Studying images on social media introduces several challenges that relate to the size of datasets and the different meaning-making grammars of social visuality; or as aptly pointed out by others in the field, it means ‘studying the qualitative on a quantitative scale’. Although cultural analytics provides an automated process through which patterns can be detected in large numbers of images, this methodology doesn’t account for other modalities of the image than the image itself. However, images circulating social media can (and should) be analyzed on the level of their audience as the latter is co-creating the meaning of images. Bridging the study of platform affordances and affect theory, this paper presents a novel methodology that repurposes Facebook Reactions to infer collective attitudes and performative emotional expressions vis á vis images shared on the large Syrian Revolution Network public page (+2M). We found visual patterns that co-occur with certain collective combinations of buttons, displaying how socio-technical features shape the discursive frameworks of online publics.
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We examine the ways in which a hidden crisis can be exposed from a communication point of view. In which way can organisations create general awareness of a crisis and try to understand the dynamic nature of interactions? With the help of discourse analysis, we have examined the interactional achievements of two crisis entrepreneurs in the domain of education in the Netherlands: a rector of a secondary school and the founders of BON, a social movement aimed at improving the quality of education. In this way, we will illustrate the discursive practices that play an active role when certain players signal a crisis.
In this case study, we want to gain insights into how residents of three municipalities communicate about the new murder scenario of the cold case of Marianne Vaatstra and the possibility of a large-scale DNA familial searching. We investigate how stakeholders shape their arguments in conversation with each other and with the police. We investigate the repertoires that participants use to achieve certain effects in their interactions with others in three focus groups. The results show that the analyzed repertoires are strong normative orientated. We see two aspects emerge that affect the support for large-scale DNA familial searching. These are: 1. Cautious formulations: respondents showed restraint in making personal judgments and often formulated these on behalf of others. Participants would not fully express themselves, but adjusted to what seemed the socially desirable course. 2. Collective identity: respondents focused on the similarities between themselves and the needs, interests, and goals of other participants. Participants also tried in a discursive way to convince each other to participate in the large-scale familial searching. These two major discursive activities offered the communication discipline guidance for interventions into the subsequent communication strategy.
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