Suchergebnisse

AbstractWithin growing marketisation of publicly funded services, the internet has provided new opportunities for marketing, delivery, and coordination of those services. Using web scraping and hyperlink network analysis techniques, this paper examines the ways in which organisations operating in Australia's evolving National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS) system inter-connect online. Social media plays the most important role in the online network. Government agencies also play a central role, with many disability service organisations linking their web users to them. Government agency websites do not hyperlink to disability service providers, suggesting that governments do not see their role as assisting access to such services. Advocacy and peak disability organisations are important in online connections between the websites of government and service organisations. Innovative uses of the internet for online brokerage of disability services are evident. The implications of these findings for service delivery are discussed.

In this article, I examine the content of online pages of Men's Rights Activists (hereafter MRAs) in India. The objective of my analysis is to illuminate what discursive elements are used by Indian MRA groups to motivate their existence and their mission. My primary sources are texts posted on websites and Facebooks pages. The argument I put forward in this paper is that Indian MRAs justify their mission by manipulating and re-articulating the meaning of 'gender' so that it becomes a useful category only when attached to men. While MRA groups are present and active in several countries worldwide, I argue that the Indian case is particularly illuminating when it comes to shedding light on the growth of anti-feminist communities at a time when "masculinist political revival" (Maellström 2016) is on the rise globally.

Social media enable their users to be connected with a diverse group of people increasing their chances of coming across divergent viewpoints. Thus, network diversity is a key issue for understanding the potentials of social media for creating a cross-cutting communication space that is one of the premises of a functioning democracy. This article analyzes the strategies social media users adopt to manage their network diversity in the context of increasing polarization. The study is based on 29 semi-structured interviews with diverse social media users from Turkey and qualitative network maps. Furthermore, the study adopts a cross-platform approach comparing Facebook, Twitter, and WhatsApp in relation to the diversity of their users' networks. The study shows that social media users adopt different strategies interchangeably in specific contexts. These strategies include visible (unfriending, blocking) and invisible (muting, unfollowing, and ignoring) forms of disconnection, debating, observing divergent opinions, and self-censorship. Political interest of social media users, political climate, issue sensitivity, and "imagined affordances" of social media platforms play a role in users' choices about which strategy to choose when they are confronted with divergent viewpoints through their diverse online networks. Building on the unfriending literature that points out to rather partisan users, who unfriend, unfollow or block others, this article demonstrates that in peak moments of polarization, also the politically disengaged or moderate users disconnect from diverse others.

During the lockdown measures put in place at the time of the first wave of the Covid‐19 pandemic in Spain (March through June 2020), LGBTQ+ youth lived through a particularly stressful situation that has so far received little attention. Confined in homes that are often hostile to their sexuality, struggling with the transition to online classes, they reached out to Internet social networks to obtain the support most of them lack in person. This article explores the role of technology for LGBTQ+ youth during a period when the educational environment was not supportive of students' sexuality and identity needs. The research assesses correlations between the use of online social networks and the perceptions of support received from others (using the concepts of social support, thwarted belongingness and burdensomeness, and cohabitation in their homes). The study involves a sample of 445 Spanish participants aged 13 to 21. A descriptive multivariate analysis of variance and bivariate correlations was performed. We found that social networks were very important for LGBTQ+ youth during the pandemic, helping them to explore their identities, but could also be a source of violence. In this regard, while trans and nonbinary youth's use of social networks to contact acquaintances show important differences when compared to that of gays, lesbians, and bisexuals, the former group also experiences more violence coming from these networks, finds less social support through them, and feels a stronger sense of burdensomeness in relation to them. Additionally, they were often living with people other than family members during the lockdown. This data suggests the need to offer specific support and online services for LGBTQ+ youth, particularly for trans and nonbinary youth.

The contemporary era of global transformations has re-oriented academic debates on the growth of non-nation-based solidarities and transnational cultural constructions. Despite this, social constructionists suggest that the concept of 'diaspora' continues to privilege the notion of ethnicity as the point of origin in the construction of solidarity between migrants, overlooking the differences of social class and gender. This research interrogates this contention by exploring the role of gender in shaping diaspora – a complex process by which migrant women articulate new identities and give new social and political meanings to their relationships with one another, with co-nationals living elsewhere and with an imagined 'homeland'. It investigates the motivation behind the emigration of highly skilled Algerian women during the 'Black Decade' of the 1990s and its aftermath, and looks at the agendas of this particular set of migrants, the extent to which they feel they belong to a diaspora, and their attitude towards returning 'home'. Their political engagement takes a variety of forms, but the research reveals that certain modes of online discourse and manifestations of a diasporic social consciousness are common to their self-presentation. In order to investigate their networks, I used Social Networking Websites Analysis (mainly Facebook) and a Respondent-Driven-Sampling (RDS) method to sample and recruit participants, coupled with 15 in-depth interviews. The majority of participants cited the amnesty law (which absolved the perpetrators of violence during the 1990s, including violence against women, of their crimes) and the rise of radical Islamist ideology as the main barriers to considering present-day Algeria as 'home'. Participants appeared to exhibit both a sense of exile and a desire to be part of a diaspora.

In our article, we investigate the affective economy of national-populist image circulation on Facebook. This is highly relevant, since social media has been an essential area for the spread of national-populist ideology. In our research, we analyse image circulation as affective practice, combining qualitative and quantitative methods. We use computational data analysis methods to examine visual big data: image fingerprints and reverse image search engines to track down the routes of thousands of circulated images as well as make discourse-historical analysis on the images that have gained most attention among supporters. Our research demonstrates that these existing tools allow social science research to make theory-solid approaches to understand the role of image circulation in creating and sustaining national and transnational networks on social media, and show how national-populist thinking is spread through images that catalyse and mobilise affects – fear, anger and resentment – thus creating an effective affective economy.

Research has documented that social media allow individuals to encounter political disagreement, potentially fostering deliberation in democratic systems. Another strand of studies has indicated that individuals tend to actively homogenize their network by removing (unfriending) political dissenters. To shed light on the psychological connection between encountering political disagreement online and acting in response, this study presents results from in-depth interviews with 20 German Facebook users. In line with cognitive dissonance theory, we found that users engage in different intrapsychic and behavioral strategies to reduce the dissonance provoked by political disagreements, such as mentally discrediting the source or legitimizing the existence of alternative viewpoints. Decisions about drastic measures, such as unfriending the source, are conditional on whether individuals perceive the disagreements as relatively severe or the relationship to the dissenter as relatively close. These findings inform literature on cross-cutting exposure and the political homogenization of online networks.

The relationship between women and new technologies has been an important area of research for feminist sociologists and others working with gender and cultural studies (i.e. Gill, 2012; Sassen, 2002), as well as for scholars within the GAD (Gender and Development) empowerment framework (Gajjala, 2003). A significant body of international scholarship on gender and the Internet has also developed in the last decades throughout the world (i.e. Haraway, 1991, 2000; Plant, 1995; Harcourt, 2000; Sandoval, 2000; Sutton and Pollock, 2000), including emerging research in Brazil (i.e. Ferreira, 2015; Natansohn, 2013; Matos, 2017). Many Brazilian women, who do not feel represented in the mainstream media and who struggle to have a voice, have increasingly made use of new technologies for self-expression, civic engagement and political mobilization. This article provides a critical summary of feminist theoretical perspectives on the potential of online communications for women's rights, further sketching a brief case study of contemporary Brazilian feminism and the mobilization around women's rights, particularly in the year 2015. This is done through a discussion of the discursive online practices of websites like Blogueiras Feministas and the NGO Think Olga, part of a wider project (Matos, 2017). Questions asked include how the media can better contribute to assist in gender development, and how online platforms can make a difference. I argue that despite constraints and setbacks, the seeds of a wider transformative influence in the offline world are slowly being planted in a highly fragmented, heterogenous and erratic blogosphere.

On October 20, 2003, Baidu Online Network Technology (Beijing) Ltd., Co. ("Baidu"), a Nasdaq-listed company known as the "Google of China," filed a suit against its competitor Beijing 3721 Technology Ltd. Co. ("3721") in Beijing Chaoyang District Court for copyright infringement and unfair competition. The case is regarded as China's first copyright-infringement dispute involving website search-engine technology. Legal experts, the Chinese media, and the Supreme Court of China have paid close attention to the case, especially as it is related to China's ongoing legislative effort to improve protection of intellectual property. The translation below is the appellate opinion in this case issued by Beijing No. 2 Intermediate People's Court in April 2004.

When debates about Islam acquire importance in the public sphere, does the far right adhere to traditional racist arguments, risking marginalization, or does it conform to mainstream values to attain legitimacy in the political system? Focusing on the aftermath of the 2015 terrorist attacks in France, I explore the framing of Islam, discussing how the far right's nativist arguments were reformulated to engage with available discursive opportunities and dominant conceptions of the national identity. By looking at actors in the protest and the electoral arenas, I examine the interplay between the choice of anti-Islam frames and baseline national values.I offer a novel mixed-method approach to study political discourses, combining social network analysis of the links between seventy-seven far-right websites with a qualitative frame analysis of online material. It also includes measures of online visibility of these websites to assess their audiences. The results confirm that anti-Islam frames are couched along a spectrum of discursive opportunity, where actors can either opt to justify opposition to Islam based on interpretations of core national values (culture and religion) or mobilize on strictly oppositional values (biological racism). The framing strategy providing most online visibility is based on neo-racist arguments. While this strategy allows distortion of baseline national values of secularity and republicanism, without breaching the social contract, it is also a danger for organizations that made "opposition to the system" their trademark. While the results owe much to the French context, the conclusions draw broader implications as to the far right going mainstream.

This article focuses on the constellations of actors engaged in the food safety debate in Germany and the potential of civil society organizations for mobilization and politicization of the issue. In an exploratory case study we assess the structure of communication between these organizations by applying hyperlink analysis. Our study sheds light on the nature of the issue network and in particular on their linkages with media and political actors. We interpret communication network patterns with respect to civil society actors' opportunities to make food safety salient on the agenda and to mobilize around it and politicize it. In fact, our empirical study shows that the structure of linkages between civil society actors, media organizations and political actors in Germany offers favourable opportunities for making the food safety issue salient and for politicizing it in the offline world.

The web 2.0 phenomenon and social media – without question – not only reshaped our everyday experiences, but they have established an environment for new types of social practices and social actors. The demotization (Turner 2010) effect of such technologies has created entirely new fields where celebrities might emerge from: one of them is videoblogging. Many video bloggers gained great reputation through peculiar micro-celebrity practices (Marwick 2015, Senft 2012), and, as a result, became key figures in distributing ideas, values and knowledge in today's society. These cognitive patterns are disseminated with a discursive apparatus that is largely based on social media activity, including posts, tweets, self-imagery and the videos themselves, which are tied to a certain logic according to environmental affordances, creating the possibility for fans to interact (share, comment, like, retweet etc.) with artifacts of the celebrity. This mechanism puts the celebrity in a so-called expert system (Giddens 1990) position as they provide adequate schemas of attitude, mentality or behavior. Most importantly, all of these public interactions are accessible for scholars to conduct scientific research. With the help of the SentiOne application this research attempts to reconstruct online networks of video bloggers based on mentions, which either occurred in an artifact (post, video description etc.) or in a fan comment. Apart from the network itself, SentiOne enables us to get insights regarding each individual connection established in it with different types of aggregated data.

AbstractSocial networking sites are suspected to impede the communication between members of different political camps and thereby increase network homogeneity. This homogeneity can be a result of humans' tendency to process information in confirmatory ways—a characteristic which is also ascribed to populist citizens and those who hold conspiratorial beliefs. It is hypothesized that populist views and conspiratorial beliefs are associated with higher exposure to like-minded information within Facebook. An online survey with German Facebook users (N = 469) revealed that populist attitudes are positively associated with conspiratorial beliefs but negatively associated with homogeneity. Conspiratorial beliefs are unrelated to homogeneity. Findings are discussed in the light of extant research.