scholarly journals New approaches to the propagation of the antifeminist backlash on Twitter

2020 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 221-237
Author(s):  
Miren Gutiérrez Almazor ◽  
Maria J. Pando Canteli ◽  
Mariluz Congosto

A year after the #MeToo movement erupted, antifeminism started to retort. The idea behind the backlash was that ‘the men who have been accused are the heroes’ (Tolentino, 2018). Twitter was one of the public spaces where this confrontation occurred; the #HimToo backlash gathered steam in 2018 (Asimov, 2018) and expanded into 2019. Focussing on the reactions against #Cuéntalo Twitter campaign –the Spanish equivalent to #MeToo—, this article examines how the antifeminist backlash proliferates, offering a view of the dynamics driving it. The authors choose an eclectic and interdisciplinary approach that integrates graph theory and CDA (Critical Discourse Analysis), thus connecting social media formulations with offline discourses, and proposing new ways of studying social movements. To examine the backlash’s characteristics, this study utilises Congosto’s typology of Twitter profiles (Congosto, 2018). Findings suggest that both approaches are complementary and necessary, for while graph analysis enables the distinction of antifeminist communities on Twitter and their behaviour and characteristics, CDA allows investigators to uncover their discursive strategies and favoured themes.

2021 ◽  
Vol 32 (3) ◽  
pp. 307-327
Author(s):  
Gwen Bouvier ◽  
David Machin

Twitter campaigns attacking those who make racist or xenophobic statements are valuable, raising the public profile of opinions that will not tolerate racism in any form. They also indicate how our major institutions are failing to address important matters of social justice. But there is concern that social media, such as Twitter, tends to extremes, moral outrages, lack of nuance and incivility, which shape how issues become represented. In this paper, using Critical Discourse Analysis, we look at three Twitter hashtags calling-out racist behaviour. We ask how racism and anti-racism is represented on these hashtags? We show how these misrepresent fundamental aspects of racism in society, distracting from, what race theorists would argue, is the most important thing these incidents tell us about racism at this present time. The findings have consequences for all such Twitter social justice campaigns.


2019 ◽  
Vol 18 (2) ◽  
pp. 291-311
Author(s):  
Snobra Rizwan

Abstract This paper focuses on critical discourse analysis of national identity premises as they enter in Pakistan’s social media debate over patriotism and treason. Drawing on a theoretical framework that calls attention to the embeddedness of religious and nationalistic ideas in identification paradigm of a society, the analysis emphasizes the naturalized link in motivational/inspirational and factual/circumstantial premises and the discursive and non-discursive practices of a culture. It also shows how (supposed) lack of a clear sense of national identity is intrinsically connected to a politicized understanding of national and anti-national identities, since anti-national identity is made salient as an obstacle in path toward national acceptance, and thus as a threat to national security. This, it is argued, is achieved through certain discursive strategies and non-discursive acts which serve to position undesirable anti-nationals as simultaneously in need of proving their patriotism and ineligible for integration into a broader national identification paradigm.


2020 ◽  
pp. 095792652097721
Author(s):  
Janaina Negreiros Persson

In this article, we explore how the discourses around gender are evolving at the core of Brazilian politics. Our focus lies on the discourses at the public hearing on the bill 3.492/19, which aimed at including “gender ideology” on the list of heinous crimes. We aim to identify the deputies’ linguistic representation of social actors as pertaining to in- and outgroups. In addition, the article analyzes through Critical Discourse Analysis how the terminology gender is represented in this particular hearing. The analysis shows how some of the conservative parliamentarians give a clearly negative meaning to the term gender, by labeling it “gender ideology” and additionally connecting it with heinous crimes. We propose that the re-signification of “gender ideology,” from rhetorical invention to heinous crime, is not only an attempt to undermine scientific gender studies but also a way for conservative deputies to gain more political power.


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.


2018 ◽  
Vol 47 (1) ◽  
pp. 79-103 ◽  
Author(s):  
Veera Kangaspunta

The aim of this article is to approach one specific environmental topic and the public debate around this topic from a user-oriented perspective – through online news comments. The article analyses online news and comments sections from three Finnish online newspapers concerning the mining accident of Talvivaara company in November 2012. Discourse and discursive legitimation strategies are used as analytical tools with the focus of critical discourse analysis. The study aims to solve what kind of discourses the public debate contains and how these discourses are connected to certain legitimation strategies. In addition, the article also continues the conceptual deliberation about the concept of the public as a group of people participating in public discussion. The study shows that Talvivaara news and news comments consist four main strategies, authorization, rationalization, moral evaluations and mythopoiesis, used for legitimation, relegitimation and delegitimation. However, the parties differ in the way they utilize these strategies and different discourses. Consequently, online news commenting appears as a unique part of the public debate about the topic, rather than remaining marginal flaming. The users tend to absorb the role of the public as a part of the public showdown about the shared issue.


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.


2015 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 153-166
Author(s):  
Elvi Susanti

Abstract This research is linked with Twitter, as one of social media services on the Internet that are extremely popular in the world, including in Indonesia. This research is important because Twitter is effective in quickly and accurately delivering messages. In fact, everyone can act as a 'reporter' and form quick opinions through this social media. This research is aimed to investigate the emergence of the roots of hegemony based on text analysis that is linked with representation, relation, identity, and transformation of national issues that become trending topics on Twitter. Moreover, the research is to discuss the social media's discourse practice that influences media workers in producing news, and to see how it implicates the research on the study of discourse analysis. By using the Fairclough theory, especially on text analysis that is linked with representation, relation, and identity, the researcher attempts to explore how the roots of hegemony emerge in the national issues that become trending topics on Twitter. The researcher also offers a new function to complete the approach of Fairclough in text analysis on social media: transformation – which is an attempt to see the change in roles of news participants and amateur readers as 'reporters' and participate in forming opinions. Abstrak Penelitian ini berhubungan dengan twitter, sebagai salah satu media sosial di internet yang sangat populer di dunia, termasuk di indonesia. Penelitian ini penting karena twitter efektif dalam menyampaikan pesan dengan cepat dan akurat. Faktanya, semua orang dapat bertindak sebagai "reporter" dan membuat opini yang cepat melalui sosial media tersebut. Penelitian ini bertujuan untuk menyelidiki kemunculan dari akar hagemoni berdasarkan analisis teks yang berhubungan dengan representasi, hubungan, identitas, dan transformasi isu-isu nasional yang menjadi topik yang sedang tren di twitter. Selain itu, penelitian ini juga untuk mendiskusikan praktik wacana media sosial  yang mempengaruhi pekerja media dalam membuat berita, dan untuk melihat bagaimana hal tersebut melibatkan penelitian dalam studi analisis wacana. Dengan menggunakan teori Fairclough, khususnya pada analisis teks yang berhubungan dengan penafsiran, hubungan, identitas, peneliti berupaya untuk menyelidiki bagaimana akar hegemoni muncul yang menjadi topik tren di twitter. Peneliti juga menawarkan sebuah fungsi baru untuk melengkapi pendekatan Fairlclough dalam analisis teks pada sosial media: transformasi - yang merupakan usaha untuk melihat perubahan peran pembuat berita dan pembaca awam sebagai 'reporter' dan berpartisipasi dalam membentuk opini. How to Cite : Susanti, E. (2015). Hegemony of The Social Media Twitter About National Issues in Indonesia and Its Implications to the Discourse Analysis Subject in Colleges. TARBIYA: Journal Of Education In Muslim Society, 2(2), 153-166. doi:10.15408/tjems.v2i2.3180. Permalink/DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/tjems.v2i2.3180


Kybernetes ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol ahead-of-print (ahead-of-print) ◽  
Author(s):  
Krešimir Žažar

Purpose The purpose of the paper is to discuss particular features of the public debate around the COVID-19 pandemic and its mitigation strategies in Croatian media from the beginning of 2020 to mid-September of the same year. Design/methodology/approach The discussion is theoretically grounded on Luhmann’s concept of moral communication combined with the key assumption of critical discourse analysis that language reflects a position of power of social actors. Based on these premises, the analysis of a sample of articles in a chosen online media was conducted to uncover the moral codes in the public debate concerning the corona outbreak and connect them with specific moral discourses of particular social actors. Findings The findings clearly indicate that the communication about the pandemic is considerably imbued with moralization and that moral coding is profoundly used to generate preferred types of behaviour of citizens and their compliance with the imposed epidemiologic measures. In conclusion, Luhmann’s claim of moralization as a contentious form of communication is confirmed as the examined public discussion fosters confrontations and generates disruptions rather than contributing to a productive dialogue among diverse social actors. Originality/value The novelty of the approach lies in the combination of Luhman’s conceiving of moral communication with critical discourse analysis that, taken together, entails a pertinent research tool for analysing relevant attributes of the ongoing vibrant debate on the coronavirus outbreak.


2019 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 126-136
Author(s):  
Patience Adamu ◽  
Deon Castello ◽  
Wendy Cukier

AbstractMuch of the literature on public space focuses on physical inclusion and exclusion rather than social inclusion or exclusion. In this paper, the implications of this are considered in the context of two monuments, The Volunteers/Les Bénévoles, and The Emigrant, located outside the Canadian Museum of Immigration at Pier 21 in Halifax, Nova Scotia. These monuments, while perhaps designed to celebrate Canadian multiculturalism, can be read instead as signaling Canada’s enduring commitment to white supremacy, Eurocentricity and colonization, when viewed through the eyes of racialized immigrants. Thus the “public space” becomes exclusionary. In the context in which the monuments are situated, the racial subtext cannot be ignored. This article purports that images, text and placement, regardless of intention, have significant implications on public space and public demeanor.


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