scholarly journals Performing the Networks of Domestic and Public Persona

2016 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-11 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christopher Moore ◽  
Kim Barbour

In this preamble to the newest collection of contributions to Persona Studies, we draw on the growing terminology from its initial offerings to consider the co-infiltration of the public and the domestic in the presentation of the online self. We provide two case studies that explore the overlapping of regions of public life that interface with social media and provide individuals with the means to curate persona micro-publics. These very different examples of persona performance are both organised around accounting for the ‘intercommunication’ of self-identification and presentational media (Marshall ‘Persona Studies’). Further, we suggest that the public spaces of social media and the web have been domesticated; that is, they have been made to ‘fit’ into the interpersonal demands of an individual’s many micro-publics of attention. This domestication has occurred via the individualised presentational media strategies of persona formation, such as memes and selfies, involved in the intercommunication of the self across multiple platforms and services to perform different roles.

2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Jennifer Spitulnik

The occupational folk group of Broadway musical theater performers uses folklore in public spaces as a kind of representational strategy for the group as a whole. This strategy is significant in representing the group’s identity to itself as well as to outsiders who are invested in knowing more about them, such as Broadway enthusiasts. That is, the group can and does tell the story of itself, representing itself ethnographically, by way of its individual members. Social media technologies provide a platform for Broadway performers to present these native ethnographies both to the public and to other members of the folk group. I argue that these native, self-conscious ethnographic works by musical theater performers are both concerned with representing themselves as individuals, and with representing the cultural group of musical theater performers as a whole. Exploring the folklore and folk identities performed by members of this group in online social media suggests new ways of understanding the politics and practices of ethnography, particularly on social network sites in our postmodern global economy of attention. In this project, the first in any field to consider musical theater performers as a cultural or folk group, I investigate actors’ recognition of and group use of vernacular creative expressionsâ€"folkloreâ€"as a representational strategy. Through this work, I explore the ways in which self-representation on the part of the ethnographic participants claims voice and authority for the group, while simultaneously performing group membership and identity for multiple audiences.


Author(s):  
J. Ignacio Criado ◽  
Francisco Rojas-Martín

The chapter investigates the employment of digital social media by Spanish regional administrations: its presence, the factors that determine that presence, as well as the self-perception of those responsible for its management. This study raises the following questions: What are the key factors that explain the use of social media in public administrations? What is the self-perception of those responsible for the management of digital social media about its current level of development within their organisations? What are the main inhibitors-facilitators for the development of digital social media in public administrations? What are the next steps to promote digital social media in the sphere of public organisations? This chapter is based on a questionnaire that was responded to by those responsible for the management of digital social media in the Spanish regional administrations. This research shows that Web 2.0 tools are more oriented to explore potential changes in the relations between the public administrations and citizens, than to innovate the functioning of public sector organisations. In sum, this chapter offers a relevant analysis, although it is of an exploratory character because of the almost total absence of systematic studies about the diffusion of digital social media within Spanish public administrations.


Author(s):  
Elitza Katzarova

What role is there for publicity in the global anti-corruption debate? This chapter introduces the concepts of “transparency” and “publicity” as analytical tools that account for differentiated channels through which the availability of information can induce social change. Two case studies provide insights into the role of traditional media in comparison to new social media. The first case analyzes the role of Western news coverage during the negotiations of the OECD Anti-Bribery Convention in the mid-1990s and the threat of publicity as a negotiation strategy. The second case investigates the role of social media platforms such as Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube in the success of the anti-corruption strike carried out by Indian social activist Anna Hazare in 2011. By introducing and further applying the conceptual toolkit of “transparency” and “publicity” to both cases, this chapter argues that transparency requires publicity or in the case of the OECD negotiations—the threat of publicity—in order for the anti-corruption campaign to be successful. The chapter concludes with a discussion of the ramifications for transparency and publicity as tools for social change.


Author(s):  
Hayley Watson ◽  
Rachel L. Finn

In a relatively new area of research for crisis management, this article presents a discussion of some of the privacy and ethical implications surrounding the use of social media in the event of a crisis. The article uses the travel chaos caused by the eruptions of the Eyjafjallajokull volcano in 2010 to contextualise the analysis. It begins by providing an overview of the use of social media in crisis management, before continuing to present two case studies of the use of social media by members of the public and the aviation industry during the crisis caused by the ash plume. The article then proceeds to examine some select ethical and privacy implications stemming from the use of social media such as privacy infringements and inequality. The article concludes by briefly summarising the findings and considering next steps for future research in this area.


2019 ◽  
Vol 56 (3) ◽  
pp. 388-404 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephanie Alice Baker ◽  
Chris Rojek

The Belle Gibson scandal that broke in 2015 is a testament to the growing phenomenon of lifestyle gurus in the 21st century. In this article, our aim is not to explain the psychology behind Gibson’s lies. Rather, we focus on the social, cultural and technological conditions that enabled Gibson’s persona to flourish and their impact on contemporary understandings of the self. Lifestyle gurus embody the para-social, trading off the appeal of intimacy, authenticity and integrity. We demonstrate how social media have increased the levels of emotional investment, trust and attention capital in para-social relationships by providing ubiquitous access to native experts and creating the platform to achieve influence and micro-celebrity status. Finally, we contend that the growing number of lifestyle gurus providing the public with health advice and scientific knowledge points to the need to examine critically the social and cultural landscape that enables micro-celebrities to emerge.


Screen Bodies ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-18
Author(s):  
Mari E. Ramler

Breastfeeding mothers and their babies are simultaneously in the public sphere and hidden from public view. Although social media has the potential to normalize attitudes toward breastfeeding by increasing visibility, Facebook and Instagram maintain an unpredictable censorship policy toward “brelfies”—female breast selfies—which has undermined progress. Combining Iris Marion Young’s “undecidability” of the breasted experience with Brett Lunceford’s rhetoric of nakedness, this article investigates what breastfeeding mothers communicate online via digital images when they expose their breasts. By deconstructing controversial case studies, this article concludes that brelfies have increased breastfeeding’s accessibility and acceptability in the material world.


Penamas ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 32 (1) ◽  
pp. 519
Author(s):  
Eko Saputra

Abstract The Islamic da'wah movement is an interesting discussion study to always be discussed. Post-Suharto 1998, the da'wah movement in Indonesia experienced very significant developments in various public spaces. Like campus, school, place of worship and social media. This is because the tap of democracy is increasingly wide open, so that da'wah actors are increasingly free to express the Islamic movement to the public space in its own way. Interestingly, the da'wah movement in Indonesia always presents a new way of how da'wah activities are applied in the daily lives of Muslims. This article wants to explore how the Islamic market-based da'wah movement is carried out by Rafa Muslim Fashion, part of the Rafa Group as the largest Islamic publication center (Jaringan Islam) in Solo. The author arguments that the Islamic market-based da'wah movement carried out by Rafa Muslim Fashion shapes the practice of piety, the Islamic market and Islamic ideology. This important article is discussed to see how Islamic market-based da'wah movements are carried out. Previously, scholars still did not discuss much about how the da'wah movement was oriented to the Islamic market. The results of this study show that the emergence of the Islamic market-based da'wah movement as an alternative to the new da'wah movement formed piety, market competition, and Islamic ideology. Keywords: Kaos Dakwah, piety, Market Islam, Islamic ideology.


2021 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
W. (Bill) Wei ◽  
Hanneke Heerema ◽  
Rebecca Rushfeld ◽  
Ida van der Lee

Cultural heritage professionals are becoming increasingly concerned about the lack of care being taken by municipalities for their cultural heritage objects which include works of art in public places. They have therefore begun to ask the public to help take care of “their” cultural heritage through so-called public participation projects. Cultural heritage professionals tacitly assume that if they “teach” the public to treasure such objects of “their” heritage, the public will become more proactive in helping to conserve them. However, research being conducted by the authors is showing that a majority of the general public often has a completely different awareness and/or feeling about cultural heritage objects in their neighborhoods than the cultural heritage professionals think they have, or think they should have. Three recent case studies carried out by the authors show that these differences are most noticeable during so-called “value moments” at the beginning and at the perceived end of an object’s life. These are the two moments when decisions are made, usually by cultural heritage professionals, to place an object in a neighborhood or have it significantly changed or removed, often to the surprise and disagreement of the residents. Between these two moments lay many moments when an object is taken for granted, grudgingly accepted, or not even noticed. Given the fact that cultural heritage professionals often make the ultimate decisions and do not always consider or outright ignore public opinion, it should not be surprising that there is an increasingly negative public perception of what they do. The results of the case studies illustrate the need for professionals to consider and accept as valid, public feelings about cultural heritage objects in their neighborhoods.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Bo Wang

<p>This thesis is centred on participatory fan culture in Chinese social media. It investigates how fans gather through social networks, how they produce creative work, and how they use different platforms to circulate their favourite media and fannish texts. By constructing, reshaping and spreading meanings through participatory practices, fans create their own cultures and gradually develop their own discourses. My theoretical approach can be classified as cultural discourse analysis (Carbaugh,2007; Scollo,2011), and I adopted the snowball sampling method to find interviewees and fan communities in which I have conducted observation to collect data for my analysis. On the basis of John Fiske’s concept of “textual productivity” (1992) and Henry Jenkins’s notions of “media convergence” (2006a) and “spreadability” (2013), the thesis is based on a platform analysis as well as two case studies about the Chinese reality TV show Where Are We Going, Dad?and BBC’s crime drama Sherlock.  The platform analysis examines four platforms that Chinese social media fans use most frequently: Weibo, WeChat, Tieba and Bilibili. Through the analysis of the sociocultural contexts, user interfaces and primary features of these four platforms, it became clear that the platforms emphasise differentiated content (e.g. microblogging-style posts, instant text/voice messages, continuous updating posts, video clips and flying comments), and that each platform has its own search and recommendation services to guide users to their target content. By comparing five elements of social media including public posts, direct messaging, group chatting, search tools and information recommendation (Yoder and Stutzman, 2011), the analysis offers insight into the different affordances provided by these four platforms and how Chinese fans employ the platforms to develop fan culture.  The two case studies investigate the formation, manifestation and influence of fan cultures on three levels: fan-platform interaction, fannish texts and fan identity. Analysing data collected from interviews and online observation in the Weibo-based fan chat group 刘诺一全球后援会1群(Liu Nuoyi Quanqiu Houyuanhui 1 Qun; “Liu Nuoyi’s Global Fan Community, Group 1”) and the Tieba-based forum爸爸去哪儿康诺吧(Babaqunaer Kang Nuo Ba; “Kangkang and Nuoyi of Where Are We Going, Dad?Forum”), the case study of Where Are We Going, Dad?demonstrates that the Web 2.0 services that fans use maintain an open structure, which attracts fans to contribute new layers of meaning and value. Discussing the fan-platform interaction, fannish texts and fan identities, the case study of Chinese Sherlockfandom demonstrates that Chinese online fans rely on textual productivity to establish their fan identities, and Chinese social media to facilitate the production and spread of fan translation, which not only bridges the language and cultural gap between the Sherlocktexts (the BBC episodes and the original novel) and Chinese fandom, but also connects different types of Sherlockfans online. I also compare the two cases from the perspective of narrative structure by drawing upon Jason Mittell’s “centrifugal and centripetal complex” model (2015) and argue that the different narrative structures lead a different sense of self-recognition for fans, gender dynamics, power differences in fan communities, and that they shape fans’ cultural citizenship.</p>


2018 ◽  
Vol 14 (4) ◽  
pp. 602-618
Author(s):  
Queer J. Thomas

AbstractThis article cautions against the strong impulse in the #MeToo movement to desexualize politics. Informed by queer theory, the article argues that the public desexualization imperative, represented by indignation toward President Donald Trump's pussy-grabbing antics and the concomitant, albeit justified, movement to expose decades of his sexual harassment of women, casts a shadow across queer citizens that chills sexual expression in democratic discourse and public life. The public desexualization imperative presents a double bind that creates, on one hand, public spaces that are less threatening and discriminatory to women and, on the other, public spaces that—from a queer white cisgender man's perspective, one whose only “marking” is his sexuality—erase queers’ valued differences. The author uses personal narrative to describe and apply tools (conceptualized as fagchild tools) that help navigate tensions between women's equality movements and queer efforts to gain fuller, more open sexual citizenship. The article focuses, first, on softening the body politic (implicitly a white cisgender heterosexual male body) to provide sociopolitical space for sexual pluralism. Second, the article uses the sexualization of House Speaker Paul Ryan to argue that making space for queer sexualities may require accommodating the expression of nonqueer sexualities, including those that most of us find offensive.


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