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This article deals with YouTube's advertiser-friendly content guidelines – the content rules dedicated to defining what YouTube deems advertiser (un)friendly and that YouTube creators seeking to monetise their content through advertising have to follow. Specifically, this study addresses the textual composition of YouTube's regulations with a focus on occurrences of vagueness. Regarding methods of data analysis, I take a corpus-assisted discourse analytical approach to YouTube's texts on advertiser-friendliness. That is, I take a wide-angle view on all concordance lines of 'content' and identify occurrences of different forms of vagueness. Findings suggest that at least 26% of the lines of 'content' detailing YouTube's ad-friendly content guidelines exhibit at least one of eight forms of vagueness. Consequently, content creators – left unsure about the monetisability of particular content – may choose not to push any boundaries but to produce noncontroversial content, which, in turn, may impede content plurality on YouTube.

This paper focuses on the potential societal function of Wikipedia beyond serving as an encyclopedia. That is, it assesses both theoretically and empirically whether talk pages (TP) – Wikipedia discussion sites that accompany the encyclopedic entries and provide spaces for debates among Wikipedia editors – may function as transnational public spheres. Despite the increasing number of studies on citizen engagement and participation in the age of social media, Wikipedia as an example of the participatory internet has received little research attention in this regard. This study redresses this research gap in two steps. Drawing on Habermas' concept of the public sphere and Fraser's and Eriksen's modifications thereof, Wikipedia's – specifically the TPs' – modus operandi is explored to evaluate whether TPs may serve as spaces for transnational political opinion formation. This theoretical exploration is complemented with an empirical assessment of a TP dedicated to the EU. The case study addresses if/to what degree Wikipedia editors have appropriated the TP to function as a transnational public sphere. Findings indicate that Wikipedia TPs can – and do – serve as general transnational public spheres.

This paper addresses how the Wikipedia community has debated the existence of an EU culture on a Wikipedia discussion site between 2001 and 2019. That is, a corpus of discussions among Wikipedia editors ('Wikipedians') was examined to shed light on how the Wikipedians involved argue for/against the idea that an overarching EU culture exists at present. This, combined with an examination of debates about concrete cultural elements associated with the EU, permits an insight into Wikipedians' conception(s) of the union. Drawing on argumentation analysis shows that the data examined indicates that cultural commonality across EU member states is not necessarily ascribed to the EU but to their being European countries. Additionally, even Wikipedians who argue that an overarching EU culture exists do not necessarily actually subscribe to this view but argue for reference to cultural elements in the Wikipedia article on the EU in order to signal to Wikipedia readers that the EU is "more than a set of treaties".

This paper addresses how the Wikipedia community has debated the existence of an EU culture on a Wikipedia discussion site between 2001 and 2019. That is, a corpus of discussions among Wikipedia editors ('Wikipedians') was examined to shed light on how the Wikipedians involved argue for/against the idea that an overarching EU culture exists at present. This, combined with an examination of debates about concrete cultural elements associated with the EU, permits an insight into Wikipedians' conception(s) of the union. Drawing on argumentation analysis shows that the data examined indicates that cultural commonality across EU member states is not necessarily ascribed to the EU but to their being European countries. Additionally, even Wikipedians who argue that an overarching EU culture exists do not necessarily actually subscribe to this view but argue for reference to cultural elements in the Wikipedia article on the EU in order to signal to Wikipedia readers that the EU is "more than a set of treaties".

This discourse analytical article deals with the power relations between social media corporations and content creators in the context of monetization schemes of social media businesses, i.e., schemes that allow creators to monetize their social media content. Specifically, this study presents an analysis of discourse material pertaining to YouTube's monetization scheme (the YouTube Partner Program [YPP]) to shed light on the broader point of how social media corporations position themselves in relation to creators who (seek to) earn money on social media. While some research on social media has focused on their potential to empower users/content creators, less optimistic scholars have addressed social media corporations generating massive profits by exploiting creators, for example, in the form of free digital labor. By comparison, there is a lack of research, especially empirical discourse analytical research, on creators' paid digital labor and on how social media corporations conceptualize paid creators. This study redresses this gap regarding one of the oldest monetization schemes—the YPP. Using corpus linguistic tools to explore textual data from 46 YouTube sites detailing the YPP, this study homes in on references to content creators, YouTube, and how these players are connected to one another. The findings show that although the name YPP elicits the impression of cooperation on equal terms, YouTube represents itself as legislator, judge, and executive authority. This indicates that despite the ability of partnered content creators to share in the social media businesses' profits, they do not inhabit a particularly empowered position.

Cover -- Half Title -- Title Page -- Copyright Page -- Dedication -- Table of Contents -- List of tables -- List of figures -- Acknowledgements -- Notes on contributors -- Chapter 1: Introduction: context, history and previous research -- Political and historical context: Brexit as a manifestation of right-wing populism -- Previous research: language, discourse and the UK-EU relationship -- The chapters in this volume -- Notes -- References -- PART I: Discursive drivers of the Brexit vote -- Chapter 2: Values as tools of legitimation in EU and UK Brexit discourses -- Introduction -- Legitimation and values in political discourse -- European (Union) values and the UK -- Data collection -- Analysis -- Discussion and conclusion -- Notes -- References -- Chapter 3: 'This is about the kind of Britain we are': national identities as constructed in parliamentary debates about EU membership -- Introduction -- Conceptual framework: the discourse-historical approach -- National identity -- Method and data treatment -- Analysis -- Conclusion -- Notes -- References -- Chapter 4: Ambient affiliation and #Brexit: negotiating values about experts through censure and ridicule -- Introduction -- Background: 'had enough of experts' -- Dataset -- Method -- Analysis: affiliation through censure and ridicule -- Conclusion -- Notes -- References -- Chapter 5: 'Britain is full to bursting point!': immigration themes in the Brexit discourse of the UK Independence Party -- Introduction -- The proto-referendum debate: from sovereignty to immigration -- Proximisation: theory and analysis -- Metaphorisation -- Conclusion -- Notes -- References -- Chapter 6: 'The British people have spoken': voter motivations and identities in vox pops on the British EU referendum -- Introduction -- Right-wing populism and voter motivation -- Data and methods -- Findings

"This book addresses an under-researched area within populism studies: the discourse of supporters of populist parties. Taking the 2019 European elections as their case study, the authors analyse how supporters in eleven different countries construct identities and voting motivations on social media. The individual chapters comprise a range of methods to investigate data from different social media platforms, defining populism as a political strategy and/or practice, realised in discourse, that is based on a dichotomy between "the people", who are unified by their will, and an out-group whose actions are not in the interest of the people, with a leader safeguarding the interests of the people against the out-group. The book identifies what motivates people to vote for populist parties, what role national identities and values play in those motivations, and how the social media postings of populist parties are recontextualised in supporters' comments to serve as a voting motivation"--