Changing people's views about veganism and climate change: influencers as lifestyle changemakers in social dilemmas (Short paper)

 Social media allows users to participate actively in social debates, increases connections and information sharing. Information systems research has extensively provided evidence for the evolving role of social media in fostering social change and has traditionally anchored it to the collective action and social movements perspectives. In this short paper, we argue that there is a growing significance of lifestyle perspectives driving social change, opening new areas for investigation of new online organising forms, impacts, and actors who work to bring about the change. We discuss this in the context of veganism and climate change and position social media influencers as changemakers in lifestyle movements who, in opposition to traditional forms of activism, promote veganism as a desirable lifestyle choice. We propose to study this argument by employing computational methods. We hope to offer new discussions and insights that advance our understanding of social media in everyday life. 

Ignore All Previous Instructions: Jailbreaking as a de-escalatory peace building practice to resist LLM social media bots (Short paper)

Large Language Models have intensified the scale and strategic manipulation of political discourse on social media, leading to conflict escalation. The existing literature largely focuses on platform-led moderation as a countermeasure. In this paper, we propose a user-centric view of "jailbreaking" as an emergent, non-violent de-escalation practice. Online users engage with suspected LLM-powered accounts to circumvent large language model safeguards, exposing automated behaviour and disrupting the circulation of misleading narratives. 

Rethinking Legitimacy Co-construction on Social Media: Veganism on YouTube (short paper accepted for ICIS)

Social media influencers are charismatic leaders who build their popularity on social media platforms for monetization purposes. They increasingly engage in social issues, such as climate change and have been shown to positively influence the legitimacy of veganism. Rather than focusing on ethical and environmental concerns, influencers promote veganism through aspirational lifestyle discourses, focused on health and wellness. While follower engagement is crucial to the influencer success, it is unclear how audiences contribute to the co-construction of legitimizing discourse. Drawing on legitimacy theory, this study investigates the evolution of vegan discourse on YouTube between 2014 and 2024. Sing an abductive mixed-method approach guided by computational theory construction, we analyse transcripts and comments to surface 14 distinct legitimizing discourses. Our preliminary results suggest that comments may reproduce an illusion consensus rather than foster discursive engagement.