Visual cross-platform analysis (VCPA) is a methodological approach designed to overcome two forms of bias in the social media research literature: first, a bias towards studies of single plat- forms and, second, a bias towards analysis that focuses on text and metrics. VCPA addresses this by providing methods for identifying visual vernaculars, defined as the platform-specific content and style of images that articulate any given social or political issue.
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This article interrogates platform-specific bias in the contemporary algorithmic media landscape through a comparative study of the representation of pregnancy on the Web and social media. Online visual materials such as social media content related to pregnancy are not void of bias, nor are they very diverse. The case study is a cross-platform analysis of social media imagery for the topic of pregnancy, through which distinct visual platform vernaculars emerge. The authors describe two visualization methods that can support comparative analysis of such visual vernaculars: the image grid and the composite image. While platform-specific perspectives range from lists of pregnancy tips on Pinterest to pregnancy information and social support systems on Twitter, and pregnancy humour on Reddit, each of the platforms presents a predominantly White, able-bodied and heteronormative perspective on pregnancy.
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In this project, we investigated how the visual vernacular of climate change, defined as the platform-specific content and style of images used to articulate climate change, changed on Twitter between 2016-19. Due to the high number of tweets in the dataset, we focused on smaller time-specific samples of tweets as a manageable way to track change over time.
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