Shitstorms og lovestorms – Nye begreber indenfor de sociale medier

“Online lovestorms” is a new phenomenon, which provides an interesting countermeasure to negative “online firestorms”, also known as “shitstorms.” Our research aims to detect indications of a lovestorms ability to drive change in society.

In 2015 local residents from Lolland Falster, Denmark started a “lovestorm” to achieve better public reputation of their home region. The rules for the Lolland Falster Lovestorm were simple. An informal group of initiators encouraged their social media peers to share positive stories on Facebook and Instagram about everyday life of the region.

“Lolland Falster Lovestorm” developed into an activistic movement, with the aim to nuance the public discourse about the rural areas of Lolland Falster to the better, while the nation-wide mainstream media main focus is on the region’s socio economic challenges, thereby stigmatising the area, for example by calling it names like “the rotten banana”.

Our paper aims at contributing to social media research by describing and analyzing the “social media lovestorm” phenomenon, and researching to which extent a primarily social media based activistic group can change the general public opinion towards a rural area.

Does it merely empower the local community? Which stories are exchanged between social media and the mainstream media, and which kind of relations are there between the participants of the lovestorm?

In order to find perspectives for future research of positive, activistic social media campaigns, the analysis strives to understand the workings of this particular social media lovestorm. Furthermore, our research plans to outline a social media communication method to support other rural areas to gain voice in a national discourse.

The project aims to generate new internationally published knowledge about the special dynamics about social media. The project is also helping to connect the local business community closer to our educational institution and might probably strengthen our network – both academically and business.

The research centrers around the approximately 8.000 posts and 35.000 comments from Facebook, and a number of articles from nation-wide media, gathered from a corresponding period. We conduct a critical discourse analysis of the social media interactions of the “Lolland Falster Lovestorm” versus the mainstream media coverage from the same period. We are comparing keywords and other language structures from social media and nation-wide mainstream media, and rate their positive/negative and affective values.

The product of the project is a scientific publication, presented at a relevant conference or in a peer-reviewed journal (if possible). We will try to get publicity of the concept lovestorm in international (non-scientific) publications such as Wired magazine.

The project’s expected yield is partly to enlighten the authors but will also contribute to teaching related to social media. Hopefully the project will contribute local companies on Falster by adding to the national and international exposure. Finally, the project intends to create knowledge with international aid, and with local anchorage.

Our study shows that Lolland and Falster have been featured in several negative stories in the media before the Lovestorm, than after the Lovestorm.

The lovestorm has not solved the social problems Lolland and Falster struggle with, but more positive stories occurred about Lolland and Falster in the nationwide media after the lovestorm than before, and it might due to the fact that #LollandFalsterLovestorm has contributed to make the reputation of Lolland and Falster better.

#LollandFalsterLovestorm can be a contrast to many of the shitstorms featured in the media. While the shitstorms are always negatively charged in the media, the lovestorm is predominantly positively charged.