Tom Divon | توم ديفون | תום דיבון

Priorities and exclusions within Trust and Safety industry standards - Blake Hallinan, CJ Reynolds, Rebecca Scharlach, Dana Theiler, Noa Niv, Omer Rothenstein, Isabell Knief, Yehonatan Kuperberg, 2025 Platform governance is simultaneously a matter of public concern and a professional calling for Trust and Safety, the nascent field tasked with setting and enfo...

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...

Playful Trauma: TikTok Creators and the Use of the Platformed Body in Times of War - Tom Divon, Moa Eriksson Krutrök, 2024 Amid the Russian invasion of Ukraine, TikTok has emerged as a pivotal platform, where creators utilize its compressed video formats to mediate the harsh realiti...

📢📢📢 PhD publication! after 1.5 years of ethnographic exploration of Ukrainian creators on TikTok, I'm thrilled to share our OA work with my brilliant friend @moaerikssonkrut.bsky.social on PLAYFUL TRAUMA in times of war and adversity 🇺🇦 💛 journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...

New publication! 🚨 Together with my brill team (@taylorannabell.bsky.social & @cgoanta.bsky.social), we explore how parents turn kids into commodities on TikTok, diving into the nuances of *kidfluencers* & raising legal questions about platform governance. See🧵 journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1...

Latin American Cultures on TikTok Download the report (PDF). About ‘Latin American Cultures on TikTok’ collects and expands on some of the main takeaways from the Latin American Cultures on TikTok event, which took place on N…

📢📢📢 My brilliant friend @danijaradent.bsky.social and I have released a report (from our TCRN event) shedding light on the structural inequalities that shape the experiences of Latin American creators on TikTok. Their reality is one of constant struggle; see 🧵 tiktokcultures.com/latam-report/

Sadly, our iPhones have become sources of trauma. Perves can harass with their dick pic via AirDrop, and 'Memories' resurface painful moments we'd prefer to forget; @nicolettelittle.bsky.social & I delve into the unsolicited nature of algos with this OA piece (🧵) www.tandfonline.com/doi/epdf/10....

From Ukraine🇺🇦 to Gaza🇵🇸, Syria🇸🇾, Lebanon🇱🇧, and now India🇮🇳 & Pakistan🇵🇰, creators use SM platforms to make their conflicts more visible. They're curators, eyewitnesses, and living archives of atrocity. @moaerikssonkrut.bsky.social & I call them *War Influencers*; OA in @platformsnsociety.bsky.social 🧵

Beautiful, my friend! 😍

New annotated resource on #SocialMediaViolence:

The rise of war influencers: Creators, platforms, and the visibility of conflict zones, by @tomdivon.bsky.social and @moaerikssonkrut.bsky.social

Read my notes here: esteban-morales.com/lit-review-v...

“The algorithm loves the war”: ambivalent visibility in content creator practices during war Content creators in war zones are critical in shaping global perceptions of conflict. Through social media, they document real-time events and reach audiences beyond the traditional news frameworks...

New publication alert: The algorithm loves the war”: ambivalent visibility in content creator practices during war"
www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.... with the amazing duo @tomdivon.bsky.social and @moaerikssonkrut.bsky.social !! findings below >>>

Dream team incoming - @taylorannabell.bsky.social @gorwa.ca @rscarlets.bsky.social Jacob van de Kerkhof @thelesbertaglia.bsky.social with a powerful reminder of how search recommendations shape what is visible, trusted and treated as credible knowledge & we better keep our eyes on it as researchers👇

a true challenge by the brill @bloggeronpole.bsky.social & @pamogranite.bsky.social to the corporate discourse of *community* on platforms. They capture how creators at risk are forced to navigate corpo-civic spaces where care, visibility & belonging are destabilized by commercial governance; GOLD👇

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We’ve poured much care into crafting this piece; please read and share! See full paper below 👇 Thank you, Julie Yujie Chen, @grohmannrafael.bsky.social, Andrea Pollio, @cheryllsoriano.bsky.social, and @nielsvdoorn.bsky.social for being such a home for us! journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...

We argue war influencers matter because they (1) fill the void left by mainstream journalism, (2) democratize conflict communication, (3) build bottom-up epistemologies, (4) reshape how war is seen, felt, and known by young ppl & (5) blur witnessing with performance, raising urgent ethical stakes👇

🔎 Using ethnographic lens, we analyzed 97 TikTok videos from Ukrainian (🇺🇦) creators, identifying three styles of war communication: POV Storytelling - intimate war testimonies; Memetic Remixing - war + trending memes; Playful Politainment - using LIVE, humor, and performance to fundraise & mobilize👇

To make sense of war influencers, we draw from three key traditions: 📸 War Photography - the long legacy of visualizing suffering, ✊ Citizen Journalism - real-time, mobile, from-the-ground truth-telling, 🔉 Creator & Platform Studies - platform vernaculars, algorithmic fluency, and visibility labor👇

We dive into *user-war influencers* and read them as content creators embedded in conflict zones who document, narrate, and aestheticize their experiences through platform-native vernaculars. They don’t monetize for profit, but for their authoritative voice in shaping public discourse👇

We offer a typology with two kinds of war influencers: 🤳Celebrity-war influencers - existing stars who use their status to engage in wartime advocacy (like Gigi Hadid); 🤳User-war influencers - individuals who rise from anonymity into global fame, depending solely on algorithmic amplification👇

From Ukraine🇺🇦 to Gaza🇵🇸, Syria🇸🇾, Lebanon🇱🇧, and now India🇮🇳 & Pakistan🇵🇰, creators use SM platforms to make their conflicts more visible. They're curators, eyewitnesses, and living archives of atrocity. @moaerikssonkrut.bsky.social & I call them *War Influencers*; OA in @platformsnsociety.bsky.social 🧵

YouTube video by Cambridge Disinformation Summit UNC Professor Alice Marwick on the need to counter false narratives

@alicetiara.bsky.social:

"It's very important that we, as a community, counter those [false accusations of censorship] narratives head on and not cede ground. …When you let another party frame the debate, you lose the debate before it's even started."

m.youtube.com/watch?v=p8ST...

I am officially part of @aoir.bsky.social exec!! Thank you to all who voted and @tomdivon.bsky.social for the encouragement ✨

Here is your 2025-2027 AoIR Executive Committee, taking office in October 2025! President (elected as Vice President in the 2023 Election): Sarah Roberts, UCLA, USA Vice President (becomes President in two years): Andra Siibak, University of Tartu, Estonia Immediate Past President (elected as Vice President in the 2021 Election): Nicholas John, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Jerusalem, Israel Secretary: Nathalie Schäfer, Weimar University, Germany Treasurer: Robert W. Gehl, York University, Canada Graduate Student Representative: Lynrose Jane Genon, QUT, Australia Open Seats: Admire Mare, University of Johannesburg, South Africa; Rebecca Scharlach, University of Bremen, Germany; and Meg Jing Zeng, University of Zurich, Switzerland.

Your 2025-2027 AoIR Executive Committee!

President: Sarah Roberts
Vice President: Andra Siibak
Immediate Past President: Nicholas John
Secretary: Nathalie Schäfer
Treasurer: Robert W. Gehl
Graduate Student Rep: Lynrose Jane Genon
Open Seats: Admire Mare, Rebecca Scharlach, & Meg Jing Zeng.

It’s so tiring to fight a majority that keeps driving us toward a reckless future. But we know there is still a path forward; one that begins with the basic recognition of existence for both Israelis & Palestinians. Hope is resistance @standing-together.bsky.social @alonlee.bsky.social 🟣 💜

That same Meir Kahane, symbol of violent, racist Jewish ultranationalism. "The singer, who also spent time in prison, explains why he believes both The Hague and Gaza should be flattened (...) claims that Netanyahu is the 'left of the right'"; This isn't a marginal voice. This is Israel.

Israel, 2025. This is where the media and everyday civilians now stand morally. The front page of a major newspaper calling for the flattening of Gaza and the Hague, featuring a piece on one of the country's leading singers, with the headline. “I would vote for Kahane.” Yes, that Meir Kahane ⬇️

Oh, Michael, yes! That would be perfect for a revision on related work I’m doing nowadays. I’ll be thrilled having the PDF. Thank you 🫶🩷

The brill @thechristinet.bsky.social reminds us that whether we "like it or not, we associate height with power”; great piece about how in politics, stature is not just symbolic for us but can shape credibility, leadership perception, and even electability!👇

Platform gaslighting: A user-centric insight into social media corporate communications of content moderation - Tom Divon, Carolina Are, Pam Briggs, 2025 This paper delves into communications dynamics between social media platforms and their users as they navigate the opacity of governance policies. Using Meta an...

Pre-Trump 2.0, Big Tech seemed to at least pretend to care about user rights, & used PR & comms as a way to engage in damage control (as @tomdivon.bsky.social, @pamogranite.bsky.social & I have argued in our paper on gaslighting as a platform comms strategy): journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...

I've just finished my talk for the BSWC "Villainous" conference, where I shared strategies for communicating with social media platforms to push for change & make an impact with NGO &/or academic / union work. Yet, comms with platforms are getting more frustrating⤵️

Brill team (👇) frames creator engagement with moderation as an *aspirational* form of participatory governance; creators express desires to influence moderation but lack structural guarantees, often ending up "legitimating the platform as arbiter of public discourse and cultural production.” READ! 🔍

@aoir.bsky.social 🩷