scholarly journals Muslim Young People Online: “Acts of Citizenship” in Socially Networked Spaces

2014 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 71-82 ◽  
Author(s):  
Amelia Johns
Keyword(s):  
Young People ◽  
Public Sphere ◽  
Social Networking ◽  
Citizenship Rights ◽  
Discursive Space ◽  
Political Issues ◽  
The Public ◽  
Digital Era ◽  
Online Spaces ◽  
The Public Sphere

This paper reviews the current literature regarding Muslim young people’s online social networking and participatory practices with the aim of examining whether these practices open up new spaces of civic engagement and political participation. The paper focuses on the experiences of young Muslims living in western societies, where, since September 11, the ability to assert claims as citizens in the public arena has diminished. The paper draws upon Isin & Nielsen’s (2008) “acts of citizenship” to define the online practices of many Muslim youth, for whom the internet provides a space where new performances of citizenship are enacted outside of formal citizenship rights and spaces of participation. These “acts" are evaluated in light of theories which articulate the changing nature of publics and the public sphere in a digital era. The paper will use this conceptual framework in conjunction with the literature review to explore whether virtual, online spaces offer young Muslims an opportunity to create a more inclusive discursive space to interact with co-citizens, engage with social and political issues and assert their citizen rights than is otherwise afforded by formal political structures; a need highlighted by policies which target minority Muslim young people for greater civic participation but which do not reflect the interests and values of Muslim young people.

Neotoponymy, Appropriation of Space and Youth Political Expression in Tokombéré, Northern Cameroon (1970–2011)

2021 ◽  
pp. 002190962110638
Author(s):  
Baskouda S.K. Shelley
Keyword(s):  
Young People ◽  
Public Sphere ◽  
Crucial Role ◽  
Political Power ◽  
Social Field ◽  
Political Expression ◽  
The Public ◽  
Northern Cameroon ◽  
The Public Sphere ◽  
A Site

Using the example of neotoponyms proliferation in Tokombéré (Northern Cameroon) between 1970 and 2011, this paper questions the banal tactics of naming places as a site of public patriarchy contestation. In fact, young people play a crucial role in reinventing local political power forms of interpellation, which enables them to symbolically reappropriate the space. This helps to establish their presence in the public sphere from which they have been side-lined by social elders. Even though it reflects a political expression, the fact remains that the attribution of toponyms does not really help to reverse their domination into social field.

Liminal Participation: Young People’s Practices in the Public Sphere Between Exclusion, Claims of Belonging, and Democratic Innovation

2021 ◽  
pp. 0044118X2110408
Author(s):  
Ilaria Pitti ◽  
Yagmur Mengilli ◽  
Andreas Walther
Keyword(s):  
Young People ◽  
Public Sphere ◽  
Case Studies ◽  
Youth Participation ◽  
European Research ◽  
Research Project ◽  
The Public ◽  
Qualitative Case Studies ◽  
The Public Sphere ◽  
Innovation And Change

Existing understandings of youth participation often imply clear distinctions from non-participation and thus boundaries between “recognized” and “non-recognized” practices of engagement. This article aims at questioning these boundaries. It analyzes young people’s practices in the public sphere that are characterized by both recognition as participation and misrecognition or stigmatization as deviant and it is suggested to conceptualize such practices as “liminal participation.” The concept of liminality has been developed to describe transitory situations “in-between”—between defined and recognized status positions—and seems helpful for better understanding the blurring boundaries of youth participation. Drawing on qualitative case studies conducted within a European research project, the analysis focuses on how young people whose practices evolve at the margins of the respective societies position themselves with regard to the challenges of liminality and on the potential of this for democratic innovation and change.

Rights, obligations and the public sphere: Arguments and options for securing just policies for young people

2002 ◽  
Vol 27 (3) ◽  
pp. 33-40
Author(s):  
Judith Bessant
Keyword(s):  
Young People ◽  
Public Sphere ◽  
Common Sense ◽  
Good Reason ◽  
Primary Reason ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Children And Young People ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Public Sphere ◽  
Dominant Narratives

Children and young people have too easily been subjected to state-sponsored mistreatment and neglect. One primary reason for the discriminatory and often hostile conduct directed at them by agencies ostensibly established to promote their welfare is that they have been ‘constructed’ as dangerous and ‘antisocial’, or as dependent, incompetent and naïve. A key aim of this article is to promote discussion about the significance of children's and young people's status as a key determinant of policies which routinely override their basic rights. The article argues that attention needs to be given to how child and youth policies can be developed more securely within a justice framework.I argue that, if we are serious about developing both just policies and ethical relationships with young people, we need to recognise the role played by dominant narratives about young people in shaping policies. Once this is achieved, attention can then be directed towards how those identities might be contested and reconstructed. I offer a number of suggestions for securing ethical treatment of young people which includes respecting them as fully-fledged human beings and citizens. I argue that challenging common-sense understandings of young people as dependent, not fully intellectually or morally competent, etc, can inform policies in ways that secure young people's entitlements as full citizens. In particular one way of challenging popular views about young people is to increase their involvement in the public sphere. The fact that most young people cannot currently claim rights for themselves directly is no reason for denying them. Indeed it is a good reason for securing mechanisms for monitoring those who have children in their care and to intervene to put those rights into effect. I also make a case for embedding young people's rights into an account of obligations that can be used to secure respectful and just conduct on the part of older people who have young people in their care.

scholarly journals Toward a Stronger Theoretical Grounding of Computational Communication Science

2021 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
pp. 1-28
Author(s):  
Annie Waldherr ◽  
Stephanie Geise ◽  
Merja Mahrt ◽  
Christian Katzenbach ◽  
Christian Nuernbergk
Keyword(s):  
Public Sphere ◽  
Complexity Theory ◽  
Methodological Approach ◽  
Theoretical Frameworks ◽  
Content Type ◽  
The Public ◽  
Digital Era ◽  
Research Designs ◽  
The Public Sphere ◽  
Blind Spots

Abstract Computational communication science (CCS) is embraced by many as a fruitful methodological approach to studying communication in the digital era. However, theoretical advances have not been considered equally important in CCS. Specifically, we observe an emphasis on mid-range and micro theories that misses a larger discussion on how macro-theoretical frameworks can serve CCS scholarship. With this article, we aim to stimulate such a discussion. Although macro frameworks might not point directly to specific questions and hypotheses, they shape our research through influencing which kinds of questions we ask, which kinds of hypotheses we formulate, and which methods we find adequate and useful. We showcase how three selected theoretical frameworks might advance CCS scholarship in this way: (1) complexity theory, (2) theories of the public sphere, and (3) mediatization theory. Using online protest as an example, we discuss how the focus (and the blind spots) of our research designs shifts with each framework.

scholarly journals Practicing Belonging?

2019 ◽  
Vol 8 (1-3) ◽  
pp. 123-150
Author(s):  
Satoko Fujiwara
Keyword(s):  
Young People ◽  
Public Sphere ◽  
Functional Differentiation ◽  
Personal Choice ◽  
World Religions ◽  
Human Relationships ◽  
The Public ◽  
Village Community ◽  
Multiple Secularities ◽  
The Public Sphere

Abstract This article suggests a way for scholars of Japanese religion to contribute to the international discussion on “nones” or the “non-religious,” who have been characterized as “believing without belonging,” “belonging without believing,” “believing in belonging,” etc. by integrating three different discursive arenas: one on multiple secularities as a context-conscious reexamination of functional differentiation; one on Japanese modernization centered on the idea of ie (household)-mura (village community); and one on a recent Japanese obsession with tsunagari (relationships, connection) and shōnin (recognition). The article argues that Japanese non-religiousness in the 2010s is an updated, self-conscious version of “religion as human relationships,” which can be paraphrased as “practicing belonging.” Moreover, while the current “religion as human relationships” practiced among young people tends to be confined to the intimate sphere, its traditional version regulated the public sphere as well. It was this public sphere of “religion as human relationships” that came to appear secular, as opposed to World Religions as matters of personal choice, in the process of modernization, which included the adoption of the Western concepts of “religion” and “secular.” The article also suggests that a “relationships turn” has been taking place not only in nonreligious rituals and festivals but also in spiritual culture and institutionalized religion.

Embodied Reasons in the Public Sphere: The Example of the Hijab

2019 ◽  
Vol 32 (4) ◽  
pp. 499-512
Author(s):  
Thomas Wabel
Keyword(s):  
Public Sphere ◽  
John Rawls ◽  
Social Practices ◽  
European Countries ◽  
Free Standing ◽  
Political Issues ◽  
The Public ◽  
Public Debates ◽  
German Philosopher ◽  
The Public Sphere

In public debates on moral or political issues between participants from different religious backgrounds, liberal and secular thinkers like John Rawls and Jürgen Habermas recommend to restrict oneself to free-standing reasons that are independent of their religious, social or cultural origin. Following German philosopher Matthias Jung, however, I argue that such reasons fall short of describing the relevance of the issue in question for the adherents of a specific religion or worldview. Referring to the debates in several European countries about the hijab, I am showing how a deeper understanding of reasons as embodied in social practices and as embodied in individual biographies can help to disentangle such debates and to facilitate a dialogue on these issues.

The U.S. Congressional Record as a technology of representation

2014 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 57-82 ◽  
Author(s):  
Zornitsa Keremidchieva
Keyword(s):  
Public Sphere ◽  
Political Issues ◽  
The Public ◽  
Congressional Debates ◽  
Congressional Record ◽  
Written Form ◽  
The Public Sphere ◽  
Historical Controversies ◽  
The U.S ◽  
Argumentative Practice

Focusing on the historical controversies surrounding the development of the print records of the U.S. congressional debates, this essay explores how human, technological, and discursive agencies come together to constitute institutional argumentative practice. Examining the U.S. Congressional Record through the lens of Bruno Latour’s concept of dingpolitik reveals that as a technology of representation print records work less as mediators and more as agents of institutional contextualization. Print records do more than translate arguments from oral to written form or transfer arguments from the public sphere to the state. Rather, they assemble the disparate elements that constitute the terrains of governance, the character of political issues, and the norms of congressional deliberation. Hence, the material dynamics of congressional deliberation prompt not only a reconsideration of what and who is being represented by Congress, but also a methodological reorientation from normative to constitutive perspectives on institutional argumentation.

Structural Analysis to Measure the Influence of Think Tanks’ Networks in the Digital Era

2015 ◽  
Vol 10 (4) ◽  
pp. 363-395
Author(s):  
Juan Luis Manfredi-Sánchez ◽  
Juan Antonio Sánchez-Giménez ◽  
Juan Pizarro-Miranda
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Structural Analysis ◽  
International Relations ◽  
Public Sphere ◽  
Research Method ◽  
Think Tanks ◽  
The Public ◽  
Digital Era ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Public Sphere

Ideas fuel power, giving means, understanding and arguments to the public sphere. Think tanks are the most influential actors in creating and disseminating such ideas in the field of international relations. This article analyses the networks of relations among think tanks in order better to understand their nature and the ways in which they operate in a global reality, organized by geographical areas. The research method is by structural analysis, using raw data collected on Twitter. Most of the think tanks selected are those categorized by the gotothinktank.com study. The main conclusions are that English is the predominant language, that geography still matters in influencing ideas and that us-based think tanks lead the social media conversation.

Forensic Iconicity: The Experimental Law’s Whatness in Digital Culture

Pólemos ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 14 (1) ◽  
pp. 131-145
Author(s):  
Cristina Costantini
Keyword(s):  
Public Sphere ◽  
Political Theology ◽  
Symbolic Representation ◽  
Digital Culture ◽  
The Public ◽  
Material Medium ◽  
Digital Era ◽  
Structural Ambiguity ◽  
The Law ◽  
The Public Sphere

AbstractThinking about the whatness of the Law in the digital era means to return to question its ontological abyss and its metaphysical violence. The essay rests on the idea that Law, to declare or to command, to condemn or to absolve, needs a material medium of communication that allows its sensible perceptibility. At the same time, the concrete appearances of the Law in the public sphere are partial and paradoxical: they are haunted by an ontological excess that resists against a conclusive form of mundane apprehension. Forensic Iconicity is the expression coined to figuratively depict the structural ambiguity between ostensibility and concealment that marks the Law’s presentialness. The aim of the work is to explore the transmutations and the displacements of the ancient bodies of symbolic representation of the Law up to the current dispersion in algorithmic sequences and digital traces. Moreover, according to the view proposed, the unresolved relationship between the abstract prophecy of Law and its physical precipitate has been captured and explained by the means of different paradigms, moving from political theology to algorithmic angelism.

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