Affordances-in-Practice: How Social Norm Dynamics in Climate Change Publics Are Shaped on Instagram and Twitter

Social norms are flexible regulating forces of human behavior. They are shaped by humans, whose actions in turn are shaped by their environment, including the online social spaces they venture into. The objective of this research is to create an understanding of how the affordances of social media p...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Nathalie Van Raemdonck, Ike Picone, Jo Pierson
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: SAGE Publishing 2025-02-01
Series:Social Media + Society
Online Access:https://doi.org/10.1177/20563051251319066
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
_version_ 1825197313992163328
author Nathalie Van Raemdonck
Ike Picone
Jo Pierson
author_facet Nathalie Van Raemdonck
Ike Picone
Jo Pierson
author_sort Nathalie Van Raemdonck
collection DOAJ
description Social norms are flexible regulating forces of human behavior. They are shaped by humans, whose actions in turn are shaped by their environment, including the online social spaces they venture into. The objective of this research is to create an understanding of how the affordances of social media platforms shape social norm dynamics in online publics, particularly in climate change publics. For this purpose, we make a comparative analysis of the practices of users on Instagram and Twitter that engage with climate change content. We conducted 22 in-depth interviews with a purposively selected sample of worldwide Twitter and Instagram users. We investigated how each platform’s specific affordances shape the participants’ sense of community and how they participate in social norm enforcement and contestation, also called “callouts.” This “affordances-in-practice” perspective brings observations on the differences in how users can actualize the novel affordances of “interventionability” and “external visibility” on both platforms. This research provides a deeper insight into the socio-technical processes underlying the (self-)organization of social movements and provides a pathway to investigating discursive practices of online publics on other platforms. The study avoids debating which norms should prevail over others in the online climate discussion, but does reflect on the negative impact that certain outcomes of norm enforcement and contestation might have on democratic deliberation on climate change. The main findings are that actualizing these affordances on Twitter anno 2023 makes climate discourse sensitive to group-loyalties, whereas on Instagram it makes it dependent on norm leaders in the form of content creators.
format Article
id doaj-art-ce45a9b405ef47bdbbaf85057ad7657e
institution Kabale University
issn 2056-3051
language English
publishDate 2025-02-01
publisher SAGE Publishing
record_format Article
series Social Media + Society
spelling doaj-art-ce45a9b405ef47bdbbaf85057ad7657e2025-02-10T11:03:24ZengSAGE PublishingSocial Media + Society2056-30512025-02-011110.1177/20563051251319066Affordances-in-Practice: How Social Norm Dynamics in Climate Change Publics Are Shaped on Instagram and TwitterNathalie Van Raemdonck0Ike Picone1Jo Pierson2Vrije Universiteit Brussel, BelgiumVrije Universiteit Brussel, BelgiumHasselt University, BelgiumSocial norms are flexible regulating forces of human behavior. They are shaped by humans, whose actions in turn are shaped by their environment, including the online social spaces they venture into. The objective of this research is to create an understanding of how the affordances of social media platforms shape social norm dynamics in online publics, particularly in climate change publics. For this purpose, we make a comparative analysis of the practices of users on Instagram and Twitter that engage with climate change content. We conducted 22 in-depth interviews with a purposively selected sample of worldwide Twitter and Instagram users. We investigated how each platform’s specific affordances shape the participants’ sense of community and how they participate in social norm enforcement and contestation, also called “callouts.” This “affordances-in-practice” perspective brings observations on the differences in how users can actualize the novel affordances of “interventionability” and “external visibility” on both platforms. This research provides a deeper insight into the socio-technical processes underlying the (self-)organization of social movements and provides a pathway to investigating discursive practices of online publics on other platforms. The study avoids debating which norms should prevail over others in the online climate discussion, but does reflect on the negative impact that certain outcomes of norm enforcement and contestation might have on democratic deliberation on climate change. The main findings are that actualizing these affordances on Twitter anno 2023 makes climate discourse sensitive to group-loyalties, whereas on Instagram it makes it dependent on norm leaders in the form of content creators.https://doi.org/10.1177/20563051251319066
spellingShingle Nathalie Van Raemdonck
Ike Picone
Jo Pierson
Affordances-in-Practice: How Social Norm Dynamics in Climate Change Publics Are Shaped on Instagram and Twitter
Social Media + Society
title Affordances-in-Practice: How Social Norm Dynamics in Climate Change Publics Are Shaped on Instagram and Twitter
title_full Affordances-in-Practice: How Social Norm Dynamics in Climate Change Publics Are Shaped on Instagram and Twitter
title_fullStr Affordances-in-Practice: How Social Norm Dynamics in Climate Change Publics Are Shaped on Instagram and Twitter
title_full_unstemmed Affordances-in-Practice: How Social Norm Dynamics in Climate Change Publics Are Shaped on Instagram and Twitter
title_short Affordances-in-Practice: How Social Norm Dynamics in Climate Change Publics Are Shaped on Instagram and Twitter
title_sort affordances in practice how social norm dynamics in climate change publics are shaped on instagram and twitter
url https://doi.org/10.1177/20563051251319066
work_keys_str_mv AT nathalievanraemdonck affordancesinpracticehowsocialnormdynamicsinclimatechangepublicsareshapedoninstagramandtwitter
AT ikepicone affordancesinpracticehowsocialnormdynamicsinclimatechangepublicsareshapedoninstagramandtwitter
AT jopierson affordancesinpracticehowsocialnormdynamicsinclimatechangepublicsareshapedoninstagramandtwitter