Social media platforms are popular sites, attracting millions of users who connect digitally. This has prompted some to argue that social media has promoted the return of Habermas’s ([1989] 1991) public sphere. We use data from in-depth interviews with Millennials and Generation Xers to refute this claim. Specifically, our results suggest that respondents do not engage in communicative action typical of the public sphere because they avoid political discourse online. Three factors influence this: (1) fear of online harassment and workplace surveillance; (2) engagement only with politically similar others; and (3) characterization of social media as a place for “happy” interactions. In addition, we find that these three factors interrelate, often sequentially, and we explore similarities and minor differences between Millennials and Generation Xers regarding each factor.

Digital storytelling in cultural and heritage tourism offers significant potential for youth engagement through social media platforms. However, current digital storytelling frameworks illustrate research gaps in integrating digital storytelling guidelines with social-media-specific requirements. Therefore, this review aims to develop an integrated digital storytelling for social media framework that extends traditional digital storytelling guidelines with four additional elements of contemporary digital engagement. The investigation employs bibliometric analysis through VOSviewer software version 1.6.20 to examine four paired domains: digital storytelling and cultural tourism, digital storytelling and social media, youth and cultural tourism, and youth interaction with digital storytelling through social media. Results revealed thematic clusters informing the development of four new framework elements: (1) social media platform integration, (2) multimedia engagement, (3) community participation, and (4) cultural authenticity. This review contributes to the knowledge by advancing digital storytelling theory through social-media-specific elements, providing methodological innovation through comprehensive domain analysis, and offering practical implementation strategies for cultural tourism practitioners.

This article explores how social media influencers have become key drivers of contemporary activism, reshaping traditional concepts of leadership. By using their platforms to raise awareness, build communities, and mobilize followers, influencers can transform online engagement—such as hashtag activism—into offline action and real social impact. Focusing on case studies from Morocco and grounded in theories of digital activism and leadership, the study shows how influencers enable grassroots mobilization, democratic participation, and the amplification of marginalized voices. It also examines ethical challenges, including authenticity, backlash, and the tension between advocacy and commercial interests, highlighting both the potential and limitations of influencer-led social movements in driving social change.

This study explores news literacy from the perspective of young people’s everyday news use on social media, rather than formal educational models. The study highlights news literacy as a situated, practice-based process, shaped by users’ experiences, motivations, and perceived agency in digital environments.

Social media has taken many sectors including the higher education by storm. However, with wide spread fears that social media may be a distractor to pedagogy, this paper investigated how social media facilitates teaching and learning. Unlike most prior studies which relied much on soliciting mere views from students and lecturers about their intentions to use or not to use social media, this study incorporated Twitter and blogs into two undergraduate courses offered in the Department of Library and Information Science at Mzuzu University which is a public university in Malawi. Data were collected in two ways: first, analysis of blog and Twitter posts by students and second, a questionnaire was sent to 64 students to find out their perception towards the use of blogs and Twitter in a classroom environment. Results suggest that if appropriately deployed, Twitter and blogs are catalysts for the much hyped learner-centred approach to teaching because using these technologies, it emerged that students shared and discussed course materials, posted their course reflections and interacted amongst themselves and with their lecturer 24/7. Challenges faced include cost of internet data bundles, inaccessible Wi-Fi, poor bandwidths and insufficient computers.