ABSTRACT
“Social news” is a term used to describe an emerging news genre. It shares the sociable vernaculars of popular internet culture and challenges traditional journalistic norms around objectivity through its frequent use of explicit perspective and argumentation which consistently identifies with and supports progressive politics. Social media rituals share these qualities, but occur within and through the affordances, cultures, and vernaculars of social media platforms. These rituals are an increasingly prominent aspect of public communication, conversation, and even mourning, as social media become a part of everyday personal and political expression. The term recalls earlier notions of “media rituals” that the media do more than simply report concrete occurrences, but instead also invoke and sustain public conflicts and solidarities based around how society “should or ought to be”, and interrupt the everyday in a “ritualised” – thereby habitual and performative – fashion. Social media rituals share these qualities, but occur within and through the affordances, cultures, and vernaculars of social media platforms.
