A public presentation that explores the contentious issues surrounding social media communication, and the importance of not regulating too tightly. Instead, we should be thinking about how a better cultural understanding can improve social media communication.

1. The University of Sydney Page 1
Sometimes I Just Want
to Eat Eggplants, Tacos
and Peaches: A re-
calibration of ethical
social media use
Dr Jonathon Hutchinson
Department of Media and Communication
University of Waitako, New Zealand
23 November, 2016

2. The University of Sydney Page 2
“The only thing worse then an uninformed
society, is a misinformed society”– Matt Masur, November 15, 2016, Huffington
Post
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/bernie-sanders-could-replace-president-trump-with-little_us_5829f25fe4b02b1f5257a6b7

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https://play.kahoot.it/#/k/613caf77-33f8-44c0-
9267-1ec92f01dd4e

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In response to a story about Prime Minister
Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel addressing the
United States Congress:
“Sounds just like an American politician — speaking
out of two sides of his mouth. Must be why the
Repugnicans invited him to address Congress —
they all speak the same language.”

5. The University of Sydney Page 5
In response to a story about Hillary Clinton's
aide Huma Abedin separating from her
husband, Anthony Weiner, following repeated
sex scandals:
“This seems like one of those articles that
shouldn’t have a comment button due to the topic
… the dissolution of a marriage. Beyond that, I’ll
keep my thoughts to myself.”

6. The University of Sydney Page 6
In response to an article that quotes the United States House
minority leader, Nancy Pelosi, criticizing her Republican
counterparts for agreeing to pay for the legal defense of a
federal ban on gay marriage:
“This is so much political correctness. The family, men plus
women = children is the basis of society. Scientific facts are not
altered by political correctness and neither is the law and design
of man by God. Two men can create a relationship, but not a
child. This is not marriage. This is sodomy. Check out Sodom &
Gomorrrah if you would like God’s opinion about it. A lie is not the
truth. Stop it Obama.”

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In response to a story about why Syria’s civil
war only seems to get worse:
“The arab spring was anything but non-violent. What were
you reading that gave you that impression? What was
happening and continues to happen is a replay of the french
revolution. This problem will not end unless a significant
portion of the middle east is sterilized and even then you
would still have to sterilize Iran and possibly Saudi Arabia.”

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In response to a story about Chinese women
who hire “mistress dispellers” to break up their
husbands’ affairs:
“Women and their monogamy obsession. Why are
they so insecure and try to fight biology?”

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Now more then ever we need to be critical
of social media practice – the call for
Ethical Social Media
But this is not necessarily easy, and takes
a particular type of expertise to make it
happen.

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The Social Media ‘Battlefield’…

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Social Media Environment
– A complex field of commercial, government and
individuals
– Regulation is not an easy task
– Activity is malleable: does not align in any one given
form
– The role of intermediaries is crucial to navigate future
engagement
– There is a shifting cultural/regulatory approach towards
everyday social media use

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Everyday Social Media:
The cultural and social norms of
social media

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Everyday Social Media
– Users participate in social media for
a variety of reasons, e.g.
maintaining relationships with family
& friends
– Social media is for information
– Social media provides locative
support
– There are cultural norms that have
emerged through social media, for
example dance memes (dad dabs)
– Hashtags are of particular interest
here as a signal to noise isolator
– Hashtags also suggest ‘social
visibility’

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Social Visibility
– Digital influencers are
skilled at using social
visibility for commercial
purposes, i.e. Zoella
– Lobbyists may use social
visibility for political
purposes, i.e. American ‘alt-
right’
– Socialists may use social
visibility to mobilize
participation, i.e.
#blacklivesmatter

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Social Media Languages
– ROFLs, LOL, Ha Ha, IMO, TBH, etc.
– Hashtags: #dadjoke,
#usedforthepunchline,
#connectswiththelargerconversation
– Sometimes, there’s emojis:
eggplants, tacos, etc
– The common thing here, is we loose
tone, facial expression, body
gestures
– This introduces complexity into the
message > sender > receiver
communication process
– Much of the language activity is to
promote social visibility

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Existing Regulation Models

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Social Media (internet) Regulation - Rationale
1. Increased access to high-speed broadband internet
2. Digitisation of media products and services
3. Convergence of media platforms and services
4. Globalisation of media platforms, content and services
5. Acceleration of Innovation
6. Rise of user-created content
7. Greater media user empowerment
8. Blurring of public/private and age based distinctions
(Flew, 2012)

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Social Media (Internet) Regulation - Global
1. Internet Society (ISOC)
2. Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN)
3. Regional Internet Registries incl. Public Internet Registry (.org)
4. UN World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) >> Internet
Governance Forum (IGF)
5. Internet Engineering and Research Groups: (oversee tech standards and
research via Request for Comments)
6. Dynamic coalitions

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Social Media Regulation - Platform
– Combination of global, local, and self regulation
– Self regulation model
– Also global, which means it is multi regional – Facebook
become purposely vague on their approach to global
regulation
– What might be useful in one region, is problematic in
another
– The result is a complex process that can be exhaustive
for users and non-conclusive for other stakeholders

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Social Media Regulation - Local
– Typically called ‘Terms of Service’, ‘End User
Agreement’, or ‘Terms and Conditions’
– A fluid group of conditions that are designed to
accommodate multiple stakeholders, cultures, uses and
languages
– Requires a specific expertise and sets(s) of knowledge
to identify, understand and interpret
– This is typically the role of cultural intermediaries

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Harmful Digital Communication Act
The 10 principles say that a digital communication
should not:
1. disclose sensitive personal facts about a
person;
2. be threatening, intimidating, or menacing;
3. be grossly offensive;
4. be indecent or obscene;
5. be used to harass a person;
6. make a false allegation;
7. breach confidences;
8. incite or encourage anyone to send a
deliberately harmful message;
9. incite or encourage a person to commit
suicide; and
10. denigrate a person’s colour, race, ethnic or
national origins, religion, gender, sexual
orientation or disability.

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So we have Everyday Social Media Use +
Regulation. How does this translate into, or
possibly equal, ethical social media?

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Cultural
Intermediation

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Cultural Intermediaries
– Bourdieu (1984) coins the phrase to describe those who
are located between differing social classes
– One example might be to translate high brow art to the
masses, or decode the significance of popular culture
– Typically, cultural intermediaries are those that exchange
knowledge and expertise ‘in the middle’ of stakeholder
groups
– These agents become increasingly important social and
regulatory roles within everyday social media use

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Cultural Intermediaries
1. Change Agents
2. Digital Influencers
3. Community Managers

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Change Agents
Change agents, e.g. opinion leaders, peer educators,
community facilitators, counsellors, outreach workers etc.,
can assist in building and strengthening these influence
relationships and can also shape behavioural norms
(Kempe, Kleinberg, & Tardos, 2003).
Many programs make use of change agents – e.g. peer
educators, counsellors, opinion leaders and community
health workers – to disseminate messages within target
communities. (Goodwin, 2015).

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Change Agents

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Digital Influencers
“Influencers — everyday, ordinary
Internet users who accumulate a
relatively large following on blogs
and social media through the
textual and visual narration of
their personal lives and lifestyles,
engage with their following in
“digital” and “physical” spaces,
and monetize their following by
integrating “advertorials” into their
blogs or social media posts and
making physical paid-guest
appearances at events” (Abidin,
2016).
Jennifer Lam , Bamboo Garden:

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Digital Influencers

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Community Managers
– Supportive individuals who promote safe and productive
environments
– Encourage conversation
– Promote creativity
– Often act as translators between stakeholders:
institutional, platform and users

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Hutchinson, 2016.
Cultural Intermediaries:
“are the taste makers defining what
counts as good taste and cool culture in
today's marketplace” (Smith-Maguire,
2014).
“are specific in how they source emerging
creativity, and make this type of cultural
production accessible for larger
audiences. They enable consumers and
producers of cultural texts to engage in a
two-way dialogue: producers are exposed
to fringe, and highly creative, practices by
non-professional creative practitioners,
while contributors are published to larger
audiences” (Hutchinson, 2016).

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Cultural
Intermediaries
Engaging Cultural
and Regulatory
Specificities

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Community Manager Code of Ethics

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Basically, we need experts in the field
– Regardless of your discipline and/or profession, we need
social media experts to navigate these environments
– They need to be experts in social media languages,
cultures, norms and regulations (at all levels)
– This is the reason we need cultural intermediaries to
operate in the ethical social media space

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Emerging Experiments in this Space
– What if institutions started training staff in this role?
– What if those institutions were public service?
– Can they embody a social advocacy, digital influencer
space?
– Would this solve some of the issues around online hate
speech an online vilification?
– This is the principle behind the Digital First Personality
(DFP)

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But are humans the
way of the future?

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But then, bots…
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/monkey-cage/wp/2016/11/17/this-researcher-programmed-bots-to-fight-racism-on-twitter-it-worked/

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This tends to indicate that future will not be
human cultural intermediaries, but ‘artificial’
cultural intermediaries built on artificial
intelligence

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Further work
– Sometimes social media is just about eggplants, tacos or
peaches, and that doesn’t necessarily have to mean
food – and that’s OK
– We need more work on understanding cultural norms
and languages in this space
– In the first instance, this is important work for cultural
intermediaries
– We need to begin understanding how artificial
intelligence can do a better job for us

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Dr Jonathon Hutchinson
Department of Media and
Communication
jonathon.hutchinson@sydney.edu.au
@dhutchman