Special Issue:
REDISCOVERING SOCIETY IN THE AGE OF SOCIAL MEDIA
Editorial
Table of Contents
Introduction
INTERVIEW
SOCIAL DECODING OF SOCIAL MEDIA: AN INTERVIEW WITH ANABEL QUAN-HAASE
Every tweet comes out of a social context, so I think that as sociologists we not only embrace big data analytics blindly, but consider its possibilities and limitations to provide answers to key research questions. So, for me there is no single approach, rather it depends on the study and context of the research. It is about choosing a research carefully, one that can provide meaningful insights and is relevant to society, rather than letting the data drive the project. It is about formulating questions that have social relevance, that’s what we do as sociologists best, we study things that are critical to society, like inequality, like social groups, which others ignore, they are invisible. So I think that if we move to big data with those sensibilities in mind, as a sociologist we can contribute to understanding social phenomena that happens online as well as the intersection of the issues that are critical to society and how they can be represented and linked to social media data.
ARTICLES
Ilona GRZYWIŃSKA, Dominik BATORSKI
HOW THE EMERGENCE OF SOCIAL NETWORKING SITES CHALLENGES AGENDA-SETTING THEORY
With the emergence of social networking sites (SNS), the way that information is being processed by media consumers has changed drastically. This has had a direct impact on one of the most established media theories: agenda-setting theory. Applying the framework presented in 2005 by McCombs, the authors of the article show how the main assumptions of the theory are being challenged in its five stages. SNS users decide what news is important by choosing what to share within their networks (basic agenda-setting effects); attributes regarding events are issued by SNS users under particular limitations (attribute agenda-setting); in conditions of high uncertainty and relevance, SNS users can directly impact public opinion (psychological effects of agenda-setting theory); SNS are becoming the source of traditional media agendas (sources of media agendas); SNS users are reaffirming their opinions as a result of SNS homophily (consequences of agenda-setting effects); and users influence public figures within SNS (reverse agenda-setting effects).
Keywords: agenda-setting theory, social networking sites, homophily, network effect, active audience.
Bartosz PIETRZYK
MIX UP THE CULTURE: CREATIVE TRANSFORMATION OF CULTURAL AND POP-CULTURAL CONTEXT ON THE YOUTUBE PLATFORM
In the era of participation culture and sharing, the most important value is communication. Every aspect of information and idea exchange is valuable, but there is one type of communication that is precious above all of the others. Taking into consideration all the aspects of the culture of participation such as: creativity, innovation, being up-to-date with pop culture trends, we can say that essential for this type of culture sharing is the idea of new content, created in the process of transforming available culture creations (mashup/remix). In other words, it is based on creating something new with new meaning and new context, using the resources of pop and mass culture. One of the possible channels of distribution for this new content is a YouTube platform. This communication medium is part of Google inc. and as a web page is representing Web 2.0 idea. This research is focused on the content published by YouTube users (youtubers, vloggers) that was creatively designed (remixed) in correlation to well know pop-culture publications. This research will try to estimate the importance of content mixing via YouTube platform and answer the following questions: What message is this kind of content sharing sending? What types of vlog formats are the most popular at the moment? How does a creative transformation of cultural and pop-cultural context work? Is there something like a community between the youtubers?
Keywords: communication, participation, content, YouTube, community, remix.
Kamil FILIPEK
SHARING RESOURCES ON FACEBOOK GROUPS: POLISH IMMIGRANTS IN GERMANY, NORWAY AND UK
Facebook groups enable their members access to diverse resources symbolic and material, scarce and free, exhaustible or renewable. Depending on the group’s objective, resources are co-used, gifted, bartered, swapped, freecycled or sold (bought) by users responding to the needs of others or satisfying their own needs. Based on posts collected through the Facebook’s Application Programming Interface (API), this study examines sharing of resources among Polish immigrants in Germany, Norway and United Kingdom, belonging to the public Facebook groups. Findings suggest that the most important resource shared by members of Polish immigrant groups on Facebook is job-related information. Moreover, Facebook groups appear to be a popular selling tool and less effective sharing space for Polish immigrants in Germany, Norway and UK. However, some sharing economy models such as freecycling, swapping and bartering are identified based on Facebook posts.
Keywords: sharing, Facebook groups, resources, social media.
Jarosław CHODAK
NEW PATTERNS OF PROTEST AND REVOLUTION IN THE AGE OF SOCIAL MEDIA
The article aims to analyse the role of social media in initiating and organising protest and revolutionary movements. Social media, particularly Facebook and Twitter, are widely believed to have been used by activists involved in the global wave of protests and revolutions after 2009. However, the assessment of their role wavers between technological determinism and minimising the impact of new technologies. Considering the current state of research, the author offers his answers to a number of questions: (1) To what extent and how are social media used in the processes of political communication, mobilisation and organisation of protest and revolutionary movements? (2) What is the relation between the old and the new media? (3) What is the relation between the online and offline dimension of collective action? (4) Why has the occupation of public space become the dominant tactic of protest and revolutionary movements in the age of social media?
Keywords: social media; protest movements; revolutions; ICTs; mobilization.