Vicari, S. orcid.org/0000-0002-4506-2358 (2017) Twitter and non-elites. Interpreting power dynamics in the life story of the (#)BRCA Twitter stream. Social Media and Society, 3 (3).
Abstract
In May 2013 and March 2015, actress Angelina Jolie wrote in the New York Times about her choice to undergo preventive surgery. In her two op-eds she explained that - as a carrier of the BRCA1 gene mutation - preventive surgery was the best way to lower her heightened risk of developing breast and ovarian cancer. By applying a digital methods approach to BRCA-related tweets from 2013 and 2015, before, during and after the exposure of Jolie’s story, this study maps and interprets Twitter discursive dynamics at two time points of the BRCA Twitter stream. Findings show an evolution in curation and framing dynamics occurring between 2013 and 2015, with individual patient advocates replacing advocacy organisations as top curators of BRCA content and coming to prominence as providers of specialist illness narratives. These results suggest that between 2013 and 2015, Twitter went from functioning primarily as an organisation-centred news reporting mechanism, to working as a crowdsourced specialist awareness system. This paper advances a twofold contribution. First, it points at Twitter’s fluid functionality for an issue public and suggests that by looking at the life story – rather than at a single time point – of an issue-based Twitter stream we can track the evolution of power roles underlying discursive practices and better interpret the emergence of non-elite actors in the public arena. Second, the study provides evidence of the rise of activist cultures that rely on fluid, non-elite, collective and individual social media engagement.
Metadata
Item Type: | Article |
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Authors/Creators: |
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Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information: | © The Author(s) 2017. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 License (http://www.creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/) which permits non-commercial use, reproduction and distribution of the work without further permission provided the original work is attributed as specified on the SAGE and Open Access page(https://us.sagepub.com/en-us/nam/open-access-at-sage). |
Keywords: | Angelina Jolie; BRCA; broadcasting; framing; gatekeeping; Twitter |
Dates: |
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Institution: | The University of Sheffield |
Academic Units: | The University of Sheffield > Faculty of Social Sciences (Sheffield) > Department of Sociological Studies (Sheffield) |
Funding Information: | Funder Grant number WELLCOME TRUST (THE) 200223/Z/15/Z |
Depositing User: | Symplectic Sheffield |
Date Deposited: | 02 Aug 2017 13:21 |
Last Modified: | 01 Nov 2018 10:19 |
Published Version: | https://doi.org/10.1177/2056305117733224 |
Status: | Published |
Publisher: | SAGE Publications |
Refereed: | Yes |
Identification Number: | 10.1177/2056305117733224 |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:119734 |