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Politics

Snurb — Wednesday 25 September 2024 19:37

A Cross-Platform Approach to the Study of Public Opinion Expression

Politics | Polarisation | Social Media | ECREA 2024 |

The next session at ECREA 2024 is a panel on the study of public opinion expressions, organised by the Opinion Network initiative. We start with Dimitra Milioni, discussing the study of opinion expression in a comparative cross-platform perspective across social media platforms. This focusses on the interplay between user practices and digital architectures, as viewed from a sociotechnical perspective.

Elements of this might include the way that pseudonymity or anonymity settings influence politeness and civility in commenting; the way that similarities between commenter identities on social media as compared to mainstream media discussion fora affect discussion processes; or the way …

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Snurb — Wednesday 25 September 2024 18:29

Introducing a Comprehensive Dataset of COVID-19 Querdenker Activity on Telegram

Politics | Polarisation | ‘Fake News’ | Social Media | Social Media Network Mapping | ECREA 2024 |

Finally, we end this ECREA 2024 session with a video presentation by Kilian Bühling, whose focus is on the use of Telegram for German-language COVID-19 protest mobilisation. This covers some 715 broadcast channels and 229 public group chats. Telegram has a 10% audience reach in Germany, and is used especially by contentious social movements for both public and private communication. The perceived anonymity and lack of content moderation here are especially attractive to such groups – including the Querdenker movement which opposed public health measures to manage the COVID-19 pandemic.

This movement was established in spring 2020, and engaged in …

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Snurb — Wednesday 25 September 2024 18:27

Assessing the Identitarian Movement Network on Telegram

Politics | ‘Fake News’ | Social Media | ECREA 2024 |

The next speaker in this ECREA 2024 session is Giuliana Sorce, focussing on the use of Telegram by the Identitarian movement in Austria, Germany, and Switzerland. This is a far-right movement which emerged first on Facebook and moved to Telegram after being deplatforming there; it especially targets what it perceives as an Islamic threat to European societies.

This paper explores why and how this movement uses Telegram as a key channel for its activities. It conducted a snowball sampling from a starting-point of three key accounts and eventually examined 13 Telegram channels with some 14,000 posts up to April 2023 …

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Snurb — Wednesday 25 September 2024 18:26

Mainstream and Hyperpartisan News Framing of Telegram as an Alternative Platform

Politics | Journalism | Industrial Journalism | ‘Fake News’ | Social Media | ECREA 2024 |

The next speaker in this rapid ECREA 2024 session is Christian Schwieter, whose focus is on the German news coverage of Telegram as a new and challenging social media platform. Telegram has become a hugely contested object in popular discourse; it has marketed itself as a strongly pro-democracy and pro-free speech platform, but is also accused of allowing hate speech and child abuse materials on its channels – notably Telegram founder Pavel Durov was recently arrested in France for this reason.

Telegram has also become a refuge for the deplatforming, and a space for alternative, conspiracist, and far-right groups. The …

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Snurb — Wednesday 25 September 2024 18:24

Actor Types in Telegram’s Ecology of Counterpublic Communities

Politics | ‘Fake News’ | Social Media | ECREA 2024 |

The next speakers in this ECREA 2024 session on Telegram are Lars Rinsdorf and Kathrin Müller, whose interest is in hyperpartisan, alternative, and conspiracist social media spheres. Telegram is a very attractive tool for the publics populating such spheres; it is a hybrid communication platform that is especially well suited to the interests of such publics.

What are the actor identities, communicative practices, and frames of relevance emerging in such (counter)publics? The project explored this through expert interviews pointing researches to relevant topics and channels; then examined some 50 such channels closely through qualitative analysis; gathered some 2,700 posts from …

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Snurb — Wednesday 25 September 2024 18:22

Telegram Conspiracy Theorists’ Understandings of Social Media Moderation Practices

Politics | ‘Fake News’ | Social Media | Facebook | ECREA 2024 |

The first full day at the ECREA 2024 conference begins for me with a panel on Telegram and politics. The first presenter is Corinna Peil, whose interest is in COVID-19 conspiracy narratives on Telegram. How do the people who disseminate such narratives understand content moderation interventions?

Content moderation is a fundamental service that social media platforms provide, but this also generates accusations of censorship; exactly how content moderation works is also a subject of (sometimes conspiracist) ‘folk theories’ about the power and practices of social media platforms, however. The pandemic heightened this further, as it pushed platforms to implement stronger …

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Snurb — Wednesday 25 September 2024 02:31

The Decline of the Welfare State as a Challenge to Social Order

Politics | Government | ECREA 2024 |

After a brief excursion to Helsinki for a workshop and a guest lecture, I have made my way to Ljubljana for the great biennial European communication conference, ECREA 2024. After the opening ceremony and a pipe organ performance (!) of Laibach’s “The Whistleblowers”, we start now with a keynote by Vesna Leskošek, addressing the conference theme of ‘communication and social (dis)order’.

She begins by introducing the idea of the welfare state, as a concept that may be in decline in the present time. But the welfare state maintains social order, social structures, and social institutions; it was one …

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Snurb — Monday 16 September 2024 14:32

Facebook without the News: Link-Sharing Patterns during Meta's Australian and Canadian News Bans (ECREA 2024 / AANZCA 2024)

Politics | Government | Journalism | Industrial Journalism | ‘Fake News’ | 'Big Data' | Social Media | Facebook | Dynamics of Partisanship and Polarisation in Online Public Debate (ARC Laureate Fellowship) | Evaluating the Challenge of ‘Fake News’ and Other Malinformation (ARC Discovery) | AANZCA 2024 | ECREA 2024 |
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Snurb — Monday 16 September 2024 14:24

The Filter in Our (?) Heads: Digital Media and Polarisation (NRC 2024)

Politics | Government | Polarisation | Journalism | ‘Fake News’ | Social Media | Echo Chambers and Filter Bubbles | Social Media Network Mapping | Dynamics of Partisanship and Polarisation in Online Public Debate (ARC Laureate Fellowship) | Conferences |
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Snurb — Sunday 15 September 2024 18:18

Reflections on Australia's News Media Bargaining Code and Canada's C-18 Bill (CCIA 2024)

Politics | Government | Journalism | Industrial Journalism | Social Media | Facebook | QUT Digital Media Research Centre |
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