Vicari, S. orcid.org/0000-0002-4506-2358, Iannelli, L. and Zurovac, E. (2018) Political hashtag publics and counter-visuality: a case study of #fertilityday in Italy. Information, Communication and Society, 23 (9). pp. 1235-1254. ISSN 1369-118X
Abstract
In 2016 the Italian health ministry launched the ‘Fertility Day’ campaign, aimed at tackling Italy’s low birth rate. Under the accusation of delivering sexist and racist messages, the campaign became a trending topic on Twitter, and a protest was launched to be held during Fertility Day. By applying a combination of digital methods and visual content analysis to the #fertilityday Twitter stream, this paper contributes to existing research on the deliberative strength of political hashtag publics, with a particular focus on their power structures, communication patterns and visual content use. Findings on gatekeeping dynamics downsize optimistic views on the democratising potential of Twitter’s socio-technical infrastructure as they point to the emergence of online satirical media and ‘tweetstars’ – along with mainstream news media– as main producers of spreadable content, with ordinary users only surfacing when traditional media elites and new satirical actors lack or lose interest in the debate. Results confirm that political hashtag publics follow acute event communication patterns, with users highly engaged in retweeting and referencing external material and visual content playing a key role in these gatewatching practices. The transient counter-visuality – or critical stance – of tweets with user-manipulated images, however, also suggests that the deliberative potential of these publics is not easily sustainable over time.
Metadata
Item Type: | Article |
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Authors/Creators: |
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Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information: | © 2018 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group. This is an author produced version of a paper subsequently published in Information, Communication and Society. Uploaded in accordance with the publisher's self-archiving policy. |
Keywords: | Gatekeeping; hashtag publics; public sphere; Twitter; visual data |
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) |
Depositing User: | Symplectic Sheffield |
Date Deposited: | 13 Dec 2018 09:43 |
Last Modified: | 24 Nov 2021 10:21 |
Status: | Published |
Publisher: | Taylor & Francis |
Refereed: | Yes |
Identification Number: | 10.1080/1369118X.2018.1555271 |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:139922 |