Digital Commons Network^™

“Follow Me So I Can Dm You Back”: An Exploratory Analysis Of A Female Pro- Isis Twitter Network, Joseph A. Varanese

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

The purpose of this study is to explore a network of female pro-Islamic State of Syria and Iraq (ISIS) supporters on Twitter. To do so, I identified twenty Twitter accounts (n=20) through snowball sampling, and analyzed their network comprising 5,861 vertices and 12,034 edges. I studied the network using three social network analysis metrics—Freeman’s normalized betweenness centrality, average geodesic distance, and tie strength. Females in the sample were more influential than males, and as a result, had a greater ability to radicalize other females within their network. Further, I observed that it took females longer than expected to …

Learning To Be Women: A Study Of Adolescent Girls In Rural Ontario, Laura Lockhart

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

In order to explore the forming subjectivities of rural young women, the material and discursive conditions of girls’ lives are examined with a focus on how rural adolescent girls come to understand themselves within their worlds, how their consciousness of limitations and possibilities develops, and how this translates into agency and self-direction. The analysis draws on data collected during five months of ethnographic research with seven grade ten, eleven, and twelve female students in a rural community in Ontario’s near north. It starts from their experiences in order to look at their lives and options from their standpoint.

Using Bourdieu’s …

"Support For Sisters Please": Comparing The Online Roles Of Al-Qaeda Women And Their Islamic State Counterparts, Hillary Peladeau

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

This study evaluates female roles in pro-jihadist terrorism by examining online content. Data was collected from 36 Twitter accounts of women associated with al-Qaeda (AQ) affiliated groups for a period of six months. The purpose for collecting this data was to: 1) compare how traditional female roles, as constructed within a jihadi-Salafist ideology, are reproduced and challenged on social media; 2) and determine the extent that AQ-affiliated women conform to roles outlined in Huey’s classification of females in pro-Islamic State (IS) Twitter networks. The results of this study reveal that women’s traditional roles in pro-jihadist activities are reproduced on Twitter. …

Terror On Twitter: A Comparative Analysis Of Gender And The Involvement In Pro-Jihadist Communities On Twitter, Eric W. Witmer

MA Research Paper

Social media has become the milieu of choice to radicalize young impressionable minds by terrorist organizations such as al Qaeda and the Islamic State. While a plethora of research exists on the recruitment and propaganda efforts by terrorist organizations there is limited number of quantitative studies that observe the relationship of gender and the involvement in online radical milieus. This current research will build upon prior studies through the comparative analysis of 750 unique Twitter accounts supporting the IS and the affiliates of al-Qaeda that were non-randomly sampled between January and September of 2015. The research aimed to address the …

Illusions Of A ‘Bond’: Tagging Cultural Products Across Online Platforms, Nadine Desrochers, Audrey Laplante, Anabel Quan-Haase, Kim Martin, Louise Spiteri

FIMS Publications

Structured Abstract

Purpose

Most studies pertaining to social tagging focus on one platform or platform type, thus limiting the scope of their findings. This study explores social tagging practices across four platforms in relation to cultural products associated with the book Casino Royale, by Ian Fleming.

Design/methodology/approach

A layered and nested case study approach was used to analyze data from four online platforms: Goodreads, Last.fm, WordPress, and public library social discovery platforms. The top-level case study focuses on the book Casino Royale, by Ian Fleming, and its derivative products. The analysis of tagging practices in each of the …

Digital Refuse: Canadian Garbage, Commercial Content Moderation And The Global Circulation Of Social Media’S Waste, Sarah T. Roberts

Media Studies Publications

The story of a rogue Canadian garbage barge attempting to offload illegal garbage in the Philippines opens this article on techno-trash, in order to underline both the relationships between countries of the Global North with countries of the Global South in matters of waste, as well as to reframe discussions of techno-trash as one fundamentally tied to material things. The definition of techno-trash is then expanded, to cover digital detritus created through an entirely digital set of practices I term “Commercial Content Moderation.” The attempt to offload mounds of e-waste and the similar ways in which a great deal of …

Commercial Content Moderation: Digital Laborers' Dirty Work, Sarah T. Roberts

Media Studies Publications

In this chapter from the forthcoming Intersectional Internet: Race, Sex, Class and Culture Online (Noble and Tynes, Eds., 2016), I introduce both the concept of commercial content moderation (CCM) work and workers, as well as the ways in which this unseen work affects how users experience the Internet of social media and user-generated content (UGC). I tie it to issues of race and gender by describing specific cases of viral videos that transgressed norms and by providing examples from my interviews with CCM workers. The interventions of CCM workers on behalf of the platforms for which they labor directly contradict …

In/Visibility, Sarah T. Roberts

Media Studies Publications

In online life there is a normative supposition that the information- and image-rich environment of the web and other platforms should provide unfettered access to the circulation of all types of content. Less attention is paid to what is not seen, to the invisible—be it actual content that is rescinded, altered or removed, or the opaque decision-making processes that maintain its flow. In/visibility online is central to the intertwined functions/mechanisms of user experience and platform control, further operationalized under globalized, technologically driven capitalism. A digital labour phenomenon that is both responsible for it and relies upon it: is …

“Popcorn Tastes Good”: Participatory Policymaking And Reddit’S “Amageddon”, Alissa Centivany, Bobby Glushko

FIMS Publications

In human-computer interaction research and practice, policy concerns can sometimes fall to the margins, orbiting at the periphery of the traditionally core interests of design and practice. This perspective ignores the important ways that policy is bound up with the technical and behavioral elements of the HCI universe. Policy concerns are triggered as a matter of course in social computing, CSCW, systems engineering, UX, and related contexts because technological design, social practice and policy are dynamically entangled and mutually constitutive. Through this research, we demonstrate the value of a stronger emphasis on policy in HCI by exploring a recent controversy …

A Model Of Social Media Engagement: User Profiles, Gratifications, And Experiences, Lori Mccay-Peet, Anabel Quan-Haase

FIMS Publications

No abstract provided.