scholarly journals #presidentspartingwords at a Critical Juncture: Reclaiming the Autonomous Subject in Social Media Discourse on Coronavirus in Belarus

2021 ◽  
pp. 019685992110495
Author(s):  
Volha Kananovich
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Autonomous Agents ◽  
Political Change ◽  
Media Discourse ◽  
Critical Juncture ◽  
Subject Positions ◽  
Official Discourse ◽  
Permissive Condition ◽  
Analytical Category

This study explores #presidentspartingwords, a viral hashtag that accompanied the eulogy-like posts that social media users created about themselves in spring 2020 by satirically emulating president Alexander Lukashenko’s patronizing remarks about the first coronavirus victims in Belarus, an authoritarian post-Soviet country. The study examines how the online public used these discursive sites to challenge the governmentally sanctioned subject positions, which construct Belarusians as inapt dependents of the state, by articulating themselves as efficacious,autonomous agents. The study argues the coronavirus pandemic served as a “permissive condition” for critical juncture by disrupting thelogic of the official discourse in which Lukashenko is assigned the role of the major, if not the only, rhetor imbued with the legitimacy to speak on behalf of the Belarusian people. I argue that approaching the coronavirus as a potential critical juncture offers critical mediascholars a useful analytical category for theorizing the discursive conditionality of political change.

scholarly journals Migration Discourse in Sweden: Frames and Sentiments in Mainstream and Social Media

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Victoria Yantseva
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
Media Discourse ◽  
Refugee Crisis ◽  
Long Term Effects ◽  
Data Set ◽  
Systematic Analysis ◽  
The Media ◽  
European Refugee Crisis

This study undertakes a systematic analysis of media discourse on migration in Sweden from 2012 to 2019. Using a novel data set consisting of mainstream newspapers, Twitter and forum data, the study answers two questions: What do Swedish media actually talk about when they talk about “migration”? And how do they talk about it? Using a combination of computational text analysis tools, I analyze a shift in the media discourse seen as one of the outcomes of the European refugee crisis in 2015 and try to understand the role of social media in this process. The results of the study indicate that messages on social media generally had negative tonality and suggest that some of the media frames can be attributed to a migration-hostile discourse. At the same time, the analysis of framing and sentiment dynamics provides little evidence for the discourse shift and any long-term effects of the European refugee crisis on the Swedish media discourse. Rather, one can hypothesize that the role of the crisis should be viewed in a broader political and historical context.

Introduction

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Samuel C. Woolley ◽  
Philip N. Howard
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Political Communication ◽  
Data Science ◽  
Autonomous Agents ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Political Role ◽  
The People ◽  
Social Media Platforms ◽  
Qualitative Work

Computational propaganda is an emergent form of political manipulation that occurs over the Internet. The term describes the assemblage of social media platforms, autonomous agents, algorithms, and big data tasked with manipulating public opinion. Our research shows that this new mode of interrupting and influencing communication is on the rise around the globe. Advances in computing technology, especially around social automation, machine learning, and artificial intelligence, mean that computational propaganda is becoming more sophisticated and harder to track. This introduction explores the foundations of computational propaganda. It describes the key role of automated manipulation of algorithms in recent efforts to control political communication worldwide. We discuss the social data science of political communication and build upon the argument that algorithms and other computational tools now play an important political role in news consumption, issue awareness, and cultural understanding. We unpack key findings of the nine country case studies that follow—exploring the role of computational propaganda during events from local and national elections in Brazil to the ongoing security crisis between Ukraine and Russia. Our methodology in this work has been purposefully mixed, using quantitative analysis of data from several social media platforms and qualitative work that includes interviews with the people who design and deploy political bots and disinformation campaigns. Finally, we highlight original evidence about how this manipulation and amplification of disinformation is produced, managed, and circulated by political operatives and governments, and describe paths for both democratic intervention and future research in this space.

scholarly journals Social Media and Socio-Political Change: An Asian Perspective

2015 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. i-v
Author(s):  
Natalie Pang ◽  
Peter Parycek ◽  
Marko Skoric ◽  
Judith Schossböck
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Political Change ◽  
Political Life ◽  
Special Issue ◽  
Widespread Adoption

With the widespread adoption of social media in many Asian societies, these platforms are increasingly used in a variety of ways to promote civic and political aims but such uses are shaped by various stakeholders and contexts of use. In this special issue, four papers on Japan, Singapore, Malaysia and China-Australia present highly contextualized assessments of the role of social media in civic and political life in Asia.

scholarly journals Being Special: Nostalgia through Special Rates Areas and Community Improvement Districts in Cape Town Suburbs

2018 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 1-16
Author(s):  
Zarreen Kamalie
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Social Media ◽  
Predominantly White ◽  
Cape Town ◽  
Media Discourse ◽  
Economic Exclusion ◽  
Media Discourse Analysis ◽  
Community Improvement

This paper explores how memories and nostalgia inform the rationale of implementing Community Improvement Districts (CIDs) or Special Rates Areas (SRAs) as a means of crime prevention and urban maintenance in two formerly ‘whites-only’ Cape Town suburbs; Rondebosch and Mowbray. Through an exploration of the remembering, the maintenance and the resuscitation of an idealized past in a suburb that remains predominantly white after years of racial and economic exclusion, this paper interrogates the role of long-term resident nostalgia in post-apartheid South Africa in maintaining spatial apartheid. Using Svetlana Boym’s (2001) framework of nostalgia, particularly ‘restorative nostalgia’ and ‘reflective nostalgia,’ to interpret the memories of residents interviewed, this paper argues that it is nostalgia for an idealized past and a remembered specialness that sustains mentalities that give rise to spatially exclusive SRAs and CIDs. In this paper, public and social media discourse analysis and resident interviews allow us to understand residents’ memories and discussions around crime and urban degeneration and homelessness in Rondebosch. The purpose of this paper is to contribute to questions about spatial exclusivity in residential spaces in the post-apartheid era, particularly in a city that retains the legacy of spatial apartheid.

scholarly journals Critical discourse analysis as an analytical resource for cultural studies: exploring the discursive construction of subject positions in British men's magazines' problem pages

2006 ◽  
pp. 83 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eduardo de Gregorio Godeo
Keyword(s):  
Discourse Analysis ◽  
Cultural Studies ◽  
Critical Discourse Analysis ◽  
Subject Position ◽  
Critical Discourse ◽  
Discursive Construction ◽  
Media Discourse ◽  
Subject Positions ◽  
Men's Magazines

In operating with quite an abstract approach to 'discourse', cultural studies has hardly engaged in detailed textual analyses examining the role of language and discourse in the constitution of cultural processes. By focusing on an area of concern for contemporary cultural studies such as the discursive construction of subject positions, this paper casts light on the instrumental role that critical discourse analysis (henceforth CDA) may play as an analytical resource for cultural studies. In particular, we highlight how detailed textual analyses undertaken by CDA may contribute to deciphering the role of language and discourse in the articulation of cultural practices of identity representation and construction in media discourse. After revising the coincidences on the agendas of CDA and cultural studies, a case study follows exploring the discursive construction of such a subject position on masculinity as the so- called 'new man' in a sample from men's magazines' problem pages as a characteristic popular-culture genre in contemporary Britain. Our analysis substantiates the validity of Fairclough's CDA framework for disentangling the mechanisms of identity construction in this genre of present-day media discourse in the UK.

scholarly journals Discourse of Social Media in the Context of the covid-19 Pandemic

2021 ◽  
Vol 14 (3) ◽  
pp. 152-167
Author(s):  
N.D. Pavlova ◽  
V.A. Afinogenova ◽  
T.A. Kubrak ◽  
I.A. Zachesova
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Significant Contribution ◽  
Vaccination Campaign ◽  
Media Discourse ◽  
Problematic Situation ◽  
Leading Role ◽  
Current Events

The article presents the results of the study of social media discourse in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, which reflects opinions, perceptions, assessments of current events and makes a significant contribution to their formation. The aim of the study was to identify the peculiarities of the organization of discourse during the vaccination campaign, which related to the intentional orientation of the subjects of communication. The material of the study — 5 information messages about the vaccination against COVID-19 and their discussion on various Internet sites (126 people; 248 comments, М= 50, min=46, max=52). Using the method of intent analysis, it was found that the discussion of messages about vaccination was accompanied by the appearance of additional topical and interactive objects and a multiple increase in the number of realized categories of intentions. The prevalence of neutral intentions to analyze the problematic situation, to present and compare the positions, demonstrating the change in the tone of the discourse from the epidemic beginning, was detected. The leading role of interactive objects was identified, which indicated the presence of dialogic intentions and the needs for joint comprehension of the events.

Social Media Discourse About Division-I Football Players’ Early Exit Announcements: The Role of Expressed Fandom

2019 ◽  
pp. 216747951987480 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gregory A. Cranmer ◽  
David Cassilo ◽  
Jimmy Sanderson ◽  
Bailey Troutman
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Student Athletes ◽  
National Collegiate Athletic Association ◽  
Division I ◽  
Football Players ◽  
Media Discourse ◽  
Fan Identification ◽  
Early Exit ◽  
Division I Football

This study sought to understand social media users’ responses to Division-I football players’ early exit announcements as manifestations of BIRGing and CORFing. Researchers analyzed social media users’ replies ( N = 2,009) to six collegiate student-athletes’ early exit announcements on Twitter and Instagram during the 2018 National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) football season. Results identified four responses to exit announcements: (a) supporting, (b) noting significance, (c) disagreeing, and (d) capitalizing. These reactions varied as a function of fan identification: (a) those who expressed fandom for exited teams supported student-athletes, (b) those who expressed fandom for other teams capitalized on the announcements, and (c) those who expressed no fandom noted the significance of and disagreed with student-athletes. These findings offer unique insights that reinforce and diverge from assertions about fans’ BIRGing and CORFing behaviors. The results also have consequences for how scholars and practitioners come to view the intersections between team/organizational processes, athlete expression, and athlete–fan interaction.

scholarly journals Between the "Self" and the "Other": Representations of Ukraine's Russian-speakers in Social Media Discourse

2018 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 65-88 ◽  
Author(s):  
Volodymyr Kulyk
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Russian Language ◽  
The Self ◽  
The Other ◽  
Media Discourse ◽  
Russian Speakers ◽  
Group I ◽  
Communicative Practice ◽  
The Russian Language

This paper analyzes the images of Ukraine’s Russian-speaking citizens as they appear in Ukrainian users’ posts on Facebook. Based on a systematic examination of the accounts of twelve prominent pro-Maidan personalities, my analysis pays attention to both the self-representations of those Ukrainians who primarily rely on the Russian language and to their representations by those individuals who locate themselves outside of this group. I argue that what usually appears in the self-representations as merely a facet of communicative practice is often perceived by others as a crucial element of social identity. While the self-representations do not undermine Russian-speakers’ identity as Ukrainians, the other-representations often do, thus questioning their belonging to the imagined national Self. Such opposing representations of Russian-speakers manifest different perceptions of the Ukrainian nation and the role of the Ukrainian language in this identity, and thus different ideologies of nationhood and language more generally.

scholarly journals Migration Discourse in Sweden: Frames and Sentiments in Mainstream and Social Media

2020 ◽  
Vol 6 (4) ◽  
pp. 205630512098105
Author(s):  
Victoria Yantseva
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
Media Discourse ◽  
Refugee Crisis ◽  
Long Term Effects ◽  
Data Set ◽  
Systematic Analysis ◽  
The Media ◽  
European Refugee Crisis

This study undertakes a systematic analysis of media discourse on migration in Sweden from 2012 to 2019. Using a novel data set consisting of mainstream newspapers, Twitter and forum data, the study answers two questions: What do Swedish media actually talk about when they talk about “migration”? And how do they talk about it? Using a combination of computational text analysis tools, I analyze a shift in the media discourse seen as one of the outcomes of the European refugee crisis in 2015 and try to understand the role of social media in this process. The results of the study indicate that messages on social media generally had negative tonality and suggest that some of the media frames can be attributed to a migration-hostile discourse. At the same time, the analysis of framing and sentiment dynamics provides little evidence for the discourse shift and any long-term effects of the European refugee crisis on the Swedish media discourse. Rather, one can hypothesize that the role of the crisis should be viewed in a broader political and historical context.

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