Search results for "social media."
showing 10 items of 718 documents
Let’s Play Tinder! Aesthetics of a Dating App
2019
This article provides an analysis of the “dating app” Tinder as an aesthetic ludic artifact. By scrutinizing the title’s features of gameplay and expressive–interpretive social interaction, Tinder usage is set into a frame theory context and shown to operate by multiple overlapping frames that allow romantic engagement to be entered as play and vice versa.
Dog blogs as ventriloquism: Authentication of the human voice
2015
This paper looks at personal blogging by dog owners in an international, English language blogsite in which dog owners from around the world report and reflect upon their dogs and their lives with dogs, and do so by using the dog׳s voice. It approaches dog blogs as an example of the strategic use of pervasive but contentious anthropomorphic western discourses about animals and discusses how dog bloggers use anthropomorphism as a discursive means for crafting and collectively ratifying authenticity in a translocal, interest-driven and informal social media context in which traditional territorial and demographic parameters of authenticity are not easily available or relevant. More specifical…
Presenting “pissis girls”: Categorisation in a social media video
2015
In Finland, a social category called “pissis girls” has evolved into a cultural concept, used widely in various discourses concerning young women. In the paper, the empirical focus is on how, in the context of a viral video disseminated in social media, a group of young girls are presented as representatives of this category. The video, called ÄM IRK, is a short edited clip of an emergent interaction between young men and girls meeting by chance in a park. Drawing on the notions of membership categorisation, cluster of indexes and indexical field, “enoughness” and authentication, the paper investigates how the edited video, through the means of de- and recontextualisation of the emergent in…
Physical activity using social media during the COVID-19 pandemic: the perceptions of sports science students
2021
Abstract During the period of the COVID-19 lockdown, sports organizations and companies had to look for new ways to connect with their customers by offering physical activity (PA) alternatives to do at home. This study explores the perceptions of 175 undergraduate sports science students regarding their social media (SM) and PA patterns during the first Spanish COVID-19 lockdown period (March to May 2020). From their homes, the students completed an ad hoc online questionnaire. The data was analyzed using SPSS 23.0 software to perform descriptive and inferential analysis (t-test). The results show that the participants used SM during the COVID-19 lockdown to visualize or practice PA, percei…
The Role of Social Media in Societal Change : Cases in Finland of Fifth Estate Activity on Facebook
2015
The Internet can be used to reconfigure access to information and people in ways that can support networked individuals and enhance their relative communicative power vis-à-vis other individuals and institutions, such as by supporting collective action, sourcing of information, and whistle blowing. The societal and political significance of the Internet is a matter of academic debate, with some studies suggesting a powerful role in creating a “Fifth Estate,” and other studies challenging such claims. Research on this issue has not yet comprehensively focused on social network sites and those operating in a very liberal-democratic context. Based on an embedded case study of Facebook use in …
New Older Users’ Attitudes Toward Social Networking Sites and Loneliness: The Case of the Oldest-Old Residents in a Small Italian City
2021
Older adults make little use of social networking sites (SNS). SNS has become essential for maintaining social contacts and countering loneliness in the current era marked by the Covid-19 pandemic. This study explores the attitudes of the oldest-old on SNS after attending a training course on SNS use. The study’s goals are to investigate their personal experiences, choices of use and to survey their views on the usefulness of SNS and its effects on mitigating loneliness for older people. The interviews were conducted in the context of the “Ageing in a Networked Society—Social Experiment Study.” The participants, who were randomly selected for the course on SNS use, agreed to be interviewed…
Tribal Politics, Suits and Rock Music: Electioneering in Meghalaya
2016
ABSTRACTPublic discourse in India's northeastern state Meghalaya is dominated by issues of tribal identity and the threat of being overwhelmed by outsiders. In the context of national elections, local campaigners have to respond to and navigate between the different requirements of national and regional politics. Election campaigns, understood as a negotiation process during which campaigners act as brokers, provide insights into the narratives and characteristics of politics in Meghalaya. Manifestos, leaflets and large-scale events communicate a statement about organisational strength and a candidate's popularity, and subsequently about the capacity to ultimately deliver to the voter. Aest…
Towards an integrated approach to emergency management: interdisciplinary challenges for research and practice
2015
This article presents an interdisciplinary vision for large-scale integrated emergency management that has been inspired by the transition from platform centric to integrated operations in the oil and gas fields, which uses remote emergency control centres collaborating virtually with local responders. The article discusses some of the most salient research challenges for integrated emergency management, including the role of mobile technology, human-centred sensing, citizen participation and social media, and the socio-cultural determinants of disaster management. The purpose of this article is to frame an integrated emergency management approach that adopts a multi-disciplinary approach, …
The use made of video in the social media by candidates in the 2019 Valencian Autonomous Government elections
2020
Videos are increasingly being used in social networks for a wide range of purposes, including political campaigning. Here, social media seem to be gaining an edge over the mainstream variety when it comes to making political choices, especially during election campaigns. This paper examines the extent to which social media is used in Valencian Autonomous Government elections and looks at each of the candidate's experiences in this regard in the April 2019 elections. We pay particular attention to the differences between the three networks analysed — Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, and consider what kind of video information is shared. For these purposes, we create nine formal categories, s…
Studying social media as semiotic technology: a social semiotic multimodal framework
2018
How do we study social media technology? While social semiotics provides an extensive toolkit for analysing multimodal texts and semiotic practices, the study of social media as semiotic technology poses a significant challenge to existing research methodologies. In this article, we present a social semiotic framework that allows us to describe in analytical details the multimodal meaning potentials offered by digital social media technology and connect these to multimodal text-making and semiotic practices while underscoring the role of technology. Our framework is organized around seven interrelated and inherently informed dimensions: (1) multimodality, (2) practice, (3) the social, (4) m…