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Content policies in Social Media Critical Discourse Studies: The invisible hand of social media providers?

This paper complements theoretical and methodological considerations regarding social media in critical discourse studies as it addresses social media content policies as a key contextual element. Specifically, this paper argues that - and why - the exploration of content policies and their enforcement is indispensable when approaching social media platforms and social media data in particular from a critical perspective.

A number of researchers have already begun to identify contextual elements that require particular attention when viewing social media and social media data through a CDS lens. However, social media sites' content policies, as pervasive contextual element, have not received adequate research attention yet.

Drawing on Computer-Mediated Discourse Analysis (CMDA) and recent developments in Social Media CDS (SM-CDS), this paper first demonstrates the existing gap in research. Then, it contends that social media sites' content policies deserve more detailed attention in SM-CDS, argues why this is the case and elaborates on the different aspects of content policies and policy enforcement that require examination. After detailed theoretical discussion of this, empirical evidence to support this argument is presented in the form of a case study of Wikipedia and Wikipedia data.

Identiferoai:union.ndltd.org:VIENNA/oai:epub.wu-wien.ac.at:7109
Date January 2019
CreatorsKopf, Susanne
PublisherCADAAD
Source SetsWirtschaftsuniversität Wien
LanguageEnglish
Detected LanguageEnglish
TypeArticle, PeerReviewed
Formatapplication/pdf
Relationhttps://www.lancaster.ac.uk/fass/journals/cadaad/volume-11-1-2019/, http://wp.lancs.ac.uk/cadaad/, https://www.lancaster.ac.uk/fass/journals/cadaad/open-access-policy/, http://epub.wu.ac.at/7109/

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