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The next session at this iCS Symposium starts with Irini Katsirea, who continues with our ‘fake news’ theme. There are a great many definitions for this problematic term, and it is usually better to distinguish between several more specific types of mis- or disinformation, and indeed a U.K. House of Commons committee recently recommended abandoning the term altogether.

One submission to the committee defined ‘fake news’ as knowing and consistent publication of predominantly false information in the guise of news, yet what is missing here is an acknowledgment that this is done with the specific intent to mislead; otherwise, openly …

The first keynote at the iCS Symposium is by Alice E. Marwick, whose focus is on the motivations for sharing the various forms of content grouped under the problematic moniker of ‘fake news’. Her recent report with Rebecca Lewis on Media Manipulation and Disinformation Online has shown that such sharing can be highly effective: because so many of us are now sharing news and news-like information online, and because especially younger users and journalists are paying increasing attention to what is happening on social media, it is now possible for mis- and disinformation content to migrate from far-right, fringe spaces …

The next paper in this iCS Symposium session is by Amelia Acker and Joan Donovan, and focusses on new approaches to gathering metadata from social media platforms without relying on Application Programming Interfaces. Indeed, platform providers are generally unable to predict all of the ways in which users, including researchers, are likely to engage with their platforms, and this leaves loopholes that researchers are able to exploit.

At the present moment, with API access increasingly limited, we clearly need new methods. Part of the issue here is in how the platforms themselves classify their own data through metadata; media manipulation …

The next speaker at the iCS Symposium is Yidong Steven Wang, who begins with Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg’s recent appearance in front of the U.S. Congress. This demonstrated the limited technical understanding of U.S. politicians, as well as Zuckerberg’s ability to evade the difficult questions.

Within the overall context of the current post-truth paradigm, the technocultural discourse in such hearings articulates technological agency, which in turn informs current regulatory principles. Technological agency here refers to what machines are seen to be able to do: we have a certain discursively derived understanding of such agency, and the current paradigm informing such …

The next speaker in this session at the iCS Symposium is Vasilii Fedorov, whose focus is on the Russian social media platform VKontakte, which enables users to deconstruct official government communication in creative, visual ways. Such activity is especially strong during election campaigns.

This study focusses especially on the content produced by the Website Lentach, whose leading stylistic device is irony; it generates visual and ironic memes in the form of comics, official images superimposed with ironic subtitles, and other content that criticises or makes fun of the government. This is especially crucial for independent media, who also …

After a quick break I’ve made my way to Copenhagen for the iCS Symposium “Locked Out of Social Platforms”, and the first panel of the day starts with a paper by Nicholas Proferes. His focus is on how power is manifested in the platform affordances of social media: these include affordances such as the persistence, visibility, spreadability, and searchability of content.

Nick focusses here on the case of WikiLeaks’ release of the Podesta Emails, from a hack of Hillary Clinton’s campaign chairman John Podesta’s email. These were released over thirty batches, starting just after Donald Trump’s infamous Access Hollywood …

The final speakers in this final session of AoIR 2018 are Lianrui Jia and Xiaofei Han, whose focus is on the changing politics of the major Chinese social media platform Weibo. It now has some 340 million users, and has a market capitalisation of US$13b. But Weibo remains significantly underresearched, and there are only a handful of major studies of the platform in the international literature to date.

Such literature has yet to reflect the full range of activities that take place on the platform. While the literature focusses largely on the political implications of Weibo, the platform …

The next speaker at AoIR 2018 is Gabriela Zago, who shifts our focus to the prevalence of ‘fake news’ in Brazilian politics; she is looking especially at the use of Twitter in the impeachment of President Dilma Rousseff. Twitter is an important social medium in Brazil, and especially features many social influencers including politicians, journalists, and celebrities.

The impeachment process showed considerable political polarisation between the left and the right in Brazil; while many on the left supported the President, the right actively supported impeachment. Crucial to the debate on social media were superparticipants: highly active users who may be …

Then next speaker at AoIR 2018 is Eedan Amit-Danhi, who continues our focus on the 2016 U.S. presidential election and especially investigates the role of infographics during this contest. Such infographics have become increasingly important in recent years, partly as a result of the rise of digital and social media – but what makes specific infographics successful?

Enhancers of an infographic’s success may be cognitive (employing proven infographic presentation methods), behavioural (calling users to action and providing interactive features), or emotional (triggering users’ positive or negative emotions). The present study examined the infographics used by the final four presidential candidates …

I’ve missed another session due to AoIR business, but I’m back for the last paper session at AoIR 2018. We start with Joel Penney, whose focus is on the use of social media by young people in the Trump era. He suggests that young people had moved from dutiful to actualising forms of citizenship, where political engagement is no longer just a duty to the state but aims to realise a better form of politics. Such engagement is also playful and creative, including in more partisan contexts.

Joel pursued these ideas through a focus group-based study of 18 politically …