Women who blog about politics or identify as feminist in Germany, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, and the United States face great risks of online abuse. In-depth interviews with 109 bloggers who write about feminisms, family, and/or maternity politics revealed that 73.4% had negative experiences due to blogging and/or social media use. Most of these negative experiences involved not only abusive comments but also stalking, trolls, rape threats, death threats, and unpleasant offline encounters. Response strategies included moderating comments, exposing abuse, adaptation, and solidarity. I argue that the democratic potential of social media in democracies remains haphazard because online abuse is not fully recognized as entangling online and offline communication, constituted and constructed through technological, legal, social, and cultural factors. Using the theoretical approaches of digital feminisms, I call for more systematic empirical work on global recognition of online abuse as punishable crime.

Through in-depth interviews with 15 women in the United States, this pilot study contributes to filling the gap in scholarship on consumer perceptions of sponsored content posted by social media influencers (SMI). We found women may follow social media influencers because of prior topic interests, perceived relatability, and authenticity. Social exchange and relationship management theories do not sufficiently account for purchasing decisions despite negative views of consumers. We argue for a new theory called Influencer-Follower Relationship Management Theory.

The Muslim minority in Germany has been historically misrepresented in and excluded from the mainstream public sphere. In response, some Muslims in Germany have turned to blogs as an alternative space to challenge the dominant public discourse through varied discursive practices. In this study, we examine these practices through 28 indepth interviews with Muslim bloggers in Germany. Applying Nancy Fraser's theory of counterpublics, we posit that this group, which seeks to challenge mainstream representations and offer oppositional counter-discourses, represents an emerging counterpublic.

This mixed-method evidence synthesis drew on Cochrane methods and principles to systematically review literature published between 2003 and 2016 on the best social media practices to promote health protection and dispel misinformation during disasters. Seventy-nine studies employing quantitative, qualitative, and mixed methods on risk communication during disasters in all UN-languages were reviewed, finding that agencies need to contextualize the use of social media for particular populations and crises. Social media are tools that still have not become routine practices in many governmental agencies regarding public health in the countries studied. Social media, especially Twitter and Facebook (and equivalents in countries such as China), need to be incorporated into daily operations of governmental agencies and implementing partners to build familiarity with them before health-related crises happen. This was especially observed in U.S. agencies, local government, and first responders but also for city governments and school administrations in Europe. For those that do use social media during health-related risk communication, studies find that public relations officers, governmental agencies, and the general public have used social media successfully to spread truthful information and to verify information to dispel rumors during disasters. Few studies focused on the recovery and preparation phases and on countries in the Southern hemisphere, except for Australia. The vast majority of studies did not analyze the demographics of social media users beyond their geographic location, their status of being inside/outside the disaster zone; and their frequency and content of posting. Socioeconomic demographics were not collected and/or analyzed to drill deeper into the implications of using social media to reach vulnerable populations. Who exactly is reached via social media campaigns and who needs to be reached with other means has remained an understudied area.

The prominence of social media in contemporary life has led more mothers to search for parenting information through various Internet and social media channels. The following study examines the impact that Instagram mommy blog content has on the perceived parenting skill of the typical American mother. In this experiment, participants were exposed to one of two types of Instagram motherhood blogger content. The first type of content did not address the struggles of motherhood (referred to as an “alpha-mom” blogger content), while the second type of content (referred to as a “realistic” blogger content) did. After reviewing the content, participants will be asked a series of Likert-type scale questions to gauge their perceived parenting skill. We hypothesized that participants who were exposed to the “alpha-mom” content would have a lower belief in their own parenting skill than those who were exposed to content from the “realistic” blogger. The hypothesis was not supported. However, we did find that participants who received some of their parenting information from Internet sources had a lower belief in their parenting skill than participants who did not receive their parenting information from online sources, regardless of the content to which they were exposed.

Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia that anyone can edit, has been enormously successful. But while it is read nearly equally by women and men, women are only 8.5 to 12.6% of those who edit or write Wikipedia articles. We analyzed coverage of Wikipedia's gender gap by 42 U.S. news organizations and blogs as well as 1,336 comments posted online by readers. We also interviewed Wikimedia Foundation executive director Sue Gardner. Commentators questioned Wikipedia's epistemology and culture and associated the gap with societal issues and/or (perceived) gender differences regarding time management, self-confidence, and expertise, as well as personality and interests. Yet, many commentators denied the gap was a problem; they blamed women for not joining, suggested it was women's choice, or mocked girly interests. The belittling of the disparity as feminist ideology arguably betrays an antifeminist backlash.

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We interviewed 61 Muslims in 15 focus groups from the most visible Muslim population in the United States: the Detroit Metropolitan Area. Participants shared their experiences of and responses to Islamophobia on social media and face-to-face during the 2016 US presidential election campaign and aftermath. Applying Fraser’s and Squires’ theories of counterpublics, we developed an adapted understanding of counterpublics in collapsed contexts of online and face-to-face spaces. We argue that everyday Muslim internet users in the United States are an example of a hyper differential counterpublic. They face the pressures of near ubiquitous and ever evolving Islamophobic attacks, while needing to engage with the internet for personal and professional purposes. We suggest that hyper differential counterpublics operate in collapsed contexts of mixed, unimaginable publics, switch between group and individual responses, and craft hyper situational responses to discriminations case by case.