A special issue of Observatorio (OBS*) resulting from the EUMEPLAT project has been released.

Observatorio (OBS*) is journal focused on publishing articles within the extended scientific field of communication and media studies, based on original research and new theoretical propositions.

Here you can read the editorial “Platformisation of News and Interactions – Regional Contexts of Crisis in Trust”, by Cláudia Álvares and Mehmet Ali Üzelgün from ISCTE-IUL.

Here-below you can find all the articles includes in the OBS* Observatório Special Issue

European narratives on social media platforms: the Italian case during the Covid-19 pandemic

Authors: Andrea Miconi, Sara Cannizzaro, Elisabetta Risi

Abstract

We present the findings of a quali-quantitative study of public opinion concerning Europeanization on social media platforms in Italy during the Covid-19 pandemics. The study aims to investigate which narratives about Europe are published on Italian digital platform. The research is based on a content and discourse analysis of the 720 most impactful posts published by different actors on Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter, between September and November, 2021. In order to assess the state of online discussions bearing the highest level of engagement during the pandemics, we took into account the actors responsible for the posts, the narratives surrounding the most relevant European issues (based on EuroBarometer polls), and the sentiment towards Europe.
Our quantitative results show that professionally-produced content is more dominant, and the main topics on the social media agenda are Health and Economy, in particular related to health measures and the social and economic restrictions imposed by the Italian government on citizens. Our qualitative results show that Europeanization constituted a leverage for populism in news and contents on Italian social media platforms. The positioning towards Europe is fluid and ambivalent (encompassing both positive and negative sentiment) in populist rhetoric, and Europeanization is manipulated for national purposes.

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Mapping Europeanization in the Greek online public sphere: Assessing the Europeanizing dynamics of social media

Authors: Ioanna Archontaki, Achilleas Karadimitriou, Iliana Giannouli, Stylianos Papathanassopoulos

Abstract

For more than a decade, following the peak of the debt crisis, Greece has been facing multiple challenges. Amongthem, a pandemic (COVID-19) that brought the global and thus the Greek economy to a halt, an energy crisis that threatens to flatten entire social classes, a refugee crisis, and wider regional instability. All of these concurrent problems reflect crucial socio-economic transformations compounding the country’s unsustainable debt. Despite these adverse factors, in the present research the anti-European sentiments have almost entirely disappeared from the online public sphere. To examine the presence of Europe in the Greek online public discourse, a quantitative content analysis was conducted. The sample was based on 700 posts published on Facebook, Twitter and YouTube coming from mainstream media organisations’ accounts, individual users’ accounts, and public pages. According to the research findings, social media platforms function, to some extent, as alternative agenda setters, fostering the dissemination of topics, or the expression of viewpoints that are circumvented by the media organisations’ posts. Moreover, the online discussion regarding EU prospects and the European institutions’ policies are largely descriptive, devoid of any critical reflection or conflict. Therefore, Greece’s position in the EU looks like a one-dimensional issue, a feature that can be attributed to the fact that, in the Greek online public sphere, alternative voices and sources have a limited presence within the most viewed content of social media platforms.

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Taking Europe home: how political agents stand out in their approach to Europe on social media

Authors: José Carlos Moreno, Sofia Ferro Santos, Rita Sepúlveda

Abstract

Recents studies suggest the existence of a European Public Sphere, especially in the face of events of significant importance. In the scope of the Covid-19 crisis, this paper aims to study the platformization of the discussion on European topics by political agents such as politicians and political parties. Focusing on four Southern European countries – Greece, Italy, Portugal, and Spain – that have a common past history in their relationships with Europe (PIGS), we analyze political agents’ posts with the highest reach. The study was conducted on Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube over a period of three months, between September and November 2021.
Regarding the platformization and the success of communication strategies, overall right-wing politicians tend to be more effective in capturing the attention and mobilising the participation of social media users on Facebook and Twitter. Different political groups stand out in the discussion of different European issues on different platforms. However, for most countries, the Economy, related to Europe, was the main subject with the highest reach addressed by the political actors, thus reinforcing the idea of Structural Europeanization. However, with most posts having a national scope, this does not contribute to strengthening the construction of a European Identity (Normative Europeanization). These findings are aligned with previous literature regarding European issues being first and foremost used as leverage for national political struggles, especially due to national and populist movements.

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Platform Spiritualities: Entrepreneurial Selves and Post-Feminist Sensibilities of Russian Influencers

Authors: Sabina Balishyan, Panos Kompatsiaris

Abstract

In this article, we look at how preeminent Russian-speaking influencers spread sensibilities of entrepreneurialism and post-feminism on social media platforms, and specifically Instagram. Drawing on platform studies, critical theory and material from influencer accounts, we explore the ways that platform-based spiritualities are embedded in the neoliberal economies of self-presentation, micro-celebrity and branding in Russia and beyond. We understand spirituality as a broader figure encompassing both external beliefs in the divine, such as in magic, spirits and forces that lie beyond human understanding, as well as internal beliefs in spiritual tropes for reaching self-development, including exercise, mindfulness and life coaching, among others. By amplifying presentations of the self around regimes of happiness, positivity, self-growth and unfettered joy, platform spiritualities nullify critical thought and normalize a depoliticized conception of selfhood in the Russian public space. Influencers encourage women to focus on themselves, travel, dress up, dream about wealthy husbands and exotic sensations, and prioritize their own well-being and empowerment over social or collective concerns. The depoliticized discourse of these influencers is largely an outcome of the social media imperative to produce safe and riskless content under the fear of cancellation, which can lead to a loss of advertising and other forms of revenue. We argue that, rather than being simply progressive vehicles for democratic publics and participatory cultures, social media platforms, and Instagram in particular, are key to intensifying an entrepreneurial selfhood that relies on magical thinking and spiritual guidance from abstract authorities in repressive political contexts.

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“The sovereignty of the region and its wealth is what really is at stake” Amazon fires in Jair Bolsonaro’s discourse on Twitter

Authors: Laara Carneiro, Livino Neto, Juliana Lima, Gleice Luz

Abstract

This article analyzes how the event reported by the media as the “Day of Fire”, as it becomes a media event, in a context of deep mediatization, is discussed by Jair Bolsonaro in his official Twitter account. It is understood that the discussion of this media event is part of a dispute of symbolic and persuasive power, transcending the media vehicles and conflicting with other sources of information, lived experiences, and interests of specific social groups, influencing the construction of a mobilizing narrative, which guides Bolsonaro’s discursive practice in the public opinion dispute. To this end, a thematic content analysis was applied to publications gathered from the account @jairbolsonaro between July 4th and September 16th, 2019. Next, two different discourse archetypes were constructed – one using elements of risk communication and the other using elements of populist communication – in order to understand and identify the characteristics and patterns of proximity among the tweets. Based on these two communication models and the political-social context surrounding this media event, we use Critical Discourse Analysis to interpret how Bolsonaro’s discourse relates to the Brazilian socioenvironmental crisis here remarked. At last, we arrived at the conclusion that the discourse mediated through Bolsonaro’s Twitter focuses on four main aspects: 1) it is reactive to the transformation of the socioenvironmental event “Day of Fire” into a media event; 2) it employs, as a strategy for the resumption of the public debate, a populist construction of two antagonistic political camps; 3) it seeks the silencing of non-capitalist ways of relating to the environment; and 4) it reveals a neoliberal populist discourse, which neglects a communication aimed at the prevention and mitigation of the existing risk.

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Datification of the wisdom of the crowd: a comparative analysis of innovation strategies in four European crowdfunding platforms

Author: Caterina Foá

Abstract

Crowdfunding is a business model where diverse stakeholders operate in a context considered an example of innovation in value co-creation. Based on literature about service ecosystems and value co-creation this study adopts the platformization of society as critical theoretical approach and analytical framework to study the relations between human and technological agents within four crowdfunding ecosystems in Europe. Conceiving Crowdfunding Service Providers (CSPs) as specialized organizations, regulated to operate multi-sided markets and to serve roles as ecosystems’ coordinators, we aim to identify the innovation strategies adopted by CSPs platforms from Italy, France, Spain and Portugal to support their core functions related to governance mechanisms, business models and infrastructural components. To understand the motives for innovation implementation and to compare the competitive adaptation from an ecosystemic perspective, we triangulate qualitative data from multiple sources to explain how and why these strategic choices affect the dynamics of value co-creation. The multiple cases-study systematizes and discusses similarities and differences, particularly as concerns the capacity of CFPs to orchestrate their governance and ICT components to innovate and take advantage of algorithms and AI implementation, collecting more data and money from user interactions. Conclusions highlight the nonneutrality of CSPs, which act as data analysts and translators, adopting more preventive, proactive or reactive strategies of usage and redistribution of the value, created, acquired and aggregated through data. Each CSP can be characterized by its infrastructure and data management approach, metaphorically being more eco-centred or ego-centred.

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Platform economy and journalism: another side to the precarious labor environment in Brazil

Authors: Janara Nicoletti, Roseli Figaro

Abstract

In this article, we discuss the precarious labor environment of Brazilian journalists with relation to platformization and the impacts it has had on the profession. This discussion is based on research data conducted on the work of journalists in Brazil, and primarily on the analysis of the results from the Brazilian Journalist Profile 2021 survey. The online survey consisted of a total of 3,100 professionals working in the field of journalism throughout the country. Data reliability is 95%, with a 2.3% margin of error. The study shows that around 60% of journalists work with online media, and more than half work from home – most of whom paid a high price for this as they were placed under a high level of stress with heavy workloads and overtime. Additionally, 50% of professionals in other communications fields have had to develop social networking roles that are unrelated to their job description. The discussion of this data, in view of precariousness and platformization, leads us to conclude that journalism professionals are subject to working conditions that have an impact on the quality of their physical and mental health.

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News platformization in Portugal: analysis of the dependence of the news media on social media and search engines

Author: Fabrício Santos de Mattos

Abstract

The research aims to understand the news platformization process based on the identification and analysis of the dependence that Portuguese news media have on social media and search engines in the process of distributed discovery of news. The method replicated the dependency analysis model proposed by Nielsen & Fletcher (2002) and Tambini & Labo (2016), selecting the 30 Portuguese journalistic media with the highest average volume of web traffic between July, August, and September 2022. Thus, the different types of access were identified with the SimilarWeb platform, used in the literature as a reference source in webometrics. The data showed that 19 news media have more than 50% of indirect traffic dependent on the platforms. As for the total volume, we found that, on average, 56.26% of news access originates from social media or search engines; 36.05% from direct access; 7.05% from reference links; and 0.31% from email, sponsored search, and advertising. Considering mobile devices, the average dependency increases to 57.35% and, on desktop devices, it drops to 50.05%. We found that there is variation according to the type of media and its content: those specializing in football have greater direct access, and those specializing in lifestyle and celebrities have greater indirect access. Digital native media also rely more on platforms, as do media coming from Radio and TV. We conclude that platformization is a relevant phenomenon in the news ecosystem in Portugal, with significant integration of journalistic media content in these digital infrastructures. Thus, media will have to find ways to counterbalance the power of platforms, which, at the same time, improve connection with the user and increase audience reach, control data, interaction patterns, as well as online advertising, operating in a logic of increased dependency.

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