Pub Date : 2025-11-10DOI: 10.1177/20563051251392753
Lin Zhang, Jingyan Elaine Yuan
This introduction repositions “platform” and “Asia” as unstable, contested imaginaries rather than fixed objects of analysis. Bringing platform studies into dialogue with Asian studies, we argue for a double move of deconstruction and reconstruction: interrogating how platforms are historically framed through metaphors, archives, and business genealogies, and how “Asia” has been imagined through colonial, Cold War, and postcolonial projects. Using Asia as method, we show how regional trajectories of platformization—superapps and platform business groups, infrastructuralization, and the absorption of informal economies—both provincialize Euro-American frameworks and generate new concepts. At a conjuncture marked by an uneven transition beyond neoliberalism, platforms in Asia formalize informality, extend state infrastructures, and mediate global capital, producing hybrid labor regimes and renewed state–platform entanglements while intensifying inequalities. We organize the special issue around four productive tensions: (1) technological/media affordances vs. cultural specificities; (2) methodological localism vs. theory-building; (3) state power vs. transnationalism; and (4) inter-Asia references vs. power inequalities. Across these frictions, contributors trace alternative genealogies (e.g., from Japanese convenience stores to K-pop fandom platforms), analyze platformized labor and entrepreneurial subjectivities, and rethink governance through fragmented, conjunctural state formations. We contend that metaphors are useful to think with—yet the dominance of “platform” as a corporate framing also calls for critical pivots to alternative figures that open different political and analytic possibilities. Viewed from Asia, platform capitalism appears as a dynamic, contested world-making process that renders visible the uneven, emergent shapes of post-neoliberal futures.
{"title":"Platformize Asia—Reimagining Asia in Platform Capitalism","authors":"Lin Zhang, Jingyan Elaine Yuan","doi":"10.1177/20563051251392753","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/20563051251392753","url":null,"abstract":"This introduction repositions “platform” and “Asia” as unstable, contested imaginaries rather than fixed objects of analysis. Bringing platform studies into dialogue with Asian studies, we argue for a double move of deconstruction and reconstruction: interrogating how platforms are historically framed through metaphors, archives, and business genealogies, and how “Asia” has been imagined through colonial, Cold War, and postcolonial projects. Using Asia as method, we show how regional trajectories of platformization—superapps and platform business groups, infrastructuralization, and the absorption of informal economies—both provincialize Euro-American frameworks and generate new concepts. At a conjuncture marked by an uneven transition beyond neoliberalism, platforms in Asia formalize informality, extend state infrastructures, and mediate global capital, producing hybrid labor regimes and renewed state–platform entanglements while intensifying inequalities. We organize the special issue around four productive tensions: (1) technological/media affordances vs. cultural specificities; (2) methodological localism vs. theory-building; (3) state power vs. transnationalism; and (4) inter-Asia references vs. power inequalities. Across these frictions, contributors trace alternative genealogies (e.g., from Japanese convenience stores to K-pop fandom platforms), analyze platformized labor and entrepreneurial subjectivities, and rethink governance through fragmented, conjunctural state formations. We contend that metaphors are useful to think with—yet the dominance of “platform” as a corporate framing also calls for critical pivots to alternative figures that open different political and analytic possibilities. Viewed from Asia, platform capitalism appears as a dynamic, contested world-making process that renders visible the uneven, emergent shapes of post-neoliberal futures.","PeriodicalId":47920,"journal":{"name":"Social Media + Society","volume":"103 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":5.2,"publicationDate":"2025-11-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145478387","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 : 2025-11-06DOI: 10.1177/20563051251388000
Alexandria Arrieta
As the lifespan of virality on TikTok has become increasingly short and operates at a smaller scale, music creators are grappling with what it means to be successful in this later stage of the platform. For this study, I conducted 27 semi-structured interviews with music artists and creators about how short-form video platforms like TikTok have affected the way they work and create music. Many participants believe that while the creation of viral content based on memes and covers of popular songs affords constant visibility, it does not result in the monetary or career milestones that they desire, so they need to use different approaches. In this article, I characterize this new period of online musical labor as a period defined by “platform negotiation,” in which creators evaluate platform demands and work to approach their content creation in ways that prioritize their personal and professional goals. This includes strategic decision-making to negotiate their presence—which can include their identity, brand, image, etc.—across platforms over time. As they engage in relational labor to support continued work, music creators cannot simply rely on the tenets of optimization to be successful. Rather, many are pivoting to utilizing content creation in ways that aim to prioritize fandom and career sustainability. This article examines the ways in which music creators grapple with the challenges of short-form video and how musical labor is changing online.
{"title":"The Limits of Virality: Music Creators and Platform Negotiation in the Era of Short-Form Video","authors":"Alexandria Arrieta","doi":"10.1177/20563051251388000","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/20563051251388000","url":null,"abstract":"As the lifespan of virality on TikTok has become increasingly short and operates at a smaller scale, music creators are grappling with what it means to be successful in this later stage of the platform. For this study, I conducted 27 semi-structured interviews with music artists and creators about how short-form video platforms like TikTok have affected the way they work and create music. Many participants believe that while the creation of viral content based on memes and covers of popular songs affords constant visibility, it does not result in the monetary or career milestones that they desire, so they need to use different approaches. In this article, I characterize this new period of online musical labor as a period defined by “platform negotiation,” in which creators evaluate platform demands and work to approach their content creation in ways that prioritize their personal and professional goals. This includes strategic decision-making to negotiate their presence—which can include their identity, brand, image, etc.—across platforms over time. As they engage in relational labor to support continued work, music creators cannot simply rely on the tenets of optimization to be successful. Rather, many are pivoting to utilizing content creation in ways that aim to prioritize fandom and career sustainability. This article examines the ways in which music creators grapple with the challenges of short-form video and how musical labor is changing online.","PeriodicalId":47920,"journal":{"name":"Social Media + Society","volume":"1 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":5.2,"publicationDate":"2025-11-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145447121","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 : 2025-10-29DOI: 10.1177/20563051251382445
Candice L. Edrington, Tara M. Mortensen, Odera Ezenna
The purpose of this study was to analyze Instagram photos posted by Black men with the #IAmABlackMan challenge as part of the ongoing Black Lives Matter movement to (a) understand the overall sentiments surrounding the hashtag challenge, (b) assess the nature of cultural projection as visually communicated through Instagram, and (c) examine how others interpret the cultural projection of these Black men through the images. This study uses a mixed-methods approach comprised of a social media insights sentiment analysis, qualitative and quantitative semiotic visual analyses, a qualitative and quantitative survey, and thematic analysis to analyze the images, comments, and perceptions of posts using the #IAmaBlackMan hashtag on Instagram.
{"title":"Projecting Culture Through Hashtag Activism: The #IAmABlackMan Challenge on Instagram","authors":"Candice L. Edrington, Tara M. Mortensen, Odera Ezenna","doi":"10.1177/20563051251382445","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/20563051251382445","url":null,"abstract":"The purpose of this study was to analyze Instagram photos posted by Black men with the #IAmABlackMan challenge as part of the ongoing Black Lives Matter movement to (a) understand the overall sentiments surrounding the hashtag challenge, (b) assess the nature of cultural projection as visually communicated through Instagram, and (c) examine how others interpret the cultural projection of these Black men through the images. This study uses a mixed-methods approach comprised of a social media insights sentiment analysis, qualitative and quantitative semiotic visual analyses, a qualitative and quantitative survey, and thematic analysis to analyze the images, comments, and perceptions of posts using the #IAmaBlackMan hashtag on Instagram.","PeriodicalId":47920,"journal":{"name":"Social Media + Society","volume":"59 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":5.2,"publicationDate":"2025-10-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145397412","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 : 2025-10-28DOI: 10.1177/20563051251385441
Jennifer Ihm, Eun-mee Kim
What news spreads on social media equally depends on what news users do and do not share. However, prior research has predominantly focused on successful news sharing , overlooking the equally consequential behavior of deliberate news withholding. This study addresses that gap by proposing a self-presentation model of deliberate news withholding on social media, integrating three dominant approaches previously used to examine successful news sharing: (1) the informational approach focusing on the virality of news content, (2) the structural approach emphasizing social media network characteristics, and (3) the relational approach centered on users’ self-presentation and management of relationships with their audience. Specifically, this study combines two types of data: (1) survey data from 408 users and (2) a text analysis of news content they withheld in their three most active chatrooms. We examine how users selectively withhold news with varying levels of emotionality, argumentativeness, and hard or soft news value, depending on the characteristics of their audience networks – particularly network size and tie strength – and in relation to three self-presentational goals: self-construction, privacy protection, and audience-pleasing. Findings show that users strategically withhold varied types of news content across different user-audience networks to meet distinct self-presentational goals, thereby managing audience expectations and curating their online image. By shifting attention from news sharing to news withholding, this study offers a more complete account of how everyday users shape news flows and social discourse on social media.
{"title":"Why Do News Sharers Choose Not to Share News? A Self-Presentation Model of Deliberate News Withholding on Social Media","authors":"Jennifer Ihm, Eun-mee Kim","doi":"10.1177/20563051251385441","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/20563051251385441","url":null,"abstract":"What news spreads on social media equally depends on what news users <jats:italic toggle=\"yes\">do</jats:italic> and <jats:italic toggle=\"yes\">do not</jats:italic> share. However, prior research has predominantly focused on <jats:italic toggle=\"yes\">successful news sharing</jats:italic> , overlooking the equally consequential behavior of deliberate news withholding. This study addresses that gap by proposing a <jats:italic toggle=\"yes\">self-presentation model of deliberate news withholding</jats:italic> on social media, integrating three dominant approaches previously used to examine successful news sharing: (1) the informational approach focusing on the virality of news content, (2) the structural approach emphasizing social media network characteristics, and (3) the relational approach centered on users’ self-presentation and management of relationships with their audience. Specifically, this study combines two types of data: (1) survey data from 408 users and (2) a text analysis of news content they withheld in their three most active chatrooms. We examine how users selectively withhold news with varying levels of emotionality, argumentativeness, and hard or soft news value, depending on the characteristics of their audience networks – particularly network size and tie strength – and in relation to three self-presentational goals: self-construction, privacy protection, and audience-pleasing. Findings show that users strategically withhold varied types of news content across different user-audience networks to meet distinct self-presentational goals, thereby managing audience expectations and curating their online image. By shifting attention from news sharing to news withholding, this study offers a more complete account of how everyday users shape news flows and social discourse on social media.","PeriodicalId":47920,"journal":{"name":"Social Media + Society","volume":"8 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":5.2,"publicationDate":"2025-10-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145397420","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 : 2025-10-27DOI: 10.1177/20563051251383635
Zachary P. Rosen, Joseph B. Walther
Online hate messaging targeting Muslims and Jews increased dramatically following Hamas’s attack on Israelis on 7 October 2023 and Israel’s military response in Gaza. This study examined anti-Jewish and anti-Muslim hate posts on X.com and the verbal replies, Likes, and reposts they acquired over the following month. It tests a theory explaining the propagation of hate messages in social media based on the social approval posters garner from other users. The analysis involved replies to 6388 anti-Muslim or anti-Jewish hate posts in terms of their semantic convergence or divergence with the content of original posts. No differences between patterns of anti-Jewish and anti-Muslim discourse arose. Convergent replies to one’s hate posts led individuals to post more hatefully in their next post, and more quickly. Likes also accelerated hate posting, while reposts decelerated them. Divergent replies led to less hateful and slower subsequent hate postings. Conclusions address implications for the social approval theory of online hate, and the relative influence of verbal replies due to their costliness.
{"title":"Social Processes in the Intensification of Online Hate: The Effects of Verbal Replies to Anti-Muslim and Anti-Jewish Posts Following 7 October 2023","authors":"Zachary P. Rosen, Joseph B. Walther","doi":"10.1177/20563051251383635","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/20563051251383635","url":null,"abstract":"Online hate messaging targeting Muslims and Jews increased dramatically following Hamas’s attack on Israelis on 7 October 2023 and Israel’s military response in Gaza. This study examined anti-Jewish and anti-Muslim hate posts on X.com and the verbal replies, Likes, and reposts they acquired over the following month. It tests a theory explaining the propagation of hate messages in social media based on the social approval posters garner from other users. The analysis involved replies to 6388 anti-Muslim or anti-Jewish hate posts in terms of their semantic convergence or divergence with the content of original posts. No differences between patterns of anti-Jewish and anti-Muslim discourse arose. Convergent replies to one’s hate posts led individuals to post more hatefully in their next post, and more quickly. Likes also accelerated hate posting, while reposts decelerated them. Divergent replies led to less hateful and slower subsequent hate postings. Conclusions address implications for the social approval theory of online hate, and the relative influence of verbal replies due to their costliness.","PeriodicalId":47920,"journal":{"name":"Social Media + Society","volume":"120 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":5.2,"publicationDate":"2025-10-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145397422","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 : 2025-10-25DOI: 10.1177/20563051251382470
Christy Khoury, Jeff Hemsley
This study explores the role of TikTok as a platform-based crisis information source, focusing on how users engaged in collective sensemaking during the 2020 Port of Beirut explosion. Using a mixed-methods approach, the research analyzes multimodal content, including video, comments, hashtags, and transcripts, to understand how users’ holistic information experience influenced sensemaking around the crisis event. Drawing on Dervin’s conceptualization of sensemaking, the study investigates how visual, auditory, and textual elements of TikTok videos facilitate dynamic, iterative information behaviors such as information seeking, sharing, and negotiation. The findings stress how the platform’s recommendation system influences crisis sensemaking and the implications specifically for Middle Eastern crises. Our analysis revealed intersemiotic dissonance—the tension arising from clashing semiotic meanings—highlighting the risk of presenting crisis discourse multimodally.
{"title":"Scrolling Through Chaos: The Implications of TikTok for Crisis Sensemaking","authors":"Christy Khoury, Jeff Hemsley","doi":"10.1177/20563051251382470","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/20563051251382470","url":null,"abstract":"This study explores the role of TikTok as a platform-based crisis information source, focusing on how users engaged in collective sensemaking during the 2020 Port of Beirut explosion. Using a mixed-methods approach, the research analyzes multimodal content, including video, comments, hashtags, and transcripts, to understand how users’ holistic information experience influenced sensemaking around the crisis event. Drawing on Dervin’s conceptualization of sensemaking, the study investigates how visual, auditory, and textual elements of TikTok videos facilitate dynamic, iterative information behaviors such as information seeking, sharing, and negotiation. The findings stress how the platform’s recommendation system influences crisis sensemaking and the implications specifically for Middle Eastern crises. Our analysis revealed intersemiotic dissonance—the tension arising from clashing semiotic meanings—highlighting the risk of presenting crisis discourse multimodally.","PeriodicalId":47920,"journal":{"name":"Social Media + Society","volume":"354 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":5.2,"publicationDate":"2025-10-25","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145397448","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 : 2025-10-25DOI: 10.1177/20563051251380042
Łukasz Szulc
Grim cultural diagnoses suggest that dating apps make their users feel sad, attributing this to the commodification of intimacy facilitated by digital technology. Dating apps are charged with offering an illusory sense of choice among abundant partners and providing tools for atomizing people and filtering through them, while many caution against the growing dependency on dating apps. Drawing on 30 interviews with Polish LGBTQ people living in the United Kingdom, this article challenges the conflation of dating apps with sadness by distinguishing between “sad dating apps” and “sad dating app users.” I show that users exercise complex forms of agency in recognizing the flaws of digital dating cultures and engaging with them creatively. I argue for research that moves beyond relatively privileged users and global dating apps to better understand the role of digital technologies in society, particularly at the intersection of emotions and agency. While Internet researchers have become more careful in avoiding technologically deterministic arguments when assessing technologies’ general impact or their “effects,” crude claims about how technologies make their users feel persist, which I refer to as emotional technological determinism. More broadly, my research not only underscores the greater agency of users in this respect but also delineates the forms, scales, and scopes of feelings, sometimes contradictory, that technologies provoke, which technologies provoke what feelings, and for whom. Emotions themselves can be more or less agential, and the agency over how one feels when interacting with technology is distributed between technologies, users, and contexts.
{"title":"Sad Dating Apps: Emotional Technological Determinism and Agency in Late Modernity","authors":"Łukasz Szulc","doi":"10.1177/20563051251380042","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/20563051251380042","url":null,"abstract":"Grim cultural diagnoses suggest that dating apps make their users feel sad, attributing this to the commodification of intimacy facilitated by digital technology. Dating apps are charged with offering an illusory sense of choice among abundant partners and providing tools for atomizing people and filtering through them, while many caution against the growing dependency on dating apps. Drawing on 30 interviews with Polish LGBTQ people living in the United Kingdom, this article challenges the conflation of dating apps with sadness by distinguishing between “sad dating apps” and “sad dating app users.” I show that users exercise complex forms of agency in recognizing the flaws of digital dating cultures and engaging with them creatively. I argue for research that moves beyond relatively privileged users and global dating apps to better understand the role of digital technologies in society, particularly at the intersection of emotions and agency. While Internet researchers have become more careful in avoiding technologically deterministic arguments when assessing technologies’ general impact or their “effects,” crude claims about how technologies make their users feel persist, which I refer to as emotional technological determinism. More broadly, my research not only underscores the greater agency of users in this respect but also delineates the forms, scales, and scopes of feelings, sometimes contradictory, that technologies provoke, which technologies provoke what feelings, and for whom. Emotions themselves can be more or less agential, and the agency over how one feels when interacting with technology is distributed between technologies, users, and contexts.","PeriodicalId":47920,"journal":{"name":"Social Media + Society","volume":"46 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":5.2,"publicationDate":"2025-10-25","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145397451","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 : 2025-10-25DOI: 10.1177/20563051251383528
Heesoo Jang, Narayanamoorthy Nanditha
This article introduces the concept of layered affordances to affordance theory, providing a framework for analyzing how digital platform affordances intersect and reinforce each other in facilitating technology-facilitated gender-based violence (TFGBV). Focusing on the #MeTooIndia movement and the Nth Room case in South Korea, we explore how multiplatform affordances, such as visibility, anonymity, and shareability, combine to create digital environments that enable the spread, reinforcement, and normalization of misogynistic narratives. In both cases, perpetrators strategically exploited layered affordances across platforms like X, Instagram, and Telegram to evade moderation, amplify harmful behaviors, and establish echo chambers of digital harm. This article argues that layered affordances reveal complex cross-platform dynamics that are crucial for understanding TFGBV and the ways in which digital harms are structured and sustained. Our findings highlight the need for nuanced, cross-platform governance policies that address the compounded nature of digital violence, particularly in non-Western contexts where marginalized communities are often most affected. By conceptualizing layered affordances, this study provides a crucial framework for analyzing the affordances that enable digital harms and for developing targeted interventions, thereby paving the way for more effective digital policy and platform design strategies.
{"title":"Echo Chambers of Digital Harm: Insights Into Layered Affordances From India and South Korea","authors":"Heesoo Jang, Narayanamoorthy Nanditha","doi":"10.1177/20563051251383528","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/20563051251383528","url":null,"abstract":"This article introduces the concept of <jats:italic toggle=\"yes\">layered affordances</jats:italic> to affordance theory, providing a framework for analyzing how digital platform affordances intersect and reinforce each other in facilitating technology-facilitated gender-based violence (TFGBV). Focusing on the #MeTooIndia movement and the Nth Room case in South Korea, we explore how multiplatform affordances, such as visibility, anonymity, and shareability, combine to create digital environments that enable the spread, reinforcement, and normalization of misogynistic narratives. In both cases, perpetrators strategically exploited layered affordances across platforms like X, Instagram, and Telegram to evade moderation, amplify harmful behaviors, and establish echo chambers of digital harm. This article argues that layered affordances reveal complex cross-platform dynamics that are crucial for understanding TFGBV and the ways in which digital harms are structured and sustained. Our findings highlight the need for nuanced, cross-platform governance policies that address the compounded nature of digital violence, particularly in non-Western contexts where marginalized communities are often most affected. By conceptualizing layered affordances, this study provides a crucial framework for analyzing the affordances that enable digital harms and for developing targeted interventions, thereby paving the way for more effective digital policy and platform design strategies.","PeriodicalId":47920,"journal":{"name":"Social Media + Society","volume":"85 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":5.2,"publicationDate":"2025-10-25","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145397449","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 : 2025-10-23DOI: 10.1177/20563051251385438
Lydia Cheng, Bunty Avieson
Guided by boundary work, this study aims to investigate how lifestyle journalism’s boundaries are changing in response to the rise of creator culture. Specifically, this study seeks to understand how lifestyle journalists define and perceive new creators in their profession and what kind of boundary-making strategies they enact in reaction to such new actors. Through 31 interviews with Singaporean lifestyle journalists, the findings show that there is currently a dynamic and evolving ecosystem of distinct digital lifestyle players comprising lifestyle journalists, digital natives, bloggers, key opinion leaders and influencers, and that the journalists perceive a complex ‘frenemy’ relationship with these actors. Lifestyle journalists engage in a combination of expansion, expulsion and protection of autonomy boundary strategies to guard their profession’s boundaries against the incursions of these new lifestyle actors, but there is a clear shift towards expansion-led strategies. Lifestyle journalists seem to be increasingly welcoming of both newer social media actors and practices into their profession, signalling that lifestyle journalism now exists in a digital reputation economy where online visibility, above all else, serves as the foremost marker of professional success.
{"title":"A Complex New Media Ecology: Mapping Shifting Digital Players and Evolving Boundaries in Lifestyle Journalism","authors":"Lydia Cheng, Bunty Avieson","doi":"10.1177/20563051251385438","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/20563051251385438","url":null,"abstract":"Guided by boundary work, this study aims to investigate how lifestyle journalism’s boundaries are changing in response to the rise of creator culture. Specifically, this study seeks to understand how lifestyle journalists define and perceive new creators in their profession and what kind of boundary-making strategies they enact in reaction to such new actors. Through 31 interviews with Singaporean lifestyle journalists, the findings show that there is currently a dynamic and evolving ecosystem of distinct digital lifestyle players comprising lifestyle journalists, digital natives, bloggers, key opinion leaders and influencers, and that the journalists perceive a complex ‘frenemy’ relationship with these actors. Lifestyle journalists engage in a combination of expansion, expulsion and protection of autonomy boundary strategies to guard their profession’s boundaries against the incursions of these new lifestyle actors, but there is a clear shift towards expansion-led strategies. Lifestyle journalists seem to be increasingly welcoming of both newer social media actors and practices into their profession, signalling that lifestyle journalism now exists in a digital reputation economy where online visibility, above all else, serves as the foremost marker of professional success.","PeriodicalId":47920,"journal":{"name":"Social Media + Society","volume":"117 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":5.2,"publicationDate":"2025-10-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145397911","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 : 2025-10-23DOI: 10.1177/20563051251386721
Macau K. F. Mak, Michael W. Wagner
Many individuals regularly use multiple social media platforms, and their information exposure is shaped by the various networks they maintain across these platforms. Given the rising trend of multi-platform social media use, this article introduces a two-step approach to investigate how networks across platforms conjointly and distinctly relate to incidental exposure to news and political information. Our analysis of survey data from the United States showed that greater immersion in multiple politically heterogeneous networks across platforms predicted higher counter-attitudinal incidental exposure, while greater immersion in multiple politically homogeneous networks across platforms predicted higher pro-attitudinal incidental exposure. Among the popular platforms, immersion in networks on Facebook, X (Twitter), and YouTube played a particularly influential role in these relationships. Surprisingly, we also found that greater immersion in homogeneous networks across multiple platforms predicted higher counter-attitudinal exposure, even though immersion in any single platform’s homogeneous network was not a significant predictor.
{"title":"Multi-Platform Social Media Use and Incidental Exposure: A Two-Step Analysis of the Conjoint and Distinct Roles of Network Heterogeneity and Homogeneity Across Platforms","authors":"Macau K. F. Mak, Michael W. Wagner","doi":"10.1177/20563051251386721","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/20563051251386721","url":null,"abstract":"Many individuals regularly use multiple social media platforms, and their information exposure is shaped by the various networks they maintain across these platforms. Given the rising trend of multi-platform social media use, this article introduces a two-step approach to investigate how networks across platforms <jats:italic toggle=\"yes\">conjointly</jats:italic> and <jats:italic toggle=\"yes\">distinctly</jats:italic> relate to incidental exposure to news and political information. Our analysis of survey data from the United States showed that greater immersion in multiple politically heterogeneous networks across platforms predicted higher counter-attitudinal incidental exposure, while greater immersion in multiple politically homogeneous networks across platforms predicted higher pro-attitudinal incidental exposure. Among the popular platforms, immersion in networks on Facebook, X (Twitter), and YouTube played a particularly influential role in these relationships. Surprisingly, we also found that greater immersion in homogeneous networks across multiple platforms predicted higher counter-attitudinal exposure, even though immersion in any single platform’s homogeneous network was not a significant predictor.","PeriodicalId":47920,"journal":{"name":"Social Media + Society","volume":"22 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":5.2,"publicationDate":"2025-10-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145397918","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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