The Torture Debate in the Public Sphere: The Discussion of the Abu Ghraib Revelations in Newspaper Opinion Pieces, Online Discussion Groups and Weblogs

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Julia Hagemann May
Keyword(s):  
Public Sphere ◽  
Online Discussion ◽  
Discussion Groups ◽  
Abu Ghraib ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Public Sphere

scholarly journals Novel Conversations: Connecting With Disability in Three Examples of Popular Fiction

2018 ◽  
Vol 7 (3) ◽  
pp. 52-88 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joanna Rankin
Keyword(s):  
Popular Culture ◽  
Public Sphere ◽  
Online Discussion ◽  
Popular Fiction ◽  
Status Quo ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Status ◽  
The Public Sphere

Examining how readers of popular fiction respond to characters with disabilities and characters immersed in the lives of characters with disabilities, this paper serves to contribute to understandings of the meanings that readers ascribe to disability in popular culture using the public sphere of online discussion. Specifically, I study online reader discussion of three characters, namely:  Trudi in Ursula Hegi’s (1996) Stones from the River, Icy in Gwyn Hyman Rubio’s (1998) Icy Sparks and Jewel in Brett Lott’s (1991) Jewel.  I present findings from my analysis of reader discussion using readers’ descriptions of their identified connections with characters with disabilities. While these connections challenge the othering frequently cited in presentations of disability through readers’ recognition and appreciation of the well-rounded characters beyond traditional disability tropes, the unmet potential of reader discussion to challenge the status quo is also demonstrated through readers’ failure to expand these connections beyond the pages of the novels.

scholarly journals Muslimah Beauty: Negotiating Veiling, Piety and Commodity in the New Indonesian Public Sphere

2019 ◽  
Vol 4 (3) ◽  
pp. 331
Author(s):  
Yuyun Sunesti
Keyword(s):  
Public Sphere ◽  
Online Community ◽  
Online Discussion ◽  
Commodity Fetishism ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Public Sphere

This paper explores the veiling issues and the negotiation of piety among women in Komunitas Muslimah Beauty of Detik Forum. This paper examines to what extent this online community discusses hijab as fashion and piety? what the basis of the arguments for negotiating them? and how is piety constructed through commodity by women in that forum? The answers to this question are important to understand because they examine the assumption considering the lack of connection between piety and veiling when both are more materialized in such of commodity fetishism. To do this, I analyze the online discussion within the Komunitas Muslimah Beautiful in detik.com website. The findings of the paper inform both sociological understanding of the rise democracy in terms of the public sphere as well as the negotiation of women in their effort to connect veiling and piety within their online discussion. Keywords: agency, piety, commodity, public sphere, beauty

The Suffering of the Perpetrators: The Ethics of Traumatic German Historicity in Karen Bass's Young Adult World War II Novels

2014 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 64-77
Author(s):  
Doris Wolf
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Young Adult ◽  
Public Sphere ◽  
Childhood Studies ◽  
Historical Narratives ◽  
World War ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Past ◽  
Adult World ◽  
The Public Sphere

This paper examines two young adult novels, Run Like Jäger (2008) and Summer of Fire (2009), by Canadian writer Karen Bass, which centre on the experiences of so-called ordinary German teenagers in World War II. Although guilt and perpetration are themes addressed in these books, their focus is primarily on the ways in which Germans suffered at the hands of the Allied forces. These books thus participate in the increasingly widespread but still controversial subject of the suffering of the perpetrators. Bringing work in childhood studies to bear on contemporary representations of German wartime suffering in the public sphere, I explore how Bass's novels, through the liminal figure of the adolescent, participate in a culture of self-victimisation that downplays guilt rather than more ethically contextualises suffering within guilt. These historical narratives are framed by contemporary narratives which centre on troubled teen protagonists who need the stories of the past for their own individualisation in the present. In their evacuation of crucial historical contexts, both Run Like Jäger and Summer of Fire support optimistic and gendered narratives of individualism that ultimately refuse complicated understandings of adolescent agency in the past or present.

Habermas, Cultural Hegemony, and the Educational Public Sphere

2018 ◽  
Vol 11 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 43-62
Author(s):  
Wisam Kh. Abdul-Jabbar
Keyword(s):  
Public Sphere ◽  
Social Inequality ◽  
Public Space ◽  
Oral Tradition ◽  
Pedagogical Practices ◽  
Cultural Hegemony ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Public Sphere ◽  
Arabic Speaking

This study explores Habermas’s work in terms of the relevance of his theory of the public sphere to the politics and poetics of the Arab oral tradition and its pedagogical practices. In what ways and forms does Arab heritage inform a public sphere of resistance or dissent? How does Habermas’s notion of the public space help or hinder a better understanding of the Arab oral tradition within the sociopolitical and educational landscape of the Arabic-speaking world? This study also explores the pedagogical implications of teaching Arab orality within the context of the public sphere as a contested site that informs a mode of resistance against social inequality and sociopolitical exclusions.

The Dynamics of Egypt’s “Semi-opposition,” 2004–11

2019 ◽  
Vol 12 (4) ◽  
pp. 83-103
Author(s):  
Mai Mogib Mosad
Keyword(s):  
Public Sphere ◽  
Political System ◽  
Muslim Brotherhood ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Muslim Brotherhood ◽  
The Public Sphere ◽  
The Relationship

This paper maps the basic opposition groups that influenced the Egyptian political system in the last years of Hosni Mubarak’s rule. It approaches the nature of the relationship between the system and the opposition through use of the concept of “semi-opposition.” An examination and evaluation of the opposition groups shows the extent to which the regime—in order to appear that it was opening the public sphere to the opposition—had channels of communication with the Muslim Brotherhood. The paper also shows the system’s relations with other groups, such as “Kifaya” and “April 6”; it then explains the reasons behind the success of the Muslim Brotherhood at seizing power after the ousting of President Mubarak.

I Think We’re Alone Now

2020 ◽  
Vol 6 (4) ◽  
pp. 183-210
Author(s):  
Erin Nunoda
Keyword(s):  
Public Sphere ◽  
Digital Images ◽  
Empty Space ◽  
The Public ◽  
Youtube Videos ◽  
The Public Sphere

This article examines YouTube videos (primarily distributed by a user named Cecil Robert) that document so-called dead malls: unpopulated, unproductive, but not necessarily demolished consumerist sites that have proliferated in the wake of the 2008 recession. These works link digital images of mall interiors with pop-song remixes so as to re-create the experience of hearing a track while standing within the empty space; manipulating the songs’ audio frequencies heightens echo effects and fosters an impression of ghostly dislocation. This article argues that these videos locate a potentiality in abandoned mall spaces for the exploration of queer (non)relations. It suggests that the videos’ emphasis on lonely, unconsummated intimacies questions circuitous visions of the public sphere, participatory dynamics online, and the presumably conservative biopolitics (both at its height and in its memorialization) of mall architecture.

The public and the private: reconfiguring the interrelationship during a civil act

2019 ◽  
pp. 53-69
Author(s):  
Natalia Kostenko
Keyword(s):  
Public Sphere ◽  
Public Space ◽  
Rapid Development ◽  
Online Communication ◽  
Decisive Role ◽  
Physical Interaction ◽  
Bare Life ◽  
Public And Private ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Public Sphere

The subject matter of research interest here is the movement of sociological reflection concerning the interplay of public and private realms in social, political and individual life. The focus is on the boundary constructs embodying publicity, which are, first of all, classical models of the space of appearance for free citizens of the polis (H. Arendt) and the public sphere organised by communicative rationality (Ju. Habermas). Alternative patterns are present in modern ideas pertaining to the significance of biological component in public space in the context of biopolitics (M. Foucault), “inclusive exclusion of bare life” (G. Agamben), as well as performativity of corporeal and linguistic experience related to the right to participate in civil acts such as popular assembly (J. Butler), where the established distinctions between the public and the private are levelled, and the interrelationship of these two realms becomes reconfigured. Once the new media have come into play, both the structure and nature of the public sphere becomes modified. What assumes a decisive role is people’s physical interaction with online communication gadgets, which instantly connect information networks along various trajectories. However, the rapid development of information technology produces particular risks related to the control of communications industry, leaving both public and private realms unprotected and deforming them. This also urges us to rethink the issue of congruence of the two ideas such as transparency of societies and security.

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