After the Arab Spring, social media have been attributed great potential for democratization and enhanced political accountability, which has raised hopes for Africa’s stagnant democracies....Show moreAfter the Arab Spring, social media have been attributed great potential for democratization and enhanced political accountability, which has raised hopes for Africa’s stagnant democracies. Research is, however, inconclusive on whether this potential is seized and what this means in practice. Moreover, no research on political accountability in Africa has used social media as a primary source yet. Therefore I have studied the everyday Nigerian political accountability dynamics on social media as participant observer for 75 days. The observations exhibited four important shifts in accountability dynamics on social media away from traditional, offline accountability practices. First, social media has created an incessant and two-directional accountability cycle in which citizens find a unified voice through hashtags and the government replies to accountability demands instantly. Secondly, social media facilitate the traditionally much sought proximity between citizens and their leaders, as a channel for complaining, reassurance and interaction. Third, clientelist accountability dynamics have shifted from only demands for private and club goods, to mostly demands for collective and public goods, despite some deviations. Lastly, social media also allowed for slacktivism, but this did not inhibit the success of one online campaign. These shifts are significant, as they strengthen political accountability and thus democracy, even though the limits of the impact of online accountability and its meaning to the average Nigerian put the democratizing powers of social media in perspective. The observations nevertheless highlight the new opportunities and new dimensions to traditional accountability in Nigeria, and possibly Africa, enabled and channelled by social media.Show less
The aim of this paper was to find out how Adidas and Nike behave on Twitter regarding both product advertising, communication with their community, and retention of customers through events,...Show moreThe aim of this paper was to find out how Adidas and Nike behave on Twitter regarding both product advertising, communication with their community, and retention of customers through events, celebrity interaction and motivational content. Primary focus is on the language contained in tweets published in January 2015 gathered from 12 company Twitter accounts. These Twitter accounts were chosen based on their monthly activity and include the main brand Twitter. We processed the dat into an all-encompassing database of our own design. The database is split up in three sections: tweet information, tweet content category and language features allowing for an easy overview. It contains information on what the type of the tweet is, what the content is classified as, who is included in the tweet, what is linked in the tweet , what its hashtags are as well as the language features that it contains. From this we analysed eight different content and language features: hashtags, Twitter account types, tweet categories, formality, genre, emphasis, phrasing and patterns. This lead to insights in the advertising strategies that these companies employ as well as their attitude towards their followers (their customers). We came across the following results: strenuous collaboration with celebrities to advertise products, use of descriptive language for product advertising, short, quote-like positive messages for inspirational messages, and personal responses for certain (community-based) twitter accounts. There is much use of a similar formula when constructing messages across all of the accounts affiliated to the same company. They furthermore reinforce themselves through the repetitive use of hashtags and phrases, meant to make tweets easily recognizable. Both companies show adaptation to new media: using Twitter as a base with customers choosing to follow them and then redirecting them to their website, using links to YouTube, and including pictures or videos directly in the tweets. We expect that further investigation (with a larger database, either due to increasing the included accounts or increasing the time of documentation) will give an even greater overview of the strategies employed by Adidas and Nike. There is potential for further expansion to include various other new media sites. An analysis of YouTube clips, focusing on word choice may also prove very insightful.Show less
De functie van sociale media bij breaking news van televisie is onderzocht in een casus toegespitst op het verslag van de NOS en RTL Nieuws omtrent MH17. De rol van sociale media is onderzocht op...Show moreDe functie van sociale media bij breaking news van televisie is onderzocht in een casus toegespitst op het verslag van de NOS en RTL Nieuws omtrent MH17. De rol van sociale media is onderzocht op basis van de functies die worden gegeven uit eerder onderzoek (Broersma & Graham, 2012) en geconstrueerde functies gebaseerd op een onderzoek dat breaking news definieert (Berkowitz, 1992). Daaruit is gebleken dat bestaande functies voor het analyseren van sociale media niet toereikend zijn. De geconstrueerde functies die herleid zijn uit een definiërend onderzoek met betrekking tot breaking news zijn in deze casus wel bruikbaar bij het analyseren van sociale media bij breaking news op televisie.Show less
