Fake news and the discursive construction of technology companies’ social power

2020 ◽  
Vol 42 (6) ◽  
pp. 952-968 ◽  
Author(s):  
Brian Creech
Keyword(s):  
Critical Discourse Analysis ◽  
Social Power ◽  
Discursive Construction ◽  
Fake News ◽  
The Public ◽  
Media Companies ◽  
Technology Industry ◽  
The Public Sphere ◽  
Discursive Field ◽  
Technology Industries

In the research and commentary around ‘fake news’, there has been growing attention to the way the phrase evidences a growing field of technology industry critique, operating as a shorthand for understanding the nature of social media companies’ power over the public sphere. This article interrogates elite and popular discourses surrounding ‘fake news’, using the tools of critical discourse analysis to show how public commentary constitutes a discursive field that renders tech industry power intelligible by first defining the issue of fake news as a sociotechnical problem, then debating the infrastructural nature of platform companies’ social power. This article concludes that, as commentary moves beyond a focus on fake news and critiques of technology industries grow more complex, strains of elite discourse reveal productive constraints on tech power, articulating the conditions under which limits on that power are understood as legitimate.

Discursive construction of an anti-immigration Europe by a Sweden Democrat in the European Parliament

2019 ◽  
Vol 16 (3) ◽  
pp. 429-439
Author(s):  
Kamber Güler
Keyword(s):  
Critical Discourse Analysis ◽  
Direct Democracy ◽  
Public Discourse ◽  
Social Power ◽  
European Parliament ◽  
Critical Discourse ◽  
Discursive Construction ◽  
Cognitive Approach ◽  
The Public ◽  
Political Group

Discourses are mostly used by the elites as a means of controlling public discourse and hence, the public mind. In this way, they try to legitimate their ideology, values and norms in the society, which may result in social power abuse, dominance or inequality. The role of a critical discourse analyst is to understand and expose such abuses and inequalities. To this end, this paper is aimed at understanding and exposing the discursive construction of an anti-immigration Europe by the elites in the European Parliament (EP), through the example of Kristina Winberg, a member of the Sweden Democrats political party in Sweden and the political group of Europe of Freedom and Direct Democracy in the EP. In the theoretical and methodological framework, the premises and strategies of van Dijk’s socio-cognitive approach of critical discourse analysis make it possible to achieve the aim of the paper.

scholarly journals Muḥammad ʿAbduh’s Notion of Political Adab

2022 ◽  
Vol 21 ◽  
pp. 339-364
Author(s):  
William Ryle-Hodges
Keyword(s):  
Public Sphere ◽  
Nation Building ◽  
Holistic Approach ◽  
Political Rights ◽  
The Public ◽  
Political Journalism ◽  
Good Taste ◽  
Modern Context ◽  
The Public Sphere ◽  
Discursive Field

This paper extends the emphasis on contingency and context in Islamic ethical traditions into the distinctly modern context of late 19th century Khedival Egypt. I draw attention to the way Muḥammad ʿAbduh’s engagement with Islamic ethical traditions was shaped by his practice in addressing the broad social and political questions of his context to do with nation-building and political journalism. As a bureaucrat and state publicist, he took pre-modern Islamic ethical concepts into the emerging discursive field of the modern state and the public sphere in Egypt. Looking at a series of newspaper articles for the state newspaper, al-Waqāʾiʿ al-miṣriyya, I show how he articulated an ethics of citizenship by defining a modern civic notion of adab that he called “political adab.” He conceived of this adab as the answer to the problem of how a unified nation emerges from the condition of “freedom” by which journalists and the reading public at the time were conceptualizing the politics of the ʿUrābī revolution in late 1881. This was a “freedom” of the public sphere that allowed for free speech and the power of public opinion to shape governance. ‘Political adab’ would be the virtue or situational skill, internalized in each participant in the public sphere, that would regulate this freedom, ensuring that it produces unity rather than anarchy. I argue that adab here enshrined ʿAbduh’s holistic approach to nation-building; Egypt with political rights would be a nation in which the very idea of the nation is comprehensively embedded—through adab—in people’s lives, animating their “souls”. This was a politics conceived not as a self-standing domain, but as growing out of society, becoming thereby an authentic unity and self-regulating “life”. In developing this vision, ʿAbduh was amplifying pre-modern meanings of adab implying wide breadth of knowledge, good taste, and the virtues, labelled in the paper as ‘comprehensivness,’ ‘consensus’ and ‘habitus.’ Keywords: Muḥammad ʿAbduh, Adab, Freedom, Nation, Politics, Egypt

scholarly journals Progressive Social Movements and the Internet

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sarah J. Jackson
Keyword(s):  
Social Movements ◽  
Social Change ◽  
Mass Media ◽  
Public Sphere ◽  
Social Power ◽  
The Body ◽  
The Internet ◽  
The Public ◽  
Media Technologies ◽  
The Public Sphere

Because of the field’s foundational concerns with both social power and media, communication scholars have long been at the center of scholarly thought at the intersection of social change and technology. Early critical scholarship in communication named media technologies as central in the creation and maintenance of dominant political ideologies and as a balm against dissent among the masses. This work detailed the marginalization of groups who faced restricted access to mass media creation and exclusion from representational discourse and images, alongside the connections of mass media institutions to political and cultural elites. Yet scholars also highlighted the ways collectives use media technologies for resistance inside their communities and as interventions in the public sphere. Following the advent of the World Wide Web in the late 1980s, and the granting of public access to the Internet in 1991, communication scholars faced a medium that seemed to buck the one-way and gatekeeping norms of others. There was much optimism about the democratic potentials of this new technology. With the integration of Internet technology into everyday life, and its central role in shaping politics and culture in the 21st century, scholars face new questions about its role in dissent and collective efforts for social change. The Internet requires us to reconsider definitions of the public sphere and civil society, document the potentials and limitations of access to and creation of resistant and revolutionary media, and observe and predict the rapidly changing infrastructures and corresponding uses of technology—including the temporality of online messaging alongside the increasingly transnational reach of social movement organizing. Optimism remains, but it has been tempered by the realities of the Internet’s limitations as an activist tool and warnings of the Internet-enabled evolution of state suppression and surveillance of social movements. Across the body of critical work on these topics particular characteristics of the Internet, including its rapidly evolving infrastructures and individualized nature, have led scholars to explore new conceptualizations of collective action and power in a digital media landscape.

scholarly journals Post-Truth: Hegemony on Social Media and Implications for Sustainability Communication

2019 ◽  
Vol 11 (7) ◽  
pp. 2120 ◽  
Author(s):  
Cecilia Jaques ◽  
Mine Islar ◽  
Gavin Lord
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Critical Discourse Analysis ◽  
Scientific Information ◽  
The United States ◽  
Marxian Theory ◽  
The Public ◽  
Social Media Platforms ◽  
The Public Sphere ◽  
The One ◽  
Science In Society

Contrary to what practice suggests, social media platforms may not be an appropriate forum for communicating with civil society about sustainability issues such as climate change. Misinformation campaigns are distorting the line between fact and falsity on social media platforms, and there has been a profound shift in the way that social media users consume and interact with information. These conditions have been popularly labeled as the post-truth era. Drawing from Neo-Marxian theory, we argue that post-truth can be explained as a new iteration of ideological struggle under capitalist hegemony. We substantiate this claim through a mixed methods investigation synthesizing corpus-assisted lexical analysis and critical discourse analysis to evaluate 900 user-generated comments taken from three articles on socioenvironmental topics published on Facebook by news organizations in the United States. The results showed that the nature of this struggle is tied explicitly to the role of science in society, where the legitimacy of science is caught in a tug-of-war of values between elitism on the one hand and a rejection of the establishment on the other. It follows that presenting truthful information in place of false information is an insufficient means of coping with post-truth. We conclude by problematizing the notion that Facebook is an adequate forum for public dialogue and advocate for a change in strategy from those wishing to communicate scientific information in the public sphere.

scholarly journals Bloggers and Deliberative Democracy in Indonesia's Blogosphere

2015 ◽  
Vol 11 (28) ◽  
pp. 15 ◽  
Author(s):  
M. Jacky
Keyword(s):  
Public Sphere ◽  
Deliberative Democracy ◽  
Virtual Community ◽  
Authoritarian Regimes ◽  
The Internet ◽  
Discursive Construction ◽  
The Public ◽  
Study Support ◽  
The Public Sphere ◽  
The Relationship

<p>The study of the relationship between the Internet and democracy has produced two main debates. Some studies have said that the Internet has significantly contributed to democracy while others disagree. This study challenged the thesis of Habermas (2006) about the relationship between the Internet and Deliberative Democracy. This study was built on the following propositions: that the Internet causes bloggers to become parasitic, fragmented, and isolated; that it is effective in breaking down authoritarian regimes to create an egalitarian relationship, but it fails as a deliberative medium. This study used the concept of the public sphere and Habermas’ Deliberative Democracy (2006). It also explored the use of 2.0 qualitative methods with a hacking analysis perspective. Moreover, it gained data from the Internet by using the latest version of 2.0 Web and a virtual community. It focused on both discursive and non-discursive construction. The results of this study support only one of Habermas’ three propositions: that the Internet creates egalitarianism. Thus, this study rejects Habermas’ thesis apart from this one proposition. Furthermore, this study recommends that further research be done using the same propositions but on Twitter instead of the Internet.</p>

scholarly journals SEXUAL VIOLENCE AND NEW FORMS OF RELIGIOUS TRADITIONALISM IN THE CROATIAN POST-CONFLICT CONTEXT

2019 ◽  
pp. 185
Author(s):  
Jana Kujundžić
Keyword(s):  
Sexual Violence ◽  
Critical Discourse Analysis ◽  
Catholic Church ◽  
Public Discourse ◽  
Gender Ideology ◽  
The Public ◽  
Post Conflict ◽  
The Government ◽  
The Public Sphere ◽  
Istanbul Convention

This paper will focus on sexual violence and new forms of religious traditionalism emerging in the Croatian political context and their engagement with the term gender. Critical Discourse Analysis as a methodological framework will be used to investigate the debates surrounding the ratification of the Istanbul Convention (Convention on preventing and combating violence against women and domestic violence) in 2018 in Croatia. Religious conservative organisations started to frequently utilize the term “gender ideology” to created fear, confusion and moral panic in the public discourse in connection to the ratification. According to their interpretations, “gender ideology” in the Istanbul convention was smuggled in to destroy the traditional Croatian Catholic heterosexual family by enabling children to choose their own gender. Croatia has undergone significant changes since the dissolution of Yugoslavia in the 1990s dismissing its socialist legacy with the support of the Catholic Church and its staunch anti-communist rhetoric which seeks to undo any progress in terms of gender equality achieved during socialism. Researching sexual violence from the intersectional feminist framework poses a challenge in a climate where the conservative discourse has highjacked any discussion of sexual violence in the public sphere by contesting the term gender itself and making it a questioned category of social analysis. Even though Croatia has ratified the Istanbul Convention in April 2018, the government has issued alongside an “interpretative statement” further legitimizing the term “gender ideology.”

Good news, bad news, and fake news

2019 ◽  
Vol 75 (1) ◽  
pp. 213-228 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Buschman
Keyword(s):  
Information Science ◽  
Social Role ◽  
Good News ◽  
Fake News ◽  
Theoretical Understanding ◽  
Content Type ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Public Sphere ◽  
Definition Of

PurposeLibrary and Information Science (LIS) has seen an explosion of responses to fake news in the aftermath of the 2016 US election, political in nature, eschewing “neutrality” supporting democracy. The purpose of this paper is to trace the definition of fake news, the challenges, the roots of recent respondes to fake news, notes that the theoretical understanding of democracy must keep pace with these efforts.Design/methodology/approachConceptual analysis of the LIS literature concerning fake news and its underlying themes; unpacking of actually existing democracy, re-linked to LIS practices.FindingsDemocracy does not require a space cleared of distorting claims but spaces suited to grappling with them, a call to address fake news, and not simply a matter of clearing up information sources; librarians should prepared to engage at the next level. Libraries stand for the proposition that there is more-true information which is worth accessing, organizing, etc., and for inclusion. Whether explicitly political or not, the imaginative uses to which libraries are put do enrich civil society and the public sphere. Libraries help to counter fake news both through specific educative actions aimed at it and as broadly educative institutions with a coherent notion of their relationship to informational discernment in democracy.Originality/valueLIS discourse on fake news has value, and references democracy, but assumes a set of traditional relationships between informing, libraries and democracy. This paper goes at both the lesser role of informing and highlights the (arguably) greater social role of libraries in democratic society.

The good despot: Technology firms’ interventions in the public sphere

2019 ◽  
Vol 29 (1) ◽  
pp. 21-36
Author(s):  
Eran Tamir ◽  
Roei Davidson
Keyword(s):  
Public Education ◽  
Public Sphere ◽  
Structured Interviews ◽  
Commercial Society ◽  
Education Inequality ◽  
The Public ◽  
Technology Firms ◽  
Technology Industry ◽  
The Public Sphere ◽  
Tight Labor Market

We examine how the technology industry intervenes in social domains not directly tied to its products, services, and immediate commercial concerns. We intend to develop a framework for considering the ways technology and the technology industry reshape these domains in ways both intended and unintended. Drawing on sociologies of knowledge and technology and a set of 20 semi-structured interviews with technology workers and HR professionals working in the Israeli facilities of two large multi-national technology firms, we find evidence that the intervention allows the industry to re-purpose public education as a means of nurturing a firm’s workforce with the goal of remaining competitive in a tight labor market both nationally and globally. In parallel, the programs allow workers to experience satisfying and pleasant interactions. These re-purposing interventions might aggravate existing education inequality while further cementing the legitimacy of a dominant industry as a model for an idealized commercial society.

Performance, performativity and melodrama as dramatic substance in Hindi film song sequences

2019 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 129-147
Author(s):  
Anna Morcom
Keyword(s):  
Public Sphere ◽  
Performance Studies ◽  
Social Life ◽  
Social Power ◽  
Social Identities ◽  
New Method ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Public Sphere ◽  
Key Nodes ◽  
Hindi Film

Abstract In this article, I explore the dramatic substance of Hindi film songs through an approach based in performance studies, which presents performance as the very stuff of social life, social identities and social power. Given this, the enactment of song sequences in the Hindi film narrative cannot be dramatically benign, or just excess, or just pleasure (however intense). I describe how song sequences perform and thereby manifest and reify love and romance in the film narrative. Using work on public spectacle and power by Foucault and the public sphere by Vasudevan, I further analyse how they connect the public, emotions of love, and social or familial struggle in various ways, embodying key nodes of melodrama. I then reflect, in these terms, on the recent curtailment of performed songs in Hindi films. I thereby present a new method for analysing the dramatic agency of screened or background songs in films.

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