scholarly journals Inappropriate Laughter: Affective Homophily and the Unlikely Comedy of #MeToo

2019 ◽  
Vol 5 (4) ◽  
pp. 205630511988342 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jenny Sundén ◽  
Susanna Paasonen
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Sexual Harassment ◽  
Negative Affect ◽  
The Political ◽  
Musical Comedy ◽  
Feminist Humor ◽  
Prestigious Institution

This article investigates the affective and ambiguous dynamics of feminist humor as an unexpected strategy of resistance in connection with #MeToo, asking what laughter may do to the sharpness of negative affect of shame and anger driving the movement. Our inquiry comes in three vignettes. First, we deploy Nanette—Hannah Gadsby’s 2018 Netflix success heralded as the comedy of the #MeToo era—arguing that the uniform viral warmth surrounding the show drives the emergence of networked feminisms through “affective homophily,” or a love of feeling the same. With Nanette, the contagious qualities of laughter are tamed by a networked logic of homophily, allowing for intensity while resisting dissent. Our second vignette zooms in on a less known feminist comedian, Lauren Maul, and her online #MeToo musical comedy riffing off on apologies made by male celebrities accused of sexual harassment, rendering the apologies and the men performing them objects of ridicule. Our third example opens up the door to the ambivalence of irony. In considering the unexpected pockets of humor within the #MeToo scandal that ripped apart the prestigious institution of the Swedish Academy, we explore the emergence of carnivalesque comedy and feminist uses of irony in the appropriation of the pussy-bow blouse as an ambiguous feminist symbol. Our examples allow us to argue for the political importance of affective ambiguity, difference, and dissent in contemporary social media feminisms, and to highlight the risk when a movement like #MeToo closes ranks around homogeneous feelings of not only shame and rage, but also love.

scholarly journals LAUGHTER OUT OF PLACE: AFFECTIVE HOMOPHILY AND THE ABSURD COMEDY OF #METOO

2019 ◽  
Vol 2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jenny Sundén ◽  
Susanna Paasonen
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
The Political ◽  
Negative Affects ◽  
Feminist Humor ◽  
Prestigious Institution ◽  
Affective Intensity

This paper investigates the affective and ambiguous dynamics of feminist humor as an unexpected strategy of resistance in connection with #MeToo, asking what laughter may do to the sharpness of negative affects of shame and anger driving the movement. Firstly, we deploy Nanette—Hannah Gadsby’s 2018 Netflix success heralded as the comedy of the #MeToo era—arguing that the uniform viral warmth surrounding the show drives the emergence of networked feminisms through “affective homophily,” or a love of feeling the same. With Nanette, the contagious qualities of laughter are tamed by a networked logic of homophily, allowing for affective intensity while resisting dissent in what is being felt. Secondly, and as a counter force to such sameness, we examine absurd feminist humor trafficking in the unreasonable, illogical, and inappropriate. In considering the unexpected pockets of humor within the #MeToo scandal that ripped apart the prestigious institution of the Swedish Academy in 2018, we explore the emergence of absurdist feminist comedy by zooming in on the figure of the unseemly woman and humor that is knowingly out of tune with both reason and decency. While our first example allows us to argue for the political importance of affective ambiguity, difference, and dissent in social media feminisms, our second example opens up a space for affective release that unpredictable and surprising absurd humour, in combining the illogical with the indecent, affords.

scholarly journals Left- and Right-Leaning News Organizations' Negative Tweets are More Likely to be Shared

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrea Bellovary ◽  
Nathaniel A. Young ◽  
Amit Goldenberg
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Negative Affect ◽  
Positive Affect ◽  
Political Orientation ◽  
The Political ◽  
News Content ◽  
News Organizations ◽  
Political Orientations ◽  
Left And Right

Negativity has historically dominated news content; however, little research has examined how news organizations use affect on social media, where content is generally positive. In the current project we ask a few questions: Do news organizations on Twitter use negative or positive language and which type of affect garners more engagement on social media? Does the political orientation of new organizations impact the affect expressed and engagement tweets receive on social media? The goal of this project is to examine these questions by investigating tweets of 24 left- and 20 right-leaning news organizations (140,358 tweets). Results indicated that negative affect was expressed more than positive affect. Additionally, negativity predicted engagement with news organizations’ tweets, but positivity did not. Finally, there were no differences in affect between left- and right-leaning political orientations. Overall, it appears that for news organizations, negativity is more frequent and more impactful than positivity.

scholarly journals The Zoom solution: Promoting effective cross-ideological communication online

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ashley Binnquist ◽  
Stephanie Dolbier ◽  
Macrina Dieffenbach ◽  
Matthew Lieberman
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Negative Affect ◽  
The Political ◽  
Online Video ◽  
Media Audiences ◽  
Face To Face ◽  
The Past ◽  
Ideological Polarization ◽  
The U.S ◽  
Society Research

Abstract The rise of ideological polarization in the U.S. over the past few decades has come with an increase in hostility on both sides of the political aisle. Although communication and compromise are hallmarks of a functioning society, research has shown that people overestimate the negative affect they will experience when viewing oppositional media, and it is likely that negative forecasts lead many to avoid cross-ideological communication (CIC) altogether. Additionally, a growing ideological geographic divide and online extremism fueled by social media audiences make engaging in CIC more difficult than ever. Here, we demonstrate that online video-chat platforms (i.e., Zoom) can be used to promote effective CIC among ideologically polarized individuals, as well as to better study CIC in a controlled setting. Participants (n = 122) had a face-to-face CIC over Zoom, either privately or publicly with a silent ingroup audience present. Participant forecasts about the interaction were largely inaccurate, with the actual conversation experience found to be more positive than anticipated. Additionally, the presence of an ingroup audience was associated with increased conflict. In both conditions, participants showed signs of attitude moderation, felt more favorable toward the outgroup, and felt more informed about the issue after the CIC. These results suggest that face-to-face CIC’s are generally positive and beneficial for partisans, and that greater effects may be achieved through private conversations, as opposed to more public social media interactions. Future researchers studying ideological conflict may find success using similar Zoom paradigms to bring together ideologically diverse individuals in controlled lab settings.

Occupy Movement, Religion and Social Formations

2014 ◽  
Vol 43 (1) ◽  
pp. 17-24
Author(s):  
Matt Sheedy
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Public Space ◽  
Religious Communities ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political Opportunity ◽  
Social Formation ◽  
Beliefs And Practices ◽  
Opportunity Structures ◽  
Occupy Movement ◽  
Political Opportunity Structures

The Occupy movement was an unprecedented social formation that spread to approximate 82 countries around the globe in the fall of 2011 via social media through the use of myths, symbols and rituals that were performed in public space and quickly drew widespread mainstream attention. In this paper I argue that the movement offers a unique instance of how discourse functions in the construction of society and I show how the shared discourses of Occupy were taken-up and shaped in relation to the political opportunity structures and interests of those involved based on my own fieldwork at Occupy Winnipeg. I also argue that the Occupy movement provides an example of how we might substantively attempt to classify “religion” by looking at how it embodied certain metaphysical claims while contrasting it with the beliefs and practices of more conventionally defined “religious” communities.

Citizens, Elites, and Social Media Methodological Challenges and Opportunities in the Study of Persuasion and Mobilization

2019 ◽  
pp. 1036-1058
Author(s):  
Philip Habel ◽  
Yannis Theocharis
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Big Data ◽  
Supply And Demand ◽  
Political Process ◽  
The Political ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Complete Understanding ◽  
Social Media Data ◽  
Challenges And Opportunities ◽  
Media Data

In the last decade, big data, and social media in particular, have seen increased popularity among citizens, organizations, politicians, and other elites—which in turn has created new and promising avenues for scholars studying long-standing questions of communication flows and influence. Studies of social media play a prominent role in our evolving understanding of the supply and demand sides of the political process, including the novel strategies adopted by elites to persuade and mobilize publics, as well as the ways in which citizens react, interact with elites and others, and utilize platforms to persuade audiences. While recognizing some challenges, this chapter speaks to the myriad of opportunities that social media data afford for evaluating questions of mobilization and persuasion, ultimately bringing us closer to a more complete understanding Lasswell’s (1948) famous maxim: “who, says what, in which channel, to whom, [and] with what effect.”

scholarly journals ‘Ruined’ lives: Mediated white male victimhood

2021 ◽  
Vol 24 (1) ◽  
pp. 60-80
Author(s):  
Sarah Banet-Weiser
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Sexual Harassment ◽  
Sexual Violence ◽  
Public Perception ◽  
White Male ◽  
The Public ◽  
Multi Media ◽  
Patriarchal Power ◽  
Almost All ◽  
False Accusations

When the hashtag #metoo began to circulate in digital and social media, it challenged a familiar interpretation of those who are raped or sexually harassed as victims, positioning women as embodied agents. Yet, almost exactly a year after the #metoo movement shot to visible prominence, a different, though eerily similar, story began to circulate on the same multi-media platforms as #metoo: a story about white male victimhood. Powerful men in positions of privilege (almost always white) began to take up the mantle of victimhood as their own, often claiming to be victims of false accusations of sexual harassment and assault by women. Through the analysis of five public statements by highly visible, powerful men who have been accused of sexual violence, I argue that the discourse of victimhood is appropriated not by those who have historically suffered but by those in positions of patriarchal power. Almost all of the statements contain some sentiment about how the accusation (occasionally acknowledging the actual violence) ‘ruined their life’, and all of the statements analyzed here center the author, the accused white man, as the key subject in peril and the authors position themselves as truth-tellers about the incidents. These statements underscore certain shifts in the public perception of sexual violence; the very success of the #metoo movement in shifting the narrative has meant that men have had to defend themselves more explicitly in public. In order to wrestle back a hegemonic gender stability, these men take on the mantle of victimhood themselves.

Political Knowledge and Misinformation in the Era of Social Media: Evidence From the 2015 UK Election

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-21
Author(s):  
Kevin Munger ◽  
Patrick J. Egan ◽  
Jonathan Nagler ◽  
Jonathan Ronen ◽  
Joshua Tucker
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Political Parties ◽  
News Media ◽  
Political Knowledge ◽  
Public Affairs ◽  
Political Information ◽  
The Political ◽  
Election Campaign ◽  
Social Media Platform ◽  
Media Platform

Abstract Does social media educate voters, or mislead them? This study measures changes in political knowledge among a panel of voters surveyed during the 2015 UK general election campaign while monitoring the political information to which they were exposed on the Twitter social media platform. The study's panel design permits identification of the effect of information exposure on changes in political knowledge. Twitter use led to higher levels of knowledge about politics and public affairs, as information from news media improved knowledge of politically relevant facts, and messages sent by political parties increased knowledge of party platforms. But in a troubling demonstration of campaigns' ability to manipulate knowledge, messages from the parties also shifted voters' assessments of the economy and immigration in directions favorable to the parties' platforms, leaving some voters with beliefs further from the truth at the end of the campaign than they were at its beginning.

When Neglect Isn’t Working Anymore: The Unlikely Success of the Tuxedo Party

2018 ◽  
Vol 26 (3) ◽  
pp. 277-305
Author(s):  
Keri Cronin ◽  
Tim Fowler ◽  
Douglas Hagar
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Nova Scotia ◽  
Political Agenda ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political Advocacy ◽  
Stray Cats ◽  
Advocacy Campaigns

Abstract In 2012, Tuxedo Stan, a domestic long-hair cat, “ran for mayor” of Halifax, Nova Scotia, and a year later Stan’s brother, Earl Grey, “ran for premier” of Nova Scotia. What separated Stan and Earl Grey (who ran under the banner of the Tuxedo Party) from other politically minded felines was that the Tuxedo Party campaigns were not stunt or joke campaigns. While the cats could obviously not take office, the two campaigns were nonetheless political advocacy campaigns, with a clearly articulated message to make life better for feral and stray cats. This paper argues that the Tuxedo Party successfully elevated the issue onto the political agenda through their savvy mix of social media, and the use of positive imagery of cats in their campaigns.

scholarly journals Teen Girls’ Experiences Negotiating the Ubiquitous Dick Pic: Sexual Double Standards and the Normalization of Image Based Sexual Harassment

Sex Roles ◽  
2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jessica Ringrose ◽  
Kaitlyn Regehr ◽  
Sophie Whitehead
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Sexual Harassment ◽  
Focus Group Interviews ◽  
Double Standards ◽  
Media Image ◽  
Image Sharing ◽  
Social Currency ◽  
Social Media Platforms ◽  
Group Interviews ◽  
Sexual Double Standards

AbstractA range of important studies have recently explored adult women’s experiences of receiving unwanted dick pics (Amundsen, 2020). However, to date there has been limited research that has explored teen girls’ experiences of receiving unwanted penis images in depth. To address this gap we draw upon our findings from a qualitative study using focus group interviews and arts based drawing methods to explore social media image sharing practices with 144 young people aged 11–18 in seven secondary schools in England. We argue that being bombarded with unwanted dick pics on social media platforms like Snapchat normalises harassing practices as signs of desirability and popularity for girls, but suggest that being sent unsolicited dick pics from boys at school is more difficult for girls to manage or report than ignoring or blocking random older senders. We also found that due to sexual double standards girls were not able to leverage dick pics for status in the same way boys can use girls’ nudes as social currency, since girls faced the possibility of being shamed for being known recipients of dick pics. Finally we explore how some girls challenge abusive elements of toxic masculinity in the drawing sessions and our conclusion argues that unwanted dick pics should always be understood as forms of image based sexual harassment.

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