social media

#VACHINA: How Politicians Help to Spread Disinformation About COVID-19 Vaccines

ABSTRACT

This paper focuses on how Brazilian politicians helped to spread disinformation about Covid-19 vaccines, discussing legitimation strategies and actors that played a significant role on Twitter and Facebook. Based on data gathered through CrowdTangle and Twitter API, we selected the 250 most shared/retweeted posts for each dataset (n=500) and examined if they contained disinformation, who posted it, and what strategy was used to legitimize this discourse. Our findings indicate that politicians and hyperpartisan accounts have a key influence in validating the Brazilian president’s populist discourse through rationalization (pseudo-science) and denunciation (against the vaccine). The political frame also plays an important role in disinformation messages.

Privacy Attitudes and Behaviors in the Age of Post-Privacy: An Empirical Approach

ABSTRACT

The digital world is a field of information and entertainment for users and a field of extraction of the most valuable good of recent years: personal data. How much of a threat to privacy is the collection and processing of data by third parties and what do people think about it? On the occasion of the extensive methods of surveilling citizens and collecting their data, this study attempts to contribute new empirical data evidence from the international research on the use of the Internet by the World Internet Project on attitudes and behaviors of individuals regarding online privacy and surveillance. The aim is to determine whether and to what extent the recorded concerns about the violation of privacy intersects with a growing acceptance of its very absence.

‘Blockchain Good, Bitcoin Bad’: The Social Construction of Blockchain in Mainstream and Specialized Media

ABSTRACT

Blockchain is one of the most widely debated technologies in recent years. Pundits and scholars have described it as a disruptive technology that will impact many sectors of society. Skeptics argue blockchain’s popularity is fuelled by the media’s obsession for the ‘next big thing’ rather than the intrinsic potential of the technology. In this paper, we follow a social constructivist approach with the aim of explaining how different discourses are creating new meanings about this technology. As Communication scholars, we focus on the role media play in framing debates about blockchain. Our analysis relies on a human coding of the most popular news about blockchain circulating on Twitter from October 2014 to July 2018. The findings show the general attitude about blockchain is predominantly positive. The discourses developing around crypto technologies are complex and multifaceted and indicate a general transition in the rhetorical definition of blockchain.

What is Global Sports Law? The View from the Twittersphere

ABSTRACT

Sports competitions are some of the oldest global activities and have been extensively organized and regulated on a global level. As a result, it is common to speak of global sports law. However, what is global about sports law and the extent of globalization of sports law’s globalization process is unclear. This article sheds new light on these questions by studying conversations about sports law on Twitter. It confirms the parallel existence of local and global sports law and explores what constitutes each. Finally, it uncovers geography-based differences in the level of globality.