"Social media provide unprecedented opportunities for the distribution of photographs capturing experiences of conflict. Instagram in particular renders conflict photography searchable, whilst also aggregating the memories of traumatised communities. This paper adds to the nascent literature in this
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area by exploring how the photosharing app is used to share photographs of the Northern Irish ‘Troubles’, a low-intensity conflict that resulted in 3,600 fatalities and left many more bereaved, injured and traumatised. Two decades on from the Belfast Agreement, Northern Ireland remains a deeply divided society in which competing narratives over the conflict remain deeply entrenched. This study explored photographic representation of the Troubles, with a specific focus on who was represented in these images and whether they were evoke personal memories of the conflict. A content and narrative analysis of 100 historical images tagged #thetroubles was conducted in order to explore these issues. Results indicate that images showing the ‘peculiarity’ of everyday life during the conflict, such as armed British soldiers standing in close quarters to children playing in the street, were the most prominent visual representations under this hashtag. The memories evoked by such historical photographs reinforce zero-sum narratives on conflict, rather than promote new interpretations that build support for peace in ‘post-conflict’ societies." (Abstract)
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"Responding to mounting calls to decenter and decolonize journalism, The Routledge Companion to Journalism in the Global South examines not only the deep-seated challenges associated with the historical imposition of Western journalism standards on constituencies of the Global South but also the opp
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ortunities presented to journalists and journalism educators if they choose to partake in international collaboration and education.
This collection returns to fundamental questions around the meaning, value, and practices of journalism from alternative methodological, theoretical, and epistemological perspectives. These questions include: What really is journalism? Who gets to, and who is qualified to, define it? What role do ethics play? What are the current trends, challenges, and opportunities for journalism in the Global South? How is news covered, reported, written, and edited in non-Western settings? What can journalism players living and working in industrialized markets learn from their non-Western colleagues and counterparts, and vice versa? Contributors challenge accepted “universal” ethical standards while showing the relevance of customs, traditions, and cultures in defining and shaping local and regional journalism." (Publisher description)
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"Neben großen Themen wie Beauty, Kochen und Katzen haben sich wachsende Nischen für religiöse Kommunikation im digitalen Raum etabliert. Instagram, das heißt heute auch: gelebte Religion, Bibel, Spiritualität, Kirchenpolitik, Seelsorge und Bildung. Der Band gibt Einblick in die Entwicklung von
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Instagramkanälen, zeigt neue Formen der Gemeinschaftsbildung und behandelt religiöse Influencer. Er beleuchtet, wie authentisch erklingende Instagram-Stimmen von religiös und kulturell interessierten Jugendlichen und jungen Erwachsenen wahrgenommen werden und zurückwirken auf die Wahrnehmung und Entwicklung von Kirchen und religiösen Gemeinschaften." (Verlagsbeschreibung)
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"An emerging activist tactic on visual-based social media such as Instagram, slideshow activism adapts the production and consumption of political information to the logic of the platform. In so doing, slideshow activism provides followers with an ideal subject position for civic engagement. By exam
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ining a popular slideshow activist Instagram account, we outline the features of this activist tactic and its mobilizing appeal. The qualitative content analysis of a sample of 50 posts reveals that slideshow activism addresses its followers as individuals who are actively staying wellinformed on the social justice dimension of a wide range of political issues and are constantly engaged in self-transformation in order to become better citizens. This ideal, we argue, entrenches social justice as a core political value for civic engagement, and recommends a mix of argumentation and personal transformation as the everyday means for individuals to bring about political change. We further explore the consequences of this subject position for citizen engagement with politics." (Abstract)
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"Mixed Methods Perspectives on Communication and Social Media Research addresses the need for a discipline-cum-methodology-tailored book that navigates the current research spectrum of communication and social media ("CommSocMed"). It examines contemporary and relevant issues that intertwine the exp
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ansive spheres of CommSocMed. Authored by professionals with extensive academic and in-depth research and industry experience, the book highlights research-based themes that mirror qualitative and quantitative methodologies vis-à-vis socio-cultural, political, educational, and organisational issues and challenges. The first two sections present the mutually interwoven disciplines of CommSocMed where research works cover a comprehensive range of designs such as narrative analysis, case study, recombinant memetics, discourse analysis, visual semiotics, ethnography, content analysis, feminist theory, descriptive-survey, descriptive-correlational, model-building/testing, experimental, and mixed methods. The third section is a concluding segment which synthesises all the scholarly contributions in this volume." (Publisher description)
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"This anthology contributes to creating awareness on how digital ageism operates in relation to the widely spread symbolic representations of old and young age around digital technologies, the (lack of) representation of diverse older individuals in the design, development, and marketing of digital
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technologies and in the actual algorithms and datasets that constitute them. It also shows how individuals and institutions deal with digital ageism in everyday life. In the past decades, digital technologies permeated most aspects of everyday life. With a focus on how age is represented and experienced in relation to digital technologies leading to digital ageism, digitalisation's reinforcement of spirals of exclusion and loss of autonomy of some collectives is explored, when it could be natural for a great part of society and represent a sort of improvement." (Publisher description)
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"YouTube, Instagram, Facebook, Vimeo, Twitter, etc. have their own logics, dynamics and different audiences. This book analyses how the users of these social networks, especially those of YouTube and Instagram, become content prescribers, opinion leaders and, by extension, people of influence. What
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influence capacity do they have? Why are intimate or personal aspects shared with unknown people? Who are the big beneficiaries? How much is vanity and how much altruism? What business is behind these social networks? What dangers do they contain? What volume of business can we estimate they generate? How are they transforming cultural industries? What legislation is applied? How does the legislation affect these communications when they are sponsored? Is the privacy of users violated with the data obtained? Who is the owner of the content? Are they to blame for "fake news"? In this changing, challenging and intriguing environment, The Dynamics of Influencer Marketing discusses all of these questions and more. Considering this complexity from different perspectives: technological, economic, sociological, psychological and legal, the book combines the visions of several experts from the academic world and provides a structured framework with a wide approach to understand the new era of influencing, including the dark sides of it." (Publisher description)
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"Was wäre, wenn Sophie Scholl auf Instagram aktiv gewesen wäre? Soziale Medien werden auch zur Vermittlung von Geschichte immer populärer. Eines der jüngsten Beispiele ist das Instagramprojekt @ichbinsophiescholl der öffentlich-rechtlichen Rundfunkanstalten SWR und BR, das Nutzer:innen an den l
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etzten 10 Monaten des Lebens einer remediatisierten Sophie Scholl, gespielt von Luna Wedler, teilhaben ließ. Der Ansatz, Geschichte »hautnah, emotional und in nachempfundener Echtzeit« zu erzählen, führte dabei zu großer medialer Aufmerksamkeit und Reichweite, im Projektverlauf jedoch zunehmend auch zu kritischen Auseinandersetzungen mit Geschichtsdarstellungen im Social-Media-Format. Anhand eines der erfolgreichsten Produkte der Public History in den letzten Jahren wird die Darstellung von Geschichte in Social Media eingehend analysiert. Der Band vereint interdisziplinäre Perspektiven aus der Geschichtswissenschaft, Medienwissenschaft, Psychologie, Didaktik und historisch-politischer Bildung auf das Projekt, dessen Rezeption und Analyse." (Verlagsbeschreibung)
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"In a reality that combines the virtual with the physical and in a context of information saturation, there are consumers who are more critical, demanding, and less loyal. In this context, it is timely to know the new habits of the Centennials, so as to understand their behaviors and consumption tre
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nds, aligning future communication strategies to their personality and interests. The Centennials or Generation Z are digital natives, concerned with technology, and complex to understand (Alonso-López; Terol-Bolinches, 2020). Generation Z –analyzed in this study– is composed of those born between 2000 and 2008, which corresponds to the youth currently between 14 and 22 years old (Vilanova; Ortega, 2017; Hernández; Andrade-del-Cid, 2020). The main objective of this research is to determine the patterns of consumption and online behavior exhibited by this generation in Mexico, Colombia, Chile, and Panama, with a focus on the characteristics of communication processes, online consumption patterns, and the cultural traits they possess. To achieve this, a mixed method is proposed consisting of a Twitter conversation analysis, survey application (n=550), in-depth interviews (n=36), and focus groups (n=2); all of which have been applied in the four selected countries. The main conclusions are that the preferred content of Centennials is humor (75%), with Instagram and TikTok being the most used networks. For they, the most important thing is to take care of their image and 40% are not interested in technological topics. Furthermore, cultural characteristics are shared among countries; however, language is the main difference between countries." (Abstract)
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"Providing detailed case studies, this book explores the vibrant digital expressions of diverse groups of Muslim cybernauts: religious clerics and Sufi mystics, feminists and fashionistas, artists and activists, Hajj pilgrims and celebrities. Together, these stories span a vast cultural and geograph
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ic landscape, including Indonesia, Iran, the Middle East, and the United States. These case studies are contextualized within the backdrop of broader social trends, including racism and Islamophobia, gender dynamics, celebrity culture, identity politics, and the shifting dynamics of contemporary religious piety and practice. Authors examine a wide-range of digital multimedia technologies as primary ''texts." These include websites, podcasts, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube channels, online magazines and discussion forums, and religious apps." (Publisher description)
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"Der Band bietet vielfältige Einblicke in die aktuelle kommunikationswissenschaftliche Rezeptions- und Wirkungsforschung rund um das Thema Nachhaltigkeit. Die Beiträge beschäftigen sich etwa damit, wie die Thematik in den (sozialen) Medien verhandelt wird, wie sich verschiedene Botschafts- und Ko
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ntextmerkmale auf nachhaltiges Verhalten auswirken oder auch welche Rolle etablierte und ‚neue‘ Akteurinnen und Akteure – wie Influencerinnen und Influencer oder die eigenen Social-Media-Kontakte – für die Nachhaltigkeitskommunikation spielen." (Verlagsbeschreibung)
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"Double-digit annual growth has taken the global social media user figure to 4.62 billion, and current trends indicate that it will equal 60 percent of the world’s total population within the next few months. COVID-19 continues to hamper research into internet adoption though, resulting in reporti
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ng delays that have kept overall growth in internet user figures down for the second year in a row. Despite these challenges, however, the latest data reveal that the number of people who don’t use the internet has now fallen below 3 billion, marking another important milestone on our journey towards equal digital access for all. Meanwhile, at 4.95 billion, we’re also tantalisingly close to reaching a global total of 5 billion internet users, and I’m looking forward to celebrating that particular milestone with you in one of our upcoming Statshot reports. As always, the data in this year’s reports goes well beyond user numbers though, and our latest collection offers some especially interesting insights into the world’s evolving online behaviours. For example, TikTok users spent an average of 48 percent more time using the platform’s mobile app over the past 12 months compared with the previous year, while YouTube users now spend almost a full day each month watching videos in the platform’s app." (Page 3)
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"The trending hashtags analysed in this study all appeared at the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020, when a range of Western media suggested that the African continent would be hit worst. However, as Western nations (such as the US and the UK) struggled under increased disease burden, content s
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uch as the #DontRushChallenge, #DontLeaveMeChallenge and #JerusalemaChallenge kept global social media audiences entertained and aware. These challenges should not be underestimated for their subversion of the idea of what popular narratives Africans can produce and engage in. The fact that a gospel Zulu song became an anthem for collective Covid-19 solidarity and entertainment is significant. Many users would not have understood the words of the song or identified the religious genre it belonged to. But the song's Creolisation of African cultures, through its infusion of Angolan dance techniques created a hybrid African cosmopolitan aesthetic that was easy for others to partake of. Thus emerged a sort of “solidarity from below”, as discussed in the literature review." (Discussion, page 11)
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"Santa Dulce dos Pobres foi a primeira mulher brasileira a receber esse título pela Igreja Católica, o que reforça a hipótese de que esse episódio, somado à sua trajetória de doação e entrega ao bem comum, associado ao trabalho que continuou com as Obras Sociais Irmã Dulce (OSID), especial
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mente dos mais necessitados, contribui para o crescimento do engajamento da instituição no Instagram, o que é comprovado a partir dos dados quantitativos obtidos através das métricas (curtidas, visualizações, salvamentos, comentários). Contudo, apesar de validar o impacto do processo de canonização de Santa Dulce dos Pobres no canal digital da OSID, esse estudo não tem o intuito de encerrar a discussão sobre a importância da comunicação para a religião. É fundamental que sejam realizados outros trabalhos de pesquisa que viabilizem mais inferências e apontem para a necessidade de se tratar a comunicação religiosa de forma planejada e articulada, com o objetivo de maximizar os resultados dos esforços dos profissionais que atuam na área. Da mesma forma, ficam aqui sugestões para estudos futuros que possam discutir, por exemplo, se a importância e a grandeza da canonização refletiram-se na mesma intensidade no engajamento nos perfis das redes sociais da OSID." (Considerações Finais, 263)
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"This publication is the first report from UNESCO and the United Nations to specifically address Holocaust denial and distortion. It details the ways in which social media is fertile ground for hate and prejudice - and proposes actions we can take in response. Based on the data of billions of Facebo
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ok, Twitter, Instagram, and Telegram users, the report outlines what information English, French, Spanish, and German speakers encounter about the Holocaust. Almost half of all Holocaust-related content on Telegram, for example, is false, misleading, or distorted. Holocaust denial and distortion are often present alongside other types of online hate speech and misinformation such as homophobia, misogyny, xenophobia, conspiracy theory and COVID-19 denial. This co-presence indicates that these issues should not necessarily be addressed in isolation." (Foreword)
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"This article explores the uses of sources in coverage of the COVID-19 pandemic in social media posts of mainstream news organizations in Brazil, Chile, Germany, Mexico, Spain, the U.K., and the U.S. Based on computational content analysis, our study analyzes the sources and actors present in more t
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han 940,000 posts on COVID-19 published in the 227 Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter accounts of 78 sampled news outlets between January 1 and December 31 of 2020, comparing their relative importance across countries, across media platforms, and across time as the pandemic evolved in each country. The analysis shows the dominance of political sources across countries and platforms, particularly in Latin America, demonstrating a strong role of the state in constructing pandemic news and suggesting that mainstream news organizations' social media posts maintain a strong elite orientation. Health sources were also prominent — consistent with the defining role of biomedical authority in health coverage—, while significant diversity of sources, including citizen sources, emerged as the pandemic went on. Our results also revealed that the use of specific sources significantly varied over time. These variations tend to go hand in hand with specific global milestones of the pandemic." (Abstract)
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