Pub Date : 2025-05-31DOI: 10.1177/20563051251341792
Niels G. Mede, Lara Kobilke, Nayla Fawzi, Thomas Zerback
Research suggests that social media can cause users, especially young adults, to overestimate their knowledge about climate change. Knowledge overestimation may then lead users to communicate more frequently about climate change with others. We test these hypotheses with a four-wave panel survey of respondents aged 18–29 years. We find that social media exposure is positively associated with respondents’ tendencies to overestimate their knowledge about climate change, but we do not find causal effects. Overestimation is also related to perceived information overload, subjective digital literacy, and trust in social media comments. While overestimation did not cause higher outspokenness about climate change, it increased respondents’ efforts to persuade others and engage with politicians. These results have implications for science communication and education.
{"title":"The Climate Change Generation: Vocal but Overconfident? How Young Adults Who Overestimate Their Climate Knowledge Use Social Media and Engage With Others","authors":"Niels G. Mede, Lara Kobilke, Nayla Fawzi, Thomas Zerback","doi":"10.1177/20563051251341792","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/20563051251341792","url":null,"abstract":"Research suggests that social media can cause users, especially young adults, to overestimate their knowledge about climate change. Knowledge overestimation may then lead users to communicate more frequently about climate change with others. We test these hypotheses with a four-wave panel survey of respondents aged 18–29 years. We find that social media exposure is positively associated with respondents’ tendencies to overestimate their knowledge about climate change, but we do not find causal effects. Overestimation is also related to perceived information overload, subjective digital literacy, and trust in social media comments. While overestimation did not cause higher outspokenness about climate change, it increased respondents’ efforts to persuade others and engage with politicians. These results have implications for science communication and education.","PeriodicalId":47920,"journal":{"name":"Social Media + Society","volume":"8 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":5.2,"publicationDate":"2025-05-31","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144193017","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2025-05-29DOI: 10.1177/20563051251342223
Karolína Bieliková, Alena Pospíšil Macková, Martina Novotná
Resilience to disinformation on social media relies on the user’s ability to critically assess disinformation and even counter it. Active users, who, with their actions, can curate the information environment of others, can play a crucial role in stopping the dissemination of disinformation. Their activities, such as correcting or reporting, in the decentralized social media environment may prove more effective than institutional responses. Considering this, the study looks specifically at how active users engage with disinformation. Through 60 semi-structured interviews over 3 years, we explore how crises like COVID-19 and the Russia–Ukraine war impact Czech users’ motivations and strategies. Findings indicate that users are driven by a moral obligation to provide accurate information. Both people sharing and correcting disinformation believe in their critical skills, with their desire to help amplified by crises. However, the ones correcting often face frustration and demotivation due to hostile interactions and a lack of visible impact, while the ones sharing remain persistent. Strategies are influenced by the perceptions of the individuals and the type of disinformation. Completely false information is often ignored as not worth debunking, whereas partially false information prompts active correction due to the perceived ease of rebuttal. The study highlights the need for social media platforms to support users in corrective actions and address algorithmic issues that may impede these efforts.
{"title":"Doing What Is Right: Role of Social Media Users in Resilience to Disinformation","authors":"Karolína Bieliková, Alena Pospíšil Macková, Martina Novotná","doi":"10.1177/20563051251342223","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/20563051251342223","url":null,"abstract":"Resilience to disinformation on social media relies on the user’s ability to critically assess disinformation and even counter it. Active users, who, with their actions, can curate the information environment of others, can play a crucial role in stopping the dissemination of disinformation. Their activities, such as correcting or reporting, in the decentralized social media environment may prove more effective than institutional responses. Considering this, the study looks specifically at how active users engage with disinformation. Through 60 semi-structured interviews over 3 years, we explore how crises like COVID-19 and the Russia–Ukraine war impact Czech users’ motivations and strategies. Findings indicate that users are driven by a moral obligation to provide accurate information. Both people sharing and correcting disinformation believe in their critical skills, with their desire to help amplified by crises. However, the ones correcting often face frustration and demotivation due to hostile interactions and a lack of visible impact, while the ones sharing remain persistent. Strategies are influenced by the perceptions of the individuals and the type of disinformation. Completely false information is often ignored as not worth debunking, whereas partially false information prompts active correction due to the perceived ease of rebuttal. The study highlights the need for social media platforms to support users in corrective actions and address algorithmic issues that may impede these efforts.","PeriodicalId":47920,"journal":{"name":"Social Media + Society","volume":"29 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":5.2,"publicationDate":"2025-05-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144193205","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2025-05-29DOI: 10.1177/20563051251340146
Cecilia Gullberg, Nils Gustafsson
This article investigates how social media can enable and constrain civil society organizations’ (CSOs) discharge of accountability. Based on a comparative analysis of the Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter (X) posts of the Swedish Red Cross during 1 year ( N = 1014), we propose a framework of affordances that illustrate how platform features, practices, norms, and perceptions about audiences jointly shape the accountability potential of a platform. Accountability is overall more content- than process-oriented, emphasizing visibility of action rather than far-reaching social interactivity. Our study, however, reveals important differences between Instagram and Facebook, on the one hand, and Twitter, on the other. Whereas accountability is more short-term, scripted, and donor-oriented in the former, it is more abstract and ad hoc, with mainly indirect efforts at interactivity, in the latter. Our framework of affordances sheds light on the hitherto under-researched intersection between the literature on CSO accountability and the literature on CSO use of social media.
{"title":"Accountability through (Inter)Action? A Framework of Affordances for Understanding Civil Society Accountability on Social Media Platforms","authors":"Cecilia Gullberg, Nils Gustafsson","doi":"10.1177/20563051251340146","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/20563051251340146","url":null,"abstract":"This article investigates how social media can enable and constrain civil society organizations’ (CSOs) discharge of accountability. Based on a comparative analysis of the Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter (X) posts of the Swedish Red Cross during 1 year ( <jats:italic>N</jats:italic> = 1014), we propose a framework of affordances that illustrate how platform features, practices, norms, and perceptions about audiences jointly shape the accountability potential of a platform. Accountability is overall more content- than process-oriented, emphasizing visibility of action rather than far-reaching social interactivity. Our study, however, reveals important differences between Instagram and Facebook, on the one hand, and Twitter, on the other. Whereas accountability is more short-term, scripted, and donor-oriented in the former, it is more abstract and ad hoc, with mainly indirect efforts at interactivity, in the latter. Our framework of affordances sheds light on the hitherto under-researched intersection between the literature on CSO accountability and the literature on CSO use of social media.","PeriodicalId":47920,"journal":{"name":"Social Media + Society","volume":"135 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":5.2,"publicationDate":"2025-05-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144193319","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2025-05-29DOI: 10.1177/20563051251345363
Veronica Ouya, Hawa Conteh, Njeri Kagotho
In developing and least developed economies, traditional and spatially bound communities play a critical role in bridging the gap when formal social welfare systems fall short in meeting essential needs. While the role of traditional communities in addressing societal issues is well recognized, research on imagined communities as agents of social welfare is a new and rapidly developing area of study. This study uses the foundational tenets of Ubuntu to examine the ways in which imagined communities—influenced by social media—use their collective agency to address gaps in Kenya’s formal social welfare system. Drawing data from three storytellers’ YouTube channels, we conducted a thematic analysis of 15 personal accounts to determine how storytellers leverage their social media presence, institutional knowledge, and community trust to address gaps in an under-resourced social welfare system. Findings indicate that personal stories shared and amplified through these digital platforms resonate with the imagined community, forming emotional connections that transcend geographic and socioeconomic boundaries. We identify key actors—storytellers, beneficiaries, public institutions, and the globally dispersed imagined community—and explore how their interactions enhance community well-being. This exploration highlights the crucial role that storytelling through social media plays in mobilizing support and fostering social connections.
{"title":"Examining the Role of Social Media and Imagined Communities in Addressing Social Welfare Gaps in Kenya","authors":"Veronica Ouya, Hawa Conteh, Njeri Kagotho","doi":"10.1177/20563051251345363","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/20563051251345363","url":null,"abstract":"In developing and least developed economies, traditional and spatially bound communities play a critical role in bridging the gap when formal social welfare systems fall short in meeting essential needs. While the role of traditional communities in addressing societal issues is well recognized, research on imagined communities as agents of social welfare is a new and rapidly developing area of study. This study uses the foundational tenets of Ubuntu to examine the ways in which imagined communities—influenced by social media—use their collective agency to address gaps in Kenya’s formal social welfare system. Drawing data from three storytellers’ YouTube channels, we conducted a thematic analysis of 15 personal accounts to determine how storytellers leverage their social media presence, institutional knowledge, and community trust to address gaps in an under-resourced social welfare system. Findings indicate that personal stories shared and amplified through these digital platforms resonate with the imagined community, forming emotional connections that transcend geographic and socioeconomic boundaries. We identify key actors—storytellers, beneficiaries, public institutions, and the globally dispersed imagined community—and explore how their interactions enhance community well-being. This exploration highlights the crucial role that storytelling through social media plays in mobilizing support and fostering social connections.","PeriodicalId":47920,"journal":{"name":"Social Media + Society","volume":"28 2 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":5.2,"publicationDate":"2025-05-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144193344","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2025-05-29DOI: 10.1177/20563051251344455
Vsevolod Bederson, Liubov Chernysheva, Andrei Semenov
Grassroots activism constitutes the backbone of civil society across political regimes. While many studies explored the role of social media and digital platforms in social movements, we focus on the ways local activists use these social media platforms to organize collectively against unwanted urban development. Localized (place-based) contention differs from large-scale social movements: it is less endowed with resources and it is directly related to physical space. We analyze 26 urban conflicts in six Russian cities based on 185 interviews with activists and experts to show how the residents leverage digital platforms’ affordances and argue that the former extensively rely on the latter for coordination, communication, and recruitment purposes. Yet, the nature of place-based conflicts makes blending online and offline organizational activities inevitable. We also demonstrate that despite their benefits, digital platforms also bring organizational challenges. The authoritarian state imposes further constraints, requiring activists to take into account state surveillance and repression in their engagement with social media. Our study contributes to the scholarship on digitally mediated actions, urging a reevaluation of social media’s role in local collective actions.
{"title":"Local Activism Goes Digital in Authoritarian Setting: The Use of Digital Platforms in Place-Based Conflicts in Russia","authors":"Vsevolod Bederson, Liubov Chernysheva, Andrei Semenov","doi":"10.1177/20563051251344455","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/20563051251344455","url":null,"abstract":"Grassroots activism constitutes the backbone of civil society across political regimes. While many studies explored the role of social media and digital platforms in social movements, we focus on the ways local activists use these social media platforms to organize collectively against unwanted urban development. Localized (place-based) contention differs from large-scale social movements: it is less endowed with resources and it is directly related to physical space. We analyze 26 urban conflicts in six Russian cities based on 185 interviews with activists and experts to show how the residents leverage digital platforms’ affordances and argue that the former extensively rely on the latter for coordination, communication, and recruitment purposes. Yet, the nature of place-based conflicts makes blending online and offline organizational activities inevitable. We also demonstrate that despite their benefits, digital platforms also bring organizational challenges. The authoritarian state imposes further constraints, requiring activists to take into account state surveillance and repression in their engagement with social media. Our study contributes to the scholarship on digitally mediated actions, urging a reevaluation of social media’s role in local collective actions.","PeriodicalId":47920,"journal":{"name":"Social Media + Society","volume":"7 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":5.2,"publicationDate":"2025-05-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144193223","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2025-05-26DOI: 10.1177/20563051251342453
Cindy Tekobbe
The author of this article contends that current digital research methodologies tend to extract and commodify knowledge in ways that can replicate social, cultural, racial, economic, and global inequities. This article presents an Indigenous approach to digital methodology, including examples of posts to Facebook, Instagram, and Bluesky, as well as algorithmic search results. Finally, the author discusses new opportunities within Indigenous methodologies as approaches for performing more inclusive digital research beyond settler colonial research paradigms.
{"title":"Turtle, Water, and Silicon: Storyworking Indigenous Digital Methodologies","authors":"Cindy Tekobbe","doi":"10.1177/20563051251342453","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/20563051251342453","url":null,"abstract":"The author of this article contends that current digital research methodologies tend to extract and commodify knowledge in ways that can replicate social, cultural, racial, economic, and global inequities. This article presents an Indigenous approach to digital methodology, including examples of posts to Facebook, Instagram, and Bluesky, as well as algorithmic search results. Finally, the author discusses new opportunities within Indigenous methodologies as approaches for performing more inclusive digital research beyond settler colonial research paradigms.","PeriodicalId":47920,"journal":{"name":"Social Media + Society","volume":"26 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":5.2,"publicationDate":"2025-05-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144145574","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2025-05-26DOI: 10.1177/20563051251344460
Christoph Lutz, Lemi Baruh, Kelly Quinn, Dmitry Epstein, Philipp K. Masur, Carsten Wilhelm
This editorial introduces the Social Media + Society special issue “Comparative Approaches To Studying Privacy.” Recognizing the importance of privacy in today’s digital societies and volatile political and regulatory environments, the editorial highlights the pressing need for comparative research on the topic and describes the articles in this special issue. The special issue addresses the theoretical, methodological, and practical challenges and opportunities of researching privacy across cultural, social, political, economic, and technological units of comparison. The articles in the special issue explore diverse privacy understandings, attitudes, and practices across contexts, challenging decontextualized and mono-cultural understandings in relation to social media and adjacent technologies. The special issue articles also illustrate fruitful ways privacy can be studied across different units of comparison with qualitative, quantitative, and mixed methods. Several contributions in the special issue, including this editorial, not only broaden the scope of privacy research but also encourage engagement with multi-stakeholder perspectives in the context of social media, considering the role of policy, industry, and civil society. In the editorial, we briefly relate the special issue and its contributions to the comparative privacy research framework (CPRF), which serves as a useful starting point and a solid conceptual foundation for comparative privacy research. Finally, we develop a research agenda for future comparative privacy research, which critically examines position of power and epistemological biases, evaluates the comparability of the subject of study, determining and justifying relevant units of comparison, and helps to analyze how these units interact in shaping the concept of privacy.
{"title":"Comparative Approaches to Studying Privacy: Introduction to the Special Issue","authors":"Christoph Lutz, Lemi Baruh, Kelly Quinn, Dmitry Epstein, Philipp K. Masur, Carsten Wilhelm","doi":"10.1177/20563051251344460","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/20563051251344460","url":null,"abstract":"This editorial introduces the <jats:italic>Social Media + Society</jats:italic> special issue “Comparative Approaches To Studying Privacy.” Recognizing the importance of privacy in today’s digital societies and volatile political and regulatory environments, the editorial highlights the pressing need for comparative research on the topic and describes the articles in this special issue. The special issue addresses the theoretical, methodological, and practical challenges and opportunities of researching privacy across cultural, social, political, economic, and technological units of comparison. The articles in the special issue explore diverse privacy understandings, attitudes, and practices across contexts, challenging decontextualized and mono-cultural understandings in relation to social media and adjacent technologies. The special issue articles also illustrate fruitful ways privacy can be studied across different units of comparison with qualitative, quantitative, and mixed methods. Several contributions in the special issue, including this editorial, not only broaden the scope of privacy research but also encourage engagement with multi-stakeholder perspectives in the context of social media, considering the role of policy, industry, and civil society. In the editorial, we briefly relate the special issue and its contributions to the comparative privacy research framework (CPRF), which serves as a useful starting point and a solid conceptual foundation for comparative privacy research. Finally, we develop a research agenda for future comparative privacy research, which critically examines position of power and epistemological biases, evaluates the comparability of the subject of study, determining and justifying relevant units of comparison, and helps to analyze how these units interact in shaping the concept of privacy.","PeriodicalId":47920,"journal":{"name":"Social Media + Society","volume":"35 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":5.2,"publicationDate":"2025-05-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144145567","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2025-05-26DOI: 10.1177/20563051251343865
Alice Mattoni, Julie Uldam, Noomi Weinryb
A few social media platforms have come to play a central role in civil society organizing, often functioning as organizing partners. But on whose terms? As organizing partners, commercial social media platforms shape the conditions under which civil society actors organize, also shaping organizational dynamics, visibility, and collective action. Far from being neutral partners, these platforms become battlegrounds where civil society actors and platform owners negotiate power, visibility, and control—differently affecting various forms of civil society actors and organizing. Therefore, we need to move beyond the notion of platforms as mere organizing agents to critically examine the opportunities and constraints they create for different civil society actors, as well as how different civil society actors navigate these. This requires considering both exogenous, contextual elements, and endogenous, actor-centered elements of civil society organizing. Doing so allows us to examine how organizing efforts emerge not simply on social media platforms but with them, requiring constant negotiation with platform logics. The collection of articles in this special issue shows how social media platforms enable civil society organizing, but also how platform-driven asymmetries emerge and play out differently according to the different features that characterize the civil society organizations at stake.
{"title":"Platforms as Partners? Dissecting the Interplay Between Civil Society Organizing and Social Media Platforms","authors":"Alice Mattoni, Julie Uldam, Noomi Weinryb","doi":"10.1177/20563051251343865","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/20563051251343865","url":null,"abstract":"A few social media platforms have come to play a central role in civil society organizing, often functioning as organizing partners. But on whose terms? As organizing partners, commercial social media platforms shape the conditions under which civil society actors organize, also shaping organizational dynamics, visibility, and collective action. Far from being neutral partners, these platforms become battlegrounds where civil society actors and platform owners negotiate power, visibility, and control—differently affecting various forms of civil society actors and organizing. Therefore, we need to move beyond the notion of platforms as mere organizing agents to critically examine the opportunities and constraints they create for different civil society actors, as well as how different civil society actors navigate these. This requires considering both exogenous, contextual elements, and endogenous, actor-centered elements of civil society organizing. Doing so allows us to examine how organizing efforts emerge not simply <jats:italic>on</jats:italic> social media platforms but <jats:italic>with</jats:italic> them, requiring constant negotiation with platform logics. The collection of articles in this special issue shows how social media platforms enable civil society organizing, but also how platform-driven asymmetries emerge and play out differently according to the different features that characterize the civil society organizations at stake.","PeriodicalId":47920,"journal":{"name":"Social Media + Society","volume":"26 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":5.2,"publicationDate":"2025-05-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144145995","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2025-05-24DOI: 10.1177/20563051251340514
Joanna Large, Natasha Mulvihill
Situated within the theoretical work of Giddens and others on the role of expertise in contemporary society, this article evaluates the Instagram accounts of six dating-themed influencers. We seek to understand the role and strategies of these “new experts” in presenting, evaluating, and responding to contemporary heterosexual dating harms. Our analysis is informed by the existing literature on digital feminism, gendered abuse, and conceptions of harm, but also recognizes how social media marketing strategies shapes the expertise provided. We conclude that while the emerging expert discourses around online dating seek ostensibly to advocate for women, they are contradictory, likely to contribute to social anxiety, and could risk diluting and individualizing the material reality of abuse.
{"title":"The New Experts of Online Dating: Feminism, Advice, and Harm on Instagram","authors":"Joanna Large, Natasha Mulvihill","doi":"10.1177/20563051251340514","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/20563051251340514","url":null,"abstract":"Situated within the theoretical work of Giddens and others on the role of <jats:italic>expertise</jats:italic> in contemporary society, this article evaluates the Instagram accounts of six dating-themed influencers. We seek to understand the role and strategies of these “new experts” in presenting, evaluating, and responding to contemporary heterosexual dating harms. Our analysis is informed by the existing literature on digital feminism, gendered abuse, and conceptions of harm, but also recognizes how social media marketing strategies shapes the expertise provided. We conclude that while the emerging expert discourses around online dating seek ostensibly to advocate for women, they are contradictory, likely to contribute to social anxiety, and could risk diluting and individualizing the material reality of abuse.","PeriodicalId":47920,"journal":{"name":"Social Media + Society","volume":"458 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":5.2,"publicationDate":"2025-05-24","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144133701","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2025-05-20DOI: 10.1177/20563051251337220
Nils Gustafsson, Nils Holmberg, Noomi Weinryb, Anders Olof Larsson
Emotional communication, especially through social media platforms, has become a contemporary populist threat. While this phenomenon has been studied in for example news media and social movements, we know less about its influence on civil society organizations, despite their pluralism being a centerpiece in a vibrant democracy. More specifically, we do not know if social media make civil society organizations more isomorphic and thus decreasing the diversity of their emotional communication over time. This question is relevant given the broad range of organizational fields that civil society engages in, as well as the documented push toward especially extreme positivity on social media platforms. Given this background, the article explores the use of positive and negative sentiment, as well as of sentiment intensity, over time in the social media communication of different organizational fields of civil society. We employ sentiment analysis to analyze approximately 100,000 organizational posts on Facebook from 125 Swedish nonprofit organizations during 2015–2020. We find that the pluralism of civil society organizations across different fields, as regards emotional communication, is retained over time, thus not threatening the pluralism of civil society in this way. In addition, emotional communication, and especially positivity, increases over time in all fields in absolute terms. However, considering post length, the relative amount of emotional communication exhibits less of an increase. Rather, across all fields there is an unexpected isomorphism relating to posts becoming longer, while enticing less user engagement. This development, rather than the lack of pluralism, raises democratic concerns.
{"title":"In the Mood for Likes: A Longitudinal Study of Civil Society Organizations’ Emotional Communication on Social Media","authors":"Nils Gustafsson, Nils Holmberg, Noomi Weinryb, Anders Olof Larsson","doi":"10.1177/20563051251337220","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/20563051251337220","url":null,"abstract":"Emotional communication, especially through social media platforms, has become a contemporary populist threat. While this phenomenon has been studied in for example news media and social movements, we know less about its influence on civil society organizations, despite their pluralism being a centerpiece in a vibrant democracy. More specifically, we do not know if social media make civil society organizations more isomorphic and thus decreasing the diversity of their emotional communication over time. This question is relevant given the broad range of organizational fields that civil society engages in, as well as the documented push toward especially extreme positivity on social media platforms. Given this background, the article explores the use of positive and negative sentiment, as well as of sentiment intensity, over time in the social media communication of different organizational fields of civil society. We employ sentiment analysis to analyze approximately 100,000 organizational posts on Facebook from 125 Swedish nonprofit organizations during 2015–2020. We find that the pluralism of civil society organizations across different fields, as regards emotional communication, is retained over time, thus not threatening the pluralism of civil society in this way. In addition, emotional communication, and especially positivity, increases over time in all fields in absolute terms. However, considering post length, the relative amount of emotional communication exhibits less of an increase. Rather, across all fields there is an unexpected isomorphism relating to posts becoming longer, while enticing less user engagement. This development, rather than the lack of pluralism, raises democratic concerns.","PeriodicalId":47920,"journal":{"name":"Social Media + Society","volume":"44 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":5.2,"publicationDate":"2025-05-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144104535","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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