Assessing meaning construction on social media : a case of normalizing militarism / [electronic resource] Susan T. Jackson, Jutta Joachim, Nick Robinson and Andrea Schneiker

SIP1723

"October 2017"

With an estimated 3.8 billion Internet users worldwide, new media in the form of Web 2.0 applications and its usergenerated content increasingly rival traditional media as the means of circulating and gathering information. Central to the power and importance of social media is its visuality and the speed with which content can circulate. However, research and policy often focus on the politics of social media in terms of revolutionary change, as a tool of radicalization, or as a resource for disseminating information and the challenges this poses to states. As a part of the Militarization 2.0 project, this Policy Brief examines the social media content that celebrates militarism as an important aspect of everyday social media usage and the related meaning construction overlooked by policymakers. The research results indicate that while there is an abundance of militaristic content, much of this content reaches targeted audiences.

The research for this brief was funded by Vetenskapsrådet (the Swedish Research Council) as part of its ‘Digitized societies: past, present and future’ four-year framework grants. The project ‘Militarization 2.0: Militarization’s social media footprint through a gendered lens’ was conducted by teams headed by Dr Susan T. Jackson (Principal Investigator), Stockholm University; Dr Nick Robinson, University of Leeds, United Kingdom; Dr Jutta Joachim, Radboud University, Netherlands; and Dr Andrea Schneiker, University of Siegen, Germany (Grant no. VR/340/2102/5990).