Intellectuals and cultural trauma

2011 ◽  
Vol 14 (4) ◽  
pp. 453-467 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ron Eyerman
Keyword(s):  
Collective Identity ◽  
Public Discourse ◽  
Social Role ◽  
The United States ◽  
Cultural Trauma ◽  
Specific Group ◽  
Social Actors ◽  
Intellectual Labor ◽  
The Media ◽  
Martin Luther King

As opposed to the intelligentsia, a historically specific group, and the professions, those who perform intellectual labor, the intellectual is here understood as the performance of a social role, one which involves the articulation of ideas communicated to a broad audience. This implies at least two distinct ways of speaking about and studying the intellectual. The first is to look at the way various social actors take on the task of articulating ideas in public discourses. The second is to study how particular persons aspire to the intellectual, a role whose meaning they inherit as part of a tradition which must be interpreted and reinvented. Through an analysis of six assassinations, the article shows how intellectuals can act as carrier groups in what is called a cultural trauma, a public discourse in which the foundations of collective identity are brought up for reflection. The six assassinations are Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy in the United States, Pim Fortuyn and Theo van Gogh in the Netherlands and Olof Palme and Anna Lindh in Sweden. The article concludes with reflections on the changing nature and position of the intellectual in contemporary society, especially in the light of the prevalence of the media and the new digital age.

Satiric TV in the Americas

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul Alonso
Keyword(s):  
Public Discourse ◽  
Critical Role ◽  
Social Institutions ◽  
The United States ◽  
Entertainment Media ◽  
Media Spectacle ◽  
The Status ◽  
The Media ◽  
Tv Shows ◽  
Critical Humor

In the post-truth era, postmodern satiric media have emerged as prominent critical voices playing an unprecedented role at the heart of public debate, filling the gaps left not only by traditional media but also by weak social institutions and discredited political elites. Satiric TV in the Americas analyzes some of the most representative and influential satiric TV shows on the continent (focusing on cases in Argentina, Peru, Ecuador, Mexico, Chile, and the United States) in order to understand their critical role in challenging the status quo, traditional journalism, and the prevalent local media culture. It illuminates the phenomenon of satire as resistance and negotiation in public discourse, the role of entertainment media as a site where sociopolitical tensions are played out, and the changing notions of journalism in today’s democratic societies. Introducing the notion of “critical metatainment”—a postmodern, carnivalesque result of and a transgressive, self-referential reaction to the process of tabloidization and the cult of celebrity in the media spectacle era—Satiric TV in the Americas is the first book to map, contextualize, and analyze relevant cases to understand the relation between political information, social and cultural dissent, critical humor, and entertainment in the region. Evaluating contemporary satiric media as distinctively postmodern, multilayered, and complex discursive objects that emerge from the collapse of modernity and its arbitrary dichotomies, Satiric TV in the Americas also shows that, as satiric formats travel to a particular national context, they are appropriated in different ways and adapted to local circumstances, thus having distinctive implications.

scholarly journals Network Propaganda

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yochai Benkler ◽  
Robert Farris ◽  
Hal Roberts
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Political Communication ◽  
Coming Out ◽  
Public Discourse ◽  
The United States ◽  
Mainstream Media ◽  
Fox News ◽  
The Media ◽  
Political Media ◽  
Political Spectrum

This book examines the shape, composition, and practices of the United States political media landscape. It explores the roots of the current epistemic crisis in political communication with a focus on the remarkable 2016 U.S. president election culminating in the victory of Donald Trump and the first year of his presidency. The authors present a detailed map of the American political media landscape based on the analysis of millions of stories and social media posts, revealing a highly polarized and asymmetric media ecosystem. Detailed case studies track the emergence and propagation of disinformation in the American public sphere that took advantage of structural weaknesses in the media institutions across the political spectrum. This book describes how the conservative faction led by Steve Bannon and funded by Robert Mercer was able to inject opposition research into the mainstream media agenda that left an unsubstantiated but indelible stain of corruption on the Clinton campaign. The authors also document how Fox News deflects negative coverage of President Trump and has promoted a series of exaggerated and fabricated counter narratives to defend the president against the damaging news coming out of the Mueller investigation. Based on an analysis of the actors that sought to influence political public discourse, this book argues that the current problems of media and democracy are not the result of Russian interference, behavioral microtargeting and algorithms on social media, political clickbait, hackers, sockpuppets, or trolls, but of asymmetric media structures decades in the making. The crisis is political, not technological.

scholarly journals The American Reception and Settlement of Hungarian Refugees in 1956–1957

2016 ◽  
Vol 9 ◽  
pp. 197-205
Author(s):  
Peter Pastor
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Collective Identity ◽  
The United States ◽  
High Educational Level ◽  
Melting Pot ◽  
The People ◽  
Us Government ◽  
Before And After ◽  
The Media ◽  
The One

In the wake of the Hungarian Revolution of 1956, close to two hundred thousand Hungarians crossed into Austria.  About thirty thousand of these refugees were allowed to enter the United States. Their common experience of living under totalitarian communism and participating or being a witness to the exhilarating thirteen days of the revolution and their sudden, previously unplanned, departure from the homeland gave them a collective identity that was different from the one shared by the people of previous waves of Hungarian influx to the United States. The high educational level of the refugees attained before and after their arrival made their absorption into the mainstream relatively easy. The integration process was facilitated by the shaping of a positive image of the 1956 refugees by the US government and the media.  The reestablishment of the communist system in post-1956 Hungary contributed to the perception that, for the refugees in the United States, there was no hope for return to the homeland.  This assumption strengthened the attitudes of those who wished to embrace the American melting pot model.  Many of the 1956-ers in the United Sates, however, were also comfortable with the notion of ethnic pride and believed in the shaping of a dual national identity.

scholarly journals Evil doers from the 'hood or disenfranchised citizens? A critical analysis of the media representation of the MS-13 gang

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elena Megas
Keyword(s):  
Social Construction ◽  
Critical Discourse Analysis ◽  
Urban Youth ◽  
Public Discourse ◽  
The United States ◽  
Gang Members ◽  
Mainstream Media ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Media ◽  
Societal Problems

In the past decade and a half, the criminalization of MS-13 gang members in public discourse has operated to further marginalize and criminalize underprivileged urban youth, a segment of the populace already ridden by high levels of socio-economic exclusion. Using Fairclough’s critical discourse analysis method, this study explores the social construction MS-13 gang affiliated youth in mainstream media in Canada, the United States, and El Salvador. This study indicates that while the current gang research is becoming more critical, conceptualizing gangs as a crystallization of broader societal problems, the social construction of MS-13 gang members as permanent criminals is still predominant, as it circulates through all of the selected media. The criminalizing representation of MS-13 gang members has significant implications, as it justifies increasingly punitive policing strategies, which in turn validate the vilified construction of gang-affiliated youth, thus creating a vicious cycle in which gang members are deemed irremediable criminals.

scholarly journals Undocumented Mexican Immigrants in Adult ESL Classrooms: Some Issues to Consider

2012 ◽  
Vol 1 ◽  
pp. 238-250
Author(s):  
Sheri Jordan
Keyword(s):  
Public Discourse ◽  
Mexican Immigrants ◽  
The United States ◽  
Mexican Migration ◽  
Student Knowledge ◽  
Mexican Migrants ◽  
Adult Esl ◽  
The Us ◽  
American Media ◽  
The Media

With anti-immigrant sentiments permeating the media, policy, and public discourse throughout the United States, little room seems to exist for understanding what drives Mexican migrants northward. However, while acknowledging the historical conditions leading to US immigration policy, negative discourses and stereotypes in the American media and public, continuing Mexican migration in spite of great sacrifice, and the choices of individuals to migrate to the US, adult ESL educators need a framework as they encounter these students in the classroom. This framework combines Freire’s “pedagogy of the oppressed” with a transformative pedagogy that relinquishes deficit models and invites student knowledge into the classroom.

scholarly journals Evil doers from the 'hood or disenfranchised citizens? A critical analysis of the media representation of the MS-13 gang

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elena Megas
Keyword(s):  
Social Construction ◽  
Critical Discourse Analysis ◽  
Urban Youth ◽  
Public Discourse ◽  
The United States ◽  
Gang Members ◽  
Mainstream Media ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Media ◽  
Societal Problems

In the past decade and a half, the criminalization of MS-13 gang members in public discourse has operated to further marginalize and criminalize underprivileged urban youth, a segment of the populace already ridden by high levels of socio-economic exclusion. Using Fairclough’s critical discourse analysis method, this study explores the social construction MS-13 gang affiliated youth in mainstream media in Canada, the United States, and El Salvador. This study indicates that while the current gang research is becoming more critical, conceptualizing gangs as a crystallization of broader societal problems, the social construction of MS-13 gang members as permanent criminals is still predominant, as it circulates through all of the selected media. The criminalizing representation of MS-13 gang members has significant implications, as it justifies increasingly punitive policing strategies, which in turn validate the vilified construction of gang-affiliated youth, thus creating a vicious cycle in which gang members are deemed irremediable criminals.

Clyde Warrior, 1939–1968

2015 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Tiffany Hale
Keyword(s):  
Native Americans ◽  
Older Men ◽  
The United States ◽  
Men And Women ◽  
Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee ◽  
Political Struggles ◽  
Poor People's Campaign ◽  
Organizational Leader ◽  
Martin Luther King ◽  
Older Men And Women

To identify Clyde Warrior as an intellectual subverts prevailing notions of intellectualism. We often think of intellectuals as older men and women whose major contributions are revealed late in life, once the passions of youth have been tempered by experience. Warrior was not this. People frequently imagine intellectuals as existing in isolation, insulated from the demands of regular folk. Warrior was not this either. He was a Ponca, born on the reservation and raised with the influence of his grandparents and community. He was also a renowned singer and powwow fancy dancer, as well as a college student, an organizational leader, a husband, and father of two daughters. Warrior’s political consciousness grew out of the deep connections he maintained to his rural Ponca roots, but he took care to educate himself about the problems affecting Native Americans across the United States as well as colonized peoples globally. As an Oklahoman, he was attuned to race relations in the South and empathized with the struggles of Africans and African Americans. His approach to indigenous political struggles was shaped and informed, for example, by his early and active participation with the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and Martin Luther King Jr.’s Poor People’s Campaign.

Terrified

2014 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christopher A. Bail
Keyword(s):  
Public Discourse ◽  
The United States ◽  
September 11 ◽  
Theoretical Argument ◽  
Muslim Americans ◽  
Media Messages ◽  
American Media ◽  
The Face ◽  
September 11 Attacks ◽  
The Public Sphere

In July 2010, Terry Jones, the pastor of a small fundamentalist church in Florida, announced plans to burn two hundred Qur'ans on the anniversary of the September 11 attacks. Though he ended up canceling the stunt in the face of widespread public backlash, his threat sparked violent protests across the Muslim world that left at least twenty people dead. This book demonstrates how the beliefs of fanatics like Jones are inspired by a rapidly expanding network of anti-Muslim organizations that exert profound influence on American understanding of Islam. The book traces how the anti-Muslim narrative of the political fringe has captivated large segments of the American media, government, and general public, validating the views of extremists who argue that the United States is at war with Islam and marginalizing mainstream Muslim-Americans who are uniquely positioned to discredit such claims. Drawing on cultural sociology, social network theory, and social psychology, the book shows how anti-Muslim organizations gained visibility in the public sphere, commandeered a sense of legitimacy, and redefined the contours of contemporary debate, shifting it ever outward toward the fringe. The book illustrates the author's pioneering theoretical argument through a big-data analysis of more than one hundred organizations struggling to shape public discourse about Islam, tracing their impact on hundreds of thousands of newspaper articles, television transcripts, legislative debates, and social media messages produced since the September 11 attacks. The book also features in-depth interviews with the leaders of these organizations, providing a rare look at how anti-Muslim organizations entered the American mainstream.

ICERD in Malaysian online news reports: A cross-linguistic comparative corpus analysis

2019 ◽  
Vol 3 (4) ◽  
pp. 51
Author(s):  
Siti Aeisha Joharry ◽  
Nor Diyana Saupi
Keyword(s):  
Comparative Analysis ◽  
Public Discourse ◽  
Online News ◽  
Corpus Analysis ◽  
Search Term ◽  
International Convention ◽  
Online Newspapers ◽  
News Reports ◽  
The Media ◽  
Online Sources

The International Convention for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (ICERD), which was not ratified in Malaysia, created a heated public discourse in the media. This cross-linguistic comparative study investigates the representation of ICERD in Malaysian news reports of two online sources in Malaysia – the widely read English portal: The Star Online, and its Malay equivalent: Berita Harian. A corpus-assisted discourse analysis was conducted to examine how news on ‘ICERD’ were reported in both English and Malay online newspapers. Initial comparative analysis of both newspapers revealed that the search term co-occurs statistically more frequently with the verb ‘ratify’ and its equivalent: ‘meratifikasi’. Patterns indicate that ‘ICERD’ was mostly referring to the act of sanctioning the agreement –particularly to ‘not ratify’ or ‘tidak akan meratifikasi’, which is concurrent with the timeframe of events. Interestingly, different patterns can be found in Berita Harian (e.g. the expression of ‘thanks’ or gratitude of not ratifying ICERD) that are not as revealing in The Star Online reports. Some inconsistencies were also reported between the two newspapers, e.g. referring to different ministers’ speech about the initial plan to ratify ICERD alongside five (The Star Online) or six (Berita Harian) other treaties in the following year.  

Liberating Afghan Women

2004 ◽  
Vol 21 (3) ◽  
pp. 70-88 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nancy Gallagher
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Human Rights ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
The United States ◽  
Political Organizations ◽  
Way Of Life ◽  
Afghan Women ◽  
The Media ◽  
Policy Priority

Public opinion in the United States and elsewhere celebrated the liberation of Afghan women following the defeat of the Taliban government. The United States promised to stay in Afghanistan and foster security, economic development, and human rights for all, especially women. After years of funding various anti- Soviet Mujahidin warlords, the United States had agreed to help reconstruct the country once before in 1992, when the Soviet-backed government fell, but had lost interest when the warlords began to fight among themselves. This time, however, it was going to be different. To date, however, conditions have not improved for most Afghan women and reconstruction has barely begun. How did this happen? This article explores media presentations of Afghan women and then compares them with recent reports from human rights organizations and other eyewitness accounts. It argues that the media depictions were built on earlier conceptions of Muslim societies and allowed us to adopt a romantic view that disguised or covered up the more complex historical context of Afghan history and American involvement in it. We allowed ourselves to believe that Afghans were exotic characters who were modernizing or progressing toward a western way of life, despite the temporary setback imposed by the Taliban government. In Afghanistan, however, there was a new trope: the feminist Afghan woman activist. Images of prominent Afghan women sans burqa were much favored by the mass media and American policymakers. The result, however, was not a new focus on funding feminist political organizations or making women’s rights a foreign policy priority; rather, it was an unwillingness to fulfill obligations incurred during decades of American-funded mujahidin warfare, to face the existence of deteriorating conditions for women, resumed opium cultivation, and a resurgent Taliban, or to commit to a multilateral approach that would bring in the funds and expertise needed to sustain a long-term process of reconstruction.

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