Traveling across Racial Borders: TripAdvisor and the Discursive Strategies Businesses Use to Deny Racism

2018 ◽  
Vol 5 (4) ◽  
pp. 518-531
Author(s):  
Heather M. Dalmage

Travel and leisure activities can bring many rewards, and yet for those deemed “racialized Others,” these same activities can be fraught with anxiety and tension. As in all aspects of society, racism mediates the rewards of travel and leisure. Decisions about when and how to confront racism are central in the lives of those considered racialized Others. Given a wish to de-escalate racist situations and respond later, some individuals are using online platforms to call out racism. Using a digital discourse analysis, the author explores TripAdvisor, as a site and context in which racial confrontation happens. Interracial couples facing discrimination during leisure activities may choose to confront businesses after the fact through an online platform. When businesses respond, they follow a pattern that defensively separates “service” from racism and ultimately denies racism entirely. The author begins with an analysis of the TripAdvisor platform, including the affordances and constraints. Next, the author uses a digital discourse analysis of the review-response interaction. As with other forms of colorblind racism, a close read of the content is needed to highlight racist practices. The author shows that the structure of TripAdvisor, including the quantitative ratings and rankings and written reviews and responses, works to legitimize the platform and build trust across a Eurocentric global community. This sense of community and trust is denied and remains elusive to those suffering as a result of racist abuse.

2019 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 3-20
Author(s):  
Alora Paulsen Mulvey

Using 27-year-old Canadian beauty blogger Estée Lalonde as a site of automedia analysis (Maguire 2015), this paper argues that through the enactment of domestic femininity in the public sphere, social media influencers embody postfeminist ideals of individual empowerment while selling their branded selves through networked intimacy (Abidin 2015; Gill, 2016). Methodologically, I approach the case study with an understanding of the intersection between online platforms of the intersection between online platforms, life writing, and constructions of the self. Using cross-promotion, scheduled posts, and self-branding, influencers create a cohesive branded self, emphasizing perceived authenticity and a sense of community among followers. The exercise of self-branding is used to gain cultural and material capital (Hearn, 2008). Understanding postfeminism as an analytical lens through which we can problematize media texts (Gill, 2016), I argue that influencer marketing privileges a one-dimensional, postfeminist representation of an empowered young woman following her life’s passion (Duffy & Hund, 2015).


2020 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 331-347
Author(s):  
Barrie Sander ◽  
Nicholas Tsagourias

Reflecting on the covid-19 infodemic, this paper identifies different dimensions of information disorder associated with the pandemic, examines how online platform governance has been evolving in response, and reflects on what the crisis reveals about the relationship between online platforms, international law, and the prospect of regulation. The paper argues that online platforms are intermediary fiduciaries of the international public good, and for this reason regulation should be informed by relevant standards that apply to fiduciary relationships.


2021 ◽  
pp. 136787792098723
Author(s):  
Laura Rodriguez Castro ◽  
Adele Pavlidis ◽  
Millicent Kennelly ◽  
Erin Nichols

This article narrates the affects and experiences of the CaiRollers, the first and only roller derby team in Egypt. Through visual affective discourse analysis of their Instagram account and interviews with team members, the article addresses the question: What do physical practices such as roller derby ‘do’ in e/affecting and mobilising change? In conversation with feminisms from the Middle East, our analysis highlights how the team’s ‘sisterhood’ is a site of affective politics that transcends the roller derby track. At the same time, a desire to be tough and to embrace risk permeated the CaiRollers discourses. Yet, while the team has established its legitimacy within the transnational roller derby community, we narrate the obstacles they face in Egypt. In sum, we found that the CaiRollers involvement in roller derby was entangled in mobilising change in political movements, gender politics, transnational mobilities and questions of legitimacy and sport.


2021 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 194-203
Author(s):  
Aram Terzyan

Abstract This article presents an analysis of the evolution of Russia’s image representation in Georgian and Ukrainian political discourses amid Russian-Georgian and Russian-Ukrainian conflicts escalation. Even though Georgia’s and Ukraine’s troubled relations with neighboring Russia have been extensively studied, there has been little attention to the ideational dimensions of the confrontations, manifested in elite narratives, that would redraw the discursive boundaries between “Us” and “Them.” This study represents an attempt to fill the void, by examining the core narratives of the enemy, along with the discursive strategies of its othering in Georgian and Ukrainian presidential discourses through critical discourse analysis. The findings suggest that the image of the enemy has become a part of “New Georgia’s” and “New Ukraine’s” identity construction - inherently linked to the two countries’ “choice for Europe.” Russia has been largely framed as Europe’s other, with its “inherently imperial,” “irremediably aggressive” nature and adherence to illiberal, non-democratic values. The axiological and moral evaluations have been accompanied by the claims that the most effective way of standing up to the enemy’s aggression is the “consolidation of democratic nations,” coming down to the two countries’ quests for EU and NATO membership.


2021 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 89
Author(s):  
Fauzan Febrian ◽  
Nazmi Fathnur Ahmad

The Covid-19 Pandemic has hurt the beverage outlets' sales. This study investigates the strength of the internal and external factors that influenced sales in the online platforms of hype drinks. Thus, the study focused on the adaptation strategy to improve the sales in the online platform of hype drinks under environmentally-health pressures. The approach was mixed-method by obtaining the data through questionnaires, interviews, and observation. The participant in this study was consumer, employee, and owner.  Data analysis is conducted under the SWOT analysis that has four steps in presenting the data. The finding concluded that internal and external factors positively impacted the business strategy to increase online sales of beverage outlets by riding the wave of hype among customers.


2019 ◽  
Vol 9 (6) ◽  
pp. 320
Author(s):  
Waheed M. A. Altohami ◽  
Amir H. Y. Salama

This paper is a corpus critical discourse analysis of the journalistic representations of Saudi women as they appear in the Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA) (Davies, 2008). It follows a sociocognitive approach (van Dijk, 2008) to explore the thematic foci discussing issues related to Saudi women and to discuss the discursive strategies implemented to propagate such issues. The study has reached four findings. First, the thematic foci related to Saudi women are textually and referentially coherent as they were meant to provide a grand narrative underlying a specific context model. Second, Saudi women are negatively represented as no social roles are ascribed to them throughout the corpus. Third, different social actors are also represented alongside Saudi women to put them in a wider socio-cultural context to aggravate their problems. Finally, the most effective discursive strategies which mediated the running context model included victimization, categorization, stereotyping, normalization, and exaggeration.


Author(s):  
Elza-Bair M. Guchinova ◽  

Introduction. This publication is devoted to the issues of deportation of the Kalmyk people to Siberia (1943–1956) and the memories that the individuals have of their traumatic experience of the exile period. It consists of an introduction, two interviews, and comments on them. The narratives belong to Kalmyks who were of preschool age at the time of Siberian exile. The purpose of the publication is to focus on “children of Siberia” as a separate generational stratum, with their own specific experiences and loyalties; Siberian villages, sites of their socialization, becoming their homeland. Of relevance are the facts that contribute to the mosaic of the Siberian life of Kalmyks and the stories shedding light on the feelings and experiences of children growing up in Siberia. Also, the author was interested in analyzing the expressions and verbal formulas, plots and associations that create the protagonists’ spontaneous narratives, and the ways the language of trauma, which arises in any narrative of the traumatic event, is used in the material under study. Data and methods. The interviews were taken by the author from V. I. Badmaev (2008) and from A. N. Ovshinov (2018); presented in the form of transcribed texts, these are examined via the method of discourse analysis. Results. The discursive strategies of the two narratives indicate their largely positive character. The author shows that, for their specific exile experience, the “children of Siberia” should be singled out into a separate generational stratum. The material will be of interest to the student of the Kalmyk deportation history and the people’s memory of the exile.


2020 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 66-75 ◽  
Author(s):  
Margarethe Kusenbach

<p>In the United States, residents of mobile homes and mobile home communities are faced with cultural stigmatization regarding their places of living. While common, the “trailer trash” stigma, an example of both housing and neighborhood/territorial stigma, has been understudied in contemporary research. Through a range of discursive strategies, many subgroups within this larger population manage to successfully distance themselves from the stigma and thereby render it inconsequential (Kusenbach, 2009). But what about those residents—typically white, poor, and occasionally lacking in stability—who do not have the necessary resources to accomplish this? This article examines three typical responses by low-income mobile home residents—here called resisting, downplaying, and perpetuating—leading to different outcomes regarding residents’ sense of community belonging. The article is based on the analysis of over 150 qualitative interviews with mobile home park residents conducted in West Central Florida between 2005 and 2010.</p>


2011 ◽  
Vol 29 (1) ◽  
pp. 43-60 ◽  
Author(s):  
Catherine E. Foley

For over a hundred years the Irish céilí, as an ‘invented’ social dance event and mode of interaction, has played a significant and changing role. This paper examines the invention of this Irish dance event and how it has developed in Ireland throughout the twentieth century. From the Gaelic League's cultural nationalist, ideological agenda of the late nineteenth century, for a culturally unified Ireland, to the manifestation of a new cultural confidence in Ireland, from the 1970s, this paper explores how the céilí has provided an important site for the construction, experiencing and negotiation of different senses of community and identity.


Author(s):  
Paola Francesca Spadaro ◽  
Gianvito D’Aprile ◽  
Maria Beatrice Ligorio ◽  
Neil Schwartz

Two focus group discussions involving 14 entrepreneurs and 106 questionnaires administered to employees were analyzed to explore various parameters of externalities, such as: (1) how externality is conceived; (2) the interplay between a sense of community and a re-definition and negotiation of identity; (3) the role of technology; the sense of belonging, and (4) the propensity to collaborate. Data are analyzed through both thematic discourse analysis and quantitative frequencies analysis. Results show that entrepreneurs hold a multidimensional definition of externality, meditated by their professional and private experience. Ultimately, the reflection on externalities sustains a sense of innovation connected to multi-membership and to re-negotiation of the sense of identity. Within this framework, technology is conceived as a tool supporting the appropriation and sharing of externalities.


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