Potts, A., Simm, W., Whittle, J. and Unger, J. W. (2014). "Success in digitally augmented activism: A triangulated approach to UK activist Twitter use", Discourse, Context, and Media.
The transformational potential of using social networking sites (SNS) for activism is a highly re... more The transformational potential of using social networking sites (SNS) for activism is a highly researched topic in various academic disciplines, but the topic of ‘success’ has been largely avoided by scholars, much to the detriment of activists themselves, for whom effective use of SNS has become action critical. In this paper, we triangulate findings (incorporating data from surveys, focus groups, and tweets from activists, and combining qualitative and quantitative methods of analysis, chiefly through corpus-based critical discourse analysis) to gain a better understanding of how activists perceive and construct activism on SNS, to describe some features of successful and unsuccessful activist tweets, and to provide some recommendations for heightened impact of activist activities on SNS. To this aim, we describe to what extent certain actions leverage the affordances of digital media and distinguish between categories of action along two dimensions: individualistic vs. collectivistic and persuasive vs. confrontational. We find that activists describe goals that involve individualized, persuasive (and therefore low-risk) activities to be most effectively achieved using Twitter, likely due to fear of police intervention. Activist tweets are found to be retweeted at a dramatically lower rate than a reference corpus of general tweets, and are characterized by lack of original content. We conclude by discussing the various ways in which activists could improve these circumstances and optimize their engagement with SNS by radically increasing their leveraging of the affordances of digital media.
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Publication Name: Discursive Approaches to Language Policy, edited by Elisabeth Barakos and Johann W. Unger
This textbook provides:
An introduction to the linguistic frameworks currently used to analyse language found in social media contexts
An outline of the practical steps and ethical guidelines entailed when gathering linguistic data from social media sites and platforms
A range of illustrative case studies, which cover different approaches, linguistic topics, digital platforms, and national contexts
Each chapter begins with a clear summary of the topics covered and also suggests sources for further reading to supplement the initial discussion and case studies. Written with an international outlook, Researching Language and Social Media is an essential book for undergraduate and postgraduate students of Linguistics, Media Studies and Communication Studies.