Terminology
General term for uploading, posting, and distributing one's own content.
Sharing
A headline or link designed solely to entice a user to click, often using misleading, exaggerated, or emotional language.
What is Clickbait?
Information is embedded into different timescales, linking short-term actions to long-term narratives.
Retemporalisation
Coined by Richard Dawkins in The Selfish Gene (1976): memes = cultural analog to genes.
What Is a Meme?
In the context of hashtags, is a user-driven innovation that categorizes and tracks digital content, aiding navigation and interpretation within online discourse.
Tagging
Hiding meaning in plain sight for selected audiences
Ex: Navigate “collapsed contexts”.
Social Steganography
Meaning shifts as it moves across different modes (e.g., from text to image).
Resemiotisation
explains how we choose the most relevant interpretation based on context and expectations.
Relevance Theory
Sharing content not originally created by the user (e.g., retweets, reblogs, shares).
Platforms provide built-in tools for rebroadcasting:
Twitter: Retweet
Tumblr: Reblog
Facebook: Share
Rebroadcasting (Scott, 2021)
Getting clicks!
perlocutionary force
Perceived possibilities for action (e.g., Twitter's 280-char limit).
Affordance
Acts of showing
ostensive communication.
Share to express an attitude (approval, irony, disbelief).
Can be explicit (with comment) or tacit (reader infers).
“Good!!” (endorsement)
“The fool Donald Trump…” (critique)
Goal tweets: #CFCLive retweeted with silent approval
Echoic Attributive
Platforms vary by:
Genre (e.g., blogs vs. wikis)
Purpose (e.g., Facebook = profiles/groups; YouTube = videos/comments)
Functionality (e.g., semi-public chats, private DMs, share buttons on shopping sites)
Features that limit certain actions.
Constraints
Curiosity = a “cognitive deprivation” from an information gap.
Symptoms: strong motivation, impulsivity, short attention span, potential disappointment.
Loewenstein’s Theory of Curiosity
Meaning is adapted from one context to another, changing its interpretation.
Recontextualisation
Identity construction in online travel reviews (TripAdvisor).
Camila Vásquez
Performance matter: Identities= masks, worn/taken off depending on context
A word/phrase preceded by #, turning it into a hyperlink.
Improve content filtering, contextualization, and “exploratory serendipity”.
Hashtag (Chris Messina)