This paper investigates why the Philippines and Vietnam delayed the establishment of their cyber commands until 2024 and 2017, respectively, despite both countries experiencing foreign cyberattacks linked to the South China Sea disputes since the early 2010s and explains the seven-year disparity between them. Findings reveal that the Philippines initially focused on combating cybercrimes, whereas Vietnam prioritized addressing regime-threatening cyber activities. When the two countries eventually recognized cyberspace as a domain of warfare, different alignment choices, strategic cultures, and domestic institutions led to divergent pathways in creating their cyber commands.
While social media plays a prominent role in global journalism, its influence on media diversity is under debate. This paper aims to examine the relationship between social media and online media diversity. The research framework posits that online media diversity is shaped between social media empowerment and the existing power structure. Social media empowerment is specified by the degree to which social media allows audience participation, consisting of two levels of participatory intensity - social media adoption (low) and organization (high). We explore how adoption and organization are associated with online media diversity in three country groups with varied levels of press freedom (low, middle, and high), which specifies the degree to which the existing power structure controls online media outlets by shaping their functions, norms, and practices. Using country-level data from Varieties of Democracy and other sources, we analyze a panel sample of 150 countries from 2014 to 2022. We find that social media adoption and organization are associated with online media diversity in different ways within and between country groups. From a comparative perspective, the findings enhance our understanding of the theories of normalization and power shift, which account for power relations between social media and media organizations.
Existing scholarship on social media polarization has predominantly focused on political polarization in developed countries. However, the interplay between social media and other forms of polarization, such as ethnic polarization, which is equally harmful and arguably more prevalent in developing nations, has not received sufficient attention. Drawing on cross-sectional survey data (N = 549) from Afghanistan, this study examines the relationship between Facebook network heterogeneity and ethnic polarization. Results from two serial mediation analyses showed no significant direct association between network heterogeneity and ethnic polarization. However, network heterogeneity is positively associated with diverse content exposure, perceived knowledge acquisition, intergroup contact quality, and trust, thereby indirectly attenuating ethnic polarization. By extending the scope of polarization research beyond the political divide in the Western context, this study contributes to the emerging literature on ethnic polarization in social media.
This article examines how Facebook reaction metrics structure party leaders' communication incentives during COVID-19. Using 7,264 posts from twelve Norwegian leaders, it codes nine crisis-message strategies and models Angry, Sad, Love, and Care counts with negative binomial regressions. Two visibility-oriented affective profiles emerge. Heat (Angry, Sad) aligns most with criticism and crisis framing, while affiliation (Love, Care) aligns most with accommodative and promotional messaging. These associations vary across crisis phases and between government and opposition. Disaggregating engagement into emotion-specific signals clarifies incentive patterns that aggregate engagement can obscure.
Politicians use the multimodal affordances of social media to strategically interact with voters. Previous scholarship focused on national elections, but how local candidates use verbal and non-verbal strategies on Instagram, remains comparatively unexplored. A quantitative content analysis of Instagram posts (N = 1194) was conducted to examine how candidates running in seven Italian regional elections employed verbal and non-verbal strategies. Findings showed that candidates used Instagram to convey professionalism (verbally and non-verbally) and to describe policies, but politicians leading center-left coalitions and female candidates were more likely to use Instagram to mobilize voters, attack opponents, and talk about policies. Verbal and non-verbal strategies often diverged rather than reinforced each other, and multimodal alignment was mainly limited to convey professionalism and to emphasize regional heritage and identity. Results indicate that in the Italian regional context verbal and non-verbal modalities on Instagram are frequently used as independent channels that do not necessarily convey the same meaning within a single post. Italian politicians used Instagram to post images with facial expressions conveying optimism and positivity, but no differences between female and male politicians were detected for facial expression, contradicting literature finding gender is a predictor of visual emotionalization on social media.
