Social Media Events
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University of Pennsylvania ScholarlyCommons Publicly Accessible Penn Dissertations 2018 Social Media Events Katerina Girginova University of Pennsylvania, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://repository.upenn.edu/edissertations Part of the Communication Commons Recommended Citation Girginova, Katerina, "Social Media Events" (2018). Publicly Accessible Penn Dissertations. 3446. https://repository.upenn.edu/edissertations/3446 This paper is posted at ScholarlyCommons. https://repository.upenn.edu/edissertations/3446 For more information, please contact [email protected]. Social Media Events Abstract Audiences are at the heart of every media event. They provide legitimation, revenue and content and yet, very few studies systematically engage with their roles from a communication perspective. This dissertation strives to fill precisely this gap in knowledge by asking how do social media audiences participate in global events? What factors motivate and shape their participation? What cultural differences emerge in content creation and how can we use the perspectives of global audiences to better understand media events and vice versa? To answer these questions, this dissertation takes a social-constructivist perspective and a multiple-method case study approach rooted in discourse analysis. It explores the ways in which global audiences are imagined and invited to participate in media events. Furthermore, it investigates how and why audiences actually make use of that invitation via an analytical framework I elaborate called architectures of participation (O’Reilly, 2004). This dissertation inverts the predominant top-down scholarly gaze upon media events – a genre of perpetual social importance – to present a much needed bottom-up intervention in media events literature. It also provides a more nuanced understanding of what it means to be a member of ‘the audience’ in a social media age, and further advances Dayan and Katz’ (1992) foundational media events theory. The findings offer new theoretical, methodological, and practical insights, which carry implications for communication and media scholars, as well as practitioners alike. Degree Type Dissertation Degree Name Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) Graduate Group Communication First Advisor Marwan M. Kraidy Keywords audiences, communication, media event, multiple methods, Olympic Games, social media Subject Categories Communication This dissertation is available at ScholarlyCommons: https://repository.upenn.edu/edissertations/3446 SOCIAL MEDIA EVENTS Katerina Girginova A DISSERTATION in Communication Presented to the Faculties of the University of Pennsylvania in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy 2019 Supervisor of Dissertation ______________________________________________ Marwan M. Kraidy Professor of Communication and the Anthony Shadid Chair in Global Media, Politics & Culture Graduate Group Chairperson ______________________________________________ Guobin Yang Grace Lee Boggs Professor of Communication and Sociology Dissertation Committee Guobin Yang, Grace Lee Boggs Professor of Communication and Sociology Victor Pickard, Associate Professor of Communication Sonia Livingstone, Professor of Social Psychology at the London School of Economics SOCIAL MEDIA EVENTS COPYRIGHT 2019 Katerina Girginova This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution- Non-Commercial Share Alike 3.0 License To view a copy of this license, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/us/ To my family. iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I am grateful to the Annenberg School and to all of my motivated, intelligent and welcoming colleagues. I am fortunate to have been given the opportunity to spend time with you all. I also feel fortunate to have been given the chance to do a PhD at the Annenberg School – a feeling that I’ve had from the first day I set foot through the building’s doors and one, that has not left me to this day. I could not have asked for – nor anticipated – a better adventure for the past five years. Special thanks go to my Annenberg committee members Guobin Yang and Victor Pickard for their time and thoughts. Additional thanks to Jessa Lingel, Carolyn Marvin and Monroe Price for our many conversations; Vlad and John for their assistance with the data capture for case study three; Sharon and Min, who have been wonderful resources and friends at the Annenberg library; the CARGC team that has provided many opportunities to learn, discuss and network; Joanne, who has been able to answer every question I could muster about the program and more; and rest of the wonderful support staff at the Annenberg School. Lastly, thank you to Dean Delli Carpini, who has been an exemplary leader of the school. Thank you, Sonia Livingstone, for alerting me to a whole set of fascinating literature and research questions about audiences. I often think that your class was the missing piece to the dissertation puzzle I was trying to solve and later, your generosity with time and feedback as a committee member has been invaluable. I feel very lucky to have had the opportunity to work with you. Finally, thank you Marwan. There are many things that I could say but I think the following sentence sums them up: I could not have asked for a better dissertation advisor both, as an intellectual and as a person, than you. On a more personal note, I would like to repeat my gratitude to my family: Dada, you have guided and inspired me more than you will ever know… and more than I often like to admit! Mama, at this point you have received a hundred honorary PhDs, yet a million more still wouldn’t do justice to your strength and intelligence. Thanks for keeping a house of academics sane! Metiu, I started the PhD adventure on my own but looking back, it wouldn’t have been complete without you. iv ABSTRACT SOCIAL MEDIA EVENTS Katerina Girginova Marwan M. Kraidy, PhD Audiences are at the heart of every media event. They provide legitimation, revenue and content and yet, very few studies systematically engage with their roles from a communication perspective. This dissertation strives to fill precisely this gap in knowledge by asking how do social media audiences participate in global events? What factors motivate and shape their participation? What cultural differences emerge in content creation and how can we use the perspectives of global audiences to better understand media events and vice versa? To answer these questions, this dissertation takes a social- constructivist perspective and a multiple-method case study approach rooted in discourse analysis. It explores the ways in which global audiences are imagined and invited to participate in media events. Furthermore, it investigates how and why audiences actually make use of that invitation via an analytical framework I elaborate called architectures of participation (O’Reilly, 2004). This dissertation inverts the predominant top-down scholarly gaze upon media events – a genre of perpetual social importance – to present a much needed bottom-up intervention in media events literature. It also provides a more nuanced understanding of what it means to be a member of ‘the audience’ in a social media age, and further advances Dayan and Katz’ (1992) foundational media events theory. The findings offer new theoretical, methodological, and practical insights, which carry implications for communication and media scholars, as well as practitioners alike. v TABLE OF CONTENTS ABSTRACT ................................................................................................................................................... V INTRODUCTION ..........................................................................................................................................1 CASE STUDY SYNOPSES ...............................................................................................................................5 CHAPTER 1 ....................................................................................................................................................9 LITERATURE REVIEW ..............................................................................................................................9 MEDIA EVENTS IN PRACTICE ........................................................................................................................9 The Olympic Games as the media event ...............................................................................................10 MEDIA EVENTS IN THEORY: PUBLIC, MEGA, AND MEDIA EVENTS ............................................................15 The five fundamentals of media events .................................................................................................20 MEDIA EVENTS: CONTEMPORARY CONTRIBUTIONS AND CRITIQUES .........................................................22 MEDIA EVENTS: ACTIVE AUDIENCES, THE MISSING PIECE ........................................................................31 The evolution of Olympic audiences .....................................................................................................35 ARCHITECTURES OF PARTICIPATION .............................................................................................41 INTRODUCTION TO THE CONCEPT ...............................................................................................................41 WHAT IS PARTICIPATION? ...........................................................................................................................43