Hashtag Feminism

2019 ◽  
pp. 125-144
Author(s):  
Kaitlynn Mendes ◽  
Jessica Ringrose ◽  
Jessalynn Keller
Keyword(s):  
Sexual Assault ◽  
Sexual Violence ◽  
Thematic Analysis ◽  
Public Discourse ◽  
Media Culture ◽  
Rape Culture ◽  
Public Discussion ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Media ◽  
Feminist Identification

This chapter focuses on women’s use of the Twitter hashtag #BeenRapedNeverReported. Using the hashtag, hundreds of girls and women shared the reasons they didn’t report incidents of sexual assault by partners, family members, friends, and acquaintances. We explore how this feminist hashtag developed in response to the public allegations of sexual violence made about then-popular Canadian CBC radio host Jian Ghomeshi, and ultimately moved across the media landscape, producing a robust public discussion about sexual violence and rape culture. Drawing on thematic analysis of #BeenRapedNeverReported tweets and interviews with eight women who contributed to the hashtag, we analyze the “affective solidarity” produced along this hashtag and the ways it created new lived possibilities for feminist identification, experience, organizing, and resistance. We contextualize this analysis within a larger Canadian media culture to position the hashtag as both a discursive and affective intervention into hegemonic public discourse about rape culture and sexual violence.

scholarly journals FEMALE PUBLIC RELATIONS PROFESSIONALS’ PERCEPTIONS ON THE PORTRAYAL OF THE #METOO MOVEMENT IN CROATIAN MEDIA

2021 ◽  
pp. 257
Author(s):  
Mirela Polić
Keyword(s):  
Sexual Assault ◽  
Public Relations ◽  
Thematic Analysis ◽  
Public Interest ◽  
Cultural Contexts ◽  
The Public ◽  
The World ◽  
The Media ◽  
Failure To Protect ◽  
Analyse Data

The #MeToo movement gained prominence in 2017 when the #MeToo hashtag went viral and woke up the world to the magnitude of the problem of sexual violence. It was the actress Alyssa Milano who made the first viral tweet accusing Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein of sexual assault. Since research on the #MeToo movement across cultural contexts is limited and mostly comes from Western countries, this research aims to explore the perceptions of six female public relations experts on the portrayal of the #MeToo movement in Croatian media. Thematic analysis has been conducted to analyse data from six interviews. The results show three main themes in the responses from the interviewees: media’s failure to protect the public interest, insufficient visibility of the #MeToo movement in Croatian media and the lack of expertise in the media.

scholarly journals [De]-Centering the Victim: Police Perceptions of Victims of Sexual Violence through a Comparative Lens of Evidence Collection and Processing

2021 ◽  
pp. 155708512110319
Author(s):  
Deborah White ◽  
Lesley McMillan
Keyword(s):  
Sexual Assault ◽  
Qualitative Study ◽  
Sexual Violence ◽  
Thematic Analysis ◽  
Police Officers ◽  
Evidence Collection ◽  
Police Perceptions

Police are central to the statutory response to sexual violence, shaping the direction an investigation may take. Evidence provided by victims is also key to the processing of sexual assault cases. From a 2013 comparative qualitative study involving interviews with police officers in one province in Canada ( n = 11) and one region in Scotland ( n = 10) who investigate such cases, we discovered striking unanticipated differences between the two groups in terms of how they perceived victims and the evidence they provide. This paper presents a thematic analysis of these data and considers possible implications and explanations.

Austerity against the Homo Sovieticus

Focaal ◽  
2011 ◽  
Vol 2011 (59) ◽  
pp. 51-65
Author(s):  
Daiva Repečkait
Keyword(s):  
Public Discourse ◽  
Lower Class ◽  
Shock Therapy ◽  
Language And Culture ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Social ◽  
Class Background ◽  
The Media ◽  
Economic Shock ◽  
Homo Sovieticus

This article analyzes the public discourse on the riots of 16 January 2009, in Vilnius, when protest against economic shock therapy ended in violent clashes with the police. Politicians and the media were quick to ethnicize the riots, claiming an “involvement of foreign influences” and noting that the rioters had been predominantly “Russian-speaking.” Analyzing electronic and print media, the article identifies a wider tendency, particularly among middle-class Lithuanian youth, of portraying the social class consisting of “losers of the post-soviet transition” as aggressive and primitive Others. A pseudo-ethnicity that combines Rus sian language and culture with lower-class background into a notion of homo sovieticus comes to stand for what is hindering the “clean up” of Lithuania and middleclass aspirations to form a new European identity. As such, the riots serve as a lens that illuminates the way ethnicity is flexibly utilized to shift political loyalties.

Mental Health Ontologies

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Janna Hastings
Keyword(s):  
Mental Health ◽  
Mental Illness ◽  
Public Discourse ◽  
Theoretical Frameworks ◽  
The Public ◽  
Holistic Understanding ◽  
Public Health Challenges ◽  
Health Related ◽  
The Media ◽  
The Way

Mental health presents one of the defining public health challenges of our time. Proponents of different conceptions of what mental illness is wage war for the hearts and minds of patients, practitioners, policy-makers, and the public. Debate and fragmentation around the nature of the entities that feature in the mental health domain divide resources and reduce progress. The way mental health is publicly discussed in the media has tangible effects, in terms of stigma, access to healthcare and resources, and private expectations of recovery. This book explores in detail the sorts of statements that are made about mental health in the media and public reporting of scientific research, grounding them in the wider context of the theoretical frameworks, assumptions and metaphors that they draw from. The author shows how a holistic understanding of the way that different aspects of mental illness are interrelated can be developed from evidence-based interpretation of the latest research findings. She offers some ideas about corrective, integrative approaches to discussing mental health-related matters publicly that may reduce the opposition between conceptualisations while still aiming to reduce stigma, shame and blame. In particular, she emphasises that discourse in the media needs to be anchored to an overview of all the research results across the field and argues that this could be achieved using new technological infrastructures. The author provides an integrative account of what mental health is, together with an improved understanding of the factors driving the persistence of oppositional accounts in the public discourse. The book will be of benefit to researchers, practitioners and students in the domain of mental health.

Entrepreneurship in the digital press: a semantic analysis

2019 ◽  
Vol 26 (3) ◽  
pp. 416-431
Author(s):  
Myriam Martí-Sánchez ◽  
Desamparados Cervantes-Zacarés ◽  
Arturo Ortigosa-Blanch
Keyword(s):  
Empirical Evidence ◽  
Thematic Analysis ◽  
Design Methodology ◽  
Semantic Analysis ◽  
Word Association ◽  
Innovation Ecosystem ◽  
Content Type ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Media ◽  
The Way

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to analyse how the media addresses entrepreneurship and to identify the attributes linked to this phenomenon. Design/methodology/approach The sample is defined in terms of a linguistic corpus comprised of content related to entrepreneurship drawn from the digital editions of the three most important Spanish economic newspapers for the period 2010–2017. Word association and co-occurrence analyses were carried out. Further, a non-supervised clustering process was used as the basis for a thematic analysis. Findings Correspondence between social and media patterns related to the entrepreneurship phenomenon is revealed by the results. It is shown how attributes such as “success”, “innovation”, “ecosystem” and “woman” appear as very relevant and are linked to different co-occurrence scenarios. Relevant thematic groups are also identified related to lexical associations such as innovation, digital economy and public policies linked to entrepreneurship. Research limitations/implications It is important to emphasise that this study has identified and explored relationships between words, but not their evolution. Furthermore, conclusions cannot be drawn concerning whether there are differences in how each newspaper has dealt with entrepreneurship because of the way the corpus was constructed. Originality/value The study provides empirical evidence that helps to identify the way media approaches entrepreneurship. The authors carried out the analysis on the media contents and not on the perception of the public on the phenomenon.

Nutzen von Erfahrungswissen in Krisen.

2021 ◽  
Vol 66 (1) ◽  
pp. 119-139
Author(s):  
Janina Barth ◽  
Andrea H. Schneider-Braunberger
Keyword(s):  
Public Discourse ◽  
Press Coverage ◽  
Political Issues ◽  
The Public ◽  
Business Reporting ◽  
Award Winning ◽  
The Media ◽  
German Newspaper ◽  
Past Experiences ◽  
Historical References

Abstract It appears to be almost self-evident that most people look towards past experiences for guidance during times of crisis. We would like to consider the empirical evidence for this assumption by analysing the public discourse regarding the reactions to crises, which includes general reporting, statements from politicians or discussions in the media. The outbreak of the Corona pandemic in Germany, starting in March 2020, opens the possibility to collect several preliminary findings by analysing relevant press coverage in the newspapers. Articles from different sections of the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (F.A.Z.) and from the Handelsblatt were evaluated. As our main interest focuses on economic historical (not e. g. medical historical) research questions, we chose the F.A.Z. First, because its business reporting is important within the German newspaper environment in general. Second, because its reporting on the Corona pandemic was award-winning. Additionally, we focused on the Handelsblatt because the newspaper provides press coverage explicitly on financial, business, and political issues – all subjects directly affected by the Corona crisis. The analysis concluded that there was a rise in articles with historical references in general while the number of articles linked to businesses did not increase at the same time which can be linked to the absence of expert business history opinions on offer.

scholarly journals “These Women are Making a Statement Against Rape and yet the only Thing Y'All can Focus on is ‘Eww They're Naked’”: Exploring Rape Culture on Facebook in South Africa

Gender Issues ◽  
2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Zaida Orth ◽  
Michelle Andipatin ◽  
Brian van Wyk
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
South African ◽  
Public Discourse ◽  
Public Health Problem ◽  
Victim Blaming ◽  
Rape Culture ◽  
The Public ◽  
Social Media Platforms ◽  
Aggressive Male ◽  
Public Reaction

Abstract Sexual assault on campuses has been identified as a pervasive public health problem. In April 2016, students across South African universities launched the #Endrapeculture campaign to express their frustration against university policies which served to perpetuate a rape culture. The use of hashtag activism during the protest served to spark online public debates and mobilize support for the protests. This article describes the public reactions to the South African #Endrapeculture protests on the Facebook social media platform. Data was collected through natural observations of comment threads on news articles and public posts on the student protests, and subjected to content analysis. The findings suggest that the #nakedprotest was successful in initiating public conversations concerning the issue of rape culture. However, the reactions towards the #nakedprotest were divided with some perpetuating a mainstream public discourse which perpetuates rape culture, and others (re)presenting a counter-public that challenged current dominant views about rape culture. Two related main themes emerged: Victim-blaming and Trivialising Rape Culture. Victim-blaming narratives emerged from the commenters and suggested that the protesters were increasing their chances of being sexually assaulted by marching topless. This discourse seems to perpetuate the notion of the aggressive male sexual desire and places the onus on women to protect themselves. Other commenters criticised the #nakedprotest method through demeaning comments which served to derail the conversation and trivialise the message behind the protest. The public reaction to the #nakedprotest demonstrated that rape culture is pervasive in society and continues to be re(produced) through discourse on social media platforms. However, social media also offers individuals the opportunity to draw from and participate in multiple counter-publics which challenge these mainstream rape culture discourses.

Mass Communication and Policy Gatekeeping

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard T. Craig
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Values ◽  
Mass Communication ◽  
Public Discourse ◽  
Media Audiences ◽  
The Public ◽  
Content Selection ◽  
Private Citizens ◽  
The Media ◽  
The One ◽  
Flow Of Information

Who filters through information and determines what information is shared with media audiences? Who filters through information and determines what information will not be shared with media audiences? Ultimately, who controls the flow of information in the media? At times commentary pertaining to media content references media as an omnipotent individual entity selecting the content transmitted to the public, reminiscent of a Wizard of Oz manner of the all-powerful being behind the curtain. Overlooked in this perception is the reality that in mass media, there are various individuals in positions of power making decisions about the information accessed by audiences of various forms of media. These individuals are considered gatekeepers: wherein the media functions as a gate permitting some matters to be publicized and included into the public discourse while restricting other matters from making it to the public conscience. Media gatekeepers (i.e., journalists, editors) possess the power to control the gate by determining the content delivered to audiences, opening and closing the gate of information. Gatekeepers wield power over those on the other side of the gate, those seeking to be informed (audiences), as well as those seeking to inform (politics, activists, academics, etc.). The earliest intellectual explanation of gatekeeping is traced to Kurt Lewin, describing gatekeeping as a means to analyze real-world problems and observing the effects of cultural values and subjective attitudes on those problems like the distribution of food in Lewins’s seminal study, and later modified by David Manning White to examine the dissemination of information via media. In an ideal situation, the gatekeepers would be taking on the challenge of weighing the evidence of importance in social problems when selecting among the options of content and information to exhibit. Yet, decisions concerning content selection are not void of subjective viewpoints and encompass values, beliefs, and ideals of gatekeepers. The subjective attitudes of gatekeepers influence their perspective of what qualifies as newsworthy information. Hence, those in the position to determine the content transmitted through media exercise the power to shape social reality for media audiences. In the evolution of media gatekeeping theory three models have resulted from the scholarship: (1) examination of the one-way flow of information passing through a series of gates before reaching audiences, (2) the process of newsroom personnel interacting with people outside of the newsroom, and (3) the direct communication of private citizens and public officials. In traditional media and newer forms of social media, gatekeeping examination revolves around analysis of these media organizations’ news routines and narratives. Gatekeeping analysis observes human behavior and motives in order to make conceptualizations about the social world.

scholarly journals Performativity of rape culture through fact and fiction: An exploration of India’s Daughter and Anatomy of Violence

2020 ◽  
Vol 23 (6) ◽  
pp. 879-897
Author(s):  
Ashvin Immanuel Devasundaram ◽  
Ravinder Barn
Keyword(s):  
Public Discourse ◽  
Real Life ◽  
Pedagogical Practices ◽  
Rape Culture ◽  
Life Event ◽  
Key Issues ◽  
The Media ◽  
Power And Influence

The power and influence of film and documentaries in public discourse and in formal pedagogical practices is recognized as critical. The content and message of a documentary are likely to be regarded as the ‘truth’. This is generally located in the belief that since a documentary is focused on a real-life event, it seeks to objectively expose key issues and concerns to reveal the veracity of the phenomenon under scrutiny. This article explores the portrayal of fact and fiction through film and documentary as exemplified by Deepa Mehta’s film Anatomy of Violence and Leslee Udwin’s film India’s Daughter (2016 and 2015 respectively), selected for their focus on the rape and murder of a Delhi student dubbed by the media as ‘Nirbhaya’ in 2012. The article investigates how these two media forms make use of fact or fiction to enhance understanding of a key social quandary, examining notions of temporality, spatiality, determinism and patriarchy.

Look Who's Talking! Islamic Discourse in the Chechen Wars

2006 ◽  
Vol 34 (2) ◽  
pp. 237-256 ◽  
Author(s):  
Scott Radnitz
Keyword(s):  
Public Discourse ◽  
Television News ◽  
Public And Private ◽  
Print Journalism ◽  
The Public ◽  
News Broadcasts ◽  
Psychological Warfare ◽  
The Media ◽  
Radio Free Europe ◽  
Chechen Wars

In any contemporary conflict, the war of ideas may be just as important as the war on the battlefield. Throughout history, propaganda has been used as a tool of psychological warfare. The prevalence of technology makes the mass media an ever more vital tool in spreading one's message, both to combatants and throughout the world. The case of the Chechen wars demonstrates the importance both sides placed on publicity in the course of fighting. In addition to the use of print journalism, the Chechen wars witnessed the employment of television news broadcasts, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty and the Internet as a means to spread messages. Given the importance of the media, the public and private discourse by the combatants has been seen as crucial to their cause. The language of Islam carries a set of widely shared symbols, many related to war, that can be used to manipulate public opinion. This article will analyze how Islamic language was used in the two Russian invasions of Chechnya in the 1990s (1994–1996, 1999–2002). It analyzes three pairs of variables: Russian and Chechen public discourse, especially regarding the language of Islam; Chechen public and Chechen private discourse; and the discourse of both sides in the first war compared to the second war.

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