Social Media, Politics and the State: Protests, Revolutions, Riots, Crime and Policing in an Age of Facebook, Twitter and YouTube
This chapter interrogates how activist social media communication in authoritarian contexts is sh... more This chapter interrogates how activist social media communication in authoritarian contexts is shaped through the mutual articulation of social media user practices, business models, and technological architectures, as well as through the controlling efforts of states. It specifically focuses on social media protest activity and contention in China, Tunisia, and Iran, authoritarian states which have made a large effort to control online activity. The analysis shows that instead of blocking or repressing social media activism, authoritarian states rather shape online contention. Online censorship and offline repression push users to adapt their communication by creatively misspelling words, using synonyms, symbolic language and parody, and through self-censorship. Simultaneously by using commercial platforms activists effectively lose control over their data, and over the spaces through which they communicate. This is particularly problematic in authoritarian settings, in which activist communication depends on specific technological arrangements and on the ability to keep sensitive data out of the hands of the authorities. Finally, while activist social media communication is shaped by Internet censorship and encapsulated by commercial social platforms, activists are constantly exploring new ways to evade censorship, but also to regain control over their collective data. They do so through technical means, especially filtering circumvention tools, but also by posting and translating information across different social media services, and by setting up their own platforms to curate their data.
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Papers by Thomas Poell
mobilization and communication are primarily propelled by the
self-motivated sharing of ideas, plans, images, and resources. It
shows that leadership plays a vital role in steering popular
contention on key social platforms. This argument is developed
through a detailed case study on the interaction between the
administrators and users of the Kullena Khaled Said Facebook
page, the most popular online platform during the Egyptian
revolution of early 2011. The analysis specifically focuses on the
period from 1 January until 15 February 2011. It draws from 1629 admin posts and 1,465,696 user comments, extracted via a customized version of Netvizz. For each day during this period, the three most engaged with posts, as well as the 10 most engaged with comments, have been translated and coded, making it possible to systematically examine how the
administrators tried to shape the communication on the page,
and how users responded to these efforts. This analysis is pursued from a sociotechnical perspective. It traces how the exchanges on the page are simultaneously shaped by the admins’ marketing strategies and the technological architecture of the Facebook page. On the basis of this exploration, we argue that the page administrators should be understood as ‘connective leaders’. Rather than directing protest activity through formal organizations and collective identity frames, as social movement leaders have traditionally done, connective leaders invite and steer user participation by employing sophisticated marketing strategies to connect users in online communication streams and networks.
Looking in detail at the technical characteristics, conventions, and peculiarities of Facebook’s architecture and data
interface, we argue that such technical fieldwork is essential to data-driven research, both as a crucial form of data
critique and as a way to identify analytical opportunities. Using the ‘‘We are all Khaled Said’’ Facebook Page, which
hosted the activities of nearly 1.9 million users during the Egyptian Revolution and beyond, as empirical example, we
show how Facebook’s API raises important questions about data detail, completeness, consistency over time, and
architectural complexity. We then outline an exploratory approach and a number of analytical techniques that take
the API and its idiosyncrasies as a starting point for the concrete investigation of a large dataset. Our goal is to close the
gap between Big Data research and research about Big Data by showing that the critical investigation of technicity is
essential for empirical research and that attention to the particularities of empirical work can provide a deeper understanding of the various issues Big Data research is entangled with.
mobilization and communication are primarily propelled by the
self-motivated sharing of ideas, plans, images, and resources. It
shows that leadership plays a vital role in steering popular
contention on key social platforms. This argument is developed
through a detailed case study on the interaction between the
administrators and users of the Kullena Khaled Said Facebook
page, the most popular online platform during the Egyptian
revolution of early 2011. The analysis specifically focuses on the
period from 1 January until 15 February 2011. It draws from 1629 admin posts and 1,465,696 user comments, extracted via a customized version of Netvizz. For each day during this period, the three most engaged with posts, as well as the 10 most engaged with comments, have been translated and coded, making it possible to systematically examine how the
administrators tried to shape the communication on the page,
and how users responded to these efforts. This analysis is pursued from a sociotechnical perspective. It traces how the exchanges on the page are simultaneously shaped by the admins’ marketing strategies and the technological architecture of the Facebook page. On the basis of this exploration, we argue that the page administrators should be understood as ‘connective leaders’. Rather than directing protest activity through formal organizations and collective identity frames, as social movement leaders have traditionally done, connective leaders invite and steer user participation by employing sophisticated marketing strategies to connect users in online communication streams and networks.
Looking in detail at the technical characteristics, conventions, and peculiarities of Facebook’s architecture and data
interface, we argue that such technical fieldwork is essential to data-driven research, both as a crucial form of data
critique and as a way to identify analytical opportunities. Using the ‘‘We are all Khaled Said’’ Facebook Page, which
hosted the activities of nearly 1.9 million users during the Egyptian Revolution and beyond, as empirical example, we
show how Facebook’s API raises important questions about data detail, completeness, consistency over time, and
architectural complexity. We then outline an exploratory approach and a number of analytical techniques that take
the API and its idiosyncrasies as a starting point for the concrete investigation of a large dataset. Our goal is to close the
gap between Big Data research and research about Big Data by showing that the critical investigation of technicity is
essential for empirical research and that attention to the particularities of empirical work can provide a deeper understanding of the various issues Big Data research is entangled with.
reconfiguring the production, distribution, and monetization of cultural content in staggering and complex ways. Given the
nature and extent of these transformations, how can we systematically examine the platformization of cultural production?
In this introduction, we propose that a comprehensive understanding of this process is as much institutional (markets,
governance, and infrastructures), as it is rooted in everyday cultural practices. It is in this vein that we present fourteen
original articles that reveal how platformization involves key shifts in practices of labor, creativity, and citizenship. Diverse in
their methodological approaches and topical foci, these contributions allow us to see how platformization is unfolding across
cultural, geographic, and sectoral-industrial contexts. Despite their breadth and scope, these articles can be mapped along
four thematic clusters: continuity and change; diversity and creativity; labor in an age of algorithmic systems; and power,
autonomy, and citizenship.