Youth collective political expression on social media: The role of affordances and memetic dimensions for voicing political views

Literat, Ioana; Kligler-Vilenchik, Neta

doi:10.1177/1461444819837571

Cited by 111 publications

(107 citation statements)

References 28 publications

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“…Considering how intimately these processes are related to creativity, it is surprising that we do not have more research on meme creativity to date. While online culture has been of interest for a while (e.g., Greenhow et al, 2011 ), memes largely flew under the radar, perhaps also given the difficulties associated with analyzing image rather than text ( Highfield and Leaver, 2016 ; Literat and Kligler-Vilenchik, 2019 ). As such, our study marks what we hope is the beginning of a new concern for digital and visual content in creativity research.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Social Media Responses to the Pandemic: What Makes a Coronavirus Meme Creative

Glăveanu

Laurent

2021

Front. Psychol.

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The current pandemic and the measures taken to address it, on a global scale, are unprecedented. Times of crisis call for creative solutions, and these are not reduced to the work of scientists or politicians. In everyday life, both in online and offline spaces, people use their creativity to make sense of the current situation, to cope with it, and to learn its lessons. Social media is a privileged space for mundane and participative creativity through the production and sharing of coronavirus Internet memes. In this article, we examine the creativity of such memes from a dedicated Reddit community. We ask, in particular, what makes a coronavirus meme creative and what this creativity tells us about the pandemic and popular understandings of it. To answer these questions, we use a triangulation of quantitative and qualitative methods by having 480 memes coded by three social media users for surprise, meaningfulness, elaboration, humor, and creativity and qualitatively analyzing those memes that score highly on each dimension. An interesting finding concerns the importance of elaboration and humor for the evaluation of creativity in the case of memes, above the more traditional criteria of surprise (proxy for novelty) and meaningfulness (proxy for appropriateness), perhaps a feature unique for Internet spaces. The article ends with reflections on what these findings tell us about creativity on social media more generally and the creative processes involved in the generation and reception of coronavirus memes in particular.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Social Media Responses to the Pandemic: What Makes a Coronavirus Meme Creative

Glăveanu

Laurent

2021

Front. Psychol.

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“…Trotz der immensen Popularität TikToks gibt es momentan nur wenige Studien, die sich auf Phänomene der Video-Sharing-App beziehen (Literat und Kligler-Vilenchik 2019). Dabei zeigt die Plattform aufgrund der rasant steigenden Anzahl von Nutzenden und anhaltenden kritischen Stimmen zu Jugendschutz, Datenschutzregularien und Zensurpraktiken einen hohen Bedarf an Auseinandersetzung (u.a.…”

Section: Aktueller Forschungsstand Zu Tiktokunclassified

Creative appropriation of political information on TikTok

Ackermann

Dewitz

2020

MedienPädagogik

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Der vorliegende Artikel befasst sich mit politischer Information auf der Mikro-Video-Plattform TikTok ausgehend von dem Hashtag #ww3, welches im Januar 2020 im Zusammenhang mit einem vermeintlichen Ausbruch eines 3. Weltkriegs grosse Popularität erhielt, nachdem US-Präsident Donald Trump einem von den USA geführten Drohnenangriff zugestimmt hatte, bei dem Irans General Qassem Soleimani getötet wurde. Auf Basis von 1373 entsprechend verschlagworteten Videos inklusive Captions wird multimethodisch analysiert, inwiefern Nutzende die unterschiedlichen kommunikativen Ebenen, die das Netzwerk bereit hält, verwenden, um – ausgehend von einem konkreten Thema – persönliche Bezüge, Gedanken und Einstellungen zu diesem zu verhandeln. Die quantitative Auswertung zeigt, dass der Wunsch nach Viralität und Sichtbarkeit zwar einen hohen Stellenwert für Nutzende auf TikTok hat, Videos und Captions aber auch intensiv genutzt werden, um sich mit politischen Themen und Fragestellungen auseinanderzusetzen. Auf welche Weise dies geschieht, wird im Rahmen des qualitativen, inhaltsanalytischen Teils der Studie betrachtet. Als gestalterische Mittel zur kreativen Bearbeitung politischer Information lassen sich dabei u.a. die Transformation bzw. der Plot-Twist in der Narration der Videos sehen, die semantische Klärung durch Text-Insertierungen, der Wunsch, eine primäre Lesart für das eigene Video vorzuschlagen und die ironische Überhöhung zur Distanzierung von eigenem Content oder emotionalen Triggern.

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“…While this study focuses on young Americans of voting age (18–24 years), research on a wider range of youth has established a consistent link between political use of social media and further engagement in politics (Boulianne and Theocharis, 2018). In particular, political expression on social media can facilitate collective meaning-making and help young people develop their political identities (Literat and Kligler-Vilenchik, 2019; Zuckerman, 2014). On a theoretical level, such opportunities for political self-expression are vital for today’s young people.…”

Section: Social Media Affordances and Youth Political Expressionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…To address this challenge, this study offers an investigation of how the features and affordances of social media can influence the political expression of young Americans (18–24 years). A novel experimental paradigm was employed to examine two characteristics of social media (identifiability and geo-boundedness) based on their importance in previous studies of youth political expression (Kligler-Vilenchik and Literat, 2018; Lane et al., 2018; Literat and Kligler-Vilenchik, 2019). Participants were randomly assigned to interact with a fictional social media platform and offered the opportunity to express their political views.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Social media design for youth political expression: Testing the roles of identifiability and geo-boundedness

Lane

2019

New Media & Society

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Previous research has examined how political expression on social media can affect young people’s engagement in political life. Yet a focus on dominant platforms (i.e. Facebook) and a lack of experimental studies have impeded theoretical understanding of how different features and affordances shape youth political expression. This study used a novel experimental paradigm to test how the design of social media sites can influence young people’s political expression. Participants (18–24 years) interacted with a fictional social media app that was manipulated in terms of identifiability and geo-boundedness. Users in anonymous (vs identifiable) environments reported less political self-presentation concern and were more likely to express their political opinions. In addition, unbounded (non-local) environments were perceived as better places to exert political voice and influence than bounded (local) environments. This study offers a promising starting point for studying and designing social media in which youth political expression can flourish.

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Youth collective political expression on social media: The role of affordances and memetic dimensions for voicing political views

Cited by 111 publications

References 28 publications

Social Media Responses to the Pandemic: What Makes a Coronavirus Meme Creative

Social Media Responses to the Pandemic: What Makes a Coronavirus Meme Creative

Creative appropriation of political information on TikTok

Social media design for youth political expression: Testing the roles of identifiability and geo-boundedness

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