Identity theory (IT) and social identity theory (SIT) are eminent research programs from sociology and psychology, respectively. We test collective identity as a point of convergence between the two programs. Collective identity is a subtheory of SIT that pertains to activist identification. Collective identity maps closely onto identity theory’s group/social identity, which refers to identification with socially situated identity categories. We propose conceptualizing collective identity as a type of group/social identity, integrating activist collectives into the identity theory model. We test this conceptualization by applying identity theory hypotheses to the “vegan” identity, which is both a social category and part of an active social movement. Data come from comments on two viral YouTube videos about veganism. One video negates prevailing meanings of the vegan identity. A response video brings shared vegan identity meanings back into focus. Identity theory predicts that nonverifying identity feedback elicits negative emotion and active behavioral response, while identity verification elicits positive emotion and an attenuated behavioral response. We test these tenets using sentiment analysis and word counts for comments across the two videos. Results show support for identity theory hypotheses as applied to a collective social identity. We supplement results with qualitative analysis of video comments. The findings position collective identity as a bridge between IT and SIT, demonstrate innovative digital methods, and provide theoretical scaffolding for mobilization research in light of emergent technologies and diverse modes of activist participation.

Research shows a clear intersection between humor and political communication online as “big data” analyses demonstrate humorous content achieving disproportionate attention across social media platforms. What remains unclear is the degree to which politics are fodder for “silly” content production vis-à-vis humor as a serious political tool. To answer this question, we scraped Twitter data from two cases in which humor and politics converged during the 2016 US presidential election: Hillary Clinton referring to Trump supporters as a “basket of deplorables” and Donald Trump calling Hillary Clinton a “nasty woman” during a televised debate. Taking a “small data” approach, we find funny content enacting meaningful political work including expressions of opposition, political identification, and displays of civic support. Furthermore, comparing humor style between partisan cases shows the partial-but incomplete-breakdown of humor’s notoriously firm boundaries. Partisan patterns reveal that the meeting of humor and social media leave neither unchanged.

Scholarly and lay publications have highlighted increasing online misogyny. We review the dominant, cross-disciplinary analyses and conceptualizations of cisnormative, heterosexist, misogynistic discourses. From feminist media /journal/soc4 1 of 12 her personal website. Other examples of "online hate culture" included a New York Times editor being flooded with anti-Semitic Tweets, and Reddit boards devoted to beating women and denigrating photos of fat women (Stein, 2016).The culture's major culprit, according to author Joel Stein? Trolls. Stein (2016) asserts that, "Trolls are turning social media and comment boards into a giant locker room in a teen movie, with towel-snapping racial epithets and misogyny." Troll expert Whitney Philips writes that trolls aim "to disrupt and upset as many people as possible, using whatever linguistic or behavioral tools are available" (2015, p. 3). Beneath these vaguely gendered statements, we suggest, lies a larger truth: Internet trolls, regardless of in-person gender, are performing virtual manhood acts. Virtual manhood acts, as defined by Moloney and Love (2017), use technologically facilitated textual and visual cues to signal a masculine self in online social spaces, enforce hegemonic sexuality and gender norms, oppress women, and keep men "in the box." The performance of manhood in online social spaces allows the actor to claim the pinnacle of power in our patriarchal society.In this paper, we first offer a brief primer on key, interlocking constructs that form the foundation of this review.We then assess understandings of online misogyny within feminist media scholarship. Next, we explore the sociological perspective and suggest that "virtual manhood acts," a nascent sociological concept, offers perhaps the most useful lens with which to analyze misogyny in virtual social spaces. Reviewing conceptualizations from multiple social scientific literatures allows us to recognize that online misogyny is an important and growing social problem rooted not in women's inherent vulnerability, but in problematic manhood practices that replicate hegemonic hierarchies.

Although group interaction is a rich source of data, it offers many challenges for analysis. We discuss how pretesting can solve many coding and reliability issues before the actual data collection and analysis. We also consider how coding schemes can be developed, how coders can be trained, and how coder reliability can be ascertained. We examine the properties of different estimates of intercoder reliability and detail how these relate to decisions about the data.