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Over 2.8 million people die each year from being overweight or obese, a largely preventable disease. Social media has fundamentally changed the way we communicate, collaborate, consume, and create content. The ease with which content can be shared has resulted in a rapid increase in the number of individuals or organisations that seek to influence opinion and the volume of content that they generate. The nutrition and diet domain is not immune to this phenomenon. Unfortunately, from a public health perspective, many of these 'influencers' may be poorly qualified in order to provide nutritional or dietary guidance, and advice given may be without accepted scientific evidence and contrary to public health policy. In this preliminary study, we analyse the 'healthy diet' discourse on Twitter. While using a multi-component analytical approach, we analyse more than 1.2 million English language tweets over a 16-month period in order to identify and characterise the influential actors and discover topics of interest in the discourse. Our analysis suggests that the discourse is dominated by non-health professionals. There is widespread use of bots that pollute the discourse and seek to create a false equivalence on the efficacy of a particular nutritional strategy or diet. Topic modelling suggests a significant focus on diet, nutrition, exercise, weight, disease, and quality of life. Public health policy makers and professional nutritionists need to consider what interventions can be taken in order to counteract the influence of non-professional and bad actors on social media.

This paper considers agentic-activities relating to the Irish language on Twitter and who is engaged with them? To answer this question, this study draws on Twitter data and filters it using the linguistic identifiers, '#Gaeilge' and the word 'Gaeilge' (Irish language). Tweets with these identifiers are conceptually considered as formulations of agentic practice with respect to language (Sabatier, P. [2007]. "Theories of the Policy Process." Boulder, CO: Westview Press). Individuals who use the #Gaeilge identifier in particular are viewed within this study as micro-implementers. Their communications provide partial insight into agentic activities within the Twittersphere specifically, related to and about the Irish language. To explore this data, peak, network, content and sentiment analyses were conducted. The study's findings illustrate that there are a number of influential hubs in this network. They are in the main micro-level individuals as opposed to macro-level or governmental institutions promoting the Irish language. This paper demonstrates the potential for in-depth research into agentic practices of minority linguistic communities within Twitter, and outlines the limitations of a computational approach in conducting such research.

Exploring online criticisms of the "take the knee" protest during "Euro 2020", this article examines how alt- and far-right conspiracies were both constructed and communicated via the social media platform, Twitter. By providing a novel exploration of alt-right conspiracies during an international football tournament, a qualitative thematic analysis of 1,388 original tweets relating to Euro 2020 was undertaken. The findings reveal how, in criticisms levelled at both "wokeism" and the Black Lives Matter movement, anti-white criticisms of the "take the knee" protest were embroiled in alt-right conspiracies that exposed an assumed Cultural Marxist, "woke agenda" in the tournament's organisation and mainstream media coverage. In conclusion, it is argued that conspiratorial discourses, associated with the alt-right, provided a framework through which the protest could be understood. This emphasises how the significance of conspiracy functions to promote the wider dissemination of alt-right ideology across popular cultural contexts, such as sport. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

England's 'shock' exit from the Euro 2016 Football Championship and the UK electorate's decision to (Br)exit from the EU occurred almost simultaneously, providing an interesting lens through which to examine unfolding tensions in the UK and its component identities – all the more so given the presence of two of the three other component countries of the UK, Wales and Northern Ireland, at the Championship. Our analysis of 34,324 original tweets featuring both the hashtag #Euro2016 and #Brexit shows a clear tendency to conflate British and English identities in the context of Brexit, a conflation coloured by largely negative characteristics. We pay particular attention to how recurring themes concerning leadership, accountability and immigration are articulated in the context of both sporting and political events. In addition, we examine the significance of the structural logic of social media in these discussions of the sport-nation nexus, with reference to vortextuality and mediatization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examines public policy advocacy by pediatricians and other health professionals in the hashtag community: #putkids1st. The study explores 4321 tweets that feature the hashtag, generated by 1231 unique users largely drawn from the American Association of Pediatricians and its members. The data are used to explore the structural dynamics of the hashtag community, the role of homophily, and to test a source-message framework to predict and recommendations to help improve engagement and retransmission of professional health advocacy messages. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The rise of online hate speech in sports is a growing concern, with fans, players and officials subject to racist, sexist and homophobic abuse (in addition to many other prejudices) via social media platforms. While hate speech and discrimination have always been problems in sports, the growth of social media has seen them exacerbated exponentially. As a consequence, policy makers, sport governing bodies and grassroots anti-hate organisations are largely left playing catch-up with the rapidly shifting realm of online hate. Scholars have attempted to fill this vacuum with research into this topic, but such is the evolving nature of the issue that research has been diverse and fragmentary. We offer a scoping review into the scholarship of online hate in sport in order to encourage and facilitate further research into this urgent issue. Our review will achieve this through offering a comprehensive cataloguing of previously employed methodologies, case studies and conclusions. In doing so, it will not only equip future researchers with a concise overview of existing research in the field, but also illuminate areas and approaches in need of further examination. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Streets perform a number of important functions and have a wide range of activities performed in them. There is a small but growing focus on streets as a more generalisable, atomised, and therefore more manageable unit of development and analysis than cities. Despite the public realm being one of the largest physical spaces on streets, the impact and potential of digitalisation projects on this realm is rarely considered. In this article, the smartness of a street is derived from the cyber-physical social infrastructure in the public realm, including data obtained from sensors, the interconnection between different services, technologies and social actors, intelligence derived from analysis of the data, and optimisation of operations within a street. This article conceptualises smart streets as basic units of urban space that leverage cyber-physical social infrastructure to provide and enable enhanced services to and between stakeholders, and through stakeholders' use of the street, generate data to optimise its services, capabilities, and value to stakeholders. A proposed conceptual framework is used to identify and explore how streets can be augmented and create value through cyber-physical social infrastructure and digital enhancements. We conclude with a discussion of future avenues of research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article adopts a work orientations perspective to consider how, through the medium of Twitter, employees voice the things they love and hate about their jobs. Using 817,235 tweets posted by 650,958 users in the calendar year 2014, the findings provide new insights into both employee voice and job satisfaction/dissatisfaction as well as an enhanced understanding of the employment relationship. First, the findings indicate that Twitter, in its expression of very personal and individualistic needs, might be considered a new form of employee voice. Second, Twitter captures the positive, the negative and the ambivalence in the notion of job satisfaction. Third, the description of the methodology used to access and analyse Twitter data illustrates how new methodological approaches, particularly those embedded within computer science, may be of value to social scientists in their analysis of 'Big Data'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Graphical abstract Abstract Data breaches are not only on the increase but firms struggle to detect, defend and respond to such breaches. A data breach opens a period of crisis for the affected firm, generates complex information, and requires providing information to a variety of stakeholders in a timely and proper manner. This article reports one of the first studies on the impact of social media exposure by affected firms on stock price reaction to a data breach announcement. Using an event study methodology on a sample of 87 data breaches from 73 US publicly-traded firms from 2011 to 2014, we find that use of social media exposure at the time of a data breach exacerbates the negative stock price to the announcement. Interestingly, we find that this negative association is contingent on traditional media visibility; the effect is positive for low-visibility companies. Based on our results, we posit that there is a need for a contingency model for social media communication during firm crises and such a model should be based at least on firm size, visibility and the type of crisis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper considers agentic-activities relating to the Irish language on Twitter and who is engaged with them? To answer this question, this study draws on Twitter data and filters it using the linguistic identifiers, ‘#Gaeilge’ and the word ‘Gaeilge’ (Irish language). Tweets with these identifiers are conceptually considered as formulations of agentic practice with respect to language (Sabatier, P. [2007]. Theories of the Policy Process. Boulder, CO: Westview Press). Individuals who use the #Gaeilge identifier in particular are viewed within this study as micro-implementers. Their communications provide partial insight into agentic activities within the Twittersphere specifically, related to and about the Irish language. To explore this data, peak, network, content and sentiment analyses were conducted. The study’s findings illustrate that there are a number of influential hubs in this network. They are in the main micro-level individuals as opposed to macro-level or governmental institutions promoting the Irish language. This paper demonstrates the potential for in-depth research into agentic practices of minority linguistic communities within Twitter, and outlines the limitations of a computational approach in conducting such research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Drawing on theories of aversive racism and colour-blindness, which stress the invisibility of contemporary racism, this article analyses online discussions on taking the knee (TTK) during EURO2020 men’s football tournament. While highly visible racist abuse directed at Black English players after losing the final to Italy (dominative racism) received most public attention and repudiation, based on 6,850 English language tweets published on Twitter/X, this article shows how subtle racism and colour-blindness were reinforced in discussions around TTK over the duration of the tournament (aversive racism). The article also shows how individuals online developed a variety of strategies (evidence, othering, critique, and activism) to challenge the main arguments against anti-racist activism in football (identified in four themes: BLM, Marxism, virtue signalling, and woke). The article makes an original contribution by examining the changing intensity of online conversations on TTK over the duration of the tournament. Our analysis identifies key moments in the tournament, political elites’ rhetoric, and trends of success and failure as relevant factors that shaped vernacular conversations online. The discussion ultimately argues that investigating the temporal patterns of public discussions on (anti)racism provides valuable insights to understand the contemporary complexity of racism in football and society more broadly. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Mobilization theory posits that social media gives a voice to non-traditional actors in socio-political discourse. This study uses network analytics to understand the underlying structure of the Brexit discourse and whether the main sub-networks identify new publics and influencers in political participation, and specifically industry stakeholders. Content analytics and peak detection analysis are used to provide greater explanatory values to the organizing themes for these sub-networks. Our findings suggest that the Brexit discourse on Twitter can be largely explained by calculated publics organized around the two campaigns and political parties. Ad hoc communities were identified based on (i) the media, (ii) geo-location, and (iii) the US presidential election. Other than the media, significant sub-communities did not form around industry as whole or around individual sectors or leaders. Participation by business accounts in the Twitter discourse had limited impact. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Together, social media and crowdsourcing can help entrepreneurs to attract external finance and early-stage customers. This paper investigates the characteristics and discourse of an issue-centered public on Twitter organized around the hashtag #crowdfunding through the lens of social network theory. Using a dataset of 2,732,144 tweets published during a calendar year, we use exploratory data analysis to generate insights and hypotheses on who the users in the #crowdfunding network are, what they share, and how they are connected to each other. In order to do so, we adopt a range of descriptive, content, network analytics techniques. The results suggest that platforms, crowdfunders, and other actors who derive income from the crowdfunding economy play a key role in creating the network. Furthermore, latent ties (strangers) play a direct role in disseminating information, investing, and sending signals to platforms that further raises campaign prominence. We also introduce a new type of social tie, the "computer as a social actor", previously unaddressed in entrepreneurial network literature, which play a role in sending signals to both platforms and networks. Our results suggest that homophily is a key driver for creating network sub-communities built around specific platforms, project types, domains, or geography. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]