Tag Archives: journal article

Publication: Article on #BrexitRiots published in International Journal of Communication

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The start of the brexit riots
byu/mrdougan inbrexit

My article ‘The Blame Game? #Brexitriots as an affective ritualized response to civil disorder in Northern Ireland has been published in the International Journal of Communication.

This paper focuses on how the April 2021 violence in Northern Ireland were discursively framed on Twitter. I argue that #Brexitriots was an affective ritualised response to civil unrest in Northern Ireland. It demonstrated a lack of knowledge of the grievances fuelling this violence.

The abstract is below:

The protests and violence in Northern Ireland in April 2021 were nominally a manifestation of Loyalist anger at the “Irish Sea border” created as part of the deal that saw the United Kingdom leave the European Union. Social media were widely blamed for having amplified tensions surrounding the protests. This study explores how affective publics, mobilized on Twitter, responded to the “Brexit riots.” It does so by providing an overview of how online platforms are used during contentious episodes in divided societies, examining the background of the disorder, and presenting the results of a reflexive thematic analysis of #brexitriots tweets (N = 8287) posted between April 9 and April 13, 2021. Results indicate that #Brexitriots was an affective ritualized response from tweeters who appeared unaware of the manifold grievances of the protesters. They used these events as a source of partisan political expression, confirming their view that the United Kingdom’s departure from the European Union was a mistake.

I would like to thank Suay Özkula and Victoria Baskett for their feedback on an earlier draft of this study. Also, a special mention to Kady and the IJOC team for their editorial help.

The paper is published Open Access and can be read in full here

New Article Reveals Geographic Disparities in Digital Activism

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New article out in Social Media + Society

Suay Özkula and I have published an article in Social Media + Society. Entitled ‘Where is the Global South? Northern Visibilities in Digital Activism Research’, this paper draws on the results of a review of 315 articles published between 1994 and 2018.

The abstract can be read below:

The seemingly global nature of English-language hashtags often obscures activism from outside the Global North (GN). This systematic review explores geographic representation in this field (N = 315 articles) through an investigation of case study location, author affiliation, methods of data collection and analysis, and researched social media platforms. The results show a preponderance of GN/Majority cases and non-region-specific social media groupings such as hashtag publics, particularly in research employing digital methods. As such, extant research in the field has disproportionately produced what we term Northern Visibilities—groups and movements based in GN countries (above all the United States) and platforms popular within them. We use the findings of the review to critically interrogate notions of the Global South in digital social research and provide recommendations for rectifying geopolitical underrepresentation and promoting more inclusive research practice.

Many thanks to the editors, reviewers, and the SM+S team for their help in getting this out. We would also like to thank Jenny Hayes for her earlier work on this project.

The article can be downloaded and read for free here.

Look out for further details on the study in the New Year!

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 like to express my gratitude to Ekatherina Zhukova and Marguerite Borelli for their comments and input on earlier versions of this paper.

New Publication: Introduction to Special Issue in The Communication Review with Virpi Salojärvi

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Virpi Salojärvi and I have a new article out in The Communication Review this week.

(De)constructing societal threats during times of deep mediatization provides an introduction to a Special Issue based on research presented in the Crisis, Security and Conflict Communication working group at the conference of International Association for Media and Communication Research (IAMCR) in 2021.

We provide an overview of the literature on mediatization of conflict and crises, with a specific focus on how online platforms present both challenges and opportunities to the agenda-setting powers of mainstream media and political institutions.

The introduction can be read here

The list of papers published in our Special Issue are as follows:

Minos-Athanasios Karyotakis (2022) Framing the Macedonian name dispute in Greece: nationalistic journalism and the existential threat, The Communication Review, DOI: 10.1080/10714421.2022.2129125

Zhe Xu & Mengrong Zhang (2022) The “ultimate empathy machine” as technocratic solutionism? Audience reception of the distant refugee crisis through virtual reality, The Communication Review, DOI: 10.1080/10714421.2022.2129118

Olivia Inwood & Michele Zappavigna (2022) A Systemic Functional Linguistics Approach to Analyzing White Supremacist and Conspiratorial Discourse on YouTube, The Communication Review, DOI: 10.1080/10714421.2022.2129122

Gregory Asmolov (2022) Internet regulation and crisis-related resilience: from Covid-19 to existential risks, The Communication Review, DOI: 10.1080/10714421.2022.2129124

We would like to thank all the authors, reviewers and the editorial team at TCR for their help bringing this Special Issue together.

New article on Mary Beard Twitterstorm published in Information, Communication & Society

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New article published in Information, Communication & Society this month

Ceri Ashwell and I have an article out this week in Information, Communication & Society. Entitled ‘Exploring Discourses of Whiteness in the Mary Beard Oxfam-Haiti Twitterstorm’, this paper draws on the results of a content analysis of tweets discussing the Twitterstorm.

The abstract can be read below:

Social media may have amplified the Black Lives Matter movement, but companies like Facebook are often accused of not doing enough to address online hate speech. These platforms nevertheless have the potential to facilitate informal learning about the color blind racism through which whites rationalize the inequalities and injustices experienced by People of Color (PoC). This paper adds to the emergent literature in this area by exploring a high-profile Twitterstorm in February 2018 following a tweet from Cambridge University Professor Mary Beard about the sexual misconduct of Oxfam aid workers in Haiti. Academics like Dr Priya Gopal faced much criticism for suggesting the tweet was evidence of the white fragility and privilege to which they were frequently subjected. A qualitative content analysis of 1718 unique tweets containing ‘Mary Beard’, posted between 16 and 20 February 2018, was conducted to assess whether there was much evidence of agonistic debate between critics and supporters of Beard about whiteness. Results indicate that there were twice as many tweets criticising Beard for her performative white privilege and frailty than those defending her. While the framing of the Twitterstorm was generally agonistic, there was little evidence of informal learning, with PoC conspicuously under-represented. Indeed, the burden of talking about racism and whiteness fell on the few PoC in the corpus, in much the same way as the ‘pre-social media’ era.

50 free copies of the article are available here and a preprint can be downloaded here.

Many thanks to the editors and reviewers for their help in getting this out. And big congratulations to Ceri for her first publication!