Social Issue Emergence in the Hybrid Media System

This project explores the emergence of social issues on social media, which we observe in popular hashtag campaigns such as #metoo or #blacklivesmatter. These issues begin as discussions on social media, and with time, they can become crucial topics that evoke strong emotions and get everyone talking. At a certain point of viral spread, the issues are picked up by professional news media and make their way into the mainstream. We are interested in this phenomenon because it is extremely relevant for democracy and civil society to define which issues are important and need political and societal action, and the continuous development of social media will only increase its importance. However, science still needs a complete explanation of how such issues emerge and grow, as previously, researchers looked at different factors in isolation. We theorize that social issue emergence involves two parallel and seemingly contradictory processes: first, the viral spread of the issue on social media (for example, via hashtags and reposts), and second, control attempts by groups and individuals (for example, an activist group spreading a certain message or a celebrity sharing a personal story under a particular hashtag). We will study these processes in-depth to understand their underlying logic and investigate which groups participate in the hashtag debates in which stages and in what way. In order to find this out, we will interview actors involved in social issue emergence, such as social media activists. Additionally, we will analyze content on many social issues from social media, alternative media, and news with the help of machine learning algorithms. We will examine how issues evolve and debates on them change over time. Based on these empirical insights, we will create a computer simulation showing how social issues develop and spread on social media platforms. As a result of the three-year research project, we will present a universal, dynamic, multi-level model of social issue emergence. The model will help us understand the underlying processes of this phenomenon and predict social issue emergence in the future.