The study examines the emerging field of knowledge representation in the context of the semantic web and linked data, with a focus on knowledge produced within the social sciences - particularly in sociocultural anthropology. It starts from the premise that natural language, especially its textualized form, has long been the primary vehicle for producing and communicating anthropological research. Informed by theoretical approaches from information science, the study explores how computational methods may offer alternative modes of structuring and representing anthropological knowledge. It challenges the dominance of text as the sole representational medium and highlights the potential of semantic modeling to open new epistemological pathways. At the same time, it acknowledges the conceptual and methodological challenges involved in such a transition. This approach shifts emphasis away from metrics and programming, foregrounding processes of conceptualization, semantics, meaning, and reasoning as key to engaging with anthropological knowledge in digital environments.
TikTok is currently one of the most topical social media platforms in modern democracies due to its ability to reach large, young audiences and the concerns over outside influences and the algorithmic nature of feeds. In Finland, the parliamentary elections of 2023 marked an increase in interest for the platform. At the same time, polarisation is also a trending subject in European social media and society, with TikTok being discussed as one of the drivers of this division. This study investigates whether TikTok comments reveal polarisation through the formation of disruptive right-wing publics alongside publics acting against disruptions during election campaigns. The dataset of the study consists of TikTok videos with their comments from the Finnish parliamentary parties that were present on TikTok before the 2023 parliamentary elections. The comments are analysed through a framework designed to uncover right-wing discursive patterns, with the goal of identifying disruptive right-wing publics that form in the comment sections of TikTok videos. This study also seeks to uncover the precise language used by commenters and thus identify what constitutes different blocs through vocabulary choices. The results indicate that a large disruptive public consisting mainly of right-wing commenters was present on TikTok. The language used by these publics was clearly leaning towards a confrontational position, thus polarising the comment sections. The study also revealed that there did not seem to be a singular right-wing disruptive public, but rather one that was driven by the nationalistic Finns Party, as evidenced by the language present on other right-wing parties’ comment sections. On a broader scale the results indicate that disruptive publics have effects on both polarisation and discussion quality on TikTok, and that comment-based discussions are relevant spaces of identity work on a video-first platform.
Authenticity is a central concept in social media influencer scholarship and typically associated with influencers' economic success. For political influencers, perceived authenticity relates to their credibility. However, the ways in which they cultivate and sustain authenticity remain under-researched. This paper examines political influencers’ authenticity labor on Instagram, focusing on practices by nano- and micro-influencers. Employing a case-study on a recent liberalization in German abortion regulations, the analysis draws on in-depth interviews with nine influencers who publicly addressed the issue on their profiles. The findings highlight the centrality of cultivating authenticity in the political realm, revealing influencers’ strategies, tensions, and the integration of political and personal spheres in their political content. Distinctively, political influencers curate ideologically coherent Instagram profiles but face pressures to maintain this coherence. The study adds political influencers’ own perspectives to scholarship on authenticity on social media and discusses implications for how they may shape political online discourse by personalizing debates and emphasizing value-driven engagement.
Ground in a critical realist framework, this article examines the habitual and addictive cycles through which social media engagement is produced, sustained, and transformed. Drawing on qualitative interviews with 22 social media users, the study explores how participants experienced and negotiated their relationships with social media across roles as consumers, producers, and prosumers of content. Findings reveal that engagement is shaped not only by individual motivations but also by the interaction of algorithmic recommendation systems, platform business models, visibility cultures, and influencer economies that encourage ongoing participation. Through retroductive analysis, two conceptual models - the habitual cycle and addictive cycle of social media use - are developed to explain movement between routine and compulsive forms of engagement. The models demonstrate that users shift between these modes under changing social, cultural, and platform conditions rather than occupying fixed categories of either habitual or addictive use. The article further shows how experiences commonly described as addiction emerge from underlying structural and cultural mechanisms that encourage continual engagement whilst simultaneously individualising responsibility for its regulation. It argues that understanding social media harms requires attention to the relationship between user agency and platform structures, shifting analysis beyond individual behavioural explanations towards broader questions of platform governance, prosumption, and social harm.
The integration of digital technologies into museums has redefined public engagement, offering innovative virtual experiences that transcend physical access. Informed by Deleuze and Guattari’s rhizome theory, this paper positions virtual museum visiting as recontextualized experience and examines the phenomenon through a case study of the Palace Museum on WeChat. Drawing on collaborative autoethnography with walkthrough elements, we found that these visits construct a new knowledge system that invites self-referential, spontaneous and heterogeneous connections. We therefore argue that the visiting experience drives the virtual museum rhizormorphous thanks to its performance of unpredicted and heterogeneous mapping. By addressing the various mediators involved in virtual museum visiting, this paper calls for a reconceptualization of (dis)connections in the audience’s engagement with virtual museums. It offers a novel framework for understanding virtual museum visiting as a lived experience.
