The case study of Leon Valley demonstrates how social media can enable new modes of participatory politics and forge mediated connections to local places, even for people who are not actually locals.

First Amendment audits combine on-the-ground activism with clear and simple calls to action for viewers, helping to convert audiences into engaged participants and playing on media’s power to shrink both perceived distance and difference between groups.

Building on the idea of parasocial relationships, I argue that First Amendment auditors find activist success through building paralocal relationships between their audiences and the places they feature in videos.

To theorize paralocal relationships, I use the case of First Amendment auditors, activist content creators who film police and government officials as a means of testing and defending their rights to free speech and free press.

Paralocal relationships describe a sense of familiarity with and concern toward a place featured in media by viewers who have never been there.

My article is available here, open access, for New Media & Society: journals.sagepub.com/doi/epub/10....

🚨New publication from my dissertation work! Examining the clash between First Amendment auditors and the police of Leon Valley, Texas, I theorize the development of paralocal relationships as a new form of civic engagement for the social media age. #openaccess

How does the professionalization of Trust & Safety shape global content moderation practices? We compare Community Guidelines using the typology of harms from TSPA to identify policy priorities and exclusions, available #openaccess in New Media & Society: doi.org/10.1177/1461...

YouTube creators challenge biased moderation with reaction videos, but may also legitimise platform authority. @blakeplease.bsky.social, @reynoldscj.bsky.social, Y. Kuperberg & O. Rothenstein analyse 115 videos, framing practices as aspirational platform governanc

Read: doi.org/10.14763/2025.1.1829

What do creators do when they feel that social media platforms aren’t treating them fairly? Our study of a controversy about racism and bias on YouTube, out now #openaccess in @policyr.bsky.social, offers a new answer: they participate in aspirational platform governance doi.org/10.14763/202...

[New special issue] #Contentmoderation on digital platforms: beyond states and firms! As content regulation becomes increasingly politicised, this issue edited by Anne Bellon & Romain Badouard explores the growing role of #civilsociety in #platformgovernance. ⅕

Read: doi.org/10.14763/2025.1.2005

It has been a privilege to get to think with the #DigitalValues crew since 2019. The theoretical framework we present here is a proper cumulation of our work, and relevant to anyone else interested in values, social media, and global communication. PS I am very proud of the figure’s aesthetics 👇

The power of values for understanding social media is also their curse: they are everywhere. In an #openaccess article in New Media & Society, the Digital Values team presents an analytic framework for systematically making sense of values in digital spheres: doi.org/10.1177/1461...

this playbook of citation plagiarism attacks www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025... reminds me a bit of copyright callouts on Youtube which @reynoldscj.bsky.social and @blakeplease.bsky.social researched policyreview.info/articles/ana...

Your favorite [✨manifesting✨] academic duo @reynoldscj.bsky.social + I will talk about the role of creators, degenerates, and provocateurs [not mutually exclusive] in platform governance tomorrow for the behind-the-scenes series from @pgmt.bsky.social 3-4 pm CET

Register here: tinyurl.com/3v45nxr3

📣 Online Talk Series (15): @blakeplease.bsky.social & @reynoldscj.bsky.social - “Malcontents as method: How bad actors offer an alternative vision of good governance on social media”
🗓️January 28, 2025 🕛3-4 pm (CET) 📍Online Event

👉 Event & Registration: platform-governance.org/online-talk-...

!!Attention!! people who care about platforms, monetization, parasocial relationships, and/or idols: the exceptionally talented MA student @landrous.bsky.social and I have a paper for you, #openaccess in the fresh new journal Platforms & Society theorizing parasocial media doi.org/10.1177/2976...

Excited I get to present new (work in progress) research out of my postdoc project at the #AlgoSoc conference 🙃

WT “Competing Priorities: Identifying Value Gaps Between Public and Private Governance” with @blakeplease.bsky.social & @reynoldscj.bsky.social

Stay tuned & see you in Amsterdam!

www.theverge.com/2024/11/26/2...

"In her lawsuit, Gifford alleges that Sheil copied her, down to specific frames in videos. She claims that repeated pattern and Sheil’s uncannily similar content ultimately cut into Gifford’s own earnings."

Reminds me of the SSSniperWolf react persona drama

www.nature.com/articles/d41...

"For example, a 2021 study found that a lack of comprehensive and open archiving meant that 174 open-access journals, covering all major research topics and geographical regions, vanished from the web in the first two decades of this millennium."

📢Q. How do creators challenge restrictive copyright enforcement? A. Platform callouts. Our new #openaccess article in @PolicyR assesses the benefits and limitations of creator-driven governance: policyreview.info/articles/analy… with @reynoldscj.bsky.social and Omer Rothenstein

Bluesky,

Today is my 2nd day on here as an escapee from The Bad Place. I am BEGGING y’all to repost this

I have $80,000 in scholarship money to give away to women and girls NATIONWIDE. I worked so hard to raise this money. Applications open THIS week. I’m scared the mass migration will impact this

New article! In “User-generated accountability: Public participation in algorithmic governance on YouTube,”
Blake Hallinan and I investigate how YouTube creators act to hold the platform accountable in the face of policy failures and make noise to draw attention to their concerns. t.co/vdhoIbqhKW