#Blockade: Social Media and the Gulf Diplomatic Crisis

2019 ◽  
Vol 53 (2) ◽  
pp. 200-220
Author(s):  
Jocelyn Sage Mitchell

AbstractThe online public sphere, and the ways in which its digital media platforms influence discourse, is a crucial but understudied area of research in the six Arab monarchies of the Persian Gulf. Through a case study of the ongoing Gulf diplomatic crisis, which began in June 2017, this essay draws on the disciplines of political science, communication, and digital media studies to analyze qualitative examples of digital discourse: the role of women, territorial boundaries, and the FIFA World Cup 2022. Linking these flash points to historical struggles between the countries, this essay suggests that the politicization of the online public sphere in the region does not represent a fundamental change in the diplomacy of the region but rather a new battleground for old regional rivalries.

2018 ◽  
Vol 15 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Jimi Narotama Mahameruaji ◽  
Lilis Puspitasari ◽  
Evi Rosfiantika ◽  
Detta Rahmawan

This study explores the phenomenon of Vlogger as a new business in the digital media industry in Indonesia. Vlogger refer to social media users who regularly upload a variety of video content with various themes. We used case study to describe and analyze Youtube’s significant role in managing Vlogger communities, and also design support systems to make the communities growth and sustainable. We also explore Vlogger role as Online Influencer. This study is expected to be one of the references related to Vlogger phenomenon in the context of digital media studies in Indonesia.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Shahirah Elaiza Wan Hassan

<p>Traditional forms of media have played a significant role in narrating the military conflict between Israel and Palestine (Said; Aouragh 2; Elmasry). Most recently, the Israeli Defense Forces used their official Twitter account to launch the 2012 Operation Pillar of Cloud in Gaza. This thesis investigates the role played by Twitter in the ‘battle of narratives’ taking place between pro-Palestinian and pro-Israeli communities on 14th June, two days after the #BringBackOurBoys hashtag campaign was launched 2014 and 9th July 2014, a day after Operation Protective Edge commenced in Gaza. The thesis argues that Twitter as a microblogging platform acts as an ambivalent discursive protest space for the battle of narratives between pro-Israelis and pro-Palestinians. Drawing on a range of hashtag case studies, such as #BringBackOurBoys, #GazaUnderAttack and #IsraelUnderFire, the thesis offers a content analysis of 300 tweets in relation to emerging concepts in digital media studies. Pablo Gerbaudo’s articulation of ‘choreography of assembly’, for example, illustrates the role of social media in ‘setting the scene’ for protest while William Gamson and Andre Modigliani’s concept of ‘interpretive packages’ allows for an exploration of symbolic devices on Twitter such as metaphors, exemplars, injustice symbols and visual images. This thesis draws on these concepts to examine how Twitter’s affordances work ambivalently to highlight the victimisation of one side of the conflict while erasing the victimisation of the other.</p>


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Shahirah Elaiza Wan Hassan

<p>Traditional forms of media have played a significant role in narrating the military conflict between Israel and Palestine (Said; Aouragh 2; Elmasry). Most recently, the Israeli Defense Forces used their official Twitter account to launch the 2012 Operation Pillar of Cloud in Gaza. This thesis investigates the role played by Twitter in the ‘battle of narratives’ taking place between pro-Palestinian and pro-Israeli communities on 14th June, two days after the #BringBackOurBoys hashtag campaign was launched 2014 and 9th July 2014, a day after Operation Protective Edge commenced in Gaza. The thesis argues that Twitter as a microblogging platform acts as an ambivalent discursive protest space for the battle of narratives between pro-Israelis and pro-Palestinians. Drawing on a range of hashtag case studies, such as #BringBackOurBoys, #GazaUnderAttack and #IsraelUnderFire, the thesis offers a content analysis of 300 tweets in relation to emerging concepts in digital media studies. Pablo Gerbaudo’s articulation of ‘choreography of assembly’, for example, illustrates the role of social media in ‘setting the scene’ for protest while William Gamson and Andre Modigliani’s concept of ‘interpretive packages’ allows for an exploration of symbolic devices on Twitter such as metaphors, exemplars, injustice symbols and visual images. This thesis draws on these concepts to examine how Twitter’s affordances work ambivalently to highlight the victimisation of one side of the conflict while erasing the victimisation of the other.</p>


2020 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 45-66
Author(s):  
Yoo Yung Lee

AbstractIn this paper, I analyze the role of metaphors in public science communication. Specifically, it is a case study of the metaphors for CRISPR/Cas9, a controversial biotechnology that enables scientists to alter the DNA of any organism with unprecedented ease and has raised a number of societal, ethical and legal questions concerning its applications – most notably, on its usage on the human germline. Using a corpus of 600 newspaper articles from the British and German press, I show that there are striking differences in how these two European countries construe CRISPR in public discourse: the British press promotes the image of CRISPR as a word processor that allows scientists to edit the DNA, replacing spelling mistakes with healthy genes, whereas the German press depicts CRISPR as genetic scissors and thereby underlines the risk of mutations after cutting the DNA. I suggest that this contrast reflects differences in the legal frameworks of the respective countries and may influence the attitudes towards emerging biotechnologies among the British and German public.


Author(s):  
Judith Bessant

This chapter presents a case study of Facu Diaz, a Spanish satirist whose on-line ridicule of the Spanish government created a political furor that brought him before the courts. The chapter engages the problem of the criminalization of political dissent by liberal states in the digital age. The case highlights how digital media is now being used to create content for satire, as well as to replicate and infiltrate more traditional political and media forums, changing many traditional forms of political practice. The case [points to some of the central problems inherent in liberalism which may give reason to curb the enthusiasm of those who think that new digital media creates fresh opportunities for augmenting the ‘public sphere'. It is argued that liberalism as a political theory and ethos, tends to be blind to non-traditional political expressions like satire and other artistic work. In addition, the expansion of security laws in many countries suggests, liberalism's ostensible commitment to freedom needs to be reframed by recalling its historical preoccupation with security.


Author(s):  
Rachel Ralph ◽  
Patrick Pennefather

As we move towards the third decade of the 21st century, the development of emerging technologies continues to grow alongside innovative practices in digital media environments. This chapter presents a comparative case study of two teams (Team A and Team B) in a professional master's program during a 13-week, project-based course. Based on the role of documentation and the reflective practitioner, team blogs representing learner experiences of Agile practices were analyzed. This case study chapter focused on one blog post of a mid-term release retrospective. The results of this case study are framed around Derby and Larson's (2006) Agile retrospectives framework, including: set the stage, gather data, generating insights, deciding what to do, and closing the retrospective. The case study results suggest the need for public documentation of retrospectives and how this can be challenging with non-disclosure agreements. Also, the authors identify the importance of being a reflective practitioner. Future research on educational and professional practices needs to be explored.


2020 ◽  
Vol 42 (7-8) ◽  
pp. 1343-1359
Author(s):  
Anthony Ridge-Newman

In Britain, by 2015, Web 2.0 had become a more widely accepted and established mode of civic engagement of which political e-participation became an observable extension. However, in the run-up to 2010, social media were newer, less understood and largely associated with younger generations. These changes present questions about how wider technocultural developments impacted political engagement between the 2010 and 2015 UK general elections. This article aims to go some way in examining this question with a theoretical focus on the role of Facebook as a driver of change in political organisation. Using the British Conservative Party as a case study, the article analyses and compares events, observations and shifting power relations associated with digital technology and organisational change observed over two election cycles spanning from 2005 to 2015. A focal aim is to examine changes in Conservative Party campaigns and organisation in order to contribute to wider debates about the impact of digital technology in changing the organisation and activities of actors, like political parties and political participants, in democratic contexts. The article concludes that a complex combination of internal and external, technological and human, and grassroots and centralised factors played roles in changing the Conservative Party.


2014 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
pp. 57-81
Author(s):  
Oriol Poveda

Through a case study of the Facebook page of a Jewish Orthodox environmental project based in Germany, this paper explores the ways in which religion and modernity might be made compatible and what role digital media plays in such interaction. On the basis of the empirical material gathered for this paper, the author presents a typology of religious-environmental processes of hybridization. The analysis draws from the concepts of multiple modernities, public religions and religious branding in order to discuss whether the combination of religion and modernity is enabled or compromised by the collapsing of boundaries between the public sphere and the marketplace in late modern societies. The findings suggest that Facebook and its affordances make possible the particular intersections of religion and environmentalism, of public sphere and marketplace, that are characteristic of the case under study.


Author(s):  
Olu Jenzen ◽  
Itir Erhart ◽  
Hande Eslen-Ziya ◽  
Umut Korkut ◽  
Aidan McGarry

This article explores how Twitter has emerged as a signifier of contemporary protest. Using the concept of ‘social media imaginaries’, a derivative of the broader field of ‘media imaginaries’, our analysis seeks to offer new insights into activists’ relation to and conceptualisation of social media and how it shapes their digital media practices. Extending the concept of media imaginaries to include analysis of protestors’ use of aesthetics, it aims to unpick how a particular ‘social media imaginary’ is constructed and informs their collective identity. Using the Gezi Park protest of 2013 as a case study, it illustrates how social media became a symbolic part of the protest movement by providing the visualised possibility of imagining the movement. In previous research, the main emphasis has been given to the functionality of social media as a means of information sharing and a tool for protest organisation. This article seeks to redress this by directing our attention to the role of visual communication in online protest expressions and thus also illustrates the role of visual analysis in social movement studies.


2018 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 313-322 ◽  
Author(s):  
Simona Cerrato ◽  
Valentina Daelli ◽  
Helena Pertot ◽  
Olga Puccioni

Why do scientists volunteer to be involved in public engagement in science? What are the barriers that can prevent them participating in dialogue with society? What can be done to facilitate their participation? In this paper we present a case study of the Children's University programme of the International School for Advanced Studies (SISSA) (Trieste, Italy), discussing the three-year experience, and reporting the outcomes of a series of focus groups conducted with the young scientists who volunteered in the programme. Two kinds of motivations emerged. The first is personal, for example volunteers' desire to improve their own communication abilities, or their curiosity for a new activity. The second is related to the perceived role of scientists in society: many volunteers feel a sense of duty and the need to promote science and its importance in society, to have an impact on the public perception of science and to seed the love for science in young people. After the first year of their involvement, volunteers expressed the need to keep improving their communication skills and participating in professional training courses, and agreed that science communication should become part of all standard training programmes of PhDs. In order for the outreach not to remain a sporadic experience, it is essential that a strong institutional commitment exists to promote, recruit, encourage, professionally train and support those involved.


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