Social media interactions in Mexico about the SARS-CoV-2 vaccination plan

This chapter focuses on the concern about the implementation strategy of the Federal Government's Vaccination Plan. Both the public and private health professionals, as well as those persons who must leave their homes to earn their livelihood, have been the most affected by the Covid-19 pandemic. Therefore, the objective of this research was to study the interactions carried out on two social media, in order to analyze what people think about the way the Federal Government's Vaccination Plan has been implemented. A mixed methodology (quantitative) was used to carry out this analysis, in order to gather the data and carry out a numerical visualization with the aim of obtaining a general appraisal about the study object. Additionally, digital ethnography was used to observe the type of interaction carried out in the fora. The data was gathered during three episodes. The first episode included informants, who were asked to get the opinion of their groups about a discussion-generating question, which raised doubts about the vaccination strategy. The second episode consisted of following a person's post expressing his opinion about the senior citizens' first vaccination day. The aim of the third episode of this analysis was to study the first 150 comments that Internet users made on the walls of two prestigious Mexican research-professors: Lorenzo Meyer and Sergio Aguayo. © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023. All rights reserved.

The Role of Physical Cues in Co-located and Remote Casework.

Across the world, large swaths of society closed in response to the COVID-19 (C-19) pandemic, transforming the provision of government services, including welfare. The shift to remote work afforded a glimpse of what a future digitized public sector might look like. In Denmark, employment assistance went fully remote in spring 2020 to prevent the spread of C-19. Caseworkers assessed unemployed individuals' needs for welfare benefits over the phone instead of at the physical job center. With this change, caseworkers could no longer rely on nonverbal communication, such as physical cues (e.g., the appearance of an unemployed individual), in their assessment practice. Although they are not explicitly described in the formal work process, caseworkers report that such cues influence their assessment of an individual's challenges related to their unemployment. Taking a qualitative approach, we conducted 60 telephone interviews with 6 caseworkers across 3 Danish job centers during the first wave of the pandemic. Later, during the second wave of the pandemic (August 2020-June 2021), we conducted observational studies (22.5 h) including on-site interviews in two job centers where caseworkers had returned to work having consultations with unemployed individuals both remotely and co-located. During this second-wave period we also conducted new interviews (n = 18) with the caseworkers from the first part of the study. The contribution of this paper is an empirical description of how casework changes when it shifts from co-located to remote consultations, focused on two factors: (1) the role of physical cues and how caseworkers rely on these cues to communicate with and assess the individual, and (2) documentation practices, and how earlier documentation became more important when caseworkers lacked access to physical cues. We contribute to CSCW research by showing that although implicit information about the individual is valuable for caseworkers, it is not problem-free, and therefore we argue that there is a need to find new ways to assess individuals, in particular interpreting implicit or un-spoken information, as the complicated use of physical cues can tip over to become a matter of bias.

Victimization of Users of Affective-Sexual Applications and the Culture of Compliance

The Projects "Enrolla2 Generation X Security Perceptions and Risk Attitudes in individuals belonging to the Generation X linked to the use of affective-sexual computer applications (CIPI / 20/091)" and "The management of desire in times of COVID (CIPI / 20/159) "had as their respective objectives, to study the perception of security, its incidence in the level of victimization and the risks to the health of individuals in affective-sexual applications;and to know the motivations that have led them to use affective-sexual apps during lockdown. Different levels of security were observed in the apps, depending on the treatment of user data, the existence of harassing attitudes and the emergence of a digital drug market. Legally, it is understood as necessary to improve the protection of users, potential victims of crime -individually identified -and, likewise, encourage the culture of prevention or compliance with respect to the companies that own said platforms.

Making (female) health care work matter: The performative publics of #systemrelevant during the COVID-19 pandemic in Germany

Over the last two years, digital media have contributed significantly to increasing the visibility of those who are outstandingly challenged by the pandemic. In Germany, the Twitter hashtag #systemrelevant [systemically relevant] initiated a public debate on values and working conditions. Applying the practice-theory-based concept of performative publics, we analyze the formation of this specific public with a special focus on its gendered structure. Results of our mixed-methods approach show how health care work has become the dominant issue of #systemrelevant. Civil society actors and engaged health care workers set the agenda, and journalism primarily responds to these voices. Although care work is performed predominantly by women, most of the attention online is given to men. However, on the level of tweets and linked content, the discourse in #systemrelevant counteracts stereotypical images of women in health care. Overall, the ethnographic data on the most significant collective actor show a continuous tension between symbolic recognition and their struggle for improving working conditions. © 2023 The authors.

'Can You Hear Me?' Five Reflections on Building Rapport Online During the Coronavirus (COVID-19) Pandemic

Building rapport with research participants is crucial for ethnographic research. The coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic has intensified the existing challenges of building rapport. In this article, five researchers explore the ethical and methodological implications of adapting their research processes to comply with the restrictions imposed during the pandemic. The researchers, each at various stages of their dissertation projects, ask a familiar question with renewed relevance: How can meaningful, reciprocal relationships be built with interlocutors through digital interactions? The planned fieldwork, with bazaar traders in Ukraine and Bishkek, adolescents in a Romanian post-industrial region, breastfeeding mothers in Germany, museum employees in Papua New Guinea and street `artivists' in Los Angeles, was not intended to take place remotely. Five PhD students at different stages of their doctoral projects met at the DGSKA Autumn School, 'Fieldwork meets crisis', where they decided to analyze their rapport-building strategies during the pandemic together, as they were facing different challenges in applying the methods of digital ethnography for their originally on -foot planned research. Yet evaluating the approaches that have been adapted to conceptualize, conduct, and interpret online ethnographic research provides fertile ground for discussing the following interconnected questions: How can relationships be built and maintained online? How is corporality related to trust? And to what extent is reciprocity possible online? By critically reflecting on these questions, the five researchers seek to take forward the longstanding and under-theorized debate in anthropology on building rapport.

Electronic Danse Music to the Test of the Livestream

Music livestream reached a new step due to lockdown and the cancellation and prohibition of music events worldwide. EDM market grabbed and articulated it to make "their” new place for music. Through the ethnography of a home-alone party, I will describe an online music festival, using interfaces to cross Detroit and reach the world within Twitch. By giving elements about how a music event producer and broadcasting networks work together, I will map music industry layers. Especially, I will question how audience —a talkative chat and silent viewers—and DJ act and build livestream as a music place, and test how musical is human learning about connexion, community sense, (a)knowledgment and relationship in livestream model comparing to rave or club. © 2022 Communiquer. Revue de communication sociale et publique. All rights reserved.

"Keeping your composure": A digital ethnography of gendered alcohol norms on Instagram.

BACKGROUND: The increase in alcohol consumption among young women has been the most striking change in drinking culture in Spain in recent years. This study sets out to examine how images and stories about alcohol consumption are presented on Instagram, the strategies for constructing them, and the impact of social norms, including gender norms, on the strategies of making alcohol consumption visible. METHODS: We have carried out a digital ethnography study in which different research techniques have been applied. We held 13 discussion groups, conducted a three-month period of observation on Instagram, and 38 in-depth interviews of young Spanish men and women between the ages of 15 and 24 (N = 118). RESULTS: The representation of alcohol consumption on Instagram by young people shows fashionable party spaces for shared disinhibition, fun and youth gatherings. This social network permits different types of alcohol advertising and promotion of the image associated with its consumption, and is thus a space that brands and influencers exploit. Young people avoid the diffusion on Instagram of images related to their heavy use of alcohol through particular strategies. They untag, delete or avoid using their smartphone; and they choose the audience to whom images are directed, and the areas of publication. The desire to be posting and exhibiting constantly converges with embarrassment and precaution with (un)known audiences. Gender is a key element for understanding the differences in the way in which posts on Instagram related to drinking and drunkenness affect young people. CONCLUSIONS: Our data show that Instagram fosters the spreading of an ideal model of "alcohol consumption" online that tends to conceal the adverse effects of the substance, and that the online diffusion of behaviour concerning drinking is not gender-neutral.

‘Put South Africans First': Making Sense of an Emerging South African Xenophobic (Online) Community

With the arrival of the Covid-19 pandemic in South Africa, a shift has taken place in the organisation of xenophobia as xenophobic activism has adapted to the pandemic and increasingly moved ‘online'. While a large scholarship on the various aspects of ‘offline' xenophobia in contemporary South Africa has been produced, the recent intensification of online xenophobic activism during the pandemic remains an under-researched topic. The present study sets out to challenge this lack of attention given to online xenophobia in South Africa by conducting a 15-month digital ethnography of an emerging South African xenophobic (online) community, the so-called ‘Put South Africans First' movement. Aiming to understand the narrative construction of social reality in this group, data gained from the Put South Africans First Facebook page were triangulated with interviews conducted with the leadership of the Put South Africans First movement. Two narratives that are constitutive for this group will be analysed: the story of the ‘harmfulness of Pan-Africanism' and the conspiracy of a ‘modern-day slavery'. Drawing on a perspective that emphasises the entanglement between the emotional, the narrative and the digital in contemporary forms of xenophobia, the article exposes the working of these two key narratives. The narrative of the ‘harmfulness of Pan-Africanism' draws on the recycling of colonial stereotypes, the affect of disgust, and on the technique of reappropriating and weaponising history. In contrast, the narrative of ‘modern-day slavery' is fuelled by a belief in replacement conspiracies and a dystopic longing into the future, where future generations of South African children have become enslaved by ‘foreigners'. The article concludes by pointing out some of the specifics of the South African case in relation to xenophobic mobilisations in other parts of the world. [ FROM AUTHOR]

Online workouts and fitness instructors' physical autonomy in times of the Covid-19 pandemic

This paper adds to the limited number of studies about physical autonomy and practice shifts among fitness instructors who responded to the change brought about by the Covid-19 pandemic and moved their professional activity online. I conceptualize physical autonomy as the ability of moving unrestrained and unhindered. I apply the online-offline ethnography to explore the interdependencies between digital media/technologies and the embodied practices of fitness instructors in online workouts. I also pay attention to fitness instructors' perception of their physical autonomy in the world of online training during the pandemic. This article shows that instructors' capacity for action has become more and more dependent on new technology.

Religious Actors, Care, and Mood in the Time of COVID-19

The introduction to this special issue considers the interdisciplinary study of religious sentiments, religious care and social actions during the COvID-19 outbreak in South-, East-and Southeast Asia. Our approach in terms of nodes and polarisation allows one to visualise a bundle of religious and secular actors and interests, as well as original strategies and actions, in time of pandemic, which sometimes challenge local regimes of truth and authority. In many cases, faith-based NGO s have been complementing the State, activating their powerful channels of mission in urban and rural areas, under the guise of combating COVID-19 crisis. The studies presented here examine several Asian religious actors during this period of COvID-19 crisis;and the ways in which their creative digitalised measures of worship, protection and healing, and their participation in urgent public health and care provisions, have given them the opportunity to renegotiate their relationships with States and societies.

A change of space: implications of digital fieldwork in connected homes during the COVID-19 pandemic

Drawing on research conducted in ten Norwegian households, this article describes the effects that the COVID-19 pandemic and social distancing regulations have had on the research design and, consequently, on research data. The article describes how the research design had to be adapted to a variety of containment measures that were imposed during the fieldwork, and how this has influenced the researchers’ rapport with informants and access to the field and the challenges that emerged. It also describes a more active role for the participants in the study, whose agency was enhanced. The article proposes a new way of approaching fieldwork in homes adopting ‘methodological improvisation’ and concludes with recommendations for future research, proposing digital ethnography methods as both an option that enables data collection during a pandemic and as a sustainable alternative to certain methodologies that belong to traditional ethnography. [ FROM AUTHOR] Copyright of Digital Creativity is the property of Routledge and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full . (Copyright applies to all s.)

Anthropology from Home: Advice on Digital Ethnography for the Pandemic Times

The coronavirus pandemic has made ethnographic fieldwork, as traditionally conceived in anthropology, temporarily impossible to conduct. Facing long-term limitations to mobility and physical contact, which will challenge our research practices for the foreseeable future, social anthropology has to adjust to these new circumstances. This article discusses and reflects on what digital ethnography can offer to researchers across the world, providing critical insight into the method and offering advice to beginners in the field. Last, but not least, the article introduces the phrase ‘anthropology from home’ to talk about research in the pandemic times – that is, geographically restricted but digitally enabled.

Resilience in online communities of practice during the COVID-19 pandemic: an Italian case study

This paper presents the results of a case study conducted through digital ethnography and textual analysis methods. The thematic focus concerns the role of online communities of practice as resilience tools in the case of emergency and crisis. The origin of this assumption lies in some reflections developed in view of the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, especially given the varied typology of social responses to this crisis. A fundamental aim in this research is the exploration of the dynamics and spontaneous practices of social support that take place today in digital environments. This study uses the theoretical paradigm of community resilience and its interpretative dimensions, such as proactivity and adaptation. The analysis of the online community Noi Denunceremo - Verita e giustizia per le vittime del COVID-19 (We Will Denounce - Truth and Justice for the Victims of COVID-19) indicates the interdisciplinary relevance of pursuing this avenue of research, especially in view of the findings that identify the role of online communities of practice in promoting inclusive and participatory responses to emergencies and crises.

Latency and Crisis: Mutual Aid Activism in the Covid-19 Pandemic.

Activists have responded to the Covid-19 pandemic by organizing for mutual aid: creating collective action to meet people's material needs and build ties of solidarity. I examine the difficulties encountered by mutual aid activists during the pandemic through Alberto Melucci's notions of latency and collective identity. Through digital ethnographic observations of the Instagram accounts of mutual aid groups based in Philadelphia, USA, as well as interviews with the activists, I explore how mutual aid, conceptualized as latency work, was practiced by activists in the unprecedented conditions of the pandemic and how activists approached collective identity processes. I show that activists experienced a compression of latency and mobilization within the crisis context of the pandemic, which made it more difficult for them to pursue the construction of a collective identity. I also suggest that the effects of this compression were further exacerbated by the logic of immediacy that characterizes social network sites.

Convivial Quarantines: Cultivating Co-presence at a Distance.

Sociology's focus on sociality and co-presence has long oriented studies of commensality-the social dimension of eating together. This literature commonly prioritizes face-to-face interactions and takes physical proximity for granted. The onset of the COVID-19 pandemic in March 2020 largely halted in-person gatherings and altered everyday foodways. Consequently, many people turned to digital commensality, cooking and eating together through video-call technology such as Zoom and FaceTime. We explore the implications of these new foodways and ask: has digital commensality helped cultivate co-presence amidst pandemic-induced physical separation? If so, how? To address these questions, we analyze two forms of qualitative data collected by the first author: interviews with individuals who cooked and ate together at a distance since March 2020 and digital ethnography during different groups' online food events (e.g., happy hours, dinners, holiday gatherings, and birthday celebrations). Digital commensality helps foster a sense of co-presence and social connectedness at a distance. Specifically, participants use three temporally oriented strategies to create or maintain co-presence: they draw on pre-pandemic pasts and reinvent culinary traditions to meet new circumstances; they creatively adapt novel digital foodways through online dining; and they actively imagine post-pandemic futures where physically proximate commensality is again possible.

“Nevertheless, the Beseda Happened”: Online Broadcasts as a New Religious Practice of the Churikovtsy Community

The coronavirus pandemic proved to be a challenge for anthropologists as well for those they study. The classical anthropological method of participant observation under quarantine restrictions turned out to be nearly impossible, which has jeopardized many researchers’ fieldwork. At the same time, due to sanitary and epidemiological restrictions, the regular spiritual life of the Churikovtsy teetotaler community I studied, including their weekly prayer meetings (“besedas”) in Vyritsa, also came under threat, yet they perceived this situation as a challenge of the modern world requiring a response. This paper fits into the general context of discussions on the possibilities and limitations of anthropological work in the pandemic times. The article focuses on the way the Churikovtsy religious community has adapted to the situation through a new practice of online broadcasts, which has allowed its members to continue their prayer meetings, while giving the researcher an opportunity to continue her fieldwork. The focus of this text is the story of adoption of this practice, as well as the challenges and benefits of the new format for the community and the anthropologist. The paper also addresses the role of material aspects in the religious practices of the Churikovtsy and the specifics of their rituals in the new circumstances. © 2021, Peter the Great Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography (Kunstkamera), Russian Academy of Sciences. All rights reserved.

Viral Visualizations: How Coronavirus Skeptics Use Orthodox Data Practices to Promote Unorthodox Science Online

Controversial understandings of the coronavirus pandemic have turned data visualizations into a battleground. Defying public health officials, coronavirus skeptics on US social media spent much of 2020 creating data visualizations showing that the government's pandemic response was excessive and that the crisis was over. This paper investigates how pandemic visualizations circulated on social media, and shows that people who mistrust the scientific establishment often deploy the same rhetorics of data-driven decision-making used by experts, but to advocate for radical policy changes. Using a quantitative analysis of how visualizations spread on Twitter and an ethnographic approach to analyzing conversations about COVID data on Facebook, we document an epistemological gap that leads pro- and anti-mask groups to draw drastically different inferences from similar data. Ultimately, we argue that the deployment of COVID data visualizations reflect a deeper sociopolitical rift regarding the place of science in public life.

Catching the Transient: Epidemic Reflections on Social Networking Sites

This paper focuses on the social dimensions of the coronavirus epidemic, which emerged and spread in various forms in social networking sites during the “first epidemic wave” (March-May 2020). Using digital ethnography, the authors analyse eleven selected pages, groups, and profiles on Facebook and Instagram, as well as a blog, and interpret the material in light of current socio-political events. Through a thematic analysis, the authors form four thematic sets (social engagement, conspiracy theories, humour, everyday), which show the inherent intertwinement of the digital and non-digital spheres. © 2021 Slovensko Etnolosko Drustvo. All rights reserved.

#GaysOverCOVID: The Social Drama of LGBTQ Representation on Instagram

This article provides a descriptive, multiperspectival account of #GaysOverCOVID, what the late anthropologist Victor Turner termed a "social drama" featuring gay Instagram influencers behaving in a manner that, according to their critics, poorly represents the gay community. Building on other social media scholars' theorization of the influencer as a kind of representational laborer, this article examines the various "representational imperatives" to which Instagays, Instagram influencers who specialize in homoerotic self-portraiture, were subjected from various publics during the COVID-19 pandemic. Drawing from two large data sets, collected during a lengthy participant observation of "gay Instagram," I endeavor to describe in visual and empirical terms the discursive construction of a public figure. I conclude by examining the impact this "social drama" has on LGBTQ representational politics.

Analysis of metaverse platform as a new play culture: Focusing on roblox and ZEPETO

At the end of 2019, due to the emergence of COVID-19, individuals’ outdoor activities have been restricted. Due to this phenomenon, demand for online activities has been increasing and the interaction in the metaverse environment is attracting great attention. The MZ generation and the alpha generation who are active in online activities are main users of the metaverse platform, but there is not enough research that studied the main activities of users on the metaverse yet. In this study, we observe how the MZ generation and the alpha generation utilize the metaverse 0and form cultures by deploying ethnography methodology. Traditional ethnography is characterized by in-depth observations of groups of individuals, recognizing the impact of historical and cultural contexts on social interactions. This has the advantage of enabling new insights through an in-depth understanding of phenomena or topics that are still perhaps only superficially understood [1]. Since the space where users of the Metaverse platform take place has been specifically a digital environment, from the perspective of digital ethnography, we selected YouTube as a platform on which the observation and research were conducted. Copyright © by the paper’s author. Use permitted under Creative Commons License Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0).