establish this claim empirically, we examine two Facebook page user networks (‘Sri Lanka’s Killing Fields’ and ‘Sri Lankans Hate Channel 4’) that emerged in response to Sri Lanka’s Killing Fields, a controversial documentary broadcast by Channel 4 that accused Sri Lankan armed forces of human rights violation during the final stage of the separatist conflict in Sri Lanka. The results showed that the Facebook group network that supported the claims made by Channel 4 is more diverse in terms of ethnic composition, and is neither assortative nor disassortative across ethnicity, suggesting the presence of cross-ethnicity interaction. The pro-allegiant group was largely homogenous and less active, resembling a passive echo chamber. ‘Social mediation’ repurposes enclaves of exposure to represent polarized ideologies where some venues display cross-ideology exposure, while others resemble an ‘echo chamber’

Carrying forward the Uses and Grats 2.0 agenda: An affordance-driven measure of social media uses and gratifications

Peer-reviewed journal articleThe notion of social media affordances has not been fully integrated into the uses and gratifications literature. Building on the MAIN (modality, agency, interactivity, and navigability) model, this study develops and tests a social media uses and gratifications scale with a sample of 393 college students. Results of the study support the MAIN model, as conceptualizing social media uses and gratifications as a second-order factor structure with 4 different types of affordances displays similar goodness-of-fit to a single-order factor structure. A confirmatory factor analysis with a second sample of 313 adults further confirms the applicability of the scale among the general population

Uptake, polymorphism, and the construction of networked events on twitter

This study conceptualises networked events as a platform-oriented view of media events by initiating a taxonomy of bottom-up construction. Focusing on computer-mediated event construction that may involve live delivery, permeate digital platforms, and attract user engagement prior to, during, and after the occurrence of ceremonial or disruptive events, the study argues that networked events can be characterised by polymorphism— i.e., presence of distinct patterns of uptake and different interactional orientations within the same space of interactions, such as hashtags. For analysis, a network dataset was created using 221,105 retweets that included the hashtag #HimToo. This hashtag was used extensively during the US Senate judiciary committee hearing that investigated claims of sexual harassment against President Trump's Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh. The study demonstrates that three types of construction— i.e., actor-centric, memetic, and metaconstruction— causes polymorphism in Twitter engagement related to the event

Repurposing sentiment analysis for social research scopes : an inquiry into emotion expression within affective publics on Twitter during the Covid-19 emergency

The scope of the article is to discuss and propose some methodological strategies to repurpose sentiment analysis for social research scopes. We argue that sentiment analysis is well suited to study an important topic in digital sociology: affective publics. Specifically, sentiment analysis reveals useful to explore two key components of affective publics: a) structure (emergence of dominant emotions); b) dynamics (transformation of affectivity into emotions). To do that we suggest combining sentiment analysis with emotion detection, text analysis and social media engagement metrics – which help to better understand the semantic and social context in which the sentiment related to a specific issue is situated. To illustrate our methodological point, we draw on the analysis of 33,338 tweets containing two hashtags – #NHSHeroes and #Covidiot – emerged in response to the global pandemic caused by Covid-19. Drawing on the analysis of the two affective publics aggregating around #NHSHeroes and #Covidiot, we conclude that they reflect a blend of emotions. In some cases, such generic flow of affect coalesces into a dominant emotion while it may not necessarily occur in other instances. Affective publics structured around positive emotions and local issues tend to be more consistent and cohesive than those based on general issues and negative emotions. Although negative emotions might attract the attention of digital publics, positively framed messages engage users more

#HimToo and the networking of misogyny in the age of #MeToo

This article brings together a quantitative approach which seeks to map and understand actor centrality and connectivity in relation to Twitter using social network analysis, with a qualitative set of interdisciplinary concerns around media representations of men's sexual violence against women. Our focus is #HimToo, a short-lived Twitter-backlash to #MeToo concentrated around the Brett Kavanaugh hearings and confirmation. We explore how #HimToo flourished and floundered across two key periods: the first related to the broadcast confirmation hearings; the second a backlash triggered by a Kavanaugh-supporting mom. With a dataset of over 277,000 Tweets, we argue that the first period shows an actor-centric conservative engagement which is dominated by female commentators, but displays a male-orientation that Kate Manne (2018) has described as himpathy. The second period presents both a serious and satirical response to the first. Whilst there is a significant reorientation of both activity and actors in this second period, we identify persistent gendered and generational patterns which warrant a more cautious response from feminist critics. We thus connect our analysis to debates about social media connectedness, gendered patterns of social media ab/use, and the role of social media in a highly polarised political climate in the USA

"Visual Affluence" in social photography: applicability of image segmentation as a visually oriented approach to study Instagram hashtags

The aim of the study is to examine the applicability of image segmentation – identification of objects/regions by partitioning images – to examine online social photography. We argue that the need for a meaning-independent reading of online social photography within social markers, such as hashtags, arises due to two characteristics of social photography: 1) internal incongruence resulting from user-driven construction, and 2) variability of content in terms of visual attributes, such as colour combinations, brightness, and details in backgrounds. We suggest visual affluence- plenitude of visual stimuli, such as objects and surfaces containing a variety of colour regions, present in visual imagery- as a basis for classifying visual content and image segmentation as a technique to measure affluence. We demonstrate that images containing objects with complex texture and background patterns are more affluent, while images that include blurry backgrounds are less affluent than others. Moreover, images that contain letters and dark, single-colour backgrounds are less affluent than images that include subtle shades. Mann-Whitney U test results for nine pairs of hashtags showed that seven out of nine pairs had significant differences in visual affluence. The proposed measure can be used to encourage a ‘visually oriented’ turn in online social photography research that can benefit from hybrid methods that are able to extrapolate micro-level findings to macro-level effects

A template for mapping emotion expression within hashtag publics

Current literature on networked publics lacks research that examines how emotions are mobilised around specific actors, and quantitative analysis of affective phenomena is limited to vanity metrics. We address this issue by developing a network analytic routine, which guides the attribution of emotions contained in hashtagged tweets to their sources and targets. The proposed template enables identification of networked inconsequentiality (i.e., inability to trigger dialogue), reply targets (i.e., individuals targeted in replies), and voice agents (i.e., senders of replicated utterances). We demonstrate this approach with two datasets based on the hashtags #Newzealand (n= 131,523) and #SriLanka (n= 145,868) covering two major incidents of terrorism related to opposing extremist ideologies. In addition to the methodological contribution, the study demonstrates that user-driven emergence of networked leadership takes place based on conventional structures of power in which individuals with high power and social status are likely to emerge as targets as well as sources of emotions