Digital Commons Network^™

New And Transferable Digital Skills In The Era Of The Covid-19 Pandemic: Mobilizing Social Support, Molly-Gloria Harper, Anabel Quan-Haase, William Hollingshead

Sociology Presentations

The COVID-19 pandemic is an unprecedented global crisis that has had profound impacts on people’s lives. Under these circumstances, social support can buffer against pandemic-related stress. Yet, the dynamics of the COVID-19 pandemic with its stringent health guidelines have created unique challenges to the mobilization of social support. These challenges particularly affect vulnerable groups with limited digital life skills. Based on a qualitative study of 101 semi-structured interviews with East York residents in Toronto, Canada conducted in 2013–2014, we investigate what new and transferable digital life skills are needed in the pre- and post-pandemic era to mobilize social support. Our …

Digital Media Use And Social Inclusion: A Case Study Of East York Older Adults, Anabel Quan-Haase, Molly-Gloria Harper, Alice Hwang

FIMS Publications

Digital media is essential to sustaining communication with various types of social ties. However, older adults (aged 65+) are reported to be the least likely to use digital media. While statistics show that older adults are increasingly using more digital media, evidence shows this is predominately aging long-term users of digital media rather than older adults adopting new digital media. To investigate this “grey divide” and adoption of digital media by older adults, this study qualitatively analyses semi-structured interviews of 41 individuals aged 65 and older from the East York region of Toronto, Canada. Our findings suggest that satisfaction with …

The Practice Of Curation On Instagram: A Bourdieusian Approach, Eve S. Smerchinski

MA Research Paper

Social media has become a salient part of the social world. However, social media platforms are no longer solely for conversing with others; they have become a tool for self-presentation and the curation of self. This paper explores how previous social media research and scholars can be used to understand the intentionality displayed by Instagram users as they construct their online identities and profiles. Additionally, this paper aims to further understand this process by approaching it as a process of curation through a Bourdieusian lens. Bourdieu’s sociological lens will allow for a further understanding of the intentionality behind social media …

The Networked Question In The Digital Era: How Do Networked, Bounded, And Limited Individuals Connect At Different Stages In The Life Course?, Barry Wellman, Anabel Quan-Haase, Molly-Gloria R. Harper

FIMS Publications

We used in-depth interviews with 101 participants in the East York section of Toronto, Canada to understand how digital media affects social connectivity in general--and networked individualism in particular--for people at different stages of the life course. Although people of all ages intertwined their use of digital media with their face-to-face interactions, younger adults used more types of digital media and more diversified personal networks. People in different age-groups conserved media, tending to stick with the digital media they learned to use in earlier life stages. Approximately one-third of the participants were Networked Individuals: In each age-group, they were the …

The Sociological Imagination In Studies Of Communication, Information Technologies, And Media: Citams As An Invisible College, Anabel Quan-Haase, Molly-Gloria Harper, Shelley Boulianne

FIMS Publications

In this 2020 CITAMS special issue of Information, Communication & Society, we bring together an important body of work that draws on the sociological imagination to ask critical questions of our times. We selected nine papers that represent both the breadth of sociological work taking place within CITAMS as well as the diversity of its members. CITAMS is welcoming of a range of perspectives in more than one way. We welcome studies of a range of tools and practices. For example, Kadylak and Cotten (this volume) study the willingness of older adults to use six different emerging technologies in …

Resignation Or Resistance? Examining The Digital Privacy Attitudes And Behaviours Of East Yorkers, Kaitlyn Cavacas

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Digital technologies have become enmeshed in everyday life causing the public to become exposed to potential privacy risks through data collection and aggregation practices. Further, the upsurge in use of social networking platforms has also created opportunities for privacy violations through institutional and social surveillance. Employing a qualitative thematic analysis, this study explores how adults (N=101) living in East York, Toronto, navigate privacy through their use of the internet and digital services. Participants expressed feelings of mistrust, loss of control, resignation, and perceived self-unimportance with regards to their digital data. Importantly, others noted their desire and attempts to …

Transgender Youtubers And The Power Of Coming Out: Existentialism, Gender Performance, And Self-Actualization, Meghan Miller

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

The transgender community has historically faced discrimination and oppression. However, the internet has emerged as a preeminent resource for transgender people to seek community and visibility, with YouTube acting as an especially valuable visual repository of self-representation. The present research is concerned with examining how transgender YouTube creators use the platform for self-actualization through the lens of existentialist and gender performance theory. Employing a qualitative content analysis of gender disclosure videos to explore this problem, this study shows how transgender YouTubers seek personal authenticity and self-disclosure, especially with the help of and in relation to their audiences. Further, having come …

Self Presentation Of Select Female Athletes On Instagram And Public Responses, Erin Ratelle

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Social media sites vastly have changed the ways in which athletes can interact with their fans. Positioned within the area of feminist cultural studies, this thesis employs a mixed-methods approach to examine how 8 selected female athletes display their bodies on Instagram via posted photos; how the public responds to this content via photo comments; and how these interactive postings fit with wider socio-cultural and historical contexts of women’s bodies in sport and physical activity. Using Erving Goffman’s theory on self-presentation and Jurgen Habermas’ theory on the public sphere, I conceive Instagram as both stage and space for public deliberation. …

Jihad And Hashtags: Women's Roles In The Islamic State And Pro-Jihadist Social Networks, Rachel K. Inch

MA Research Paper

Over a one-year period from January 2015 to January 2016, a team of researchers collected nearly 100,000 Tweets from female operated Twitter accounts that exhibited pro-Islamic State (IS) affiliations. The following exploratory research paper aims to address two questions: (1) will identifiable patterns of engagement be revealed through a thematic analysis of Tweets posted by pro-IS women?, and (2) do these patterns illuminate the roles pro-IS women occupy online and in real-time social networks? This research paper intends to challenge the gendered assumption that women play strictly supportive roles within the boundaries of the IS, and demonstrate that IS female …

“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 …

"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 …

Solidarity Is For White Women, Aramide Odutayo

2015 Undergraduate Awards

Can a simple hashtag constitute a social movement? The answer is a resounding yes. Using the definition of a social movement proposed in the Blackwell Companion to Social Movements as a framework, this paper illustrates that #SolidarityIsForWhiteWomen is a perfect example of how social media and social movements have intersected to inspire profound change. Created by blogger and black feminist scholar Mikki Kendall, #SolidarityIsForWhiteWomen highlighted the justified resentment that many black feminists have against the white liberal feminist movement. This paper contends that Kendall’s hashtag activism satisfies the fundamental characteristics of a social movement, because it was a coordinated, collective, …

Policing Cyber Bullying: How Parents, Educators, And Law Enforcement Respond To Digital Harassment, Ryan Broll

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Some prior research has emphasised how adults ought to address cyber bullying, yet little is known about how they actually prevent and respond to digital harassment. This study addresses this gap in the literature by exploring the formal and informal “policing” of cyber bullying by a network of security actors: parents, teachers and school administrators, and the public police. Data were collected through a mixed methods research design consisting of semi-structured qualitative interviews with eight parents, 14 teachers, and 12 members of law enforcement (n = 34) and quantitative surveys completed by 52 parents.

Drawing upon nodal governance theory as …