Search Results (7)

Video-sharing platforms have significantly influenced social justice movements by creating unprecedented opportunities for mobilization and support. However, YouTube’s unique role and platform culture in facilitating social justice movements remain relatively understudied. This research addresses this gap by analyzing video content related to two prominent online social justice movements: #BLM and #StopAAPIHate. We conducted a comprehensive thematic analysis of a dataset comprising 489 videos obtained using the YouTube Data API. Thematic categories were developed to explore the identities of video creators, the type of information conveyed, storytelling techniques, and promotional features utilized. Our findings indicate that public figures, vloggers, and news reporters are the most frequent creators of videos supporting these movements. The primary purpose of these videos is to share movement-related knowledge and personal stories of discrimination. Most creators primarily promote their social media accounts and do not extensively utilize platform features such as live streaming, merchandise sales, donation requests, or sponsorships to actively support these social justice initiatives. Full article

Emerging as a pivotal trend on social media, food review vlogs not only narrate culinary experiences but also boost local cuisine and economic growth. This study delves into how such vlogs and vlogger traits affect viewer attitudes and restaurant visit intentions, guided by the stimulus–organism–response paradigm. Hypotheses were quantitatively assessed through an online survey with 347 participants from Amazon’s Mechanical Turk (MTurk), analyzed using SPSS 22 and AMOS 22 for structural equation modeling (SEM). The results indicated that informativeness, entertainment, and vividness influence viewers’ engagement with food review vlogs, while attractiveness and homophily are major predictors of parasocial relationships. Content engagement and parasocial relationships exerted positive influences on attitudes and visiting intentions toward the reviewed restaurants. The findings contribute to the empirical understanding of foodservice communication by identifying key characteristics of food review vlogs and vloggers that drive viewer engagement and behavioral intentions. Building on an established theoretical foundation, this study underscores the practical significance of the S–O–R model in digital marketing, offering actionable insights to empower content creators and marketers in driving audience engagement and shaping consumer behavior. Full article

Using a discourse approach, this study examines online news and opinion pieces about calls for the British Museum to return Chinese artefacts. We examine the interpersonal meanings conveyed by the linguistic choices made in these texts. This study uses the appraisal system in the systemic functional linguistic (SFL) framework to examine how news discourse addresses the issue and constructs interpersonal meanings. Graduation resources, as a subcategory of appraisal system, can underpin the degree of meanings and perspectives, allowing writers to adjust the gradability of attitudinal meanings conveyed to readers. This research first examines how the writer’s voice is embedded in graduation resources, and later, how these graduation resources are used in online news articles calling for the return of the artefacts. This study also examines how online newspapers covered a short film by vloggers called “Escape from the British Museum”, which sparked massive social media reactions, offering new perspectives on how social media and traditional news organisations interact to construct meanings through language. The results show that quantification and fulfilment (completion) resources are the two most common subcategories of graduation resources. The findings shed light on the language strategies used in news and social media discourse, as well as the interpersonal meanings behind such requests for cultural heritage repatriation. Full article

User-generated content (UGC) from e-commerce platforms and third-party platforms can impact customer-perceived risk and influence product sales in online stores. However, the understanding of UGC from which platform type yields a stronger effect on product sales and how the effects interact across the platforms remains limited. This limitation arises from the complexity of consumer purchasing behavior and information processing, as well as the heterogeneity of UGC features across different platforms and the uncertainty surrounding causal relationships. This study constructs a novel cross-platform framework using the elaboration likelihood model (ELM) to investigate the underlying mechanism of how cross-platform UGC affects online sales of experiential products. Additionally, it examines the mediating effect of purchase intention in the relationship between cross-platform UGC and product sales, as well as the moderating effect of product price. Taking the e-commerce platform Tmall and third-party platform Bilibili as a cross-platform example, we analyzed customer reviews on Tmall and vlogger reviews on Bilibili for 300 cosmetic products, using text sentiment analysis and multiple regression. Results show that the number of product evaluations from third-party platforms positively impacts sales, but this impact is weaker compared to the influence of UGC originating from e-commerce platforms on sales. The underlying mechanism refers to the process by which UGC on an e-commerce platform directly impacts sales and also influences sales through purchase intention. In contrast, UGC on third-party platforms only influences sales through purchase intention. Furthermore, the product price has no significant moderating effect on the positive relationship between review length and sales. This study provides a cross-platform UGC research framework that can guide effective cross-platform marketing management by shedding light on the role of UGC in reducing customer-perceived risk and its impact on online sales of experiential products. Full article

TikTok, along with other social media platforms, has emerged as one of the most important tools for many people, particularly millennials. Because the relationship between social media and customers’ behavioral intentions has long been a topic of discussion in the hospitality industry, the purpose of this study was to look into the potential determinants of customers’ visiting intentions toward Universal Studios Beijing on short video platforms such as TikTok. In addition, descriptive analysis was also conducted to show the demographic and other basic characteristics of the sample. The findings revealed that social interaction, informativeness, and trust had significant effects on perceived usefulness, as well as significant influences on the related visiting intentions from the perceived usefulness, ease of use, and playfulness. This study filled in the research gaps of the TikTok studies based on the extended technology acceptance model (TAM) and explored the effects of perceived playfulness on the theme park. This study can contribute to the formulation of operational and marketing strategies by theme park marketers, help internet vloggers with content creation and development, and provide suggestions to local governments for tourism destination management. Full article

In Great Britain, “religion or belief” is one of nine “protected characteristics” under the Equality Act 2010, which protects citizens from discrimination in the workplace and in wider society. This paper begins with a discussion about a 2020 ruling, “Jordi Casamitjana vs. LACS”, which concluded that ethical vegans are entitled to similar legal protections in British workplaces as those who hold philosophical religious beliefs. While not all vegans hold a philosophical belief to the same extent as Casamitjana, the ruling is significant and will be of interest to scholars investigating non-religious ethical beliefs. To explore this, we have analysed a sample of YouTube videos on the theme of “my vegan story”, showing how vloggers circulate narratives about ethical veganism and the process of their conversion to vegan beliefs and practices. The story format can be understood as what Abby Day has described as a performative “belief narrative”, offering a greater opportunity to understand research participants’ beliefs and related identities than, for example, findings from a closed-question survey. We suggest that through performative acts, YouTubers create “ethical beliefs” through the social, mediatised, transformative, performative and relational practice of their digital content. In doing so, we incorporate a digital perspective to enrich academic discussions of non-religious beliefs. Full article

Far-right movements, activists, and political parties are on the rise worldwide. Several scholars connect this rise of the far-right at least partially to the affordances of digital media and to a new digital metapolitical battle. A lot has been written about the far-right’s adoption of trolling, harassment, and meme-culture in their metapolitical strategy, but researchers have focused less on how far-right vloggers are using the practices of influencer culture for metapolitical goals. This paper tries to fill this gap and bring new theoretical insights based on a digital ethnographic case study. By analyzing political YouTuber and #pizzagate propagator Brittany Pettibone, this paper contributes to our understanding of radicalization processes in relation to the use of digital media. Full article