Identifying Digital Aggression in Information Dissemination on Social Media: A Network Analytical Study

Abstract

Text and memes are increasingly populated and used to spread information on social media like twitter. Sometimes these memes can have different meanings or connotations. This study was aimed at highlighting how such information in the form of memes or text are diffused on social media platforms, with Twitter the selected platform. The study adopted an explanatory sequential mixed method design which allows for in-depth analysis of quantitative results from the corpus of tweets. The findings indicate a growing use of a new terminology ―vawulence‖ over the period of eight months observed showing adoption and acceptance of the new variation for the word violence. The study also found that digital aggression (cyberbullying) has become more notable and on the rise particularly with the use of text and memes showing veiled and, in some instances, outright attempts at cyberbullying with new terminologies still arising (in the form of ‗wotowoto‘ and ‗collect‘ which mean a form of physical assault).