Monthly Archives: March 2024

New article on Instagram and memories of Troubles published in Information, Communication & Society

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I have a new article out in Information, Communication & Society this week. Entitled ‘Random access memories or clichéd representations? Exploring historical photographs of the troubles on Instagram’, it explores 100 historical photographs of the Troubles on Instagram.

.The abstract can be read below:

Social media provide unprecedented opportunities for the distribution of photographs capturing experiences of conflict. Instagram in particular renders conflict photography searchable, whilst also aggregating the memories of traumatised communities. This paper adds to the nascent literature in this area by exploring how the photosharing app is used to share photographs of the Northern Irish ‘Troubles’, a low-intensity conflict that resulted in 3,600 fatalities and left many more bereaved, injured and traumatised. Two decades on from the Belfast Agreement, Northern Ireland remains a deeply divided society in which competing narratives over the conflict remain deeply entrenched. This study explored photographic representation of the Troubles, with a specific focus on who was represented in these images and whether they were evoke personal memories of the conflict. A content and narrative analysis of 100 historical images tagged #thetroubles was conducted in order to explore these issues. Results indicate that images showing the ‘peculiarity’ of everyday life during the conflict, such as armed British soldiers standing in close quarters to children playing in the street, were the most prominent visual representations under this hashtag. The memories evoked by such historical photographs reinforce zero-sum narratives on conflict, rather than promote new interpretations that build support for peace in ‘post-conflict’ societies.

The article is published Open Access and can be found here

Many thanks to the editors and reviewers for their help in getting this out. i would ALSO like to express my gratitude to Ekatherina Zhukova and Marguerite Borelli for their comments and input on earlier versions of this paper.

Deconstructing societal threats during times of deep mediatization online book launch 16 April

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Dear all,

Please join the authors for a book launch event to mark the publication of the book ‘Deconstructing societal threats during times of deep mediatization’. This will be held online on 16 April (9-10:30am GMT).

This book explores how both elite and non-elite actors frame societal threats such as the refugee crisis and COVID-19 using both digital and traditional media. It also explores ways in which the framing of these issues as threatening can be challenged using these platforms.

People typically experience societal threats such as war and terrorism through the media they consume, both on and offline. Much of the research in this area to date focuses on either how political and media elites present these issues to citizens, or audience responses to these frames. This book takes a different approach by focusing on how issues such as the refugee crisis and the COVID-19 pandemic are both constructed and deconstructed in an era of hybrid media. It draws on a range of traditional and innovative research methodologies to explore how these issues are framed as ‘threats’ within deeply mediatized societies, ranging from content analysis of newspaper coverage of the Macedonian name dispute in Greece to investigating conspiratorial communities on YouTube using Systemic Functional Linguistics. In doing so, this book enriches our understanding of not only how civil and uncivil actors frame these issues, but also their impact on societal resilience towards future crises.

(De)constructing Societal Threats During Times of Deep Mediatization will be a key resource for academics, researchers, and advanced students of Communication Studies, Media Studies, Journalism, Cultural Studies, Research Methods, Sociology and Politics.

The chapters included in this book were originally published as a special issue of The Communication Review. 

Many thanks to our authors for their excellent contributions, which are listed below:

1. Framing the Macedonian name dispute in Greece: Nationalistic journalism and the existential threat

Minos-Athanasios Karyotakis

2. The “ultimate empathy machine” as technocratic solutionism? Audience reception of the distant refugee crisis through virtual reality

Zhe Xu and Mengrong Zhang

3. A systemic functional linguistics approach to analysing white supremacist and conspiratorial Ddscourse on YouTube

Olivia Inwood and Michele Zappavigna

4. Internet regulation and crisis-related resilience: From Covid-19 to existential risks

Gregory Asmolov

The book can be ordered here and you can register for the online book launch here