Anna A. Litvinenko

Transferring control from the backend to the frontend: A comparison of the discourse architectures of comment sections on news websites across the post-Soviet world

This study compares how comment sections (CSs) were implemented, as of summer 2016, on the 179 leading national news websites across the 15 post-Soviet countries. In order to pursue this aim, a novel coding scheme is developed that facilitates assessment of the degree to which the discourse architectures of CSs transfer control over the content published from the backend to the frontend of a website. Accordingly, each CS is assigned a value on a ‘control transfer index’ (CTI). The study identifies the level of press freedom/democracy of a country as the only significant predictor for whether, and how openly, CSs were implemented. The popularity of CSs and their CTIs decreased with decreasing levels of press freedom/democracy. However, even in the most closed regimes, CSs were still a relatively commonly observed phenomenon. We interpret this latter finding by drawing on theories of citizen participation under authoritarian rule.

Please Follow Us: Media roles in Twitter discussions in the United States, Germany, France, and Russia

The media are normatively expected to play significant roles in conflictual discussions within national and international communities. As previous research shows, digital platforms make scholars rethink these roles based on media behavior in online communicative environments as well as on the structural limitations of the platforms. At the same time, traditional dichotomies between information dissemination and opinion formation roles, although seemingly universal, also vary across cultures. We look at four recent conflicts of comparable nature in the United States, Germany, France, and Russia to assess the roles that legacy media have performed in the respective ad hoc discussions on Twitter. Our approach differs from previous studies, as we combine content analysis of tweets by the media and journalists with the resulting positions of the media in the discussion graphs. Our findings show that, despite the overall trend of the “elite” and regional media sticking to information dissemination, online-only media and individual journalists vary greatly in their normative strategies, and this is true across countries. We also show that combining performance in content and social network analysis may allow for reconceptualization of media roles in a more flexible way.

Comparing Influencers: Activity vs. Connectivity Measures in Defining Key Actors in Twitter Ad Hoc Discussions on Migrants in Germany and Russia

Today, a range of research approaches is used to define the so-called influencers in discussions in social media, and one can trace both conceptual and methodological differences in how influencers are defined and tracked. We distinguish between ‘marketing’ and ‘deliberative’ conceptualization of influencers and between metrics based on absolute figures and those from social network analytics; combining them leads to better understanding of user activity and connectivity measures in defining influential users. We add to the existing research by asking whether user activity necessarily leads to better connectivity and by what metrics in online ad hoc discussions, and try to compare the structure of influencers. To do this, we use comparable outbursts of discussions on inter-ethnic conflicts related to immigration. We collect Twitter data on violent conflicts between host and re-settled groups in Russia and Germany and look at top20 user lists by eight parameters of activity and connectivity to assess the structure of influencers in terms of pro/contra-migrant cleavages and institutional belonging. Our results show that, in both discussions, the number of users involved matters most for becoming an influencer by betweenness and pagerank centralities. Also, contrary to expectations, Russian top users all in all are, in general, more neutral, while Germans are more divided, but in both countries pro-migrant media oppose anti-migrant informal leaders.

Content Sharing in Conflictual Ad - Hoc Twitter Discussions: National Patterns or Universal Trends?

Recently, the growing role of social network users in content dissemination has brought to life the concept of secondary gatekeeping – selection and republication of content already selected and published by traditional gatekeepers. Secondary gatekeeping is believed to be raising the media in-platform visibility, but it may also have negative effects such as adding to creation of echo chambers and deepening the gaps between conflicting views. Such studies are particularly relevant for emergencies or social conflicts where sharing relevant content may be crucial for lowering social unease. But till today the nature of secondary gatekeeping remains highly understudied. We have conducted a comparative study of three ad-hoc Twitter discussions on heated ethnic/racial conflicts in the USA (Ferguson riots), Germany (Koln mass abuse), and Russia (Biryulyovo anti-migrant bashings) to assess the patterns of content sharing by active discussants. We used vocabulary-based web crawling and human coding of over 1,000 tweets in randomized samples. Our results show that, in all cases, there’s weak but significant correlation between the type of user and his/her attitude to minority with the attitudes expressed in content, while it is not always true that users prefer the same gatekeeper type, e.g. online or social media. As difference between individual users remains statistically significant, this may mean that the nature of heated ad-hoc discussions facilitates formation of ‘individual-level filter bubbles’ in addition to bigger echo chambers.

Ad-hoc publics and influencers on the Russian Twitter: The case of discussion on migrants

With the emergence of discussion platforms like Twitter, the hopes rose that computermediated public sphere would become more even in access to discussion than massmediatized public sphere of the late 20 century. Scholars have argued that it will eventually form an ‘opinion crossroads’ where conflicts would be discussed by all the parties involved. But today, existing research provides mixed evidence on whether ordinary users, rather than mainstream media and institutional actors, can become influencers in discussions on current issues, e.g. relations between host and migrant communities. We focus on the Twitter discussion about an inter-ethnic conflict in Moscow’s Biryuliovo district in 2013, as well as the comparative ‘calm’ period in March 2014, and look at who were real influencers by reconstructing the discussion’s web graph, as well as analyzing and juxtaposing its metrics to figures indicating user activity. Our results show that ad hoc discussion differs dramatically from an issuebased one in terms of the influencer nature and composition; the role of active tweeting is questioned. We also show that nationalist accounts play a much bigger role than expected in both periods.

The Ukraine conflict and the European media: A comparative study of newspapers in 13 European countries:

The crisis in Ukraine was one of the dominant topics in international news coverage of 2014 and the following years. Representing a conflict along the lines of an East-Western confrontation unprecedented since the end of the Cold War, the news reporting in different European countries with different historical backgrounds is an essential research topic. This article presents findings of a content analysis examining coverage of the conflict in the first half of 2014 in newspapers from a diverse set of 13 countries: Albania, Czech Republic, Germany, Latvia, the Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Serbia, Switzerland and the United Kingdom, as well as Ukraine and Russia. Drawing on prior literature on news values, key events, and news cycles in foreign coverage, this study maps the evolution of the conflict in the course of four key events and identifies specific characteristics of the coverage in different newspapers. The results show that attention for the conflict varies considerably across the countries, which might be traced back to different degrees of geographical and cultural proximity, domestication, and economic exchange, as well as lack of editorial resources especially in Eastern Europe. Russia dominated the news agenda in all newspapers under study with a constant stream of conflict news. Contradicting prior literature, media sought to contextualise the events, and meta-coverage of the media’s role in the crisis emerged as a relevant topic in many countries with a developed media system.

‘New globalization’ and media studies: notes on the second international conference ‘Comparative media studies in today's world’, 25 April 2014, St. Petersburg, Russia

The second international conference ‘Comparative media studies in today’s world: journalism cultures in various socio-political contexts’ was held at the St. Petersburg State University (SPbU), Russia, on 25 April 2014. The English-speaking event was part of the 53rd international conference ‘Media in today’s world: St. Petersburg readings’, which is one of the biggest conferences in the area of journalism and mass communications in Russia. More than 200 researchers from different countries become participants of the conference every year. Anatoly Puyu, Director of the SPbU School of Journalism and Mass Communications, said: