Katy Elizabeth Pearce

Engaging in political activities in authoritarian Azerbaijan carries significant legal, political, and social costs. This study examines the anticipated and actual interpersonal outcomes of activis...

This study examines the strategies young Azerbaijani activists use to manage the visibility of their stigmatized political identities, particularly in relation to their families. Drawing on concepts of socially mediated visibility, stigma, and honor culture, we analyze interviews with 29 activists to explore how they navigate the complex trade-offs between visibility and concealment in an authoritarian context. Our findings highlight the central role of courtesy stigma and relational repression in shaping activists’ decisions, as they seek to balance their desire for political expression with the potential risks to their families. We also show how social media platforms both enable and complicate activists’ visibility management strategies. The study contributes to understanding the dynamics of activism and resistance in honor culture and authoritarian contexts.

Online social support, with its novel opportunities for coping, is especially important for those experiencing isolation. Daughters-in-law in Azerbaijan are isolated and have inadequate support due to patriarchal and patrilocal norms, amplified when they experience infertility. This study considers an online community where supportive communication and resources are exchanged to mitigate infertility isolation. Using virtual ethnography and thematic analysis, three research questions related to different types of isolation are explored. We find support exchanges in this community can likely help women more efficiently and effectively cope with, and have more control over, the immediate stressor of infertility and associated uncertainty, which is profound given the lack of supportive resources they would otherwise have.

The correction of misinformation is an important scholarly and practical endeavor. Understanding the correction process requires drawing on theorizing from a multitude of perspectives. This interview study of (N = 26) Indian young adults in Delhi uses an affordances perspective in combination with face-negotiation theory to understand how face considerations during a misinformation correction are tied to different social and mobile media affordances that influence channel selection. While older family members share falsehoods on WhatsApp group chats, corrections rarely occur there. Instead, perceived synchronicity, bandwidth, and publicness affordances of different channels that support politeness and face concerns influence channel choice for correction. Thus, this study not only provides an interesting context for understanding these affordances, but also adds to the literature on misinformation correction by highlighting the role of social and contextual factors, and demonstrates the utility of CMC and interpersonal communication theory in understanding misinformation correction.

The COVID-19 pandemic was stressful for everyone, particularly for families who had to supervise and support children, facilitate remote schooling, and manage work and home life. We consider how families coped with pandemic-related stress using the video game Animal Crossing: New Horizons. Combining a family coping framework with theorizing about media as a coping tool, this interview study of 27 families (33 parents and 37 children) found that parents and children individual coped with pandemic-related stress with media. Parents engaged in protective buffering of their children with media, taking on individual responsibility to cope with a collective problem. Families engaged in communal coping, whereby media helped the family cope with a collective problem, taking on shared ownership and responsibility. We provide evidence for video games as coping tools, but with the novel consideration of family coping with media.

The open science (OS) movement has advocated for increased transparency in certain aspects of research. Communication is taking its first steps toward OS as some journals have adopted OS guidelines codified by another discipline. We find this pursuit troubling as OS prioritizes openness while insufficiently addressing essential ethical principles: respect for persons, beneficence, and justice. Some recommended open science practices increase the potential for harm for marginalized participants, communities, and researchers. We elaborate how OS can serve a marginalizing force within academia and the research community, as it overlooks the needs of marginalized scholars and excludes some forms of scholarship. We challenge the current instantiation of OS and propose a divergent agenda for the future of Communication research centered on ethical, inclusive research practices.

Demographic tables for Animal Crossing families project

This special issue brings together 13 manuscripts and two practitioner responses that speak to the intersection of marginality and social media in a variety of contexts. Readers of Social Media + Society certainly know what social media are, but marginality may be more elusive. We introduce this special issue by noting the historical moment for studying marginality, providing a working definition of that concept, and highlighting how this special issue sustains and extends that conversation within the context of social media.