‘Globalized difference’: Identity politics on social media

2020 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 55-70
Author(s):  
Sanja Vico

By drawing on an ethnographic study of digital communication practices of Serbian Londoners, this article identifies a new form of subtle spontaneous identity politics on social media that seeks to reassert national identity and present it both as an exotic difference and as cosmopolitan. It argues that this form of identity politics has been brought about thanks to social surveillance on social media, the context of London ‐ as a global city ‐ and the particular socio-historical position of the Serbian national identity. Thus, this article contributes to the socio-technical approach to social media, which considers both technical properties of social media and a range of social factors, including users’ agency, in understanding the social consequences of social media. The article concludes that this identity politics is ambivalent in its character ‐ while it is a source of empowerment, it also tends to commodify difference.

2020 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 12-25
Author(s):  
Kusnul Fitria ◽  
Yessi Febrianti

The main objective of this research is to reveal the meaning and attitudes of victims of body shaming behavior on social media. Body shaming is the behavior of giving negative comments about a person's physical condition. Instagram is the social media most often used by body-shaming actors to carry out their actions. This research is a digital ethnographic study with primary data collection through digital observation, and in-depth interviews with five informants who were selected purposively. The results of this study, in general, encompass the description of three things which are: a) the awareness and experiences of the victim; b) the attitude of the victim; and c) the two ways interactions between the victim and the followers. The interpretation of the body shamming victims reflects body positivity and self-love form of content on their personal Instagram.


2017 ◽  
Vol 8 (2-3) ◽  
pp. 169-189 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alexandra Georgakopoulou

AbstractThe longstanding tradition of the examination of language and discourse in context has not only spurred the turn to issues of context in language and new media research but it has also led to numerous methodological and analytical deliberations, for instance regarding the roles and nature of digital ethnography and the need for an adaptive, ‘mobile’ sociolinguistics. Such discussions center around social media affordances and constraints of wide distribution, multi-authorship and elusiveness of audiences which are often described with the term ‘context collapse’ (Marwick and boyd 2011; Wesch 2008). In this article, I argue that, however helpful the insights of such studies may have been for linking social media affordances and constraints with users’ communication practices, the ethical questions of where context collapse leaves the language-in-context analysts have far from been addressed. I single out certain key challenges, which I view as ethical clashes, that I experienced in connection with context collapse in my data of the social media circulation of news stories from crisis-stricken Greece. I argue that these ethical clashes are linked with context collapse processes and outcomes on the one hand and sociolinguistic contextual analysis priorities on the other hand. I put forward certain proposals for resolving these clashes arguing for a discipline-based virtue ethics that requires researcher reflexivity and phronesis.


2021 ◽  
Vol 21 (3) ◽  
pp. 536-542
Author(s):  
V. L. Muzykant ◽  
M. A. Muqsith

The article considers the relationship between the 2020 regional elections in Indonesia under the covid-19 pandemic, public space, and political activism in the social media. The covid-19 pandemic has changed the social, political and cultural fabric of the contemporary world. First, the covid-19 threatened the countrys healthcare system, then it affected other aspects of social life, including the political sphere. The pandemic has been exacerbated by the spread of misinformation about the covid-19, which is also known as the infodemic. Thus, the covid-19 pandemic influenced the choice of holding elections or delaying it until the situation is under control. The development of the social media encourages political activism in the political public sphere and makes it more diverse in the sphere of egalitarianism. The political public sphere becomes increasingly dynamic and critical to various policies. Indonesia did not postpone the 2020 regional elections under the covid-19 crisis. According to the health protocol, this decision had its pros and cons in the digital space. The authors show that political activists in the social media called for prioritizing health rather than the process of democratization through elections, while the government supporters insisted on having elections even in the covid-19 pandemic situation. Finally, the 2020 regional elections were held but were followed by various incidents. The question is whether the governments argument to hold elections under the covid-19 pandemic was reasonable or, on the contrary, contributed to the wider spread of the covid-19 in Indonesia. Deliberative democracy should consider civil participation as the main pillar of the political system, which is relevant for the new social reality as based on the new social media technologies.


2005 ◽  
Vol 23 (2) ◽  
pp. 50-71
Author(s):  
Patricia Anne Simpson

In this article, I analyze the social and cultural trends from within the music scene that counter challenges the moderate and extreme right. This music centers on the issue of ethnic exclusivity and aggressively insists on accepting Germany as a diverse society, however uncomfortable a fit that may still be for many. Certain bands and musicians move from politics to identity politics, in an attempt to generate a discourse about racism and national identity. By foregrounding the contingent relationship between citizen and nation, bands like Advanced Chemistry destabilize any naturalized or motivated link between self and state. Songs like "Fremd im eigenen Land" dismantle any proprietary relationship between German ethnicity and entitlement to the rights of citizenship. An image of a new Germany emerges that insists on the political acceptance of diversity. Nevertheless, this vision is subject to the pressures of reality: Germany is not by any stretch of the imagination a hate-free zone. Structured in part by responses to alienation within Germany, as well as by imported musical forms of male affinity, some bands, rappers, and musicians are organizing themselves into new fraternities. While criticizing or rejecting certain Americanized clichés of masculinity, the bands I discuss look beyond the caricatures of yuppies and cowboys to different models.


2018 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 89-104
Author(s):  
James Steinhoff

Abstract The thriving contemporary form of artificial intelligence (AI) called machine learning is often represented sensationally in popular media as a semi-mystical technology. Machine learning systems are frequently ascribed anthropomorphic capacities for learning, emoting and reasoning which, it is suggested, might lead to the alleviation of humanity’s woes. One critical reaction to such sensational proclamations has been to focus on the mundane reality of contemporary machine learning as mere inductive prediction based on statistical generalizations, albeit with surprisingly powerful abilities (Pasquinelli 2017). While the deflationist reaction is a necessary reply to sensationalist agitation, adequate comprehension of modern AI cannot be achieved while neglecting its material and social context. One does not have to subscribe wholeheartedly to the social construction of technology thesis1 to allow that the development and evolution of technologies are influenced by social factors. For AI, the most important aspect of the current social context is arguably capital, which increasingly dominates AI research and production. One former computer science professor describes a “giant sucking sound of [AI] academics going into industry” (Metz 2017). This paper introduces capital’s theory of AI as utility and initiates a discussion on its social consequences. First, I discuss utilities and their infrastructures and introduce a few critical thoughts on the topic. Second, I situate modern AI by way of a brief history. Third, I detail capital’s view of AI as a utility and the technical details underpinning it. Fourth, I sketch how AI as a utility frames a social problematic beyond the important issues of algorithmic bias and the automation of work. I do so by extrapolating from one consequence of AI as a utility which multiple capitalist firms predict: the curation of human subjectivities.


Author(s):  
Pedro Álvaro Pereira Correia ◽  
Irene García Medina ◽  
Zahaira Fabiola González Romo

The emergence of social networks has revolutionized the way people communicate and share information. Consequently, it becomes important to analyze the role of these models of collaboration and innovation through social networks in the strategic vision of the responsibility of marketing and communication in tourism industries, mainly the role of Facebook in e-business actions. This chapter presents a qualitative and exploratory analysis of the individuals in the virtual context of the social media, their behaviors, reactions, and attitudes, to perceive which social factors can enhance the appearance of competitive advantages for the organizations. There was a predilection for companies with a greater international connection at the level of clients and also at the level of the operation because there was a predominance of companies related to the tourism sector of Madeira.


2014 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Amy E Forrest

This article considers the social consequences of transgressing expected norms of gendered behaviour in the public sphere of a mainstream French television programme. La Barbe, who appeared on Le Petit Journal in December 2011, elicited an onslaught of indignant and sardonic public responses via social media. Drawing on Meehan (1995), Fraser (1990, 1995), and Landes (1995), this article analyses the televised appearance and the online reactions. Due to La Barbe’s unsuccessful communication and interested discourse, the public denounced, and so attempted to regulate, feminist disobedience.


Author(s):  
Kostas Maronitis

Within the context of the financial crisis and austerity protests in Greece, this article elucidates the potential of Facebook communities to realise democracy as a notion that transcends instrumental processes of electing political elites while at the same time reinstating a cultural order and legitimising exclusionary political and communication practices. The article contrasts Facebook communities with John Dewey's vision of democracy as a form of social cooperation, which orients citizens toward pluralistic associations and overlapping political discourses. In order to overcome discredited economistic approaches, the article highlights the social dimension of the crisis by developing a media sociology for the analysis of the technological turn to community. The media sociology developed here refrains from sociology of media approaches, which explain the formation of social media communities as a result of hard variables such as the economy and political corruption. Media sociology will deploy social media communities for the analysis of the collective meanings of these variables. The article deals with the Facebook community ‘Indignants in Syntagma’. The focus is on the activism of the movement from 25 May 2011 to 23 June 2012. Instead of Dewy's concept of democracy the Indignants' communities tend to forge a Web enhanced regime – defined here as Communitarianism 2.0. The direct democracy envisioned by this regime is closer to Schmitt's constitutional theory in which national and cultural homogeneity is a necessary precondition for the democratic exercise of any given political formation and authority.


2020 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 87-95
Author(s):  
Sigit Haryanto ◽  
Rini Fatmawati

Language, culture, and society are three things that cannot be separated. The intertwining among them are reflected in halal bi halal tradition. This annually tradition mainly uses Javanese language as a main central of social communication. Two common codes that used by the participants in conducting the event are krama and ngoko.  The participants when choosing the codes, of course, are influenced by the social factors. Dealing with this, the aim of this study is finding the language choices use and the factors that affect the participants selecting the codes. This ethnographic study used participant observation in collecting the data. Then, the collected data were analyzed by theory of social dimension proposed by Holmes. The results of the study showed that (1) the language choices use are (a) Javanese krama, (b) Javanese ngoko, (c) mixture of Javanese and Arabic, (d) mixture of Javanese, and Arabic, and Indonesian, and (e) Indonesian and Indonesian and (2) the factors that affect the language choices are   (a) the social relationship of the participants, (b) the setting of the event, (c) the formality of the vent, and (d0 the function for the event. As a conclusion, code choices that happen in halal bi halal tradition are commonly affected by social factor or nonlinguistic factor.  


Author(s):  
Lisel Hintz

Teasing out the complex link between identity politics and foreign policy, this book turns the concept of identity politics as traditionally used in IR scholarship inside out. Rather than treating national identity as a cause or consequence of a state’s foreign policy, it rethinks foreign policy as an arena, alternative to domestic politics, in which contestation among competing proposals for national identity takes place. It argues that elites choose to take their contestation “outside” when their identity gambits are blocked at the domestic level by supporters of competing proposals, theorizing when and how internal identity politics becomes externalized. Turkey offers an ideal empirical window onto these dynamics because of dramatic challenges to understandings of Turkishness and because its identity is implicated in multiple international roles, such as NATO ally, EU candidate, and OIC member. Using intertextual analysis, the book extracts competing proposals for Turkey’s identity from a wide array of pop culture and social media sources, interviews, surveys, and archives. It then employs process tracing to demonstrate how elites sharing an Ottoman Islamist understanding of identity counterintuitively used an EU-oriented foreign policy to challenge the institutional grip of pro-Western, secular Republican Nationalism back home, thus clearing the way for an increased presence of Islam domestically and a renewed role in the Middle East. The framework developed closes the identity-foreign policy circle, analytically linking the “inside-out” spillover of national identity debates in foreign policy with changes in the contours of these debates produced by their contestation abroad.


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