Recent research has damped initial promises for democratic deliberation in social media arenas. Empirical studies find only low degrees of direct reciprocal interaction among participants, a lack of consensus orientation, and accelerated forms of communication that fail to meet traditional ideals of deliberation. In line with recent literature, we argue that traditional deliberative ideals are too narrow to embrace the potential contribution of social media for deliberation about (ir-)responsible business conduct. Instead, we propose to conceptualize social media (...) as arenas for everyday talk, that is, everyday communication practices through which participants informally discuss and express opinions about current issues, thereby contributing to a broader deliberative system. In adopting this lens, we ask: How can everyday talk in social media contribute to deliberation about (ir-)responsible business conduct? Drawing on the latest insights from online deliberation studies, we develop a framework for evaluating everyday talk and propose that its deliberative quality depends on social media appropriate forms of justification, interactivity, equality, and civility. We apply this framework with an analysis of 260,224 tweets about the role of business in climate change. Based on our findings, we critically discuss how everyday talk in social media can contribute to deliberation at the intersection of business and society. (shrink)

The study aims at exploring the salience and functions of media and television contents in children’s lives by focusing on their uses as a discursive resource in naturally occurring peer talk. We observed and recorded Israeli children talk in everyday, natural settings in two separate studies, in 1999–2002 and in 2012–2013. Detailed discourse analysis of television-based interactions from an ethnographic, child-centered perspective reveals the enduring centrality of television as an enjoyable, available, and shared cultural resource with valuable (...) social, cognitive, and discursive affordances: it is frequently mentioned during everyday adult-free interactions; utilized as the basis for drawing and negotiating boundaries and hierarchies within the peer community; and facilitates experiencing a variety of discursive literacy skills, ranging between practicing adherence to original texts and creativity and distancing from them. These findings provide further evidence for the mediatization of everyday life, and may have educational implications, which are discussed. (shrink)

This collection assembles a number of chapters engaging different strands of Martin Heidegger_s philosophy in order to explore issues relevant to contemporary media studies. Following the release of Heidegger_s controversial Black Notebooks and the subsequent calls to abandon the philosopher, this book seeks to demonstrate why Heidegger, rather than be pushed aside and shunned by media practitioners, ought to be embraced by and further incorporated into the discipline, as he offers unique and often innovative pathways to address, and (...) ultimately understand, our daily engagements with media-related phenomena. (shrink)

“Mechanical objectivity,” which Lorraine Daston and Peter Galison trace to the mid-nineteenth century, often coincided with efforts to inscribe nature “directly,” such as through automatic registering machines. But what did this inscription entail? Addressing this question requires that we reexamine indexicalization: the shift in semiotic ideology whereby medial technologies are imagined and acted on as if they preserved material traces of the real. Indexicalization is no simple reflex of mechanical objectivity and is more varied and consequential than commonly imagined. This (...) essay demonstrates this by returning to the sciences of face-to-face interaction, which crystallized in postwar America but drew inspiration from earlier research on talk therapy. Returning to efforts to record psychoanalysis sessions in the early 1930s “objectively,” it chronicles a shift in the technosemiotic mediation of knowledge. Whereas transcripts were originally “verbatim” records of literal content, researchers came to seek tacit, symptomological signs. And whereas mechanical recording was introduced to avoid an observer effect, it was later deemed necessary to preserve indexical traces for fine-grained analysis. This indexicalization had ontological as well as epistemological effects, and it was inspired not by mechanical objectivity but by the parallel capacities of the perceptive psychoanalyst and the receptive mechanical recorder, both virtuosic in registering the indexical richness of the communicative unconscious. (shrink)

This study tried to investigate the type of argumentation found in media discourse data. A case in point was the sport talk show interview. The data included an interview extracted from the Iranian popular sport show, Navad, broadcast every Monday by Channel 3 in Iran. The interview was with the former president of the Football Federation of the Islamic Republic of Iran. Analysis of the data was done within the framework of Toulmin’s conception of argument as a form (...) of conversation. Accordingly, the propositions produced collaboratively by the host and guests were used to reconstruct the argument structure of the interview in terms of Toulminian schemata. The qualitative analysis of the data revealed that: 1) the argument structure of the interview was that of substantial argument rather than the analytic one. 2) Little if any formal validity was found in the skeleton of the argument. 3) The talk seemed to be subjective, and backing and qualifier elements widely used by the guest were not in some parts satisfactory. 4) Warrant, considered as one of the essential components of practical arguments, was not, in some parts, explicitly referred to, but must have been be implicitly inferred by the listeners. (shrink)

ABSTRACT This paper focuses on the potential societal function of Wikipedia beyond serving as an encyclopedia. That is, it assesses both theoretically and empirically whether talk pages – Wikipedia discussion sites that accompany the encyclopedic entries and provide spaces for debates among Wikipedia editors – may function as transnational public spheres. Despite the increasing number of studies on citizen engagement and participation in the age of social media, Wikipedia as an example of the participatory internet has received little (...) research attention in this regard. This study redresses this research gap in two steps. Drawing on Habermas’ concept of the public sphere and Fraser's and Eriksen's modifications thereof, Wikipedia's – specifically the TPs’ – modus operandi is explored to evaluate whether TPs may serve as spaces for transnational political opinion formation. This theoretical exploration is complemented with an empirical assessment of a TP dedicated to the EU. The case study addresses if/to what degree Wikipedia editors have appropriated the TP to function as a transnational public sphere. Findings indicate that Wikipedia TPs can – and do – serve as general transnational public spheres. (shrink)

Taboos restrict what could but should not be done or said in relation to topics such as bodies and their effluvia, disease, death and killing, or food consumption (Allan & Burridge, 2006, p. 1). In...

Public participation broadcasting has recently become the focus of attention in media studies, as well as from the social interactional perspectives of discourse and conversation analysis, and it has been argued in particular that the talk show genre has given new and enhanced status to the `authentic' voice of lay members of the public. What remains largely unexplored is how lay participants discursively construct authentic positions for their own knowledgeable participation in such discourse. Expert speakers in public participation (...) broadcasts are typically attributed names, rank, institutional affiliation and status, which legitimizes their position, and in so doing provides their warrant to talk about whatever issue they have been brought in to discuss. Lay participants typically do not have this status attributed to them, but need to establish their own position from which to talk. In this article I examine the public identities that lay speakers build for themselves in these broadcasts, and show how they routinely draw on a range of discursive resources to construct situated, local identities which provide a warrant for what they have to say. (shrink)

An invigorating exploration of the pleasures and social benefits of conversation Talking Cure is a timely and enticing excursion into the art of good conversation. Paula Marantz Cohen reveals how conversation connects us in ways that social media never can and explains why simply talking to each other freely and without guile may be the cure to what ails our troubled society. Drawing on her lifelong immersion in literature and culture and her decades of experience as a teacher and (...) critic, Cohen argues that we learn to converse in our families and then carry that knowledge into a broader world where we encounter diverse opinions and sensibilities. She discusses the role of food in encouraging conversation, the challenges of writing dialogue in fiction, the pros and cons of Zoom, the relationship of conversation to vaudeville acts, and the educational value of a good college seminar where students learn to talk about ideas. Cohen looks at some of the famous groups of writers and artists in history whose conversation fed their creativity, and details some of the habits that can result in bad conversation. Blending the immediacy of a beautifully crafted memoir with the conviviality of an intimate gathering with friends, Talking Cure makes a persuasive case for the civilizing value of conversation and is essential reading for anyone interested in the chatter that fuels culture. (shrink)

Death Talk asks why, when our society has rejected euthanasia for over two thousand years, are we now considering legalizing it? Has euthanasia been promoted by deliberately confusing it with other ethically acceptable acts? What is the relation between pain relief treatments that could shorten life and euthanasia? How do journalistic values and media ethics affect the public's perception of euthanasia? What impact would the legalization of euthanasia have on concepts of human rights, human responsibilities, and human ethics? (...) Can we imagine teaching young physicians how to put their patients to death? There are vast ethical, legal, and social differences between natural death and euthanasia. In Death Talk, Margaret Somerville argues that legalizing euthanasia would cause irreparable harm to society's value of respect for human life, which in secular societies is carried primarily by the institutions of law and medicine. Death has always been a central focus of the discussion that we engage in as individuals and as a society in searching for meaning in life. Moreover, we accommodate the inevitable reality of death into the living of our lives by discussing it, that is, through "death talk." Until the last twenty years this discussion occurred largely as part of the practice of organized religion. Today, in industrialized western societies, the euthanasia debate provides a context for such discussion and is part of the search for a new societal-cultural paradigm. Seeking to balance the "death talk" articulated in the euthanasia debate with "life talk," Somerville identifies the very serious harms for individuals and society that would result from accepting euthanasia. A sense of the unfolding euthanasia debate is captured through the inclusion of Somerville's responses to or commentaries on several other authors' contributions. (shrink)

Death Talk asks why, when our society has rejected euthanasia for over two thousand years, are we now considering legalizing it? Has euthanasia been promoted by deliberately confusing it with other ethically acceptable acts? What is the relation between pain relief treatments that could shorten life and euthanasia? How do journalistic values and media ethics affect the public's perception of euthanasia? What impact would the legalization of euthanasia have on concepts of human rights, human responsibilities, and human ethics? (...) Can we imagine teaching young physicians how to put their patients to death? There are vast ethical, legal, and social differences between natural death and euthanasia. In Death Talk, Margaret Somerville argues that legalizing euthanasia would cause irreparable harm to society's value of respect for human life, which in secular societies is carried primarily by the institutions of law and medicine. Death has always been a central focus of the discussion that we engage in as individuals and as a society in searching for meaning in life. Moreover, we accommodate the inevitable reality of death into the living of our lives by discussing it, that is, through "death talk." Until the last twenty years this discussion occurred largely as part of the practice of organized religion. Today, in industrialized western societies, the euthanasia debate provides a context for such discussion and is part of the search for a new societal-cultural paradigm. Seeking to balance the "death talk" articulated in the euthanasia debate with "life talk," Somerville identifies the very serious harms for individuals and society that would result from accepting euthanasia. A sense of the unfolding euthanasia debate is captured through the inclusion of Somerville's responses to or commentaries on several other authors' contributions. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Journal of Aesthetic Education 37.4 (2003) 58-64 [Access article in PDF] Media Literacy Education in Art:Motion Expression and the New Vision of Art EducationThe Bauhaus, which established the foundation of modern design, has greatly influenced Japanese design and art education. It is a historical fact that the movement views "synthetic art" as an integration of the various fields and the integration of the art and machine technology (...) experimentally. However, the Bauhaus is not just of historical importance but continues to have an influence even in the integration of the art and electronic technology in today's "multimedia." In addition, it can be said that it is very much alive as "the digital Bauhaus" or "the electronic Bauhaus." 1 As we know, today's multimedia and the Internet give us a new life-environment, and expandthe possibility of expression in art. Therefore, current art education must examine how these new medias will be incorporated into the curriculum.In the cases of the photograph, video, or computer, an expression by the image media is added to the art course for the junior high school course of study. 2 Also in school art classes, image media was introduced, expanding the possibilities of self-expression through art. This result can be matched to the needs of the industrial world in Japan as well. As an educational practice, the content of this course of study is promising, even though someproblems must be solved, acquiring new equipment, re-educating the artteacher, and securing additional art school hours. The new content in art education can be summarized as follows:1. The motion picture (animation) which includes time and movement. Motion picture is asequence of continuous images, obviously different from the still images of painting. There are, of course, artworks that express motion or induce the viewer'seye movement. There are also kinetic artworks that do move, such as mobiles. Works of motion picture have, however, a fixed time shaft, and they are formed by the afterimage phenomenon. Thinking about the progress of time shaft is an indispensable element for the production. [End Page 58]2. The synchronism of image and sound. Because time is a factor in the visual expression, the works are compatible with music — the art of time. There is a synchronized relation between the motion picture and music. Image expression with multimedia became synthetic art, just as the Bauhaus looked for "architecture." Currently, this kind of expression transitions from art to entertainment, and permeates daily life.3. The method with interactive art work. Not only artworks of installation, but also TV games and web design have interactive construction as an indispensable interface. The aesthetic value of these visual works will be appreciated when the user starts the action by hitting a touchpad, pushing buttons, or clicking a mouse. To make this kind of artwork, one needs to consider the latent relationships between humans and work, and establish the input-output order for the method of construction.4. The problem of virtual reality. The term "virtual reality" is used by some art teachers as criticism against digital works such as computer graphics. These teachers insist that there is no reality there. One can, however, get an aesthetic feeling through sensory information, imagination, and sensitivity, even though what one sees is an illusion. The feeling of reality a picture of an apple gives, for example, may be equal to a computer graphic apple.Human imagination also creates "virtual reality" beyond reality in the myth, the novel, and so on. It can be said that this is the basis for human creativity.Furthermore, expression by image media raises the problem of a "reality" in which material experience is important to encounterthe world directly. Such an argument discusses multimedia as a tool of expression and a teaching material while reconsidering human reality.More recently, "media literacy" (ability to read and understand media) became an important point of discussion for Japanese educators. Usually, in this discussion, the critical ability to talk back to the television program is emphasized. However, through art... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Journal of Aesthetic Education 37.4 (2003) 58-64 [Access article in PDF] Media Literacy Education in Art:Motion Expression and the New Vision of Art EducationThe Bauhaus, which established the foundation of modern design, has greatly influenced Japanese design and art education. It is a historical fact that the movement views "synthetic art" as an integration of the various fields and the integration of the art and machine technology (...) experimentally. However, the Bauhaus is not just of historical importance but continues to have an influence even in the integration of the art and electronic technology in today's "multimedia." In addition, it can be said that it is very much alive as "the digital Bauhaus" or "the electronic Bauhaus." 1 As we know, today's multimedia and the Internet give us a new life-environment, and expandthe possibility of expression in art. Therefore, current art education must examine how these new medias will be incorporated into the curriculum.In the cases of the photograph, video, or computer, an expression by the image media is added to the art course for the junior high school course of study. 2 Also in school art classes, image media was introduced, expanding the possibilities of self-expression through art. This result can be matched to the needs of the industrial world in Japan as well. As an educational practice, the content of this course of study is promising, even though someproblems must be solved, acquiring new equipment, re-educating the artteacher, and securing additional art school hours. The new content in art education can be summarized as follows:1. The motion picture (animation) which includes time and movement. Motion picture is asequence of continuous images, obviously different from the still images of painting. There are, of course, artworks that express motion or induce the viewer'seye movement. There are also kinetic artworks that do move, such as mobiles. Works of motion picture have, however, a fixed time shaft, and they are formed by the afterimage phenomenon. Thinking about the progress of time shaft is an indispensable element for the production. [End Page 58]2. The synchronism of image and sound. Because time is a factor in the visual expression, the works are compatible with music — the art of time. There is a synchronized relation between the motion picture and music. Image expression with multimedia became synthetic art, just as the Bauhaus looked for "architecture." Currently, this kind of expression transitions from art to entertainment, and permeates daily life.3. The method with interactive art work. Not only artworks of installation, but also TV games and web design have interactive construction as an indispensable interface. The aesthetic value of these visual works will be appreciated when the user starts the action by hitting a touchpad, pushing buttons, or clicking a mouse. To make this kind of artwork, one needs to consider the latent relationships between humans and work, and establish the input-output order for the method of construction.4. The problem of virtual reality. The term "virtual reality" is used by some art teachers as criticism against digital works such as computer graphics. These teachers insist that there is no reality there. One can, however, get an aesthetic feeling through sensory information, imagination, and sensitivity, even though what one sees is an illusion. The feeling of reality a picture of an apple gives, for example, may be equal to a computer graphic apple.Human imagination also creates "virtual reality" beyond reality in the myth, the novel, and so on. It can be said that this is the basis for human creativity.Furthermore, expression by image media raises the problem of a "reality" in which material experience is important to encounterthe world directly. Such an argument discusses multimedia as a tool of expression and a teaching material while reconsidering human reality.More recently, "media literacy" (ability to read and understand media) became an important point of discussion for Japanese educators. Usually, in this discussion, the critical ability to talk back to the television program is emphasized. However, through art... (shrink)

This article seeks to bring small talk about cinema – the type of conversation that can begin with the question “Have you seen any good movies lately?” – into the analytical ambit of cinema and media studies. In order to do so, I argue that such conversation is relevant to the philosophical project of Stanley Cavell. Throughout his attempts to wed film analysis and philosophical reflection, including his seminal studies of Hollywood genres, Cavell has remained committed to the (...) idea that philosophy is not a search for objective absolutes or momentous conclusions. This is a characteristic inconclusiveness that small talk shares. While small talk is often derided as unimportant on account of this very inconclusiveness, the work of Cavell provides a propitious framework for appreciating small talk's underacknowledged philosophical stakes and for reconsidering assumptions about the relative value of communicative practices. In order to better illustrate this relation between small talk and philosophy, this art... (shrink)

Despite the potential political impact of industry attempts to influence public policy about genetic modification, little research has focused on critical understanding of industry perspectives. This article explores the rhetorical and discursive construction of public messages about this controversial issue by two major New Zealand export industries. The kiwifruit industry advocates a very cautious public policy position, while the dairy industry has been a strong advocate for the commercial development of genetic modification. We demonstrate that these industries draw on multiple (...) identities and rationalities to negotiate, express, and elaborate their positions on genetic modification, informed variously by discourses of risk, science, the political economy of the marketplace, and images of the ‘natural’ environment. We suggest that exploring how organizations seek to influence controversial socio-political issues through the management of multiple identities may facilitate greater understanding of viewpoints often represented in the media as two distinct polarities; that is as either ‘for’ or ‘against’ the issues. (shrink)

Vocal fry is a phonation, or voicing, in which an individual drops their voice below its natural register and consequently emits a low, growly, creaky tone of voice. Media outlets have widely acknowledged it as a generational vocal style characteristic of millennial women. Critics of vocal fry often claim that it is an exclusively female vocal pattern, and some say that the voicing is so distracting that they cannot understand what is being said under the phonation. Claiming that a (...) phonation is so distracting as to prevent uptake of the semantic content of an utterance associated with it is an extreme reaction, especially when accompanied by demands for women to change their phonation. We argue that this reaction limits women's communicative autonomy. We analyze the extreme reaction to female vocal fry, which we characterize as a non-content-based response, from the perspectives of philosophy of language, feminist epistemology, and linguistics. We argue that when fry is heard as annoying and distracting, it is because the hearer interprets the speaker as echoing an utterance from a position of authority to which she is not entitled. We show that this reaction encodes conscious or unconscious sexist attitudes toward women's voices. (shrink)

In this paper I make a number of points about “political correctness”. Although individually these arguments seem straightforward - and will hopefully be uncontroversial - put together in context they reveal the idea of a “politically correct”, left-wing dominated, media or intelligentsia in Western political culture to be a conservative bogeyman. The rhetoric of “political correctness” is in fact overwhelmingly a right-wing conservative one which itself is used mainly to silence dissenting political viewpoints. However, the same investigation also suggests (...) that a “politics of speech” is an inevitable fact of social life and that some sorts of censorship are likewise inevitable. The question of censorship is therefore revealed as not “Whether we should tolerate all sorts of speech?” but “Which sorts of speech should we tolerate?”. (shrink)

The US and China have both benefited greatly from their trading relationship. However, motivated by a US concern that their partner was becoming more of a rival, then-president Donald Trump began a ‘trade war’ in 2018. In US news outlets and, of particular interest here, on American social media platforms, China was represented as a global menace, with extreme xenophobia against Chinese people. Yet less is known about how Chinese people responded on social media to the same situation. (...) This paper explores the discourses carried on the Chinese social media platform Weibo, focusing on the 2021 Alaska talks between the US and China, where negotiations took place. As with their US counterparts, Weibo users comment little on actual trade benefits or damages caused by the conflict. We find a strong sense of nationalism, but this is not based on xenophobia; rather on a discourse comparing the talks to similar events early in the twentieth century, where the ‘Century of Humiliation’ began, and where territories such as Hong Kong, Taiwan and Shaoshan were taken by colonial powers. Foregrounded is China’s ability now to end this humiliation. (shrink)

Social research techniques are a set of devices that contribute to the observation and knowledge of the social. Such devices are the subject of analysis in this article. The main argument that we hold is that increasingly innovation in design and use is required to better understand the complexity contained in social processes we studied, not succumbing to the formalization and crystallization of the same, but opening to movements that blur boundaries and open up new possibilities increasingly filled with everyday (...) observation. The youth as a metaphor for the social contains a good opportunity for the deployment of these ideas, especially in the possibility of addressing the confluence of biography and structure, when these individuals reflect on their future. With a qualitative method we investigate how young people from different social sectors are experiencing the output of secondary education in Chile. Further analysis on the technique used in this research allows us to offer the following thoughts. Las técnicas de investigación social constituyen un conjunto de dispositivos que contribuyen a la observación y conocimiento de lo social. Dichos dispositivos son el objeto de análisis del presente artículo. El argumento principal que sostenemos es que se requiere cada vez más innovación en su diseño y uso, para dar mejor cuenta de la complejidad contenida en los procesos sociales que estudiamos, no sucumbiendo ante la formalización y cristalización de las mismas, sino abriendo a movimientos que diluyan los límites y abran nuevas posibilidades cada vez más llenas de la cotidianidad del fenómeno en observación. Lo juvenil como metáfora de lo social, contiene una buena oportunidad para el despliegue de estas ideas, sobre todo en la posibilidad de provocar la confluencia de biografía y estructura, cuando estos sujetos reflexionan sobre su futuro. Con un método cualitativo indagamos sobre cómo jóvenes de diversos sectores sociales están experimentando la salida de la enseñanza media en Chile. Un análisis posterior sobre la técnica utilizada en dicha investigación, las decisiones que evidencian nuestras lógicas y prácticas investigativas, nos permite ofrecer las siguientes reflexiones. (shrink)

The media, perhaps more than any other slice of culture, influence what we think and talk about, what we take to be important, what we worry about. And this was especially true when news of Dolly hit the airwaves and newstands. Most Americans received training in the ethics of cloning before they knew what cloning was. Media coverage fixed the content and outline of the public moral debate, both revealing and creating the dominant public worries about cloning (...) humans. The primary characterization of cloning as an ethical issue centers around three connected concerns: the loss of human uniqueness and individuality, the pathological motivations of a cloner, and the fear of out‐of‐control scientists. (shrink)

This article describes a policy-driven project Marketing of unhealthy food directed to children, which represents the first extensive study of food and beverage advertising and marketing to children in Sweden. The project mapped out food and beverage advertisements directed to Swedish children to provide policymakers with current data about marketing trends to inform the debate concerning the regulation of food advertising in response to childhood obesity. The nature, number and placement of advertisements on television and in the internet that encourage (...) children to buy food and beverages were surveyed during one week in 2005 and 2007. The article summarizes the TV and Internet study results, stakeholder views and public opinion, and discusses the policy implications of digital media and the marketing of unhealthy food and beverages to Swedish children. (shrink)

Studies of mediation practices typically focus on parental mediation, but during adolescence parents’ impact decreases relative to that of peers. This study compares perceived parental and peer mediation in the context of media portrayals of risk behavior and adolescents’ perceptions thereof. A cross-sectional survey was conducted among 278 adolescents aged 12 to 17 (M = 14.18, SD = 1.62, 51.4 % girls) using Hayes’s process macro (model 4) to investigate direct and indirect associations between mediation, media-related cognitions, and (...) social norms. Findings indicate that perceived parental and peer mediation are related to adolescents’ media-related cognitions and perceived social norms in equally important but different ways. (shrink)

With the 21st century, we are witnessing the mass spread of the communication technologies and social media revolution. Interactive networks built on a global scale have led to the formation of a virtual world of reality that is connecting the whole world. With the global spread of communication networks, the question of whether social media points to a new public sphere has been raised. Social media applications such as Facebook, Twitter and Instagram are nowadays seen as a (...) place where political campaigns are carried out, causing the destruction of authoritarian regimes, organizing global protests and innovation culture, and discussing political, social and cultural changes. What gives social media a similar quality to the agora of Ancient Greek city-states is the characteristic of been a place where citizens come together and talk about issues that are considered to be public, eventhough in a virtual reality. This work, following the Arendtian sense, discusses whether social media really is a place where public issues are discussed, common ideas are produced and transparency prevails. In her work "The Human Condition", Arendt makes a fundamental distinction between private and public sphere based on human activities. By conceiving the activities that she describes as labour and work in relation to the private sphere, Arendt tackles the activity of action through linking it to public sphere. Arendt defines the public sphere as a sphere of freedom and a political sphere. The public sphere consists of equal people without hierarchy, who come together with their completely free will. According to Arendt, the condition for the public sphere to be possible is transparency and commonality. Firstly; it has a wide transparency in the sense that something have to be seen and heard by others, and the second is that it points to a common world that belongs to everyone, except for the part that is privately owned. Considering the public sphere in relation to the transparency not a direct transfer of things that happen in the private or intimate sphere. It is precisely related to the fact that something pertaining to the private exhibits a presence within the world of public and the fact that the private acquires a public chatacter. This does not mean that the public sphere is a sphere in which the private and intimate are directly transferred. According to Arendt, leading a private life as a whole will lead to the lack of what is necessary to be a true person. It also leads to the lack of a common world that unites and separates them. Arendt thinks that with the modern period, what belongs to the purely private and intimate sphere expands and causes the collapse of the public. The collapse of the public sphere in the modern period; It has caused both the loss of difference and interaction and the emergence of individuals who are increasingly alike, unable to think and act. In this kind of society, action has left its place to behavior, difference to standartization and thought to obedience. Arendt sees the public sphere as a sphere where public affairs are discussed, while the private sphere is a sphere where intimate and private activities take place. Arendt argues that with modern society the distinction between public and private has became indistinct , and as a third sphere, the social sphere has swallowed up both the public and the private. The social sphere has removed the distinction between the public transparency and commonality of the public and the privacy of the private sphere and activities. This study considers social media as a sphere where public issues are discussed. It also dıscusses the private sphere events and the most intimate issues. It claims that social media is not a new public sphere as it is cosidered, but it is a social sphere in which the distinction between private and public in the Arendtian sense is become indistinct. In this context, the study seeks to answer the following questions: How does the distinction between public and private spheres, which is central in Arendt's thought, look like in today’s world? Is it possible to talk about a public sphere in the modern age? Can social media be considered as a public sphere? Or is social media a sphere of freedom and a political sphere? Does social media allow discussions on public issues? Is social media a non-hierarchical nature open to the free participation of everyone, difference and plurality? (shrink)

Throughout art history, numerous artists have explored connections to science. In the society of today, the relationship between art and biology has been acquiring special visibility. Moreover, the current importance given to science and technology by today’s public opinion directly drives an increased awareness about the relationship between art and science. The public has been eagerly following breakthroughs in scientific research, albeit with mixed feelings: simultaneously awe, hope and fear for its potential misuse. Such awareness about biological sciences and biotechnology (...) has been having an increasing influence over artists, where the artist is no longer a mere observer of the scientific research and not quite a science researcher, but rather an art researcher. This particular position has led to the development of strategies to promote the exploration of possibilities deriving from a cross-talk between artists and scientists. This is a new art practice, based on a ‘risk-based’ situation; a timeless research strategy to develop new methods of practice, new media and new ways to manipulate materials for artistic expression. This is art research. During the twentieth century, the key scientific advances – such as the discovery of the DNA structure, in vitro fertilization, transgenesis or the sequencing of the human genome (in the twenty-first century) – were perceived by society in diverse ways. The progressive incorporation of those concepts by society itself led to a point where biology and the medical sciences became the most promising areas of science. It is therefore not surprising that those same scientific disciplines have marked the development of the artistic discourse in a tremendous fashion, as well as also influencing all other areas of the contemporary society. Furthermore, these artworks explore new media, described as ‘moist’ in that they integrate dry in silico computer components with wet living biological systems. (shrink)

All the utopian talk of information superhighways and the great media societies of the future helps to mask the fact that contemporary capitalist societies are in a situation of seemingly permanent crisis with increased human suffering due to deteriorating social conditions. In the United States, more than 34 million people live below the poverty level; over 3 million are homeless; over ten million are out of work; and millions lack basic health insurance and guaranteed medical care (Hoffman 1987).

The global COVID-19 pandemic has brought the issue of rationing finite healthcare resources to the fore. There has been much academic debate, media attention, and conversation in the homes of everyday individuals about the allocation of medical resources, diagnostic testing kits, ventilators, and personal protective equipment. Yet decisions to prioritize treatment for some individuals over others occur implicitly and explicitly in everyday practices. The pandemic has propelled the socially taboo and unavoidably prickly issue of healthcare rationing into the public (...) spotlight—and as such, healthcare rationing demands ongoing public attention and transparent discussion. This article concludes that in the aftermath of COVID-19, policymakers should work towards normalizing rationing discussions by engaging in transparent and honest debate in the wider community and public domain. Further, injecting greater openness and objectivity into rationing decisions might go some way towards dismantling the societal taboo surrounding rationing in healthcare. (shrink)

Many people assume that the topic of this paper -- namely, what the media does to ensure that knowledge is limited in a democracy -- is almost an obsolete topic, because with the internet and the proliferation of multiple other sources, it is really no longer the case that we are forced to rely upon a very small and homogenous set of sources. There's no denying that, theoretically at least, we all now have the ability -- at least those (...) of us with internet access have the ability -- to circumvent the media's control over the information that we receive and to deliberately seek out a much wider range of political perspective. The problem, though, is that the only way that one will do that is if one believes that there is actually a reason to do it. In order to be sufficiently motivated to seek out such information, one must believe that there is certain information that we are either not getting, or are being somehow impeded from accessing; or conversely, that the set of information that we do get from the American media and the dominant corporations that control media discussions provide a basically full and truthful picture of the world. We have a very recent, significant example, where most of us know that, in fact, our political knowledge and political information were extremely limited and distorted and manipulated:the run-up to the Iraq War. It wasn't just that people were mistaken, but rather, that information was controlled -- first by the government and then with the aid of the media. That fact has become a fairly mainstream view, because the control and the manipulation were so blatant that even the most mainstream sources were forced to talk about and confront it and acknowledge it. (shrink)

Firm–employee relationships are dependent on the wider societal context and on the role business plays in society. Changes in institutional arrangements in society affect the perceived responsibilities of firms to their personnel. In this study, we examine mass media discussions about firm–employee relationships from a social responsibility perspective via a longitudinal study in Romanian society. Our analysis indicates how the expected responsibilities of firms towards employees have altered with the changing role of firms in society since the early 1990s. (...) These transformations correspond to the ideological developments, from communist to market-based thinking, which have taken place in post-communist Eastern Europe. More specifically, our study shows how the diminishing expectations of corporate social responsibility (CSR) are linked in mass media to increasingly important talk of human resource management (HRM). HRM is a modern business approach believed to address personnel needs and organisational objectives simultaneously. The congruency of goals in HRM may mistakenly lead to the conclusion that organisations are inherently responsible toward their personnel. We argue that this may not necessarily be the case. HRM, matching well the new free-market ideology in post-communist Eastern Europe, was eagerly embraced in that it defined firm–personnel relationships. In this study, we question whether this was an adequate theoretical perspective for Romanian firms to adopt as it lacks sufficient ethical grounding. We also call for a higher awareness concerning the role of mass media in the management literature, since its current role in constructing the ‘rightness’ and ‘wrongness’ in firm–personnel relationships is hardly considered. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Journal of Aesthetic Education 37.4 (2003) 41-50 [Access article in PDF] Encounter Between Hyper-Media and Art Education:A Retrospection of Jean-Jacques Rousseau or Memories of Art and EducationToday both art and education are experiencing profound change as a result of emerging technologies. This essay attempts to redefine art education by considering the latest media art as the culmination of change in art. Statements about art education are (...) only viable in the meta-context of art, as art education must start with the work to objectify, as well as structure, "art." Atthe same time, these meta-statements can cast light on the "foundation" of art.Attempts to view the totality of art up to the present time from the "end" of history (meta) and questioning of the "beginning" of art and mankind (foundation) are two sides of the same phenomenon.Media art is an example of this phenomenon which reflects both the meta-context and foundation of art. For example, the work of Jean-Louis Boissier boasts both a radical as well as refined image. 1 His exhibition, "Salle Rousseau" further extends the scale of his conventional work based on the texts of Jean-Jacques Rousseau. 2 This essay revises the text written for the catalogue for the exhibition and aims at analyzing the close relationship between media art and art education, sketching the phases of [End Page 41] meta-statements and foundations which emerge as a result of the interaction of art, media, and education. A Place for Retrospection Boissier's work is well-known for its references to Rousseau. Having been involved in art education, it was natural for me to develop a strong interest in Rousseau, whom I consider to be a founder of modern art and education. The fact that the Boissier's exhibition was held at the "Kyoto Art Centre" in Muromachi, Kyoto supports this belief. Kyoto was the first place in Japan where primary schools based on the school district system were introduced. The Kyoto Art Centre is located at the former Meirin Primary School which was founded at the dawn of modern Japanese education. In its turn, Meirin Primary School succeeded Shingaku-juku. 3 Thus, the location for the BoissierExhibition, dating back to the very beginning of education in Japan, is a place that encourages reflection on the past.While Boissier recollects Rousseau with his unique interactive texts, Rousseau recollects his own past. We, the spectators, are immersed in multiple layers of memories and recollections. Sometimes, however, Rousseau's recollections break through the intricacy and multiple layers and appear to achieve a rapport with the people and flowers which once existed. I have long been attracted by the fresh literal expressions particularly evident in "The Confessions" and other works. The beauty of such expressions must have been born from his affectionate view of nature as illustrated by his hobby of plant collection. View of Nature I cannot help recalling Rousseau whenever I think about the relationship between nature and mankind. Rousseau was a person who could talk beautifully about the direct relationship between nature and mankind. In his writings of "Les riveries du promeneur solitaire" and "Quoted Passage," Rousseau recollects his peaceful life on St. Pierre Island in Lake Bieler in Switzerland where he spent nearly one and a half months after being deported from France as well as his hometown, Geneva because of problems caused by the publication of The Social Contract and Emile. For me, this text is inseparable from the looped image of shallow water which forms the background of the work entitled Flora petrinsularis (1993 and 1994) by Boissier.The beautiful text by Rousseau captivates us without any external help and, at the same time, shows what nature meant to him. The relationship with nature described here is the food as well as foundation of his life. This attitude of accepting nature in the deepest part of his mind is pure agreement with nature as pointed out by Jean Starobinski and represents an experience of fusion... (shrink)

We are all guilty of it. We call people terrible names in conversation or online. We vilify those with whom we disagree, and make bolder claims than we could defend. We want to be seen as taking the moral high ground not just to make a point, or move a debate forward, but to look a certain way--incensed, or compassionate, or committed to a cause. We exaggerate. In other words, we grandstand. Nowhere is this more evident than in public discourse (...) today, and especially as it plays out across the internet. To philosophers Justin Tosi and Brandon Warmke, who have written extensively about moral grandstanding, such one-upmanship is not just annoying, but dangerous. As politics gets more and more polarized, people on both sides of the spectrum move further and further apart when they let grandstanding get in the way of engaging one another. The pollution of our most urgent conversations with self-interest damages the very causes they are meant to forward. Drawing from work in psychology, economics, and political science, and along with contemporary examples spanning the political spectrum, the authors dive deeply into why and how we grandstand. Using the analytic tools of psychology and moral philosophy, they explain what drives us to behave in this way, and what we stand to lose by taking it too far. Most importantly, they show how, by avoiding grandstanding, we can re-build a public square worth participating in. (shrink)

Media studies as a field has traditionally been wary of the question of technology. Discussion of technology has often been restricted to relatively sterile debates about technological determinism. In recent times there has been renewed interest, however, in the technological dimension of media. In part this is doubtless due to rapid changes in media technology, such as the rise of the internet and the digital convergence of media technologies. But there are also an increasing number of (...) writers who seem to believe that media theory, and more widely social science and the humanities, needs to rethink the question of technology and its relationship to society, culture and cultural production. Andrew Feenberg has characterized the two most dominant positions as, on the one hand, the social constructivist or 'technology studies' approach to technology, and, on the other, 'substantivist' theories of technology. The social constructivist approach, aims to counter technological determinism by showing how the development of technology is shaped not by technical and scientific progress but by contingent social, cultural and economic forces. The limitation of this view, however, is that it tends to see technology as no different from any other social process and it may lose the ability to distinguish between the technical object and any other social formation or cultural artefact. Doubtless constructivism would like to see technology as a subset of the cultural artefact and not vice versa, therefore explaining technology in terms of culture and society. But there are powerful arguments for arguing something like the opposite: in other words for understanding culture and society in terms of or as technical objects. In recent years this argument has been put most forcefully by the French philosopher Bernard Stiegler and it is to his work and its implications for media theory that this essay is dedicated. In particular I will show how Stiegler might defend his ideas around technics from the charge of technological determinism. Firstly, technics is not understood in the narrow sense of techno-scientific technology but in the wider sense of all the ways in which the human is exteriorised into artefacts or organized inorganic matter. Technics in this sense is therefore inseparable from culture and society and it makes no sense either to talk of technics determining culture and society or vice versa. Culture and society are not constituted by technics as if by a cause but rather constituted through it. Secondly, a technics in Stiegler's sense does not represent scientific progress or a deterministic evolution; rather, however strange this may seem, technics is a kind of pure accidentality or contingency. For Stiegler it is because of the exteriorisation of the human into artefacts or inorganic organized matter that culture and society constitute themselves contingently. Stiegler's work therefore offers a way for us to rethink the relationship between culture and technology in ways which can productively reconfigure the concerns of critical theory. (shrink)

Large organizations, including listed businesses, financial service providers as well as public services entities are increasingly disclosing information on their environmental, social and governance (ESG) issues through corporate websites or via social media. Therefore, this research uses valid measures from the Elaboration Likelihood Model (ELM) to explore the individuals’ attitudes toward online corporate social responsibility (CSR) communications. The data were gathered from a structured questionnaire among three hundred ninety‐two respondents (n = 392). A structural equations modeling partial least squares (...) (SEM‐PLS 3) approach was used to analyze the data. The findings revealed that the timeliness, relevance and accuracy of information as well as the source expertise were highly significant antecedents that were affecting the research participants’ attitudes toward CSR communications. This contribution implies that there is scope for content curators to publish quality online information on their business activities to improve their trustworthiness and positive credentials among stakeholders. (shrink)

Large organizations, including listed businesses, financial service providers as well as public services entities are increasingly disclosing information on their environmental, social and governance (ESG) issues through corporate websites or via social media. Therefore, this research uses valid measures from the Elaboration Likelihood Model (ELM) to explore the individuals’ attitudes toward online corporate social responsibility (CSR) communications. The data were gathered from a structured questionnaire among three hundred ninety‐two respondents (n = 392). A structural equations modeling partial least squares (...) (SEM‐PLS 3) approach was used to analyze the data. The findings revealed that the timeliness, relevance and accuracy of information as well as the source expertise were highly significant antecedents that were affecting the research participants’ attitudes toward CSR communications. This contribution implies that there is scope for content curators to publish quality online information on their business activities to improve their trustworthiness and positive credentials among stakeholders. (shrink)

Increasingly, social media platforms are understood by researchers to be valuable sites of politically-relevant discussions. However, analyses of social media data are typically undertaken by focusing on ‘snapshots’ of issues using query-keyword search strategies. This paper develops an alternative, less issue-based, mode of analysing Twitter data. It provides a framework for working qualitatively with longitudinally-oriented Twitter data, and uses an empirical case to consider the value and the challenges of doing so. Exploring how Twitter users place “everyday” (...) class='Hi'>talk around the socio-political issue of UK welfare provision, we draw on digital ethnography and narrative analysis techniques to analyse 25 user-timelines and identify three distinctions in users’ practices: users’ engagements with welfare as TV entertainment or as a socio-political concern; the degree of sustained engagement with said issues, and; the degree to which users’ tweeting practices around welfare were congruent with or in contrast to their other tweets. With this analytic orientation, we demonstrate how a longitudinal analysis of user-timelines provides rich resources that facilitate a more nuanced understanding of user engagement in everyday socio-political discussions online. (shrink)

Populist representation is the process by which a body or set of bodies become the signifier of a powerful act of political transgression of the social order. We call this specific type of representative linkage ‘synecdochal representation’. In it, the leader’s body performs three key functions: it mirrors certain popular traits that are characterized as ‘low’, it displays marks of exceptionality, and it appropriates symbols of institutional power. These tasks are performed through particular ways of acting, dressing, talking, eating, and (...) the like, in public. Social media has become a key locus for bodily self-presentation because it is used to create the appearance of intimacy and spontaneity through the distribution of ‘candid’ pictures and videos. This paper will analyze how the self-presentation of populist and non-populist leaders are established through Twitter, what images they choose to disseminate, and how they are re-signified by the audience. To do so, we will focus on the two Latin American politicians: Cristina Fernández (with a populist style) and Mauricio Macri (with a technocratic one). (shrink)

This article analyses the orientation of gaze as a significant communicative resource in televised political interviews. The study explores how interviewees use their gaze, in coordination with talk, in receiving and answering adversarial questions. It is guided by conversation analysis, Goffman’s work on gaze in interaction, and the approach on embodied actions developed primarily by Goodwin. Gaze is described as a flexible recipient and speaker resource available for stance-taking, the downgrading and upgrading of actions, and the claiming of the (...) floor. The study is based on taped and transcribed data from two formats of election campaign interviews on Swedish television, including 350 question and response sequences. (shrink)

The growing influence of the visual media in contemporary society is quite alarming; hence, learning to explicate them is inevitable. This is a paradigm shift from verbal argumentation to visual argumentation. The aim of this article is to contribute to the understanding of visual analysis and visual literacy, a part of discourse analysis. Visuals employ a number of rhetorical devices; however, understanding the effectiveness of these devices is still a challenge. Adopting Visual Argumentation Theory, the article analyzes argumentation in (...) cartoons on the post-election violence that rocked Kenya in 2007/2008. From the analyses, it is concluded that visuals can argue as simply and forcefully as their verbal counterparts. The blending of caricature and portraiture makes them even more explicit as portraiture denotes the characters so that we can recognize who they are; caricature ridicules them, analogy attributes actions to them in a satirical or sarcastic way, and cultural memory is needed to access the reference to the analogies. Visuals are designed to make the reader think not only about the event or the people being portrayed but also about the message being communicated. This means visuals have the ability to stretch the truth beyond caricature or mere amusement. (shrink)

Increasing numbers of news organizations have formal codes of ethics for their personnel. This paper looks at the content of media ethics codes, how these codes are written and what comprises a news organization's fixed value system. Results show that many written policies were devised in recent years, and a noticeable number of other news organizations said they have firmly established unwritten policies. The written codes represented in this survey clearly draw lines around certain activities and label them as (...) acceptable or unacceptable for journalists. Teaching, unpaid appearances (such as on a television talk show), and participation in charitable activities are outside interests more acceptable than political activities in behalf of another person, or holding elected or appointed office. Certain activities which remain as unfinished business include: uniformity of enforcement, management ethics, financial interests, and spouse or friend conflict of interest. (shrink)

While the mainstreaming of the far right is attracting growing scholarly interest based on its contemporary relevance, the role that far-right self-representation strategies play in this process has seen limited engagement. In this article, we argue that far-right actors employ a post-fascist logic to bring their ideas closer to the mainstream. This logic rests on a dual message, whereby they attempt to outwardly distance themselves from fascism while at the same time recontextualising fascist ideas. To explore these dynamics, we use (...) a mixed-methods approach to discourse analysis to examine far-right social media posts during the 2022 Italian general election. Taking all Facebook, Instagram and Twitter posts during the official campaigning period from the party and leader accounts of Lega per Salvini Premier and Fratelli d’Italia, we explored articulations of the post-fascist dyad within this context. Our findings underscore how both far-right parties ridiculed accusations of fascism and depicted themselves as ‘centre-right’, yet they commonly used fascist dog-whistles and violent anti-immigration discourse to construct a broader conspiracy narrative and portray themselves as Italy's saviour. While Italy proves a paradigmatic case, this research has wider implications for the need to explore the relationship between self-representation and mainstreaming. (shrink)

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to foreground the importance of context in discourse analysis by drawing on a study of online gender talk on Facebook in India. Design/methodology/approach Using Foucauldian discourse analysis (FDA), this study explored participants’ use of language to construct and perform various identities in online gender talk. This study discusses the methods used and challenges in analyzing digital spaces through FDA, focusing specifically on the importance of an ethnographic perspective to contextualize online (...) class='Hi'>talk. Findings Engagement with the larger socio-cultural context of the subject of study through various data collection methods enhanced our understanding of the contexts behind text. It helped the authors to explore the data from multiple directions from a Foucauldian framework. This study found that people constructed a “progressive” identity when talking about gender on Facebook. Originality/value There are very few studies combining discourse analysis and digital ethnography and this paper seeks to do that. Digital ethnography helps to look beyond the text and locate text in the larger socio-cultural context. To emphasize the importance of context in discourse analysis, this study engages with both online and offline data as online talk is connected with offline contexts in many significant ways. In this paper, the authors provide a description on various methodological steps used to collect and analyze online data using FDA. (shrink)

Past research on talk radio discourses has illustrated the crucial role of the hosts in managing the conversation and shaping the voices of callers. However, past research focused mostly on dyadic host–caller interactions. Radio talk shows in Hong Kong, in contrast, often have more than one host. This study is interested in the implications of the triadic setting of radio talk shows in Hong Kong. It uses Radio Television Hong Kong’s evening program Open Line Open View as (...) a case study. Employing the techniques of conversation analysis, this study replicates some of past studies’ findings about the source of host power. More importantly, the analysis shows that the second host in a triadic setting can play three important roles: the program conductor, the buffer, and the counterweight. The micro-level interactional patterns have important implications for the overall character of the program itself and the role of talk radio in the politics of public opinion in Hong Kong. More generally, this study illustrates the utility of paying attention to the differences between dyads and triads in the microsociological analysis of conversations in broadcast media. (shrink)