bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
“ARE WE DATING THE SAME GUY?”: COLLECTIVE SENSEMAKING AS A MORAL RESPONSIBILITY IN FACEBOOK GROUPS
Authors: Casteel Diana Michelle , Leiser Sarah , Papacharissi Zizi
Published: March 2024

Hinge to happily ever after is an arduous process in which dating apps place the burden of risk management on users. Women across the U.S. have joined regional “Are We Dating the Same Guy?” private Facebook groups to manage the ambiguities of dating, crowdsource information on men, and provide social support to other women experiencing the tribulations of modern dating. Using discourse analysis, this study analyzes the collective sensemaking practices of AWDTSG groups in relation to constructing knowledge, managing privacy boundaries, content moderation, and providing social support. Preliminary analysis reveals three major findings: Facebook groups provide a space of empowerment, however anticipated acts of moderation shape how knowledge claims are formed and legitimized. Second, group level moderation enacted by admins is understood by members as a means of community protection against platform interventions and interpersonal conflict with the outgroup. Third, social support is an integral part of knowledge creation, resisting cultural logics that socialize women to see each other as competitors in the dating sphere. These findings contribute to our understanding of how ICTs may be used in the service reclaiming gossip as a mode of resistance through the act of collective sensemaking.
MAGIC IN THE AIR: MEMES, MAGIC, AND THE INTERNET
Authors: Chess Shira
Published: March 2024

Leading up to, during, and immediately following the 2016 US election of Donald Trump, there was buzz about magic on the internet. From the meme magic of the cult of Kek to liberal witches performing binding spells, magic seemed to emerge out of thin air. However, while technology and the occult may seem like strange bedfellows, they have a cozier historical relationship then we often acknowledge. For instance, it has been well-documented that there was a synergetic relationship between telegraphy and spiritualism (Sconce, 2000) and we can consider ciphers used to construct grimoires as an antecedent to modern techno-cryptography (Reeds, 1998). In this paper, I historicize internet magic situating the recent online magical wars within the broader context of both digital and occult histories. Just as spiritualist séances articulated hopes and anxieties of mass communication, meme magic speaks to contemporary concerns and desires about information spread.
FEVER DREAMS AND THE FUTURE OF NOSTALGIA ON TIKTOK
Authors: Conner Viki
Published: March 2024

This paper contributes to the growing body of literature that interrogates the modalities of nostalgia afforded in, by, and through digital media technologies with a focus on its performative dimension within one social formation of nostalgia – the TikTok aesthetic. Drawing on a fine-grained, qualitative artifact analysis of the most viewed video in #nostalgicore on TikTok, this paper asks how the platform’s socio-technical affordances enable and/or constrain Boym’s “restorative” (regressive) and “reflective” (progressive) modalities of nostalgia as a basis for action. Drawing on performance studies and emotion theory, I conceptualize nostalgia as “emotive” to foreground its performative dynamics and allow for further study of nostalgia as a performance or “narrative event” that articulates time, space, and affective feeling. Through the interplay of TikTok’s temporal and spatial affordances, I find that TikTok permits the feeling of the "thick present" to emerge, encouraging liminal, fever dream-like performances of nostalgia in which young people imaginatively construct nostalgic worlds. I argue that this practice constitutes a form of digital placemaking that resists normative assumptions of nostalgia operating on a linear temporal horizon of action (i.e., backward/past vs. forward/future) as it is made, remade, and algorithmically circulated. Contributing to recent work on “algorithmic nostalgia,” these findings suggest that creative and mnemonic practices are entangled in algorithmically structured aesthetic social formations of nostalgia and invite further consideration to how TikTok encourages the “mnemonic imagination” through performance.

Keywords: nostalgia, TikTok, performance, temporality, affect, social media affordances
PUSHING BACK: DIGITAL RESISTANCE AS A SENSITIZING CONCEPT
Authors: Couture Stéphane , Toupin Sophie , Latzko-Toth Guillaume
Published: March 2024

This paper thus aims to contribute to media, communication, and digital technology studies by proposing a more systematic conceptualization of digital resistance. While the notion of resistance in relation to technology is often connoted negatively and associated the rejection of innovation of change, our approach to digital resistance takes here a new meaning: political and critical. Indeed, the notion of digital resistance is often used in academia and public discourse to describe practices of using, subverting, and creating technologies, usually in a progressive and anti-oppressive perspective (Russell, 2005).

However, the term is still relatively undefined, and many practices could be categorized as digital resistance if the term was better defined. We propose in this paper a preliminary but formal conceptualization of digital resistance. Our theorization takes place in the context of a research project on the cartography of digital resistance. Different data collection and analysis activities will be implemented to have a wide and panoramic empirical view of the phenomenon of digital resistance. In this project, the cartographic approach takes on a dual meaning, namely a broad and systematic description of a phenomenon, and the implementation of an original digital device allowing its visualization and potentially participatory enrichment. Our preliminary empirical mapping identified six dimensions to analyze digital resistance that we will present in this paper.
STABLE SCIENCE AND FICKLE BODIES: AN EXAMINATION OF TRUST AND THE CONSTRUCTION OF EXPERTISE ON R/SKINCAREADDICTION
Authors: DeCusatis Cara Maria Carmel
Published: March 2024

While there is considerable research on the topic of trust when it comes to health information or news media, there is less work examining how trust and expertise are conceptualized for information that straddles both subjective and objective approaches to knowledge. “Skincare”, as it is engaged with on the subreddit r/SkincareAddiction, exists in such a space, occupying a liminal positioning between formalized bioscience and experiential/aesthetic knowledge. Depending on where a member places skin care on this spectrum influences who they view as credible experts, and in turn what information that member deems trustworthy. Using an STS/Feminist STS theoretical framing, this paper investigates how members of the subreddit r/SkincareAddiction identify, evaluate, and perform skincare expertise. These expressions of expertise provide valuable insight into how members negotiate community norms, personal experience, and scientific studies to not only discern skincare knowledge, but also construct an understanding of their own skin.
#VLADDYDADDY ON TIKTOK: IMAGINED INTIMACY AND MEMETIC PARTICIPATION IN TIMES OF WAR
Authors: Divon Tom , Jaramillo-Dent Daniela , Gekker Alex
Published: March 2024

#Vladdydaddy is a popular internet meme that emerged during the 2016 elections in the United States on 4chan and Twitter to characterize the perceived submissive behavior of Donald Trump towards Vladimir Putin. The meme re-emerged on TikTok in the days leading to the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, gaining a new meaning. This paper is part of a larger research project with the objective of identifying and scrutinizing various forms of social media memetic participation in response to human tragedies, such as the Russia-Ukraine war. In this paper we focus on "DM memes" as a creative sub-meme of #Vladdydaddy. Drawing from theories of memetic participation (Milner, 2016) and imagined intimacy (Greenwood & Long, 2011) for the analysis. The findings suggest that the DMing Putin meme emerges as a collective coping mechanism to fulfill an emotional need through the construction of imagined intimacy. The strict censorship laws within Russian borders underscores the significance of exploring seemingly trivial online discursive practices as courageous in a political context that can carry grave consequences offline. In doing so, we bring to the forefront the global community of creators who take a firm stance towards the current political climate in Russia.
THE INFRASTRUCTURAL POWER OF PROGRAMMATIC ADVERTISING NETWORKS: ANALYZING DISINFORMATION INDUSTRIES IN BRAZIL
Authors: Dos Santos JR Marcelo Alves , D'Andrea Carlos
Published: March 2024

The informational disorder that sprawls through multiple state-nations, exacerbated by violent uprisings and coup attempts such as the US Capitol Storm on January 6th, 2021 and the Brazilian coup attempt on January 8th, 2023, has shed new light on the political economy of disinformation industries. In particular, it brings to the forefront the problem of economic incentives for creating and spreading disinformation. This paper builds on critical platform and infrastructure research literature for analyzing the multilateral infrastructural power of programmatic advertising networks. Our research questions are: how is power exercised by programmatic advertising infrastructures while managing its multilateral relationships? In terms of technicities, governance and business models, how does these infrastructures enable or reinforce desinformation disorder? This case study draws on a multi-methodological approach, combining digital methods research and critical analysis of platform documents. The empirical data obtained has 95.269 ads collected on the website (data scraped with a Python script developed by one of the authors) during the election month. Empirical data show that MGID, a native advertising platform, placed 54% of the advertisements on Terra Brasil Notícias. Google Ads was the second largest provider of digital ads on TBN, despite its policy`s restrictions on sellers that host unreliable or harmful content on issues such as health, climate, elections and democracy. Findings from the Brazilian case also contribute to understanding the infrastructural power of big tech governing the monetization of publishers in the Global South.
“THIS TWEET IS UNAVAILABLE”: #BLACKLIVESMATTER TWEETS DECAY
Authors: Duan Yiran , Hemsley Jeff , Smith Alexander O.
Published: March 2024

Previous studies show that random tweet collections that include more than one hashtag had relatively low rate of unavailable tweets while political related datasets have a higher rate of tweet decay (Almuhimedi et al., 2013; Bastos, 2021; Bhattacharya & Ganguly, 2016; McCammon, 2022; Zubiaga, 2018). For example, Zubiaga’s (2018) study indicates that 81.4% of their 30 randomly selected real-world events datasets remained available after 4 years, while Bastos’ (2021) study shows that only 67% of Brexit debate related tweets were available after the same amount of time. Our preliminary study looks at the #BlackLivesMatter discussion on Twitter and we find that only 63% tweets remain available after 2 years, which is significantly higher compared to the previous studies.

This preliminary work adds to the existing literature in two keyways. First, we broaden the kinds of discussion spaces where information decay has been studied by focusing on #BlackLivesMatter (hereafter, BLM), which in the U.S. has become a highly politicized movement (Stewart et al., 2018). Second, to our best knowledge, this is the first study looking at social movement tweets since Musk took over and it may highlight how the landscape on Twitter has shifted.
DEAR BABY GAYS: INVESTIGATING THE SOCIOTECHNICAL PRACTICES OF OLDER LGBTQ+ TIKTOK USERS
Authors: Duguay Stefanie , Acar Özgem Elif , Jamet-Lange Hannah
Published: March 2024

Much scholarship and public discourse alike focus on TikTok’s widespread uptake by young people, including LGBTQ+ youth. However, LGBTQ+ people on the platform often experience challenges relating to visibility and censorship. As users of a variety of ages have joined TikTok’s youthful population, this paper explores the sociotechnical practices of older LGBTQ+ TikTok users as they emerge from, and are shaped by, the platform and its user cultures. It does so through an analysis of older LGBTQ+ TikTokers’ videos and metadata, gathered through novel methods for configuring research accounts to serve up this content to the For You page. Once the accounts were trained to deliver this content through TikTok’s personalized algorithmic curation, videos were collected for one hour per day over a duration of approximately 4 weeks for each account. Preliminary visual and textual analysis of videos indicates recurrent themes related to constructing identities that intersect age with sexual identity, giving advice, sharing about personal experiences and queer history, and circulating counter-discourses against homophobia and transphobia as well as messages of solidarity with targets of discrimination. Analysis of how these users negotiate TikTok’s affordances also indicates that platform’s features, policies, and dominant user practices permeate and shape older LGBTQ+ TikTokers’ self-representations, such that the platform and modes of paying attention to it have become a central element of their content.
INVITATION TO LISTEN: MAPPING CLUBHOUSE’S EARLY INVITE-ONLY SOCIAL CAPITAL NETWORK
Authors: Fang Cindy , Iliadis Andrew
Published: March 2024

Clubhouse has attracted roughly 10 million users to its platform since the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic as an invite-only, drop-in audio social network app. Yet, few studies examine Clubhouse as a new platform for conducting social media research, and even fewer examine the early invite-only growth of social audio apps. This study theorizes Clubhouse as an emerging social media platform during the COVID pandemic, and empirically investigates its communicative capacity, networked connections, and social dynamics. The primary contribution is a social network analysis of Clubhouse’s early users, wherein segmented networked publics based on invite links emerge. While some researchers explain that the growth of invite-only social networks is often attributed to a platform’s ‘cool factor,’ the growth of the early Clubhouse network reveals a hierarchy of social exclusivity among the networked publics, which indicates an embedded capitalist social structure and connection that grants more access to those with more social and economic power. These networked relationships provide insights into how invite-based emerging viral social media platforms are formed.
REVOLUTIONARY DISCOURSES IN A TIME CAPSULE: A HISTORIOGRAPHICAL ANALYSIS OF CANONICAL, INTELLECTUAL LITERATURE CONCERNING THE SOCIAL IMPACT AND SIGNIFICANCE OF THE INTERNET.
Authors: Fridzema Nathalie , Aasman Susan , Smit Rik , Slootweg Tom
Published: March 2024

Whilst the internet’s development can be traced back to the 1940s (Turner, 2006; Flichy 2015), the rhetoric of a digital revolution primarily emerged during the early 1990s and mid-00s and was often produced by the US-based academic community which has been intrinsically involved with the advancement of the internet. The dominant conceptualizations put forward in their popular, scholarly writings about the technology’s past and future, became authoritative in our academic understanding of the internet’s social impact and significance. Subsequently, notions like ‘the electronic highway’ were adopted in legislative and popular discourse which, in turn, influenced how the internet was understood, designed, and used on a broader, societal level.

Notable authors of these influential texts - Howard Rheingold, Nicholas Negroponte, Sherry Turkle, and Geert Lovink - wrote their findings based on their own experiences with internet initiatives and from their particular theoretical backgrounds and positionality. Most importantly, these texts present valuable information as if coming from a time capsule; often framed with a rhetoric of transformation, the writers themselves contribute to the idea of a revolutionary internet following optimistic notions of digital utopianism and technological solutionism, situated in a particular Zeitgeist. The aim of this paper is to contribute to a better understanding of how these revolutionary notions developed over time and what their grander impact was on our contemporary conceptions, in and outside the influential American context. This is achieved by conducting a critical, historiographical analysis of canonical, intellectual literature about the early internet and thus re-contextualizes it as historical traces itself.
AN INTIMATE REVOLUTION: DIGITAL PRACTICES OF INTIMACY DURING COVID-19 AND BEYOND
Authors: Garcia Iglesias Jaime , Heaphy Brian , Yodovich Neta
Published: March 2024

This paper investigates the changes in digital practices of intimacy during the COVID-19 social distancing period in the UK, and whether these transformations have persisted in the ‘new normal’. The study employed a mixed-methods approach, collecting quantitative and qualitative data from 824 adults who used dating apps during the pandemic, and conducting 60 in-depth interviews. The study aimed to understand the digital intimate practices of heterosexual and LGBT+ communities during and after COVID-19.

First, we describe (using both descriptive statistics and excerpts from participant interviews) the changes to practices of digital intimacy during COVID-19. Second, we will explore the distribution of these changes among communities. In particular, we describe the differences between heterosexual and LGBT+ respondents, and between white and ethnic minority respondents. Third, we explore how these changes have endured after COVID-19. In particular, we will explore how changes to what people look for in their app use endured or returned to ‘pre-covid’

The paper concludes by arguing that dating app's increasing status as health actors, particularly during a pandemic, necessitates more research in this area. This study provides insights into how digital practices of intimacy have transformed during COVID-19 and whether these transformations have endured in the ‘new normal’. Understanding these changes is essential to adequately support people’s emotional and sexual well-being during and after a time of crisis.
THE INTIMACY TRIPLE BIND: STRUCTURAL INEQUALITIES AND RELATIONAL LABOUR IN THE INFLUENCER INDUSTRY
Authors: Glatt Zoë
Published: March 2024

The careers of social media content creators, or influencers, live or die by their ability to cultivate and maintain an invested audience-community. To this end, they are encouraged to practise relational labour (Baym, 2018) to build authentic self-brands and intimacy with audiences. Drawing on a longitudinal ethnographic study of the London influencer industry (2017-2023), this paper examines relational labour through an intersectional feminist lens, foregrounding the ways in which structural inequalities shape relationships between creators and their audiences. This research found that the tolls of managing audience relationships are higher for marginalised creators—especially those who make critical leftist and feminist content—who find themselves on an uneven playing field in the challenges they face as well as the coping strategies at their disposal. Creators employed four key tactics to navigate relational labour and boundaries with audiences: (1) leaning into making rather than being content; (2) (dis)engagement with anti-fans through silence and digital self-harm; (3) retreating into private community spaces, away from the exposure of public platforms; and (4) turning off public comments. Marginalised creators find themselves in an intimacy triple bind, already at higher risk of trolling and harassment, yet under increased pressure to perform relational labour, adversely opening them up to further harms in the form of weaponised intimacy. Findings highlight the individualisation of risk and harm as a structural norm in the influencer industry, raising serious questions about the lack of accountability and responsibility that platforms show towards the creators who generate profit for them.
PLATFORM POWER, XR, AND THE METAVERSE: NEW CHALLENGES OR OLD STRUCTURES?
Authors: Gray Joanne Elizabeth , Bay Morten
Published: March 2024

While social media platforms continue to dominate the ways in which people connect using computational devices and digital media, a transition towards more immersive platforms and experiences is underway. Extended reality (XR) is the umbrella term for media that enable experiences in augmented, mixed, and virtual reality. Through XR technologies, new digital spaces are being developed that combine features of existing digital platforms with elements of the immersiveness of gaming, sometimes referred to informally as ‘the metaverse’. Notably, many of the corporations behind the dominant social media platforms are active in the XR economy. Meta has garnered much attention in this regard, but Google, Apple, Microsoft, Amazon and Sony have all either entered the market or have been reported as having XR/metaverse ambitions. Through a multiple-case study of three companies—Meta, Epic Games/Unity Engine and ROBLOX—this paper maps out key dimensions of the emerging metaverse economy and shows how the platform characteristics of XR providers, similar to the current social media economy, can enable the concentration of social and economic power around a few actors. We propose that in the transition to a more immersive digital era, to enable a competitive, vibrant and fair XR economy, policymaking and governance must proactively address the issue of concentrated platform power. The paper concludes with a discussion of potential policy and regulatory pathways for taking up this challenge.
ALTERNATIVE VISIONS FOR THE DNS: CORE, IAHC, AND THE POSSIBILITY FOR EXPANDED GTLDS IN EARLY GOVERNANCE POLICY
Authors: Grosse Meghan
Published: March 2024

In 1994, U.S. President Clinton stated that the commercialization of the internet was a “top priority” for his administration. The domain name system (DNS), which was developed to deal with the growing unwieldiness of the commercial internet, was an early battleground in shaping the values of early internet governance policies. The system would include highly sought after addresses in generic top-level domains (gTLDS) that ended in .com, .gov, .org, .edu, and so on. Below this were second-level domains and country codes which ended web addresses in sequences like .uk, .jp, .ca, etc. This model raised legal and economic questions about trademarks, intellectual property, and the global distribution of addresses on top level domains. Technical experts were wary of the limitations of the proposed system, particularly given the potential to expand the number of gTLDs. While many groups responded to U.S. governance policy, a number of non-profit associations were particular vocal in their critique, most notably the Internet Council of Registrars (CORE), the International Ad Hoc Committee (IAHC), and the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) represented by Jon Postel. As the internet transitioned from a network used primarily by government and educational entities to a mass medium, there was a potential for revolutionary modes of communication, information sharing, education, creative expression, and a revolutionary, de-centralized structure of governance. The DNS debate resulted instead in support of predictable structures of power and a failure to realize that potential.
THE HASHTAG SYLLABUS AS CLASS ASSIGNMENT: FROM CRITICAL INFORMATION LITERACY TO CULTURAL CRITIQUE
Authors: Grosse Meghan , Clarke-De Reza Sara
Published: March 2024

In the immediate aftermath of the 2014 murder of 18-year Michael Brown in Missouri, hashtags like #ferguson, #justiceformikebrown, and #handsupdontshoot begin trending on Twitter. At the same time, Marcia Chatelain, Georgetown University Professor of History and American Studies, began crowdsourcing materials for educators trying to address what happened in their classrooms using the hashtag #fergusonsyllabus. What resulted was a list of highly interdisciplinary and multimedia sources including scholarly texts, news stories, songs, poems, films, public addresses, and children’s books. Chatelain’s call spoke both to the present crisis, the murder of a Black teenager by police, and to the historical and cultural context in which this shooting happened. The efforts of Chatelain and the community that came together around this hashtag expanded our understanding of information production and curation and the function of a syllabus beyond the college classroom. In introducing our undergraduate classes to the idea of the hashtag syllabus, we attempt to engage our students in practices of information literacy with the hope of providing them tools to look critically at the inequities that permeate academic and non-academic spaces. Here, we explore the ways in which this format operates in interdisciplinary social science programs and the ways in which it supports unique learning objectives in both introductory and upper-level courses. In doing so, we hope to engage in pedagogical praxis that connects our fields and our students with questions of social justice and to do so in a way that prepares them for meaningful civic engagement.
#STOPMENSTRUALSHAMING: XIAOHONGSHU USERS’ ONLINE ADVOCACY FOR WOMEN’S ISSUES IN CHINA
Authors: Gu Yuejie , Yang Ying , Saiyinjiya  , Wu Wanyu , Chen Qingyun , Chen Siqi , Literat Ioana
Published: March 2024

This paper investigates how social media users advocate for women's issues in China, focusing on the activism against menstrual shaming on the social media platform Xiaohongshu, a culturally significant but understudied platform used primarily by women. With women accounting for 90.41% of active users, Xiaohongshu provides a unique social media environment that shapes the way users engage with feminist issues. However, despite the growing literature on digital feminism in China and the surging popularity and significance of Xiaohongshu in the Chinese social media ecosystem, no studies so far have examined the feminist activism on this platform.

Our study contributes to this gap by exploring the discourse around menstrual shaming on Xiaohongshu, as a lens into the dynamics of activism on this female-oriented platform. Analyzing 329 posts and 10,336 comments under the hashtag #StopMenstrualShaming on Xiaohongshu, our study foregrounds the salient role of Xiaohongshu in helping women express their feminist values in an online space that they perceive as safe and intimate. In doing so, we employ the conceptual framework of hashtag activism, which refers to the development and spread of online activism with tangible results in the physical and digital worlds. Shining a spotlight on this significant but understudied platform, we illuminate the dynamics of Chinese digital feminism, especially the formation of solidarity, relatability and collective identity on a female-oriented social media platform.
EQUALITY THROUGH EXCLUSION? TOWARDS A NEW CONCEPTUALIZATION OF DEMOCRATIC EXCLUSION IN THE CONTEXT OF DIGITAL PUBLIC VENUES
Authors: Holm Malin Charlotte
Published: March 2024

In order to hinder attacks on democratic norms and processes in digital public venues, designing strategies of exclusion is a pressing concern. Nevertheless, we lack systematic studies of how digital public venues should be governed to protect – rather than undermine – democratic values through exclusion. The purpose of this contribution is to offer a systematic theorization of the concept of democratic exclusion in the context of digital public venues. I will in particular draw on two strands of literature within democratic theory which have contributed greatly to the normative theorization of democratic exclusion, but have done so in relation to other types of political settings: the works within feminist political theory on exclusion of dominant groups within parliaments (e.g. Dovi 2009; Murray 2014) and the literature on hate speech regulation and democratic self-defence against (primarily) antidemocratic parties (e.g. Müller 2016; Invernizzi Accetti and Zuckerman 2017; Malkopoulou and Kirshner 2019). First, I will analyze if and how these previous contributions can be applied to the specific context of digital public venues, where special conditions of access and visibility apply. I will then assess to what extent the platforms’ existing governing strategies and policies concerning the exclusion of problematic content or accounts are compatible with the relevant exclusion principles formulated in these works. Building on this analysis, in its final parts the study will move on to carve out more specific suggestions for how exclusion on digital venues should be governed, and what principles should guide this governance.
DARK PATTERNS AND PEDAGOGY: EXPANDING SCHOLARSHIP AND CURRICULUM ON MANIPULATIVE MARKETING PRACTICES
Authors: Iantorno Mathew , Guadagnolo Dan , Petterson Adrian
Published: March 2024

This conference paper addresses gaps in scholarship and pedagogy surrounding the phenomenon of “dark patterns” in digital marketing and interface design by showcasing three curriculum-building projects. Dark patterns refer to a set of design strategies that co-opt the human-centred values advocated for in the fields of user experience (UX) design and human-computer interaction (HCI) to manipulate users into taking actions contrary to their personal interests. Recent dark patterns research has clustered within the fields of HCI, media studies, and game studies, with a focus on e-commerce and online gambling platforms. The presented projects put this established research into conversation with scholarship from business and marketing, science and technology studies, cognitive neuroscience, and disability studies to both create a more holistic definition of dark patterns and implement this expanded definition into university course curricula. These include $2 , focused on contextualizing dark patterns within historical market segmentation and merchandising strategies; $2 , on broadening the definition of dark patterns to include non-screen interfaces; and $2 , on analyzing how dark patterns have a disproportionate effect on individuals with certain cognitive disabilities. Collectively, these projects aimed to grant a greater historicity and social context to the phenomenon of dark patterns and introduce them as a utilizable pedagogical concept within the disciplines of communications, technology, and design. The findings of these projects are presented through the sharing of pedagogical materials, informal and formal feedback, and planned curriculum revisions.
LIFESTYLE GOVERNMENTALITY IN CHINA: GOVERNING THE ENTREPRENEURIAL CITIZEN SUBJECTS THROUGH LIFESTYLE PRACTICES ON XIAOHONGSHU (RED)
Authors: Ju Ran
Published: March 2024

Xiaohongshu (Red), the Chinese biggest lifestyle sharing platform, as a collaborator and partner with China’s national cultural and political project (Wang, 2021), aligns with multiple strategies of governing, shaping and guiding citizens through lifestyle practices. In this article, I propose the term ‘lifestyle governmentality’ to capture Red as a cultural technology of citizenship that directs self-managing subjects toward the desired outcomes sought by the institutions of the official government. This research project combines a systematic document analysis of regulations, notices, and guidelines related to platform governance, discourse analysis of Red's content, with walk-through method, and in-depth interviews with Red influencers (n=12) and users (n=35). I suggest that the inducement offered by Red to facilitate and improve users’ personal life, fulfillment and success through lifestyle sharing is distinctly tied to a hybrid model of governmentality that combines neoliberal and socialist political reasoning about governance, enterprise, and social welfare.
“WOULD YOU DATE A MAID?”
Authors: Kantachote Krittiya
Published: March 2024

The refers to a common video trend we encountered as we set out to analyze how FDWs use TikTok to express personal and sexual sovereignty amid constraining structural surveillance at the level of policy, employer-employee dynamics, and social restrictions. Academic scholars from various disciplines have critiqued the nature of migration regimes in which foreign domestic workers (FDW) are hired, drawing from the fields of social, health, and economic justice. We focus on FDWs in Singapore, where these conditions are enforced and rationalized through laws and government-owned-media that entrench socially constructed divisions. These conditions are rationalized and perpetuated through rhetoric that stigmatizes, stereotypes, and enforces segregation. Intersecting layers of marginalization are created by a labor system that maximally extracts and exploits low-wage migrant workers. Discursive techniques used by state-owned media and legislation also portray FDW as ungovernable and promiscuous employer property that supersedes and eclipses their civil rights (Kaur-Gill, Pandi & Dutta, 2021).
THE WORLD ACCORDING TO TIKTOK: AN OBSERVATORY ON CROSS-NATIONAL CONTENT PRIORITIZATION AND PLATFORM-MEDIATED PROXIMITIES
Authors: Kerby Natalie , Romano Salvatore , Schueler Miazia , Beraldo Davide
Published: March 2024

The present paper showcases a research tool that makes data for a global, cross-national analysis of TikTok available to and navigable by the research community. Next to justifying the necessity for this approach and providing an overview of to the tool, the paper illustrates its potential by presenting the analysis of a dataset comprised of daily snapshots of TikTok’s homepage collected over 4 months from 197 countries and territories in the world. Our results shed light on which content is prioritized by TikTok on a global scale, and introduces the notion of ‘platform-mediated proximity’ - i.e., the clustering of countries according to patterns of co-recommendations promoted by the platform. Preliminary results obtained on a subset of the data suggest that TikTok’s cross-national content prioritization patterns generate forms of platform-mediated proximities that, in most cases, follow geographical lines of clustering at the regional level, with notable and interesting exceptions.
COLLECTIVE SENSEMAKING AND INTERSEMIOTIC DISSONANCE: A STUDY OF CRISIS DISCOURSE ON TIKTOK
Authors: Khoury Christy , Hemsley Jeff
Published: March 2024

Social media applications are an important medium of crisis information exchange. Of growing importance and use is TikTok, an application with a multi-modal curation structure that enables users to share content of various interests. Previous TikTok scholarship on crisis research has not considered how the application sustains a cultural understanding of a crisis event. Using a semiotic analysis approach, this study explores TikTok’s role in crisis communication by examining the process of collective sensemaking of the Port of Beirut, Lebanon explosion on August 4th, 2020. The preliminary findings reveal intersemiotic dissonance obscuring crisis discourse, thus negatively influencing the process of collective sensemaking. The results of this study motivate further research that examines tacit guidelines for crisis communication on TikTok and similar applications.
REAL BUT FAKE, REAL BECAUSE FAKE: TECHNOLOGICALLY AUGMENTED K-POP IDOLS AND META-AUTHENTICITY
Authors: Kim Do Own
Published: March 2024

Through the case of the technologically augmented K-pop idol group Mad Monster, this article explores the participatory culture in the supposedly revolutionary proliferation of “humanlike, realistic” digital technologies by drawing on the concept of meta-authenticity, loosely defined as the desire or achievement of authenticity in practices of inauthenticity. I focus on the implications of the social integration of artificial agents and augmentative tools for humans, not to re-establish the human-nonhuman binary but to illuminate the persisting human presence and involvement. Mad Monster’s authenticity was achieved through—not despite—their blatantly “inauthentic” technological augmentations like extreme facial and voice filters. They were co-managed to perform as per “human” authenticity expectations while drawing on the presumption of inauthenticity: by the comedy duo, their fans, existing institutions, and commercial interests—the locus of their authenticity was in collaborative performances. Mad Monster is a case of contemporary meta-authenticity that demands a shift of focus from technological states to collaborative performances around it: how “humanlike” or technologically augmented cyborgs are involved in social spheres matters more than what they are. Their success as “fake but/thus real” AR-filtered, autotuned celebrities also warns of how diverse humans’ crucial contributions can be easily hidden in cyborg phenomena that stress their technological components, and how accountability can be diverted. The revolutionary potential of cyborgs rests not in technical achievements but in the collaborations of the actors involved: questioning, shaking, and breaking the standards.
ALGORITHMIC FOLK THEORIES OF ONLINE HARASSMENT: HOW SOCIAL MEDIA ALGORITHMS ENABLE ONLINE HARASSMENT AND PREVENT INTERVENTION
Authors: Lackey Cait , Hardman Taylor Samuel
Published: March 2024

Online harassment is a public health concern, and social media algorithms are often proposed as a solution by social media companies. As online harassment grows, there are concerns that algorithms as content moderators fail to achieve their desired effect because of inabilities to contextualize social issues. This research contributes to the intersection of algorithms and online harassment by investigating the algorithmic folk theories of the victims, perpetrators, and bystanders of online harassment. Strategically sampling the experiences of marginalized identity categories who experienced harassment, we conducted grounded theory interviews and found that people theorize that algorithmic failures fuel online harassment and isolate victims. We describe four folk theories that victims, perpetrators, and witnesses utilize to make sense of their experiences of online harassment. The $2 asserts algorithms only pay attention to harassment incidents with a large number of flags. $2 describes perceptions of how algorithms amplify harassment content to increase engagement. $2 refers to perceptions that algorithms seek to form new audiences for content, which networks harassers together. $2 finds victims perceive that algorithms fail to contextualize the harassment of marginalized communities. Victims, bystanders, and perpetrators each described using their folk theories to instigate, push back, or succumb to the culture of online harassment. Understanding these algorithmic online harassment folk theories highlights how social media algorithms perpetuate harassment and fail to support victims.

$2 : algorithmic folk theories, online harassment, networked harassment, social media, content moderation.
CARE-LESS DATA POP CULTURES: AN INVESTIGATION OF THE DATA IMAGINARIES AND DATA CULTURES OF THE PANDEMIC
Authors: Lee Jeehyun Jenny , Lee Jin
Published: March 2024

In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, many studies have critiqued the care-less legal and technical aspects of governments’ data disclosure of COVID-19 patients’ information. Yet, while there were many reported cases of public shaming of COVID-19 patients, not many studies have examined citizens’ usage and engagement with publicized data. In our study, we direct attention to citizens’ care-less engagement with COVID-19 patients’ data through the case study of the “Itaewon outbreak.” In May 2020, the gay community in South Korea became the target of public surveillance after it was revealed that a person who tested positive had visited a gay club in Seoul’s multicultural district Itaewon. Using the anonymized demographic and location data disclosed by the government, the news media sensationally reported on the data by highlighting the visitors’ presumed gay sexuality. In response, citizens widely circulated the data across social media by drawing on social media's popular culture of surveillance and call-outs. We describe these processes of interpreting and shaping pandemic data through social media’s participatory culture as data pop culture. To analyze data pop culture, we first examine the dominant data imaginaries cultivated through news media and government reports on pandemic data disclosure and how they inform the public’s understanding of data. Then, we examine how these dominant data imaginaries create power relations between people on social media as data owners and data objects. Lastly, we illustrate how these data imaginaries and relations become reproduced through social media popular culture and their implications.
MANUFACTURING INFLUENCERS: THE REVOLUTIONARY ROLES OF MCNS (MULTI-CHANNEL NETWORKS) IN THE PLATFORM ECONOMY
Authors: Liang Fan , Ji Li
Published: March 2024

This study examines how MCNs (Multi-Channel Networks) intervene in the platform economy by manufacturing influencers. Previous studies have explored the emergence of influencers and creators from various perspectives, including platformization, creative labor, and algorithmic power. However, little attention has been paid to another crucial player – MCNs which incubate and train influencers on an industrial scale. MCNs are firms and organizations that collaborate with influencers to facilitate the production, promotion, and monetization of creative content. They serve not only as incubators for micro-entrepreneurs and influencers looking to establish their businesses, but also as a key intermediary between influencers and other stakeholders on platforms. This study combines in-depth interviews with documented lawsuits to explore the role of MCNs in the platform economy, as well as their relationships with influencers. The findings suggest that MCNs significantly shape the platform economy through three strategies: manufacturing influencers, spreading industry lore, and exploiting creativity. On one hand, MCNs help established influencers maintain their success and reduce the risk of creativity while exploiting the labor of aspirants who struggle to enter the platform economy. As such, they constitute a power imbalance by providing business for successful influencers and increasing precarity for ordinary influencers. On the other hand, MCNs continue to expand their business scopes to meet the needs of various stakeholders, mainly platforms, advertisers, and brands. Consequently, MCNs have the ability to facilitate the relationship between these actors, industrialize aspiring influencers, and determine who can participate in creative labor.
ARTIFICIAL LOVE: REVOLUTIONS IN HOW AI AND AR EMBODIED ROMANTIC CHATBOTS CAN MOVE THROUGH RELATIONSHIP STAGES
Authors: Liao Tony , Porter Debriunna , Rodwell Elizabeth
Published: March 2024

Depictions of romantic relationships between humans and computers/robots/AI systems are a common trope in science fiction. With recent advances in AI conversational chatbots and augmented reality avatars, applications such as Replika have started to enable everyday people to engage in romantic relationships with AI chatbots and talk to visual representations of their AI partners. While there has been a growing body of work exploring the motivations, practices, and benefits/risks of these conversational chatbots, the romantic side of things has been relatively underexplored. While much of the work has been about the why and the overall purpose of the romantic relationship, there has been less work that examines these from a relational stage perspective, and how these systems move in and across different relationship stages of development. This is especially important because communication scholars have long theorized that Romantic Relationships fall into a unique category of relationships, such that there are more discrete stages of coming together/apart, more risk/vulnerability in these relationships, and a wider range of interactions/negotiations over identity and interdependence. Through in-depth interviews with people who participate in an online forum ILoveMyReplika, this study aims to explore how people engage with the system romantically, how these systems craft messages that are indicative of different stages of relationships, and how people handle the movement and change across time with these systems. This piece will have important implications for our understanding of human machine relationships and human relationship stages generally, as well as implications for the design of social computing agents.
CIVIC PARTICIPATION IN CHINA: A COMPARATIVE STUDY BETWEEN WECHAT AND DOUYIN AS A DEMOCRATIC ARENA
Authors: Lin Hui
Published: March 2024

Online media platforms have become an arena for activists to engage with political discourses. Since COVID-19, an increasing number of citizens have begun to actively participate online to express their ideas towards political issues. Various types of user-generated content were circulated on various social media platforms: they wrote textual content on Wechat with various metaphors and created user-generated videos on video-streaming platforms to express their opinions. In this context, this study examines how citizens express democratic opinions against ideological discourse, what role social media platforms play as an arena for activists’ participation, and what social media factors facilitate active online civic participation. Adopting a cross-platform perspective, this study compares how Douyin and Wechat facilitate civic participation differently and how people engage with political content differently on these two different media platforms. I employed digital ethnography, augmented by the walkthrough method (Light et al., 2018), and qualitative content analysis to examine how WeChat and Douyin play different roles in civic participation. This study argues that the social networking platform WeChat provides more in-depth participation and has more resistant forms than Douyin, especially for expressing counter-ideas to mainstream discourses. Among the various forms of resistance, sharing WeChat articles is one of the most visible and effective ways to express democratic opinions in mainstream discourse.
CLIMATE ANXIETY AS A LENS INTO YOUNG PEOPLE'S POLITICAL EXPRESSION ON YOUTUBE
Authors: Literat Ioana , Kligler-Vilenchik Neta
Published: March 2024

Climate anxiety—the feeling of dread and distress associated with worrying about the future of the planet—has been posited as a defining feature of Gen Z. This study examines youth communication around climate anxiety on YouTube, through a qualitative content analysis of 146 youth-created videos about climate anxiety, as well as the over 20,000 comments posted on them. Illustrating an emphasis on content rather than form, the videos in our corpus showed an in-depth engagement with the topic at hand, coupled with a simple, low-key aesthetic. The vast majority of videos assumed an imagined audience of young people who are concerned about the climate; thus, the goal was to provide information and advice rather than persuade about climate change. Our analysis illustrates the significance of insider conversations among youth, and the centrality of YouTube’s expressivity and connectivity affordances in allowing young people to engage with these topics on a personal and intimate level. At the same time, our research illuminates the mental toll of political expression for young people, and further highlights this connection between the affective and the political drive. On a theoretical level, our research offers and tests a broadly applicable model that explains how different social media platforms (in this case, YouTube) enable—as well as constrain—certain forms of political expression, through the interaction between their affordances, norms, and contents.