Uncategorized – Page 2 – Debating Communities and Networks IX

What impact do Instagram influencers have on the community?

The effect of social capital on Instagram

influencers audiences

Nicola Roque

Curtin University

Abstract

This paper will discuss the strong ties that are formed in the involved communities of social media influencers, using the social media platform Instagram as an example. One Instagram influencer who has a large Instagram following is Tammy Hembrow; she involves and engages with different social groups in her audience. This range of demographics involved in Tammy’s audience has created social capital held by Tammy over many different kinds of people. With the use of this influencer as an example, this paper discusses the ties formed between the influencer and the audience, the ties formed between the audience members and other audience members and the balance between financial gain and creating strong ties within the community.

Keywords: Weak ties, Strong ties, Instagram Influencers, Social Capital.

The effect of social capital on Instagram

influencers audiences

The social capital held by social media influencer’s significantly impacts on the ties formed in involved communities. Many people use social media to connect with communities, create networks and create social ties with people with similar interests. Networks within this social media context refer to these connections that are made between people with similar interests. Strong and weak ties can be created with members of these networks, and often these ties can be influenced by people who hold social capital. One platform that has many social media influencers who hold social capital is the social media site Instagram. “The top 50 Instagram influencers total 3.1 billion followers.” (Influencer Marketing Hub, 2018). These large amounts of followers often are interested in the niche markets that are presented by the Instagram influencers such as fitness, health and beauty, gaming, lifestyle, motherhood or sports and many other topics. The connection of interests held between the followers of each influencer community can create social ties. In this paper, I will argue that the social capital held by social media influencer’s significantly impacts on the ties formed in involved communities. I will be backing up this argument by looking into three main points that show the impact of this social capital on involved people. Firstly I will be discussing the relationships formed between the influencer and the audience, being strong ties with regard to the influence that these influencers have over their audience. Secondly I will discuss the relationship formed between the audience and other audience members as being strong ties due to the connection of similar interests between audience members. Thirdly I will be discussing the balance between product promotion/ financial gain and creating strong ties in the involved community. I will be discussing these points with reference to the Instagram influencer Tammy Hembrow; an Australian based fitness, health and beauty influencer and Mother.

Social capital

Social Capital refers to “The ability of actors to secure benefits by virtue of membership in social networks.” (Portes, 1998; Mu, J., Peng, G., & Love, e. 2008). Ties formed in communities refer to the weak and strong relationships formed in communities online and offline. These ties can be between social media influencers and their audience and/or between the audience members themselves. Social ties in this context can refer to a strong friendship- like relationship or to the ability of a social media influencer to influence an audience member due to the respect held by an audience member for that influencer, even though these two parties may have never engaged in conversation before. Macpherson et al (2006) argues that “Using communication technology may weaken social ties, increasing the prevalence of social isolation throughout society.” (McPherson et al, 2006; Boase, J. 2008). This communication technology referring to any technology being used to communicate with others, such as smartphones. In the context of this argument communication technology could be further defined as social media tools that are used by people to communicate.

The argument of McPherson et al. on the weakening of social ties is relevant to this argument as social ties may have been weakened within influencers and their audience’s due to the lack of actual conversation between the influencer and each audience member. However strong ties may also be created due to the use of social media communication technologies, between influencers and their audiences and between the audience members. The majority of studies however suggest that people utilise different kinds of social media communication technologies in order to fit their lifestyles and social needs. (Boase, J. 2008). The majority of people use social media to connect with others and grow their communities, in turn decreasing the amount of social isolation within society. (McPherson et al, 2006; Boase, J. 2008).

Relationships between the influencer and audience

Tammy Hembrow is an Instagram influencer who has created a community involving different social groups and members; mothers, fashion and beauty lovers and fitness lovers. Tammy Hembrow’s different range of interests and talents allows for a large audience of different demographics. Tammy has over 8 million Instagram followers, with an average of 5 thousand followers per day. (Social Blade, 2018). Instagram influencers such as Tammy Hembrow that reach a large audience, often feel a range of benefits from their jobs such as receiving money, free products and potentially being able to make influencing their main occupation. “Networking is the ostensible purpose of these sites – using one’s chain of connections to make new friends, dates, business partners, etc.” (Donath, J., & Boyd, D. 2004). Networking for an influencer like Tammy, means making money and is absolutely imperative to making her brand flourish. Growing these communities is essential to influencers, using the chain of connections to find new followers with similar interests. Tammy creates and keeps these connections strong with her audience members by replying to comments made by audience members and by speaking on her Instagram story, answering questions for her audience. She also has other active social media accounts such as Twitter, Snapchat and Youtube. Using these different platforms allows her audience members who have found her images on Instagram and want to find more information on the topics that she covers (i.e: motherhood, fashion, fitness etc) to follow links to each of her social media accounts and find what they are looking for. By using this chain of social media communication technology platforms Tammy has created a larger audience for herself, reaching different types of audience members on each platform. This has created multiple social ties between herself and each of her audience members.

The social capital held by influencers like Tammy creates strong ties with their audience members due to the ability that they have to influence audience members. This includes the ability to influence audience members to purchase promoted products, to try activities promoted by the influencers and to follow other brands or influencers that are connected to the influencer. Social network influencers are seen as “A trusted tastemaker in one or several niches.” (Veirman, D, M., Cauberghe, V., & Hudders, L. 2017). These influencers are seen as trusted due to the high number of followers that they obtain, making audience members feel that if other people of similar demographic to themselves, trust, respect and follow the information that these influencers put forward, that it is suitable for them to do so too. This social capital held by these influencers therefore impacts on the social ties created by the influencer and their audience members by allowing Instagram influencers to have some power and influencer over their audience, which shows a strong tie between these audience members and the influencer.

Relationship between audience and other audience members

“Underlying all the networking sites are a core set of assumptions: that there is a need for people to make more connections, that using a network of existing connections is the best way to do so, and that making this easy to do is a great benefit.” (Donath, J., & Boyd, D. 2004). Finding new connections is easier when a preconceived group of individuals with similar interests has already been created. Audience members know where to go to find people to make connections with. Social media sites allow users to meet strangers, but they also “Enable users to articulate and make visible their social networks. This can result in connections between individuals that would not otherwise be made. (Boyd, D., & Ellison, N. 2007). Often social media influencers allow for connections to be made within audience members that usually would not connect, potentially due to differing geographic location or differing demographics. Using Tammy Hembrow’s following as an example, many traditional followers of beauty and fashion bloggers on Instagram are young women around the ages 13-25, however the fact that Tammy is a young mother brings in a new set of audience members; mothers. This range of followers allows for audience members who may not have connected before to connect online.

Counter argument

Danah M. Boyd and Nicole B. Ellison argue that although social network sites do allow strangers to meet online, the main reason for people using social media sites is in order to articulate their pre-existing social networking connections, this could be relationships that have been formed on other social networking sites previously or offline. Boyd & Ellison argue that these meetings between people over social media are often due to “latent ties”, that are existent between people that have met offline before. (Boyd, M. D., & Ellison, B. N. 2007). This counter argument is relevant in that often people on some social media sites have met offline, however in the context of the social media site Instagram, people post images that capture their brand image or something that they want to present about themselves, creating an identity for themselves online. This encapsulate the idea behind the platform, putting forward an identity you want to be received by others, through the use of images and videos. Due to this being the main purpose of Instagram, it makes sense that people who do not know each other offline would meet online and follow each other, perhaps for inspiration or because they share similar interests. This creates strong ties between audience members of influencers as they have never met before but still come together due to similar interests.

Balance between product promotion/ financial gain and creating strong ties in the community

Many Instagram influencers are paid by companies to promote products due to their large range of audience members. “Instagram influencers receive payments ranging from free products to $1 million per post.” (Influencer Marketing Hub, 2018). They are paid by these company’s due to the influence that they have over their audience. This means “These endorsements are likely to be interpreted as highly credible electronic word of mouth (eWOM) rather than paid advertising as they are often seamlessly woven into the daily narratives influencers post on their Instagram accounts”. (Abidin. 2016; Veirman, D, M., Cauberghe, V., & Hudders, L. 2017). Influencers audiences feel as though they relate to the influencers they follow, to them the influencer is almost a friend or guide to finding the best clothes, makeup, fitness techniques etc. It is easy for an influencer to incorporate a paid advertisement into their feed without it seeming like they are just trying to manipulate their audience into purchasing products because they are trusted as being an expert in a niche market. “People will ignore ads, but they won’t ignore posts, mentions and blogs by influencers who they have willingly followed and routinely engage with. (Ghidotti, N. 2017).

The impact of a social media influencer not finding the balance between keeping and creating meaningful connections with people in their involved communities and product promotion/ financial gain can lead to a loss of trust between influencers and their audiences. “Celebrity endorsements, however, tend to be expensive and are sometimes viewed as untrustworthy because the stars are motivated by money and not by sharing honest opinions and experiences”. (Morgan, N. 2017). When audience members lose trust in their Instagram influencer it leads to the job of the influencer; to influence their audience into buying products that they enjoy themselves, being very hard to do. Audience members lose trust and don’t believe that the influencer is promoting a product or brand because they truly enjoy it and are only promoting it for financial gain. This can occur due to the size of the influencers audience; the larger their audience the more famous the influencer is, which can make the audience feel as though the influencer is less relatable. This can also occur because the influencer is promoting something seemingly very different to what they usually promote or doesn’t seem to align with the influencers beliefs, likes or interests in the audience’s mind.

This balance between product promotion/ financial gain, which is necessary to find due to the social capital held by the influencer, impacts on the ties formed between the influencer and the audience by potentially weakening social ties if balance is not found.

Conclusion

From the research supplied it can be said that for the most part the social capital held by social media influencers, impacts significantly on the social ties held by involved communities by creating strong ties between; the influencer and their audience and the audience members and other audience members. If a balance is found between product promotion/ financial gain and retaining a trustworthy, respectful relationship with audience members then social ties are strengthened between the influencer and the audience. By using a famous Instagram influencer such as Tammy Hembrow for reference it is evident that this argument is relevant.

References

Mu, J., Peng, G., & Love, E. (2008). Interfirm networks, social capital, and knowledge flow. Journal of Knowledge Management, 12, 86-100.

https://doi.org/10.1108/13673270810884273

Boase, J. (2008). Personal networks and the personal communication system. Information, Communication & Society, 11.

https://doi-org.dbgw.lis.curtin.edu.au/10.1080/13691180801999001

Influencer Marketing hub. (2018). 15 Mind Blowing Instagram Statistics You Don’t Know. Retrieved from: https://influencermarketinghub.com/15-instagram-influencer-statistics/

Social blade. (2018). Instagram Statistics Summary for Tammy Hembrow. Retrieved from:

https://socialblade.com/instagram/user/tammy%20hembrow

Donath, J., & Boyd, D. (2004). Public Displays of Connection. BT Technology Journal, 22 (4), 71-82.

http://smg.media.mit.edu/papers/Donath/socialnetdisplay.draft.pdf

Boyd, D., & Ellison, N. (2007). Social Network Sites: definition, History, and Scholarship. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 13 (1).

https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1083-6101.2007.00393.x

Veirman, M., Cauberghe, V., & Hudders, L. (2017). Marketing through Instagram influencers: the impact of number of followers and product divergence on brand attitude. International Journal of Advertising, The Review of Marketing Communications. 36(5), 798-828.

https://doi-org.dbgw.lis.curtin.edu.au/10.1080/02650487.2017.1348035

Ghidotti, N. (2017, March 1). Snapchat, Instagram and Influencers, How to Know What’s Best for Your Brand. Public relations Tactics. Retrieved from: http://web.a.ebscohost.com.dbgw.lis.curtin.edu.au/ehost/pdfviewer/pdfviewer?vid=1&sid=76a4db91-6749-4475-86d1-b8926ff2660c%40sessionmgr4006

Morgan, N. (2017). Instagram Influencers: The Effects of Sponsorship on Follower Engagement With Fitness Instagram Celebrities. (Doctoral dissertation). Retrieved from https://search.proquest.com/docview/2014469958?pq-origsite=primo

Oberlo. (2018). How to do Instagram influencer marketing [Image]. Retrieved from:

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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Subconsciously Absorbing Information Via Snapchat

Snapchats Success in Facilitating and Maintaining

Ambient Awareness in Users

Jenelle Miles

Curtin University

Abstract

The social media application Snapchat facilitates ambient awareness and actively maintains it in several aspect of the app. Facebook’s position as the leading social network for ambient awareness information has declined and Snapchat is now the main facilitator and maintainer on any social networking platform. This paper explains how Snapchat engrains features in its application to actively maintain ambient awareness, such as; best friends, streaks, filters, stories and Snap Map. The paper will argue these features are vital in the applications success in creating a forum that relies purely on users being interested in the ambient information they receive from other users.

Keywords: Snapchat, ambient awareness, weak ties, strong ties

Introduction
Many academic articles associate ambient awareness with the social networking site Facebook (Levordashka & Utz, 2016). This paper aims to prove the use of Facebook as a social networking site has changed to one where people are consciously aware of their audience and post less mundane information of their day. Ambient awareness still exists heavily in social media, however the application Snapchat is now the main facilitator and maintainer of this information. Snapchat has introduced many features to promote daily usage of the application and contact between users. The application uses these features to create a sense of community between the users who are connected within the network (Ahmed, 2016) and encourages users to uphold strong ties and heightens the possibility of strengthening weak ties (Kramer, et al. 2014).

Discussion

Ambient Awareness is a term associated with the psychology behind social networking sites. Ana Levordashka and Sonja Utz define it as “the awareness social media users develop of their online network in result of being constantly exposed to social information” (Levordashka & Utz, 2016, p. 147). This awareness of users online posts slowly works to create a strong connection between the user and their online friends. The term online friend is general because friendship is used on social media sites as a way to classify people users are connected to online. Online friendships represent a “binary, static, and symmetric relationship of equal value between all the directly connected users, which provide only a coarse indication of the nature of the relationship” (Ahmed, 2016, p. 496). This relationship or online friendship can grow stronger if each friend chooses to interact with each other online on a regular basis. A 2008 article in The New York Times highlighted the creation of ambient awareness through Facebook posts, in which small uninformative posts by Facebook friends are often “insignificant on its own, even supremely mundane” (Thompson, 2008, pp. 16). But taken together over time the small unimportant information works together to create an informative set of details about a users life (Thompson, 2008, pp. 16). Thomson writes that ambient awareness was not possible before social media and the way “updates are all visible on a single page in a big row” (Thompson, 2008, pp. 16, 23) means updates aren’t necessarily directed at each individual that is friends with said poster on social media, however each online friend will see the update and mentally catalogue it, whether they consciously realise they are doing it. Thompsons’ article introduced ambient awareness, however its argument that Facebook is the main site for the consumption of ambient information has severely changed since 2008. The concept of ambient awareness is kept alive through social media and the online communities it creates. Online communities are the basis of social networking sites and “require a technological infrastructure with tools and applications to enable user interaction and communication” (Wang, et. al, 2012, p. 782). To uphold online communities users maintain a sense of membership and influence with integration and fulfilment of needs and a shared emotional connection with other users of the same online platform (Blanchard & Markus, 2002, p. 2). Creating ambient awareness while using a social media site works to create a sense of community. It encourages people to share information on a particular platform.

Snapchat is a particular social media platform that relies on ambient awareness existing between users, which create a sense of online community between users of the social media application and the use of the platform itself.
Snapchat is a social media network created in 2011 (Vaterlaus, et al. 2016, p. 595) its existence relies on facilitating and maintaining ambient awareness. Unlike Facebook where posts stay on the site unless users actively delete them, Snapchat users “can share snaps (i.e., pictures and short videos that can include text and drawings) with friends that ‘disappear—forever—in a matter of seconds” (Vaterlaus, et al. 2016, p. 595) where “the sender can determine how long the viewer can view the Snap” (Vaterlaus, et al. 2016, p. 595). The application encourages these pictures to be of users everyday activities and mundane tasks and relies on creating ambient awareness between friends. The 187 million users daily (Aslam, 2018)is proof of the platforms popularity. Users can take visuals of what they are currently doing and can add ‘creative tools’ to the image as a way to add supplementary information in which viewers can soak up. These tools include the current weather, location and stickers to convey mood. Each tool appears mundane but can provide adequate information to the photo. Unless a screenshot is taken of a ‘snap’ pictures, messages and videos sent between friends will not be permanently saved and this is a large part of what keeps ambient awareness and therefor Snapchat alive. The applications ability to let users choose who to send data to “has been conceptualized as a more private form of communication and is an escape from the public one-to-many communication that is the default on Facebook” (Vaterlaus, et al. 2016, p. 595). This may encourage users to share mundane images that others may enjoy as they are aware it is not permanent or available for thousands of online friends to view and is likely it will not impact on their personal or professional life. Snapchat encourages one-to-one conversation between friends because there is less pressure to ensure users are representing themselves in the same way they would do so on Facebook or Twitter where posts reach a larger audience of online friends. Protecting ones reputation online is important even for low profile issues, such as a woman who used Facebook “to make fun of ugly scarves sold in the gift shop she worked in” (Mortiz, 2017, pp. 1). Many tweets that do not align with company values can result in a user being fired from their job due to social media use. Snapchat acts as a ‘safer’ social media platform, where users know their photos and opinions will almost only be shared with a select group of friends of their choosing and not on a Facebook feed.

Snapchats popularity as a highly personalised social media application enhances its ability to maintain a strong level of ambient awareness between users and the photos they share. Users may be more likely to share information about their daily life if they know they are only sharing information with a select group and not appearing on a newsfeed style network like Facebook. Snapchat encourages sharing between certain friends by labelling users who connect with each other on the application as ‘friends’ and ‘best friends’ emojis are placed next to each friends name to rank the strength of their Snapchat ‘friendship’ based on how often two people communicate with each other using the application. Users “can have up to eight Best Friends, and they’re featured front-and-centre on the ‘Send To’ screen” (Snapchat, 2018, pp. 1) this automatically prompts people to continue an online relationship with the same few users, maintaining the connection and promoting ambient awareness. This division of ‘friends’ and ‘best friends’ creates strong and weak ties between users of the application. Snapchat ‘friends’ can be categorised as weak ties as they provide informational support but are often colleagues or acquaintances (Kramer, et al. 2014, pp. 1), whereas the ‘best friends’ category on Snapchat can be a source of strong ties that provide “both emotional and informational support” (Kramer, et al. 2014, pp. 1) between the users. A study on Snapchat behaviours in 2016 found “research indicates that young adults are motivated to use snap chat and stay connected with family and friends” (Vaterlaus, et al. 2016, p. 596) the ‘best friends’ feature of the app promotes this connection, which maintains online connections and ambient awareness. Ambient awareness is only able to exist when a user is viewing updates, posts or photos from another user on a regular basis, Snapchat ensures ambient awareness is coexistent within the application with ‘streaks’. Snapchats website defines streaks as when two users “have Snapped each other within 24 hours for more than three consecutive days”(Snapchat, 2018, pp. 2) as each twenty four hour period passes the number between two people consecutively snapping increases, with the aim to continue the streak. A theme found in the study saw Snapchat is used “to enhance the connection in existing relationships” (Vaterlaus, et al. 2016, p. 598) and streaks are used to do this with the number acting as literal relationship tally. Streaks are a clear promoter of ambient awareness and means at least once a day, everyday for as long as the user is committed to the streak they are receiving a piece of information about a person. This not only promotes ambient awareness but can also encourage online connections even between weak ties. Snapchats ‘stories’ feature allows for ambient awareness to develop between weak ties. “A Story is a collection of Snaps that play in the order they were taken. You and your friends’ Stories cover the last 24 hours, so you can see the day unfold” (Snapchat, 2018, pp.1) this is useful in maintaining ambient awareness between users because even through they may not have sent a direct photo, they can upload a photo to their story for all of their Snapchat friends to see in the twenty four hour period. This story setting acts almost as a newsfeed and means if two people don’t directly Snapchat but view each other’s posts on their story they are still creating ambient awareness between each other. Stories are enablers of online relationships and turning weak ties into strong ties as people can directly reply to a story and if Snapchats are consistent between the two users a streak can begin and daily intake of ambient awareness about each other will occur. When a user uploads a story the option to upload it to our story exists, which enables people from all over the world to see the story they uploaded from their specific region, and if a user is regularly watching ‘our stories’ on a specific part of the world they are gaining information about the culture without consciously realising so.

The applications use of ‘my stories’ encourages ambient awareness on a global scale, particularly when it introduced geofilters such as Snap Map. Snap Map allows users to share their location with one another (Snapchat, 2018, pp. 1). Users have the option of making their location public on Snap Maps, they will appear at the exact street and location they are when active on the app and can choose wether to be seen to all of their Snapchat friends, a select few or none at all. This personal use of Snap Maps actually encourages ambient awareness. Users being able to view where others are during the day is essentially useless information, but over time someone can start to learn daily movements of a friend. As The New York Times article mentioned, ambient awareness was originally coined by how people used Facebook, Facebook is now deemed as too public for users to be constantly posting about their day. Because of this change in sharing, Snapchat is able to facilitate ambient awareness at a private level, as users perceive the app as “reserved for private conversation, rather than a large social network” (Vaterlaus, et al. 2016, p. 600) and they may feel more comfortable sharing their location on a social media application with a slightly smaller online friends base than on a network with a wider audience. Geo filters and submissions to Our Story means users can see what is happening across the world and can create a connection with places they have never physically visited. Users are able to view “sporting events, celebrations, breaking news, and more” (Snapchat, 2018, pp. 1) from their phones, this can be “useful for publishers who often compile reaction lists or for journalists who get a feel for a scene by looking at Snap Maps” (Carman, 2018, pp.4). Snap Maps creates ambient awareness of events and the cultures of different places. It also works to create an ambient awareness connection between users and celebrities via its ‘discover’ section, where users can “keep up to date with breaking news, the big game or your favourite celebs” (Snapchat, 2018, pp1). As prominent figures post content to their stories users can learn more about the figure and a connection is formed because of ambient awareness, even if what he celebrity is doing is mundane, users are still taking in information about them. Author Amanda McClain argues that “social media permits an ostensible link between celebrities and audience members” (McClain, 2013, p. 67) this link creates weak ties between celebrity and user. In one twenty four hour period, the American celebrity Kourtney Kardashian posted a video of her cooking breakfast and two pictures of herself with her children, the weak tie is exists because the user is viewing her posts and ambient awareness is created because they are taking in basic information about her daily life, however the “relationships between celebrities and audience members do not truly exist” (McClain, 2013, p. 67) because the viewing of mundane content, is only a one way relationship. Viewers may forge a connection with the celebrity, however this type of ambient awareness cannot create strong ties as information is only being received one way between the two Snapchat users.

Counter arguments

Arguments to the paper may include the understanding that all types of social media networks allow for the consumption of ambient awareness and there are many other social networking applications that do facilitate and maintain ambient awareness. A 2018 research study estimated “Facebook will lose 2 million users under 25 this year” (Guynn, 2018)and Snapchat will “add 1.9 million users”(Guynn, 2018) in the same age group. This research indicates ambient awareness is maintained in Snapchat because of people in younger age groups, however ambient awareness may still exist heavily on Facebook only with older Internet users facilitating the information.

Conclusion

Snapchats’ introduction of different features into the application such as ‘best friends’ streaks and My Story, encourages users to participate and be daily active users of the application. The point of the network is to create a sense of ambient awareness; weak ties do exist within the application and have the ability to be shaped into strong ties (except in the case of celebrities). Taking in information about others on a regular basis is the definition of ambient awareness and users appear to prefer Snapchat to larger social networking sites such as Facebook because their posts are broadcast on a private level and this actually increases the level of ambient information a user is willing to send and receive. Snapchat appears to be the main contributor to the production and consumption of ambient awareness across all social networking sites

References

Ahmed , J. (2016).A Semantic Model for Friend Segregation in Online Social Networks. Web Engineering, 16, 495-500. Retrieved from https://link-springer-com.dbgw.lis.curtin.edu.au/chapter/10.1007%2F978-3-319-38791-8_36

Aslam, S. (2018). Snapchat by the numbers: Stats, Demographics & Fun Facts. Retrieved from https://www.omnicoreagency.com/snapchat-statistics/

Blanchard, A., & Markus L. (2002). Sense of Virtual Community- Maintaining The Experience of Belonging. Proceedings of the 35th Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences. Retrieved from https://ieeexplore-ieee-org.dbgw.lis.curtin.edu.au/stamp/stamp.jsp?tp=&arnumber=994449&tag=1

Carman, A. (2018). You can now watch Snap Maps on the web. Retrieved from https://www.theverge.com/2018/2/12/17003486/snapchat-maps-online-snap-maps

Guynn, J. (2018). Snapchat snapping up young users fleeing Facebook. Retrieved from https://search-proquest-com.dbgw.lis.curtin.edu.au/docview/2001302697/fulltext/FBD94AC24C354978PQ/1?accountid=10382

Kramer, N., & Rosner, L., & Eimler, S., & Winter, S., & Neubaum, G. (2014). Let the Weakest Link Go! Empirical Explorations on the Relative Importance of Weak and Strong Ties on Social Networking Sites. Socities,4, 785-809. doi:10.3390/soc4040785

Levordaska, A., & Utz, S. (2016). Ambient Awareness: From random noise to digital closeness in online social networks. Computers in Human Behaviour, 60, 147-154. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.chb.2016.02.037

McClain, A. (2013). Keeping Up the Kardashian Brand: Celebrity, Materialism andSexuality. Retrieved from https://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/curtin/reader.action?docID=1524038&ppg=66

Moritz, K. (2017). These Social Media Posts Can Get You Fired. Retrieved from https://www.rewire.org/work/social-media-fired/

Snapchat. (2018). About Snap Map. Retrieved from https://support.snapchat.com/en-US/article/snap-map-about

Snapchat. (2018).Best friends. Retrieved from https://support.snapchat.com/en-US/a/best-friends

Snapchat. (2018). Discover. Retrieved from https://support.snapchat.com/en-US/a/discover

Snapchat. (2018). Snapstreaks. Retrieved from https://support.snapchat.com/en-US/a/snapstreaks

Snapchat. (2018). About Stories. Retrieved from https://support.snapchat.com/en-US/a/about-stories

Thompson, C. (2008). Brave New World of Digital Intimacy. Retrieved from http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/07/magazine/07awareness-t.html?_r=1

Vaterlaus, J., & Barnett, K., & Roche, C., & Young, J. (2016). “Snapchat is more personal”: An exploratory study on Snapchat behaviours and young adult interpersonal relationships. Computers in Human Behaviour, 62, 594-601. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.chb.2016.04.029

Wang, H., & Chung, J., & Park, N., & McLaughlin, M.. & Fulk, J. (2012). Understanding Online Community Participation: A Technology Acceptance Perspective. Communication Research, 39, 781-801. DOI: 10.1177/0093650211408593

Contentious Conversations: Race, Religion and Participation Within the New Media Landscape

James Manson. May 2018.

Abstract

The ubiquity of the internet and subsequent convergence of technology and culture, combined with the functionality of social media has allowed for new media technologies to be utilised by indigenous and marginalised communities as an effective mode of communication that crosses several cultural, geographic and political lines. Social media has the capacity to democratise and empower users but also to homogenise and pervert understandings depending on its uses. This study has identified that the discussions surrounding issues dealing with indigenous and marginalised communities in Australia are not only proliferated within these communities themselves, but people are often mobilised in response to various crises and citizen reports. This uncovered an interesting mechanism whereby uninvolved agents within various political communities and special interest groups hijacked these issues surrounding indigenous and marginalised peoples, in order to, promote a loosely related agenda. Politics, power, fear, left vs right-wing politics, political correctness and human rights are identified as often at the heart of these discussions and require a discerning eye when navigating social media.

Keywords: Indigenous Communities Online, Social Media, Participatory Culture, Citizen Journalism, Social Capital.

Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International

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The social media movement: The creation of online and offline communities using social media in the Black Lives Matter Movement.

Jessica Petrides

THE SOCIAL MEDIA MOVEMENT

Abstract

This paper explores the use of social media platform Twitter and its ability to create strong communities online, which are then taken offline to enact change. I will examine what determines a virtual community and the factors that contribute to creating a strong virtual community. Building on this, I will explore how virtual communities have to capacity to transcends to that of one which also exists offline. This paper will use the Black Lives Matter movement as an example to demonstrate the way in which the online activist movement also created an offline movement by organising protests, rallies and boycotts.

Keywords: Black Lives Matter, social media, online communities, Twitter.

THE SOCIAL MEDIA MOVEMENT

Social networking sites (SNS’s) have the ability to connect a wide range of demographics, from all over the world, to form online communities. These virtual communities can be used to spread awareness, create support systems, facilitate relationships and generate strong-ties between users (Porter, 2015). These virtual communities also have the capacity to transfer to offline communities. An example of this is Black Lives Matter, an originally online community which has become an offline movement. The movement, which utilises the social media platform Twitter, fights to spread awareness against racial disparity in America, and was created following unfortunate events of mistreatment to African Americans. Originally starting as a hashtag (#blacklivesmatter), the movement transformed into on ground protests, boycotts and rallies right around America. By delving deeper into both the online and offline communities that Black Lives Matter has created, I will be exploring how SNS’s have the capability to go further than just virtual interaction, and its ability to spread awareness and form communities that gather face-to-face in the world to achieve a shared goal.

Social media communities and the Black Lives Matter movement

Porter (2015) describes virtual communities as passion-centric, where the focal point of the communication by individuals is a shared interest and the interaction of this is supported by technology. To build a strong virtual community there are a set of factors which create its foundations. These factors include a fulfilment of needs, shared emotional connection between members and a sense of belonging (Hersberger, Murray, & Rioux, 2007). Because of these foundations, the assumption for a well maintained community should include content and support which reaches its member’s expectations, be engaging and act in solidarity. As Forman, Kern, and Gil-Egui (2012) discuss, the fulfilment of needs, shared emotional connection and sense of belonging, are all factors which can be achieved in both virtual and face-to-face communities. This provides a transition from virtual community to face-to-face, and vice versa, to be that of a smooth one. Virtual communities forming on social media websites can be said to be split into two groups, computer supported social networks (CSSNs) and the other, a network-based virtual community (Porter, 2015). CSSNs cover users who only communicate over computers and have the potential to have strong, moderate or weak ties. The second, network-based virtual communities, covers those individuals who are geographically dispersed where members seek social benefits (Porter, 2015). The creation of these online communities can be performed through gaming, chat rooms and social media. With the ease of access to social media, it can be utilised as a space to gather, communicate and discuss issues. This can be seen on Twitter, which now amasses over 330 million users worldwide (Statista, 2018). The creation of online communities assisted in creating a large and ongoing civil movement in the United States of America. The Black Lives Matter movement began in 2013, as a response to George Zimmerman’s acquittal of the shooting and killing of unarmed, 17 year old, African American, Trayvon Martin. Created by Alicia Garza, Patrisse Cullors and Opal Tometi, three African American women who were united together in their stance to form a revolutionary peace movement, the term Black Lives Matter was created. The purpose of their movement was to, and to this day still is to, affirm African Americans humanity, contributions to society and resilience in the face of deadly oppression, as they wish to live in a world where black lives are no longer targeted for demise (“Herstory,” 2013). The movement is strong and powerful and truly took off in 2014, when protests commenced in Ferguson, Missouri, following the shooting and killing of Michael Brown, who was once again an unarmed, African American, teenager. Brown’s death by a white police officer gained a large amount of traction on Twitter, with the Black Lives Matter hashtag being tweeted about on an average of 58,747 times per day for three weeks after Michael Brown’s death (Anderson & Hitlin, 2016). The large amount of media coverage and response to this incident brought to light topics of national debate including race, rights and gun control. From these unfortunate events, and many others since (“Timeline: The Black Lives Matter movement,” 2018), the Black Lives Matter virtual community was born, and was used as a platform and tool to organise on-ground events for communities to engage in this social activism in person.

How Black Lives Matter created an online community

Black Lives Matter, which originally began as a hashtag on Facebook (#Blacklivesmatter), transcended into an extremely popular and widespread Twitter movement. It created a large community of users and from the movement entered a recognisable community, with its own agenda and identity, to end racial disparity and police brutality (Freelon, McIlwain, & Clark, 2016). Twitter emerged as a platform where users shared stories, found common ground in their concern of the events occurring and together were fighting for reform (De Choudhury, Jhaver, Sugar, & Weber, 2016). Millions of users expressed their concerns over brutality, and a recognisable community with its own agenda and identity formed (Freelon et al., 2016). This growing community utilised multiple hashtags, as shown in Table 1 in the appendix. With over 21 million tweets regarding the Ferguson riots, and over 9 million regarding the killing of Michael Brown. Millions of tweets including the names of other victims of police brutality were also posted. Members of this community were fighting give a voice to those who could no longer speak for themselves. Amongst the millions of tweets displayed in appendix one, De Choudhury et al. (2016) discovered that users with high participation in the movement rarely expressed high levels of negativity or anger in their posts. They were determined to fight for change, as a calm collective. They were firm in their stance to organise action and were socially connecting, supporting, coping and engaging with each other as a community (De Choudhury et al., 2016). The online community grew so rapidly in size, that these users had the capacity to spread news of any brutality and issues regarding the movement faster than mainstream media (Miners, 2014). Adding to this, Patterson (2016) found that the community associated with Black Lives Matter was larger than any communities that were associated with mainstream media outlets. This formed a powerful community that had the ability to be well-informed and knowledgeable and was able to control the speed of information dispersed. As Freelon et al. (2016) discusses, supportive communities consistently attract more attention than those that are unaligned or opposed, and the Black Lives Matter movement who involved users rallying together so their voices could be heard and their desire for change further discussed, is a prime example of this. Twitter support from celebrities including Lebron James, Kim Kardashian West and Lady Gaga among many more, expanded the movements reach even further (James, 2016; Kardashian West, 2016; Gaga, 2016). With celebrities having a reach of millions on Twitter, this type of traction on the issue assisted in the movements capacity to those outside of the community of the issues at hand.

How Black Lives Matter created an offline community.

From reaching millions to create a virtual community on Twitter, the Black Lives Matter movement also adapted to on-ground communities right around America. Using Twitter as the main platform, it was able to facilitate the organisation of Black Lives Matter protests, boycotts and rallies. The organisation of these demonstrations were not just completed by the founders of the movement, but were done by many individuals and other organisations who shared the same goals. From July 2014 to March 2018, over 2300 protests or other demonstrations were held in support of this movement . Some protests attracted thousands and lasted for days, the biggest, and most covered by the media being the Ferguson protests which attracted a great amount of worldwide media attention. Community members who were on-ground at the protests, continued to update members of the community who were unable to make the Ferguson protests due to geographical location (Freelon et al., 2016). DeRay McKesson was one of these community members who live-tweeted his experience at the protests. This total amount of retweets and mentions of the brutality that was displayed at the protests amassed to 1 million (Freelon et al., 2016). With people from around the world seeing what this community was capable of arranging, the protests not only become widespread throughout the United States, they also became international and continued to attract thousands, with solidarity marches held in Manchester, London, Birmingham and Bristol (Pidd, 2016). On-ground support of the movement was also demonstrated by celebrities who had originally expressed their support of the campaign via Twitter. Celebrity husband and wife duo John Legend and Chrissy Tiegen hired several food trucks to serve free food to those protesting the movement in New York, Jay Z and Beyonce hosted a charity ball where they raised $1.5 million to donate to social justice groups including Black Lives Matter, four NBA players delivered a speech at the opening of the 2016 ESPY (Excellence in Sports Performance Yearly) Awards where they brought to light their strong support of the Black Lives Matter movement and actor Jesse Williams produced a documentary titled ‘Stay Woke: The Black Lives Matter Movement’ (Price, 2016). This transition to what once began as a hashtag, to millions worth of donations, a documentary and people demanding action on-ground, is a true testament to what a Twitter movement has the capability to do.

Conclusion

As shown above in the Black Lives Matter movement, strong virtual communities have the ability to become offline communities. Virtual communities with strong foundations and a clear purpose as discussed by have similar characteristics to traditional communities, and therefore can be both online and offline. Twitter gave the Black Lives Matter movement a global audience and the employment of this social media form gave way for Twitter users to also become a part of on-ground activism rather than just online activism. The sheer magnitude of protests, boycotts, rallies and media attention the movement received is a testament to this. Although it is impossible to measure if the movement would have been as influential without the Twitter movement, I believe it would not have gained the vast amount of traction and support that is has, and still does.

Appendix:

Table 1: Retrieved from “Beyond the Hashtags: #Ferguson, #Blacklivesmatter, and the Online Struggles for Offline Justice,” by D. Freelon, C. D. Mcllwain, and M. D. Clark, 2016.

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