Visual content is a critical component of everyday social media, on platforms explicitly framed around the visual (Instagram and Vine), on those offering a mix of text and images in myriad forms (Facebook, Twitter, and Tumblr), and in apps and profiles where visual presentation and provision of information are important considerations. However, despite being so prominent in forms such as selfies, looping media, infographics, memes, online videos, and more, sociocultural research into the visual as a central component of online communication has lagged behind the analysis of popular, predominantly text-driven social media. This paper underlines the increasing importance of visual elements to digital, social, and mobile media within everyday life, addressing the significant research gap in methods for tracking, analysing, and understanding visual social media as both image-based and intertextual content. In this paper, we build on our previous methodological considerations of Instagram in isolation to examine further questions, challenges, and benefits of studying visual social media more broadly, including methodological and ethical considerations. Our discussion is intended as a rallying cry and provocation for further research into visual (and textual and mixed) social media content, practices, and cultures, mindful of both the specificities of each form, but also, and importantly, the ongoing dialogues and interrelations between them as communication forms.

Journal of Medical Internet Research - International Scientific Journal for Medical Research, Information and Communication on the Internet #Preprint #PeerReviewMe: Warning: This is a unreviewed preprint. Readers are warned that the document has not been peer-reviewed by expert/patient reviewers or an academic editor, may contain misleading claims, and is likely to undergo changes before final publication, if accepted, or may have been rejected/withdrawn. Readers with interest and expertise are encouraged to sign up as peer-reviewer, if the paper is within an open peer-review period. Please cite this preprint only for review purposes or for grant applications and CVs (if you are the author). Background: There has been a rapid rise in the popularity of electronic cigarettes (e-cigarettes) over the last decade, with growth predicted to continue. The uptake of these devices has escalated despite inconclusive evidence of their efficacy as a smoking cessation device and unknown long term health consequences. As tobacco smoking rates continue to drop or plateau in many well developed countries transnational tobacco companies have transitioned into the vaping industry and are now using social media to promote their products. Evidence suggests that e-cigarettes are being marketed on social media as a harm reduction alternative with retailers and manufactures utilising marketing techniques historically used by the tobacco industry. Objective: To identify and describe the messages presented in e-cigarette related social media (Twitter, YouTube, Instagram and Pinterest) promotions and discussions, and identify future directions for research, surveillance and regulation. Methods: Data sources included Medline, Scopus, ProQuest, Informit, Journal of Medical Internet Research and Google Scholar. Studies must have been published in English between 2007 and 2017, analyse content captured from e-cigarette related social media promotions or discussions, and report results for e-cigarettes separately to other forms of tobacco and nicotine delivery. Database searching ceased October 2017. Initial searching identified 536 studies. Two reviewers screened studies by title and One reviewer examined 71 full texts to determine eligibly and identified 25 studies for inclusion. This process was undertaken with the assistance of the online screening and data extraction tool - Covidence. The review was registered with The Joanna Briggs Institute Systematic Reviews database and followed the methodology for JBI Scoping Reviews. Results: Several key messages are being used to promote e-cigarettes including as a safer alternative to cigarettes, efficacy as a smoking cessation aid, and for use where smoking is prohibited. Other major marketing efforts aimed at capturing a larger market involve promotion of innovative flavouring and highlighting the public performance of vaping. Discussion and promotion of these devices appears to be predominantly occurring among everyday people and those with vested interests such as retailers and manufacturers. There is a noticeable silence from the public health and government sector in these discussions on social media. Conclusions: The social media landscape is being dominated by pro-vaping messages disseminated by the vaping industry and vaping proponents. The uncertainty surrounding e-cigarette regulation expressed within the public health field appears not to be reflected in ongoing social media dialogues, and highlights the need for public health professionals to interact with the public to actively influence social media conversations and create a more balanced discussion. With the vaping industry changing so rapidly real time monitoring and surveillance of how these devices are discussed, promoted, and reportedly used on social media is necessary in conjunction with evidence published in academic journals.

Parents are increasingly sharing information about infants online in various forms and capacities. To more meaningfully understand the way parents decide what to share about young people and the way those decisions are being shaped, this article focuses on two overlapping areas: parental monitoring of babies and infants through the example of wearable technologies and parental mediation through the example of the public sharing practices of celebrity and influencer parents. The article begins by contextualizing these parental practices within the literature on surveillance, with particular attention to online surveillance and the increasing importance of affect. It then gives a brief overview of work on pregnancy mediation, monitoring on social media, and via pregnancy apps, which is the obvious precursor to examining parental sharing and monitoring practices regarding babies and infants. The examples of parental monitoring and parental mediation will then build on the idea of “intimate surveillance” which entails close and seemingly invasive monitoring by parents. Parental monitoring and mediation contribute to the normalization of intimate surveillance to the extent that surveillance is (re)situated as a necessary culture of care. The choice to not survey infants is thus positioned, worryingly, as a failure of parenting.

While social media research has provided detailed cumulative analyses of selected social media platforms and content, especially Twitter, newer platforms, apps, and visual content have been less extensively studied so far. This paper proposes a methodology for studying Instagram activity, building on established methods for Twitter research by initially examining hashtags, as common structural features to both platforms. In doing so, we outline methodological challenges to studying Instagram, especially in comparison to Twitter. Finally, we address critical questions around ethics and privacy for social media users and researchers alike, setting out key considerations for future social media research.

This paper examines two ‘ends’ of identity online – birth and death – through the analytical lens of specific hashtags on the Instagram platform. These ends are examined in tandem in an attempt to surface commonalities in the way that individuals use visual social media when sharing information about other people. A range of emerging norms in digital discourses about birth and death are uncovered, and it is significant that in both cases the individuals being talked about cannot reply for themselves. Issues of agency in representation therefore frame the analysis. After sorting through a number of entry points, images and videos with the #ultrasound and #funeral hashtags were tracked for three months in 2014. Ultrasound images and videos on Instagram revealed a range of communication and representation strategies, most highlighting social experiences and emotional peaks. There are, however, also significant privacy issues as a significant proportion of public accounts share personally identifiable metadata about the mother and unborn child, although these issue are not apparent in relation to funeral images. Unlike other social media platforms, grief on Instagram is found to be more about personal expressions of loss rather than affording spaces of collective commemoration. A range of related practices and themes, such as commerce and humour, were also documented as a part of the spectrum of activity on the Instagram platform. Norms specific to each collection emerged from this analysis, which are then compared to document research about other social media platforms, especially Facebook.

Governments across the world are struggling to address the market dominance of technology companies through increased regulation. The Australian Federal government found itself leading the world in platform regulation when, in 2021, it enacted the Australian News Media and Digital Platforms Mandatory Bargaining Code. The furore surrounding the introduction of the legislation, and Facebook's subsequent Australian ‘news ban’ exposed the limits of a regulatory model that has previously left the tech industry to moderate itself. In this paper, we argue the introduction of the Code is a leading example of a global trajectory towards regulatory change, which sees governments move from a reactive regulation model to specific interventions around the governance of digital media spaces. We discuss how best to measure the successes and failures around this more interventionist model through a case study of the implementation of the Code in Australia. More broadly we consider how global platforms have responded, and whether the reform is an effective regulatory model for other national governments to emulate.