Snapchat Usage Among Minority Populations

ABSTRACT

Using Hall’s essential work on encoding/decoding as a theoretical framework, this research analyzes “snaps” posted during a two-week period on the Snapchat Story at Brigham Young University, a religious institution of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Further, college students, who are members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, are creating negotiated religious readings of Snapchat and secular college culture as a response to a perceived hegemonic moral relativism. The results indicate three categories of snaps: a) Hegemonic platform usage with oppositional messages, b) Oppositional platform usage with negotiated messages, and c) Oppositional platform usage with modified hegemonic meanings of signifiers within the message. Minority cultures can use social media to enhance minority values and behaviors in ways not envisioned by mainstream social media use.

Notes

¹ Although members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints have been historically referred to as “Mormons,” in accordance with an official church statement from August 2018, the preferred term when describing the church is the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints on first reference and the Church of Jesus Christ on second reference; members are referred to as “Latter-day Saints” (The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, 2018).