Assessing Meaning Construction of Social Media: A Case of Normalizing Militarism

With an estimated 3.8 billion Internet users worldwide, new media in the form of Web 2.0 applications and their user- generated content increasingly rival traditional media as means of circulating and gathering information. Central to the power and importance of social media is its visuality and the speed with which content can circulate. However, research and policy often focus on the politics of social media in terms of revolutionary change, as a tool of radicalization, or as a resource for disseminating information and the challenges this poses to states. As a part of the Militarization 2.0 project, this policy brief examines the social media content that celebrates militarism—an important aspect of everyday social media usage and meaning construction overlooked by policymakers. The research results indicate that while there is an abundance of militaristic content, much of this content reaches targeted audiences.