The disinformation landscape and the lockdown of social platforms

ABSTRACT

This introduction to the special issue considers how independent research on mis/disinformation campaigns can be conducted in a corporate environment hostile to academic research. We provide an overview of the disinformation landscape in the wake of the Facebook-Cambridge Analytica data scandal and social platforms’ decision to enforce access lockdowns and the throttling of Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) for data collection. We argue that the governance shift from user communities to social media algorithms, along with social platforms’ intensive emphasis on generating revenue from user data, has eroded the mutual trust of networked publics and opened the way for dis/misinformation campaigns. We discuss the importance of open, public APIs for academic research as well as the unique challenges of collecting social media data to study highly ephemeral mis/disinformation campaigns. The introduction concludes with an assessment of the growing data access gap that not only hinders research of public interest, but that may also preclude researchers from identifying meaningful research questions as activity on social platforms becomes increasingly more inscrutable and unobservable.     

Disinformation,performed: self-presentation of a Russian IRA account on Twitter

ABSTRACT

How disinformation campaigns operate and how they fit into the broader social communication environment – which has been described as a ‘disinformation order’ [Bennett & Livingston, (2018). The disinformation order: Disruptive communication and the decline of democratic institutions. European Journal of Communication, 33(2), 122–139] – represent critical, ongoing questions for political communication. We offer a thorough analysis of a highly successful disinformation account run by Russia’s Internet Research Agency: the so-called ‘Jenna Abrams’ account. We analyze Abrams’ tweets and other content such as blogposts with qualitative discourse analysis, assisted by quantitative content analysis and metadata analysis. This yields an in-depth understanding of how the IRA team behind the Abrams account presented this persona across multiple platforms and over time. Especially, we describe the techniques used to perform personal authenticity and cultural competence. The performance of personal authenticity was central to her persona building as a likeable American woman, whereas the performance of cultural competence enabled her to infiltrate American conservative communities with resonant messages. Implications for understanding disinformation processes, and how some aspects of the hybrid media system are especially vulnerable to hijacking by bad actors are discussed.     

After the ‘APIcalypse’: social media platforms and their fight against critical scholarly research

ABSTRACT

In the aftermath of the Cambridge Analytica controversy, social media platform providers such as Facebook and Twitter have severely restricted access to platform data via their Application Programming Interfaces (APIs). This has had a particularly critical effect on the ability of social media researchers to investigate phenomena such as abuse, hate speech, trolling, and disinformation campaigns, and to hold the platforms to account for the role that their affordances and policies might play in facilitating such dysfunction. Alternative data access frameworks, such as Facebook’s partnership with the controversial Social Science One initiative, represent an insufficient replacement for fully functional APIs, and the platform providers’ actions in responding to the Cambridge Analytica scandal raise suspicions that they have instrumentalised it to actively frustrate critical, independent, public interest scrutiny by scholars. Building on a critical review of Facebook’s public statements through its own platforms and the mainstream media, and of the scholarly responses these have drawn, this article outlines the societal implications of the ‘APIcalypse’, and reviews potential options for scholars in responding to it.     

How public relations agencies in Greece respond to digital trends

The present study investigates the extent to which PR agencies in Greece incorporate new media platforms in their clients' campaigns. Moreover, PR consultants’ views about the benefits associated with social media usage in PR are also assessed. Based on a sample of 81 PR agencies, results indicate that integration of digital media in the clients’ communication campaigns is widespread. Popular online tactics used by Greek PR agencies are related to social media platforms (e.g., Facebook), websites and viral campaigns. Moreover, executives of the Greek PR firms have acknowledged the new roles of digital media in practicing public relations for their clients, conducting research and managing effectively corporate reputation.     

Live tweeting and building the digital archive; #NFQLR – who and what is it for?

This paper examines the temporal and ethical affordances of commercial social media platforms, such as Twitter, as tools for engaging in social research and knowledge exchange. Drawing on activity that took place during the New Frontiers in Qualitative Longitudinal Research seminar series, the article reports on using Twitter and other social media platforms to document, share and archive ‘data’ from a series of research events. It also experiments with new modes of research writing, using fragments of ‘data’ from Twitter to distil research knowledge and ideas, whilst also capturing the pace and form of this live method of social documentation and knowledge exchange. Bringing together conversations within digital sociology about how to ‘do’ time in digital research, with methodological debates among qualitative longitudinal researchers about how to research social and biographical continuity and change, the paper argues that the presentist focus in digital research is far from inevitable. Attending to time in digital media demands that we are alert to questions of authorship, audience and co-production, recognizing the labour of research and the provenance of research knowledge, ‘data’ and ideas.     

How Journalists Think about Media Effects—And Why We Should Care

Research suggests that journalists’ beliefs about media effects are influenced by unsystematically gathered knowledge and subjective-intuitive judgments. However, it has also been shown that these presumptions must be considered important factors for the formation of journalistic coverage. Against this background, this article synthesizes existing research on dimensions, determinants, and consequences of journalists’ presumptions of media effects. The resulting framework offers researchers in the field of journalistic content production a comprehensive overview of the possible role that presumptions of media effects could play for journalistic content creation. In a second step, we summarize the implications that the current state of research points at. We discuss why journalism scholars should integrate presumed media effects into their research agendas and what communication researchers, as well as journalists themselves, could do to promote more realistic beliefs about media effects among journalists.     

Institutionalizing Scientific Knowledge: The Social and Political Foundation of Empirical Economic Research

Scientific knowledge is an essential component of modern society. Consequently, sociologists are interested in its production process and have conducted a broad variety of studies showing how social patterns influence the definition and the boundaries of scientific knowledge. In this paper, I ask how social factors influence the transformation of a ‘normal’ field of knowledge into a ‘scientific’ one. First, I give a brief overview of the development of the sociology of scientific knowledge exploring different approaches to the social foundations and boundaries of scientific knowledge. Second, I present a case study of the transformation of empirical economic research in the 1920s from a field of knowledge produced by journalists and civil servants into a prestigious scientific domain. I use neo‐institutionalist ideas to show that knowledge needs a socially legitimated organizational frame in order to count as ‘scientific’ and I examine how political needs to ‘manage the economy’ build boundaries around economic knowledge and define it as ‘scientific’ in order to control its production, distribution, and communication.     

Re-evaluating standards of human subjects protection for sensitive health data in social media networks

This study addresses ethical questions about conducting health science research using network data from social media platforms. We provide examples of ethically problematic areas related to participant consent, expectation of privacy, and social media networks. Further, to illustrate how researchers can maintain ethical integrity while leveraging social media networks, we describe a study that demonstrates the ability to use social media to identify individuals affected by cancer. We discuss best practices and ethical guidelines for studying social media network data, including data collection, analysis, and reporting.     

Using value modeling to evaluate social media messages: The case of Hurricane Irene

Emerging technologies, advances in social media, and new communication platforms have transformed how crisis communicators reach their audiences and partner agencies in a variety of situations. Not only do individuals and organizations communicate differently during a crisis, but they are also perceived very differently; social media platforms and messages add to the challenges involved in maintaining the overall reputation of brands and corporations. To better understand the new messaging system and its effects, the researchers analyzed social media crisis messages and messaging theory through various qualitative and quantitative value modeling techniques and generated a simple baseline model for what constitutes a “good” crisis message. Using data collected during Hurricane Irene, the researchers used this baseline model to rank effective and ineffective messages to determine whether the most followed/forwarded messages fit this model, and to identify a set of new best practices for crisis communicators and reputation management monitors using social media platforms.     

Moral bureaucracies and social network research

In the wake of Europe’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), research ethics governance does not just affect the ethical dimensions of social research but also the range of scientific decisions available to researchers. Because of the sensitive status of personal data and the aversion to even minimal risk by what we call “moral bureaucracies”, we are concerned that social network researchers will increasingly limit their research decisions to “safe” options, like reusing anonymized datasets, choosing target populations based on convenience rather than theoretical relevance, and routinely subcontracting fieldwork to professional data collection companies, among others. We also suggest that scientific associations and social scientists in general need to adopt a proactive role in preserving both scientific freedom and genuine ethics advice within this new regulatory framework.     

Examining characteristics of prebunking strategies to overcome PR disinformation attacks

In 2020, Twitter launched a new strategy dubbed ‘prebunking’ in hopes of pre-emptively countering false information about voting by mail and election results. Prebunking was touted as a potential solution; however, little empirical research has tested the strategy to examine its effectiveness towards disinformation in the realm of public relations. Exploring PR-based disinformation attacks as a paracrisis, the purpose of this online quasi-experimental design study (N = 965) was to investigate the effects of an attack and how prebunking strategies, grounded in inoculation theory, can protect organizational outcomes (i.e., reputation and credibility) by interweaving positive psychology. In addition to examining effects on attitudinal components, this study also inspected dimensions of social amplification to determine if prebunking messages can thwart the spread of disinformation via Facebook. Findings provide insight into advancing the conceptual framework of proactive disinformation responses for crisis communication by demonstrating the success of using prebunking with autonomy support and explicit details to thwart adverse effects of disinformation.     

The transformative power of civil society in South Africa: an activist’s perspective on innovative forms of organizing and rights-based practices

ABSTRACT

This essay analyses recent campaigns to fulfil human rights to quality basic education and access to mental health care services, led by SECTION27, a social justice organization in South Africa. It investigates how these campaigns were able to impact on inequality in education and health care and the ways in which they mobilized and empowered communities to demand social justice and drive pro-poor transformation. In particular, it looks at the way SECTION27 used human rights law and the Courts to advance social justice. It records many positive outcomes. But concludes by asking whether, if inequality is enabled by elite power can it only be disabled by people’s power? How can civil society overcome fault-lines in its sustainability, representativity and power structure? It argues that civil society must do more to tackle the systems and not just scratch at the symptoms of a more and more unequal world.     

Tweeted,deleted: theoretical,methodological, and ethical considerations for examining politicians’ deleted tweets

In an election, political candidates often slip up and want a do-over. On Twitter, they get this chance. Candidates can delete tweets and hope no one notices. But organizations such as Politwoops notice. Politwoops archives politicians’ deletions in the hopes of bringing more transparency and accountability to political discourse. This article discusses the theoretical value, methodological challenges, and ethical considerations of examining deleted tweets and using the Politwoops archive. Specifically, this article (a) discusses how analysis of deleted tweets can expand and deepen research on impression management and online self-presentations in elections, (b) proposes the use of an intertextual content analysis ? a hybrid approach that incorporates elements of a qualitative content analysis and an intertextual interpretative analysis ? when analyzing deletions, (c) investigates and exposes some of the limitations of the Politwoops archive, and (d) given the limitations of the Politwoops archive, discusses the potential ethical dilemmas of researchers creating their own datasets of deleted tweets. Overall, analyzing deletions can reveal what campaigns strategically present and hide from voters in order to create electable personas. To uncover the content of candidates’ deleted tweets and how they may contribute to impression management, researchers must first consider several methodological and ethical matters.     

Do public relations practitioners perceptually share ingroup affiliation with journalists?

Upwards of 200 studies over the past hundred years have reported on the relationship between public relations practitioners and journalists. However, no experiment has compared the group members’ perceptions when seeing their roles in action. Inspired by frameworks of social identity theory, intergroup deception, and the black sheep effect, we test how public relations practitioners and journalists respond to a crisis communication media interview. In our experiment, a company spokesperson either answers questions or engages in stereotypical “spin,” which journalists historically consider one of the most offensive public relations strategies. Results indicate that public relations practitioners align with journalists in their perceptions of a spokesperson’s trustworthiness and the organization’s trustworthiness across treatment conditions. Practitioners also manifest the black sheep effect, disliking their group representative engaging in deception. Furthermore, we explore whether the effects on perceptions of trustworthiness are moderated by psychological identification with their respective industry. Discussion concerns the theoretical and practical ramifications of the groups sharing ingroup affiliation, contrary to prevailing notions of acrimony.     

A thirst for the authentic: craft drinks producers and the narration of authenticity

There is a long academic tradition which positions the desire for authenticity as emerging as a symptom of dissatisfactions with modernity. Most recently, this has involved consumption of products that are valued for being authentic in contrast to mass produced commodities which are seen as being homogeneous, standardized and therefore inauthentic. A recent resurgence in interest in the idea of craft and craftwork has brought to the fore concerns about re‐establishing connections between products, consumers and producers beyond rational market exchange. This research draws on interviews with 40 craft brewery and distillery workers to explore the ways in which authenticity is narrated as part of an ongoing effort to add value to their products and the contexts of their production. The article identifies six modes of authenticity which are drawn on in combination by participants to establish a narrative of authenticity. This is understood to be a clear illustration of the ‘enrichment process’ by which post‐industrial economies manufacture value. A central element of craft drink producers’ work is the marshalling of cultural value and engaging in communicative and performative acts that ascribe that value to products and the people involved in making them.     

Coming to terms with inequality and exploitation in an African state: researching disability in Sierra Leone

In this article, I describe how during my anthropological research in post‐conflict Sierra Leone with a disabled community, I was confronted by experiences of inequality and exploitation. Many disabled people had previous disabling contact with other researchers, organisations and journalists. Others described difficulties surviving the disabling socio‐economic conditions and were not viewed as ‘development’ partners, despite the fact that their images and stories had played a big role in the rebuilding and ‘healing’ of the Sierra Leonean nation state. I ask whether we as researchers and an international community are still not colluding with structures and institutions that exploit disabled people in post‐conflict and post‐disaster countries.     

‘Social media logic’ meets professional norms: Twitter hashtags usage by journalists and politicians

Social media is characterized by a set of principles defined as ‘social media logic’ [van Dijck, J., & Poell, T. (2013). Understanding social media logic. Media and Communication, 1, 2–14. doi:10.12924/mac2013.01010002], derived from the theory of ‘media logic’ developed in the era of mass media [Altheide, D. L., & Snow, R. P. (1979). Media logic. London: Sage.]. This article explores how ‘social media logic’ impacts on two interconnected but yet distinct professions, journalism and politics, by analysing one of the key principles of social media logics, namely ‘connectivity’, an advanced strategy of algorithmically connecting users to content and other users in social media [van Dijck, J., & Poell, T. (2013). Understanding social media logic. Media and Communication, 1, 2–14. doi:10.12924/mac2013.01010002]. The operationalization of connectedness in this study is the Twitter hashtag, as it is the most common feature for users to connect and relate to within a larger networked discourse [Bruns, A., & Burgess, J. (2015). Twitter hashtags from ad hoc to calculated publics. In N. Rambukkana (Ed.), Hashtag publics: The power and politics of discursive networks (pp. 13–27). New York, NY: Peter Lang.]. The empirical material consists of tweets posted by 10 Norwegian politicians and 10 journalists, selected on their level of activity on Twitter. The tweets are analysed with the emphasis on the frequency and content of the hashtags, and the methodological design is comparative between the journalists and the politicians. A key finding is that there are significant differences between how journalists and politicians use hashtags, but that they both use mass media hashtags to reach outside their follower networks. Consequently, this demonstrates that journalists’ and politicians’ use of social media is closely connected to their professional norms, and that the ‘social media logic’ is still related to the ‘media logic’ of mainstream and broadcast media.     

Techniques of disinformation: Constructing and communicating “soft facts” after terrorism

Informed by social media data collected following four terror attacks in the UK in 2017, this article delineates a series of “techniques of disinformation” used by different actors to try and influence how the events were publicly defined and understood. By studying the causes and consequences of misleading information following terror attacks, the article contributes empirically to the neglected topic of social reactions to terrorism. It also advances scholarship on the workings of disinforming communications, by focusing on a domain other than political elections, which has been the empirical focus for most studies of disinformation to date. Theoretically, the analysis is framed by drawing an analogy with Gresham Sykes and David Matza's (1957) account of the role of “techniques of neutralization” originally published in the American Sociological Review. The connection being that where they studied deviant behaviour, a similar analytic lens can usefully be applied to disinformation cast as “deviant” information.     

How journalists engage in branding on Twitter: individual,organizational, and institutional levels

In a social media age, branding is an increasingly visible aspect of identity construction online. For media professionals generally and journalists especially, branding on spaces such as Twitter reveals the complicated set of forces confronting such public-facing actors as they navigate tensions between personal disclosure for authenticity and professional decorum for credibility, and between establishing one’s own distinctiveness and promoting one’s employer or other stakeholders. While studies have begun to reveal what journalists say about branding, they have yet to provide a broad profile of what they do. This study takes up that challenge through a content analysis of the Twitter profiles and tweets of a representative sample of 384 U.S. journalists. We focus on the extent of branding practices; the levels at which such branding occurs, whether to promote one’s self (individual), one’s news organization (organizational), or the journalism profession at large (institutional); and how other social media practices may be related to forms of journalistic branding. Results suggest that branding is now widely common among journalists on Twitter; that branding occurs at all three levels but primarily at the individual and organizational levels, with organizational branding taking priority; and that time on Twitter is connected with more personal information being shared.     

Diverse social movement coalitions: Prospects and challenges

Coalitions are among the most important tactical tools available for social movements and civil resistance campaigns, as they enable the sharing of networks, resources, expertise, and information, while simultaneously projecting an image of power through unity and numbers. Though exceptionally challenging to build, diverse coalitions are viewed by many as particularly important. However, there is considerably less literature that explicitly discusses them. In this article, I review the literature on diverse coalitions, with a focus on both their theorized and documented importance for social movements and civil resistance campaigns, and the challenges they face (including the factors working against their formation and sustainability). To do so, I bring two closely related but often separate literatures into conversation: social movements and civil resistance. I conclude by evaluating the state of this research area, highlighting remaining gaps, and suggesting directions for future research.