Platform 9096/26/2023 Through a mixed-method approach that includes a science and technology studies informed technical analysis of the Twitter platform, a quantitative analysis of survey data gathered from Twitter users and non-users which tested knowledge of different aspects of information flows on Twitter, and a critical discourse analysis of Twitter’s messaging to users in the new-user orientation process, this dissertation theorizes how junctures and disjunctures among the three can impact individual power. This dissertation responds to such a need by investigating the extant state of information flows on the popular social media platform “Twitter,” user knowledge about information flows on Twitter, and explores how Twitter, Inc.’s messaging to users may impact users’ knowledge construction. Ultimately, knowledge about how information flows through these platforms helps shape users’ informational power. There is an immediacy to this issue because as social media sites become further entrenched as dominant vehicles for communication, knowledge about these technologies will play an ever increasing role in users’ abilities to gauge the risks for information disclosure, to understand and respond to global information flows, to make meaningful decisions about use and participation, and to be a part of conversations around how information flows in these spaces should be governed. Following a number of recent examples where social media users have been confronted by information flows that did not match their understandings of the platforms, there is a pressing need to examine public knowledge of information flows on these systems, to map how this knowledge lines up against the extant flows of these systems, and to explore the factors that contribute to the construction of knowledge about these systems.
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