New Media & Society

This article argues that maps of the Web’s structure based solely on technical infrastructure such as hyperlinks may bear little resemblance to maps based on Web usage, as cultural factors drive the latter to a larger extent. To test this thesis, the study constructs two network maps of 1000 globally most popular Web domains, one based on hyperlinks and the other using an “audience-centric” approach with ties based on shared audience traffic between these domains. Analyses of the two networks reveal that unlike the centralized structure of the hyperlink network with few dominant “core” Websites, the audience network is more decentralized and clustered to a larger extent along geo-linguistic lines.

Research on non-hedonic entertainment suggests the experience of elevation as an important construct leading to beneficial outcomes such as prosocial motivation. This study builds on first findings in this realm by distinguishing between different meaningful media contents. In a 3 × 4 between-subjects online experiment, we varied type of video (beauty of the earth, unity of humankind, portrayals of human kindness, and funny control videos) and context of proliferation (presentation on an unknown video platform or on YouTube with low vs high number of views). Meaningful videos indeed led to greater elevation, more universal orientation, and prosocial motivation—with videos showing human kindness standing out against other forms of meaningful videos. Human kindness videos additionally fostered more positive attitudes toward stereotyped groups—mediated by the feeling of elevation and the subsequent feeling of universal orientation.

Guided by media multiplexity theory (MMT), this article reports results of an experimental study examining how participants say they would respond to hypothetical changes in media use (i.e. increasing or decreasing use frequency) by an extended family member. After contending that MMT addresses both media use patterns and expectations, we employed expectancy violations theory (EVT) to consider the extent to which communication satisfaction (CS) and tie strength moderate evaluations of media use violations. Results supported MMT’s prediction that tie strength would moderate the extent to which the violation was perceived as important, whereas, following EVT, CS with the relative moderated perception of the violation’s valence. Beyond highlighting possible outcomes of media use violations, these results commend the nature of the relationship as a motivating force for media selection in interpersonal contexts.

This article investigates an intergenerational information and communications technology (ICT) program that seeks expressly to enhance children’s civic participation by placing them in mutually educational encounters with seniors. Applying Devine’s model of the interrelationship among structure, power, and agency, it problematizes this goal by analyzing the dialectics of the power relations between seniors and children who maintain a technology-driven relationship. The data were gathered via qualitative participant-observation in two elementary schools. The results reveal clashing implications for children’s empowerment as computer “teachers” and their experiencing of agency. Implementation of Devine’s theoretical model sheds light on the meanings of the stereotyped terms “digital natives” and “digital immigrants,” as well as on the a-stereotyped senior’s identity as “digital consumers.” The conclusions suggest that the technological gap may not be definitive in confirming young people’s supremacy in the generational hierarchy, signaling the need for caution in handling this gap via civic empowerment in an educational setting.

Following recent theoretical contributions, this article suggests a new approach to finding the governance in Internet governance. Studies on Internet governance rely on contradictory notions of governance. The common understanding of governance as some form of deliberate steering or regulation clashes with equally common definitions of Internet governance as distributed modes of ordering. Drawing on controversies in the broader field of governance and regulation studies, we propose to resolve this conceptual conundrum by grounding governance in mundane activities of coordination. We define governance as reflexive coordination – focusing on those ‘critical moments’, when routine activities become problematic and need to be revised, thus, when regular coordination itself requires coordination. Regulation, in turn, can be understood as targeted public or private interventions aiming to influence the behaviour of others. With this distinction between governance and regulation, we offer a conceptual framework for empirical studies of doing Internet governance.

The use of algorithms to mine big data for media preferences presents a transformation in the structure of the public sphere that is amplifying the tyranny of the majority. Whereas previous scholarship has lamented the fragmentation of the public sphere caused by the use of big data to inform audience analysis and media production, I argue here that fragmentation itself is not an implicitly bad thing for public debate, as fragmentation can encourage participation from the otherwise disempowered. Instead, I suggest that the use of big data to inform media production causes problems in the public sphere not because it fragments public debate, but because it somewhat paradoxically recentres public engagement around the complementary interests of the broad majority and profitability. The problem for public engagement is not that there are no overarching or all-encompassing media structures anymore but rather that these systems are informed by algorithms that promote a particularly populist ‘profitable and normal’ media experience.

This article addresses the digital culture of Islamophobic bloggers, focusing on the online circulation of a forensic photograph of a Swedish woman who was assaulted. The analysis shows how through appropriating this image, the bloggers created a unifying, imagined whiteness in the transnational Islamophobic network. The empirical analysis clarifies how this one image migrated and transformed in the blogosphere and legitimated the recurrent discursive trope of “Muslim rape.” This image became a subcultural “memory freeze frame” crystallizing the contemporary Islamophobic ideologies articulated in connection to race, ethnicity, nation, gender, and sexuality. The viral circulation of this image constructed a cultural, gendered, and racial Swedish whiteness, imagined to have become victimized by both Islam and liberal feminism, and therefore requiring global protection.

The purposes of the current study are (1) to conceptualize and test a social networking service (SNS) dependency measure and (2) to propose and test a general model of the effect of SNS dependency on online and offline interpersonal storytelling. This study is theoretically guided by media system dependency theory and communication infrastructure theory. Computer-assisted personal interviews (CAPI) were conducted with 477 SNS users aged 19–59 in Seoul in October of 2012. Confirmatory factor analyses results showed that our SNS dependency measure was valid and reliable. The results also confirmed that SNS dependency had direct effects on individual users’ levels of engagement with interactive activities on SNSs and indirect effects on offline interpersonal storytelling.

Privacy is a culturally specific phenomenon. As social media platforms are going global, questions concerning privacy practices in a cross-cultural context become increasingly important. The purpose of this study is to examine cultural variations of privacy settings and self-disclosure of geolocation on Twitter. We randomly selected 3.3 million Twitter accounts from more than 100 societies. Results revealed considerable cultural and societal differences. Privacy setting in collectivistic societies was more effective in encouraging self-disclosure; whereas it appeared to be less important for users in individualistic societies. Internet penetration was also a significant factor in predicting both the adoption of privacy setting and geolocation self-disclosure. However, we did not find any direct relationships between cultural values and self-disclosure.