scholarly journals “MISS RONA IS REALLY CLAPPING THE WHITE SUPREMACISTS”: BLACK TWITTER'S POLITICAL HUMOR IN COVID-19 TIMES

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anshare Annie Antoine ◽  
Mel Stanfill
Keyword(s):  
Racial Violence ◽  
Cultural Critique ◽  
Political Climate ◽  
Political Humor ◽  
Vernacular English ◽  
Political Commentary ◽  
Political Critique ◽  
The Social ◽  
White Supremacists ◽  
A Site

As has been widely reported, the COVID-19 pandemic has disproportionately sickened and killed Black Americans. At the same time, however, there is a significant body of conversation on Black Twitter that jokes about the pandemic. This includes tweets that nickname the pandemic as "Miss Rona,” as in “god i need a drink so bad, miss rona i promise i will be good.” Through an analysis of tweets using the “Miss Rona” nickname, we examine how Black Twitter humor serves as a site of political critique of both public policy failures and the Trump administration more broadly, with users leveraging practices like Signifyin’, African American Vernacular English (AAVE), and wordplay to resist legibility by outsiders as they orient toward their own community. Black humor is political commentary that resonates with the Black community because the tweets address or refer to Black trauma during the pandemic: dealing with continued racial violence, white supremacist ideology, and medical disparities based on race. The tweets are also expressions of Black Twitter catharsis (joy despite pain) through witty one-sided Twitter banters that skillfully and playfully engage with several facets of the social and political climate. We consider how these conversations go beyond laughing to keep from crying to coded political statements and cultural alliance, and argue that Black Twitter’s jokes about the collective trauma of COVID-19 is a resource for online camaraderie, cultural critique, and community affiliation.

Upsettling Canada in 140 Characters: race relations in the Twittersphere

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Caroline Carter
Keyword(s):  
Content Analysis ◽  
Social Networking ◽  
Race Relations ◽  
Online Discussion ◽  
Qualitative Content Analysis ◽  
Vital Role ◽  
The Social ◽  
Colonial Theory ◽  
Networking Tool ◽  
A Site

This paper is a qualitative content analysis of public tweets made during the Indigenous social movement, Idle No More, containing the #upsettler and #upsettlers hashtags. Using settler colonial theory coupled with previous literature on Twitter during social movements as a guiding framework, this study identifies how settler colonial relations were being constructed on Twitter and how functions of the social networking tool such as the hashtag impacted this process. By examining and analyzing the content of 278 tweets, this study illustrates that Twitter is a site where conversations about race relations in Canada are taking place and that the use of the hashtag function plays a vital role in expanding the reach of this online discussion and creating a sense of solidarity or community among users.

scholarly journals Office Setting as Organizational Structure in “Bartleby the Scrivener”

SAGE Open ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 215824401769043
Author(s):  
Lori Duin Kelly
Keyword(s):  
Organizational Structure ◽  
Short Story ◽  
Social Relations ◽  
Institutional Ethnography ◽  
Interpersonal Dynamics ◽  
Office Setting ◽  
Linguistic Markers ◽  
The Social ◽  
Bartleby The Scrivener ◽  
A Site

This article uses a methodology from the social sciences known as institutional ethnography to analyze the office setting in Herman Melville’s short story “Bartleby the Scrivener” as a site of social organization. This approach contributes to an understanding of how that office came to adopt specific structures as crucial to its functioning and how, as a consequence of those structures, individuals’ roles within the organization’s hierarchies became constituted. As fieldwork occurs inside of organizations, institutional ethnography also provides a tool for identifying and evaluating linguistic markers for an individual’s placement within a larger organizational structure. This approach to the story seems particularly useful for understanding the interpersonal dynamics at the heart of “Bartleby.” At the same time, it provides a method for identifying the larger institutional process at work in Melville’s story, one that contributes to the reproduction of a system of social relations in the workplace that requires subordination and compliance to insure its success.

scholarly journals Russia in world society: A comparative perspective on international references in parliamentary debates

2018 ◽  
Vol 62 (2) ◽  
pp. 228-242 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tatiana Tiaynen-Qadir ◽  
Ali Qadir ◽  
Pertti Alasuutari
Keyword(s):  
International Community ◽  
World Society ◽  
National Politics ◽  
Policy Makers ◽  
Parliamentary Debates ◽  
World Polity ◽  
World Society Theory ◽  
The Social ◽  
The World ◽  
A Site

This article explores how international references in parliaments build a synchronized world polity, even in countries that are often portrayed as being at odds with the rest of the world. The article asks whether and how Russian parliamentarians refer to the international community, and how such references compare with parliamentary debates in other countries. The “mesophenomenological” argument developed here connects World Society Theory, which demonstrates global isomorphism, with national studies of Russia, which argue for important national particularities. The empirical analysis draws on a stratified random sample of debates on draft laws in the Russian Duma from 1994 to 2013, comparable to similar samples from six other countries. The results show that: (1) Russian parliamentarians refer to the international community in the same level and the same forms as in other countries; (2) Russian policy-makers rely on the same imageries of the social world to convince their audiences as do other parliamentarians; and (3) this similarity in form remains consistent throughout the period, despite radical changes in national politics. These findings attest to the Russian Duma as a site of world culture, and to the mesophenomenological view that the world polity is highly synchronized through discourses of cross-national comparisons.

scholarly journals VIRTUAL TOUR ENVIRONMENT OF CUBA’S NATIONAL SCHOOL OF ART

2017 ◽  
Vol XLII-2/W5 ◽  
pp. 547-551 ◽  
Author(s):  
R. K. Napolitano ◽  
I. P. Douglas ◽  
M. E. Garlock ◽  
B. Glisic
Keyword(s):  
The Political ◽  
Political Climate ◽  
Virtual Tour ◽  
Heritage Sites ◽  
National School ◽  
Imaging Camera ◽  
Pertinent Information ◽  
Information Image ◽  
A Site ◽  
Art Schools

Innovative technologies have enabled new opportunities for collecting, analyzing, and sharing information about cultural heritage sites. Through a combination of two of these technologies, spherical imaging and virtual tour environment, we preliminarily documented one of Cuba’s National Schools of Art, the National Ballet School.The Ballet School is one of the five National Art Schools built in Havana, Cuba after the revolution. Due to changes in the political climate, construction was halted on the schools before completion. The Ballet School in particular was partially completed but never used for the intended purpose. Over the years, the surrounding vegetation and environment have started to overtake the buildings; damages such as missing bricks, corroded rebar, and broken tie bars can be seen. We created a virtual tour through the Ballet School which highlights key satellite classrooms and the main domed performance spaces. Scenes of the virtual tour were captured utilizing the Ricoh Theta S spherical imaging camera and processed with Kolor Panotour virtual environment software. Different forms of data can be included in this environment in order to provide a user with pertinent information. Image galleries, hyperlinks to websites, videos, PDFs, and links to databases can be embedded within the scene and interacted with by a user. By including this information within the virtual tour, a user can better understand how the site was constructed as well as the existing types of damage. The results of this work are recommendations for how a site can be preliminarily documented and information can be initially organized and shared.

scholarly journals Utz Richsner as Ideologue of the Schilling Uprising in Augsburg, 1524

2018 ◽  
Vol 40 (4) ◽  
pp. 91-116
Author(s):  
Robert J. Bast
Keyword(s):  
Turning Point ◽  
Social Economic ◽  
Close Collaboration ◽  
Left Behind ◽  
Political Critique ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Reformation ◽  
Reformation Movement ◽  
Previous Scholarship ◽  
Better Than

The 1524 uprising of evangelical artisans in Augsburg on behalf of the Franciscan preacher Johann Schilling counts as a turning point of the Reformation movement in that city. Relying on chronicles, government reports, and interrogation records, previous scholarship—none better than Jörg Rogge’s— has exposed the egalitarian theology and the social, economic, and political critique that united Schilling’s supporters. Yet the source of their ideology has always been unclear, for Schilling left behind neither treatises nor sermon transcriptions. That lacuna can be filled in part by re-examining sources largely overlooked: the four pamphlets published in 1524 by the weaver Ulrich (Utz) Richsner. A contextual reading of those pamphlets suggests a close collaboration between Schilling and Richsner, and a much more central role for Richsner in the movement around Schilling than has yet been recognized. La révolte en 1524 des artisans évangéliques d’Augsbourg pour le compte du prédicateur franciscain Johann Schilling est considérée comme un tournant dans le mouvement de réforme de cette ville. En se basant sur des chroniques, des rapports gouvernementaux et des minutes d’interrogatoires, la recherche — incluant les travaux inégalés de Jörg Rogge — a mis en lumière la théologie égalitaire ainsi que la critique sociale, économique et politique qui ont rassemblé les partisans de Schilling. Toutefois, les sources de cette pensée n’ont jamais été clarifiées, puisque Schilling n’a laissé ni écrits, ni transcriptions de sermons. Cette lacune peut être partiellement comblée en réexaminant des sources qui jusqu’à maintenant ont été négligées, c’est-à-dire les quatre libelles publiés en 1524 par le tisserand Ulrich (Utz) Richsner. Une lecture de ces textes dans leur contexte suggère une collaboration étroite entre Schilling et Richsner, ainsi qu’un rôle beaucoup plus important de Richsner dans le mouvement entourant le procès de Schilling, deux aspects méritant davantage notre attention.

Slow Storytelling and hybridity: Re-staging community storytelling as a tool for co-thinking

Book 2 0 ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 107-123 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Wilson
Keyword(s):  
Digital Storytelling ◽  
Local Community ◽  
Water Governance ◽  
Research Work ◽  
Social Aspect ◽  
Reflective Process ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Social ◽  
Social Intimacy ◽  
A Site

Since the early 2000s social media has transformed the internet into a site for the exchange of stories through the mass democratization of publishing. And yet, new forms of digital and online storytelling have at the same time compromised one of the core functions of storytelling, namely its social aspect, the ability to build community when two or more people share stories in the same space, at the same time, breathing the same air. Somewhat ironically the advent of social media may have broadened the audience for any one person’s storytelling, whilst diminishing the social intimacy of the storytelling experience. As part of its research work into storytelling as a means of engaging people in the public debate around environment, the Storytelling Academy at Loughborough University has been developing new forms and processes of digital storytelling to promote wider engagement and dissemination of environmentally driven personal stories. ‘The Reasons’, first staged in Cambridgeshire in 2016, was an attempt to create a live, community social event that provided a public forum for storytelling as a way of debating issues around drought and water governance in the Fens. Inspired by a re-staging of La Rasgioni in Sardinia in 2015, a traditional form of conflict resolution, whereby a ‘mock’ court provides the means for the community to publicly tell its stories to each other, ‘The Reasons’ was co-designed for the Fenland context and was performed twice in 2016. It was then further adapted for use in the Korogocho slum in Nairobi for an event to discuss the issue of waste management with members of the local community, as part of an initiative with UN Live. ‘The Reasons’ is an attempt to bring together the advantages of digital storytelling as a reflective process with the social intimacy of the live storytelling event. The result is a new form of hybrid storytelling that seeks to build community and establish co-thinking processes to build resilience to environmental change. This article reflects critically upon the development and evolution of this work over the past five years.

Braving the Waves with Francis Xavier

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ulrike Strasser
Keyword(s):  
Pastoral Work ◽  
The Social ◽  
Fear Of God ◽  
A Site ◽  
The Waves

This chapter discusses the transoceanic voyage as a rite de passage into missionary manhood. Jesuits defined their brand of masculinity in the social microcosm of the ship, carrying out pastoral work in confinement and danger. If Ignatius was the Society’s inventor and Ur-father, Francis Xavier was its patron of mobility and a model for conduct for generations of missionaries, including many Germans. Hagiographical accounts and paintings of Xavier’s dramatic sea voyages emphasize his exemplary self-governance and ability to convert sinful fears into correct fear of God. The transoceanic ship was a site of embodied conditioning for those who followed in Xavier’s footsteps. When the missionaries reached foreign shores, they felt more ready than ever to convert and regulate indigenous others.

The Country Book

2021 ◽  
pp. 129-161
Author(s):  
John Evelev
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Middle Class ◽  
Herman Melville ◽  
Rapid Growth ◽  
Domestic Life ◽  
National Space ◽  
The Social ◽  
Suburban Development ◽  
A Site ◽  
Suburban Life

Picturesque aesthetics and an increased focus on men’s domestic life shaped the rapid growth of the suburbs in the mid-nineteenth century, one of the most consequential reconfigurations of American understandings of national space. This suburban development had its own popular literary genre in the period, the country book. Although the country book is now largely forgotten and many of its more prominent examples have lapsed into obscurity, canonical writers such as Herman Melville wrote in the genre, and Thoreau’s Walden can also be understood in the context of this genre. The country book’s vision of the suburbs as a site of picturesque male domesticity that allowed for both privacy and homosocial intimacy countered a dominant vision of urban masculinity as public, individualistic, and competitive. Although the country book in general offers an idealized vision of male suburban life, individual texts also often feature deferrals, debility, and even death that threaten both male privacy and intimacy. The country book promoted the imaginative investments in suburban development at the same time that it hinted at the contradictions at the heart of middle-class masculine identity that foreclosed on that dream. In this way, as with the park movement texts discussed in Chapter 3, the country books that supported mid-nineteenth-century suburban development expressed both the social aspirations and fears of bourgeois men.

More Than a Joking Matter

2016 ◽  
pp. 38-64
Author(s):  
Funmi Olubode-Sawe
Keyword(s):  
Physical Violence ◽  
Political Satire ◽  
Political Climate ◽  
Political Commentary ◽  
Semiotic Resources ◽  
National Leaders ◽  
Political Scene

This chapter discusses how humor is generated in Oga at the Top series (OATT), a puppet political satire program featuring prominent actors on the Nigerian political scene. The question of how multimodal phenomena in humor bearing texts combine to create a humorous political commentary has not been addressed within the Nigerian context. This chapter therefore explores how different semiotic resources are combined to create humor in OATT. From the 25 videos selected from Season One, the humor creation mechanisms in OATT were found to include caricature of national leaders, re-interpretation of contemporary happenings, musical parody, script opposition in conversation, inter-texuality and physical violence. Though the stated function of the series was to exploit the Nigerian political climate for humor, the analysis shows that the audience has appropriated the videos for their own ends based on the functions they felt they could serve. The chapter concludes with the significance of the online distribution of the videos.

Visual Art, Ethical Witnessing, and Resistance

2020 ◽  
pp. 117-140
Author(s):  
William A. Callahan
Keyword(s):  
Visual Art ◽  
International Crises ◽  
Authoritarian State ◽  
Political Aesthetics ◽  
The Social ◽  
Traditional Sense ◽  
Resistance To Power ◽  
Visual Construction ◽  
Ideological Resistance ◽  
A Site

The chapter engages with another popular approach to visual international politics: visuals as a site of resistance to power, both through producing critical artwork and by ethically witnessing international crises. To trace these issues, the chapter analyzes the work of Ai Weiwei, a world-famous artist-activist whose ethical witnessing creatively resists China’s authoritarian party-state. It shows how Ai’s art presents ideological resistance to state power, in both the traditional sense of liberal resistance to authoritarian state oppression and the hermeneutical sense, in which it is necessary to decode his work for its “meaning” as the social construction of the visual. The chapter then considers how Ai’s documentary film Human Flow (2017) provokes transnational resistance through its “visual construction of the social”—and of the global. It thus examines how visual art can serve as an ethical witness to resist reigning political regimes, and how it also can excite affective communities of sense to creatively resist reigning political aesthetics. Chapter 6 thus highlights the need to appreciate the dynamic tension that entangles cultural governance and resistance.

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