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On 8 March 2017 Ben O'Loughlin will begin a Media and Communication Fellowship at the University of Canterbury, Christchurch in New Zealand. Ben will be based in the School of Languages, Social and Political Sciences.
Ben is currently part of the C3EU project based at Canterbury investigating media and information flows in Ukraine and Israel/Palestine, funded by a Jean Monnet Network Grant.
Thanks to Babak Bahador for sponsoring Ben's visit.
Shelley Boulianne, "Twenty Years, Thirty-five Countries: Digital Media Effects on Participation"
Popular and academic discourses characterize the effects of digital media as revolutionary, but the true effects are blurred by a multiplicity of studies with conflicting results. This meta-analysis project examines almost 300 studies conducted on the relationship between digital media use and participation in civic and political life across the globe. Unlike other meta-analysis in this field (Boulianne, 2009, 2015; Skoric et al., 2016 a,b), the focus of this analysis is at the study-level. The focus on study-level analysis, combined with a large sample of studies, allows for an examination of how the effects of digital media change across time and how the effects differ across the globe. As digital media use increases, are the effects growing? Do the effects increase gradually or is there a period marking a dramatic or revolutionary change in effects? Finally, to what extent can we discuss the global effects of digital media? Can the pattern of effects be explained by political system, the degree of press freedom, or geographic region? This research seeks to bring structure to the multitude of studies in this field of research and provide clarity in this area of research. Clarifying findings will help devise culturally-appropriate strategies to optimize the use of digital media in civic and political life. This research can inform civic organizations, governments and political campaigns' investments in digital media.
Shelley Boulianne is Associate Professor of Sociology at MacEwan University. She studies the impact of the internet on democratic practices, citizens’ engagement in deliberative events, and generational shifts in community attachment and social capital and its impact on patterns of civic and political engagement.
Date: March 8, 2017
Time: 2pm-3pm
Location: Windsor 0-02
Leaders on all sides of the Iran dispute were truly transmedial as they tried to build support for the deal
Ben O'Loughlin and Alister Miskimmon will present a paper The Visual Diplomacy of the Iran Deal on 20 January 2017 at The Oxford Digital Diplomacy Working Group's Workshop in Images and Narratives. The topic they address is: how could the EU and IAEA lead long-time enemies Iran and the US to a deal in 2015 on Iran's nuclear programme? In their paper they show how the leading players - Kerry, Zarif, Khamenei, and Mogherini - used social media to visualise momentum and the inevitability of a deal. They show how these visuals kept a focus on scientific and economic cooperation and away from religious or geopolitical conflict. Finally, they trace how journalists were cut out of the loop so that domestic tensions could be sidestepped. This allowed a deal, but did the failure to fully explain the deal to publics in the US, Europe and Iran mean support for cooperation could be unravelled in years to come?
The full programme is below.
9:30 AM Welcome Remarks & Workshop Rationale - Mr. Ilan Manor and Dr. Rhys Crilley
9:45 AM Narratives and Images in Digital Diplomacy
. Images of #givingtoindia: Iconographies of transnational modernity in India’s Digital
Diaspora Diplomacy. Jennifer Dickinson (University of Winchester)
. Telling NATO’s story of Afghanistan: TakingSeriously the alliance’s digital diplomacy. Katherine Wright (University of Winchester)
. We Need a Hero! Just crusaders and vengeful villains in the post-heroic age. Julian Schmid (University of Warwick)
. The iconic FCO- On the Use of Iconic Imagery in British Digital Diplomacy. Ilan Manor (University of Oxford)
. Seeing Syria: The National Coalition of Syrian Revolution and Opposition Forces on Facebook. Dr. Rhys Crilley (University of Warwick)
11:30 AM Coffee Break
11: 45 AM Narratives and Images- From Trump to Iran
. From Trump to Daesh: The end of taken for grantedness and the digital production of narratives. Jan Wilkens (University of Hamburg)
. The Visual Diplomacy of the Iran Deal. Ben O’Loughlin (Royal Holloway) Alister Miskimmon (Royal Holloway)
. The Practitioners View. Alicia Kearns (Global Influence, FCO)
. Summary and Conclusions. Corneliu Bjola (University of Oxford)
Thanks to Ilan Manor, Rhys Crilley and Corneliu Bjola for organising the workshop.
This week’s PIR Research Seminar will feature Akil N. Awan from Royal Holloway’s History Department and Newpolcom.
Akil N. Awan is Senior Lecturer in Modern History, Political Violence and Terrorism at Royal Holloway, University of London, and Senior Fellow with the Center for Global Policy. His research interests are focused around the history of terrorism, radicalization, social movements, protest, and new media. He has served in an advisory capacity to the United Nations, UNDP, UK Home Office, the Foreign Office, the US State Dept., the US Defense Dept., the US Military, Council of Europe, NATO and the OSCE amongst others. His books include Radicalisation and Media: Terrorism and Connectivity in the New Media Ecology (with Andrew Hoskins & Ben O’Loughlin: 2011, Routledge), and Jihadism Transformed: al‐Qaeda and Islamic State’s Global Battle of Ideas (2016, Hurst/OUP). He is on Twitter: @Akil_N_Awan
The seminar takes place on Tuesday 17 January in room FW101 and runs from 5.15 to 6.30. All welcome!
A new volume Image Operations is out, including a chapter from NewPolCom's Ben O'Loughlin entitled 'Images of the World, Images of Conflict'. The book features an outstanding group of scholars of visual politics, including W.J.T. Mitchell, Zeynep Gursel, Nicholas Mirzoeff and Timothy Lenoir. Edited by Jens Eder and Charlotte Klonk, the book is published by Manchester University Press. Below is a summary of Ben's chapter.
Images of the World, Images of Conflict - Ben O'Loughlin
In the short story Pascale's Sphere Borges wrote, “universal history is the history of a few metaphors.” The history of world politics certainly seems marked by a few recurring concepts and metaphors: the universal and the particular, the inside and the outside, the balance of power, and the ideal of symmetry and actuality of chaos. Across eras, these concepts have shaped the image of world politics held by leaders, citizens and scholars. Such concepts are abstract but become visualized through diplomacy, war and cartography and through the lived experience of world affairs. For critical scholars of International Relations, these concepts and the images they translate into are responsible for conflict, for they become concrete in the states, borders and security dilemmas that propel us from conflict to conflict. It follows that there is a relationship between “the image of world politics” and actual visual images of world politics; between abstract, conceptual understandings of the ontology and mechanics of International Relations and the horrific news and events we witness every day. Borges concludes his story, ‘Perhaps universal history is the history of the various intonations of a few metaphors.’ If so, we are doomed to variations on the same bleak events and the practice of international relations is ultimately tragic, as many of its founders believed.
Amber Macintyre, a PhD student here at newpolcom, received an honorable mention for the James Thomas Memorial Prize, awarded by the Media and Politics Group of the Political Studies Association to the best paper presented by a PhD student at the Group's annual conference. The 2016 conference was held at the London School of Economics on December 12-13. Amber's paper is titled "The culture of data: The help and hindrance of modern political philosophy".
Amber's research is funded by the Leverhulme Trust. In 2015, Royal Holloway was awarded over £1 million from the Trust to support a total of 15 PhD research projects on the theme of Freedom and the Rights of the Individual in the Digital Age.
Here is Amber's paper abstract:
The culture of data has provoked a sense of crisis since its initial popularisation in the 1960s. From the start, academics and civil rights groups, concerned with the impact of dataveillance on democratic rights, have called for urgent decisions to be made on ethical standards. Since then, data availability has grown in capacity and quality; individuals, organisations and government have greater dependence on technical expertise, resulting in a shift in power in the favour of data companies and data scientists. Despite this, and the ongoing criticism, ethical responsibilities have been neglected and a consistent code of ethics is yet to form.
In the last few years, and particularly after the Snowden revelations, more citizens are becoming concerned with the negative impacts of big data on democratic life while simultaneously becoming dependent on data for everyday living. The tension between technological progress and the need for an ethical code remains dichotomous and seemingly unsolvable. Foundational theories of modern political philosophy have both helped shape and explain democratic structures. In this research, these same theories are used to frame the analysis of big data literature so far. The findings are two-fold. Firstly, the seeming dichotomy between data practice and ethical concerns can be understood by considering theories of democracy. Secondly, new challenges of data doubles, machine learning and the ‘technocrats’ of data uncover drawbacks of these political theories.
Dan Jackson, convenor of the PSA Media and Politics Group, congratulates Amber on her honorable mention.
Dr Akil Awan has appeared in front of the House of Lords Select Committee on Communications and was taking part into the government's inquiry Children and the Internet to give evidence on young people's political use of the Internet. Several other high-profile companies and individuals have spoken to the inquiry, including representatives from Google, Facebook, the BBC, Ofcom and Sky.
In a wide ranging discussion, Dr Awan spoke on the risks, challenges and opportunities that the Internet and in particular, immersion in social media and web 2.0 platforms posed to young people. On the subject of online radicalisation, he suggested that "the idea of online radicalisation as being the most important issue facing us has largely been debunked in academia; there aren't any real cases of completely autonomous online radicalisation. Children live in real worlds. In online and offline worlds simultaneously, so it's a bit like pathologising the internet [to say it's responsible for radicalising children]."
However, he also recognised the role the Internet had played in enabling the growth of violent extremism by providing spaces online that cocooned audiences from alternative viewpoints. These echo chambers then allowed the circulation of extremist ideologies without being challenged or contested, and were conducive to the growth of political radicalism. He pointed to the recent US presidential election as an important example of the effectiveness of these sorts of spaces, pointing to the proliferation and circulation of patently false news on Facebook, which had contributed in part to the creation of a ‘post-factual’ politics.
When asked by the committee, what more the ICT industry could do to monitor and prevent access to extremist material, he argued that “there are a whole host of things we might do that are not necessarily about censoring content and online spaces, but rather about how young people engage with them. That is the key. We have to think about the role schools play in developing critical thinking and young people’s abilities, and teaching them methods and skills so that they can weigh evidence and contextualise the knowledge they receive, and engage with it in a much more sophisticated and nuanced way. That is fundamental. It involves digital literacy and media literacy, too.”
He also argued that schools had a role to play in other ways by teaching students history and politics, such as the Crusades or colonialism, in a much more nuanced and sophisticated way, so that when they encountered very tendentious, skewed and polarised views of the world or history online, they were equipped with the tools and their own internal resource to challenge and contest these ideas at in any way. It would almost be like providing some kind of inoculation against very poisonous messages.
He also suggested that “schools should do more to promote progressive and inclusive ideas of citizenship, belonging and civic identity. We tend to think that political socialisation begins when children turn 18, but it does not; it is a continuous process. If someone feels that the Iraq war was unjust and carried out for ulterior motives, you might not be able to change their mind cognitively but you might teach them how they might respond politically. Teach them that there are other ways. Teach them political socialisation and how they might be part of their community and the political process. That can be quite helpful. If you teach those sorts of things at school, you are dealing with some of the problems quite early on.”
When asked to assess the government’s counter-terrorism strategy, he suggested that the Prevent duty and the Counter-Terrorism and Security Act 2015, had become unworkable and was now considered a toxic brand in the communities it desperately need to have on board for it to work. He also argued that the Prevent duty which creates a statutory duty for those in the public sector to spot the early signs of radicalisation had been quite problematic for all sorts of reasons, particularly for children. He said, “there has not been sufficient training of those in the public sector about how they might spot the signs of radicalisation, whatever that might mean. Just before I came, I printed off the Government’s vulnerability assessment framework, which is one of the things they use to identify the signs of radicalisation; I want to refer to four that relate to young people in particular. One is being at a transitional time of life; another is a need for identity, meaning and belonging; another is a desire for excitement and adventure; and another is a desire for political or moral change. There are others, but those things could apply not only to every student in this country but to every child on the planet. When there is such a broad swathe of risk factors, or things that might predispose you to recognise a radical, it becomes almost nonsensical. We have seen a number of referrals under Prevent, and they do not get followed through, because we are talking about false positives. And really what we are doing then, is looking at markers of religiosity, and often ethnic-based, which is one of the reasons why the National Union of Students has refused to implement Prevent.”
He further argued that “young people need to be allowed to explore ideas, particularly at university. There is now a statutory duty on university lecturers like myself to report anything that could tick some of those boxes, but universities are supposed to be safe spaces in which you can explore ideas, and make mistakes politically and ideologically. There is the famous adage that if you are not a radical when you are young you have no soul, and if you are still a radical when you are old you have no sense. That is part of our political socialisation. We go through that process as young people.”
You can watch the session in full here.
The ECREA 6th European Communication Conference kicks off on 9 November in Prague, featuring keynotes from Peter Dahlgren, Sabina Mihelj, Joanna Zylinksa and Rasmum Kleis Nielsen. NewPolCom's Ben O'Loughlin is taking part in a panel on Saturday the 12th that brings together research on strategic narratives with historical research on memory in international politics. Panel details below. Do join if you are at ECREA!
Power and the contestation of the past: memories, legacies and strategic narratives in international perspective
Saturday 12 November 2016
11:00 – 12:30 Meeting Room 225
Panellists: Ben O’Loughlin (with Alister Miskimmon), Eric Sangar, Keren Tenenboim-Weinblatt, Aleksandra Krstic, and Judith Lohner.
With his seminal book on “The invention of tradition” the historian Eric Hobsbawm fundamentally changed the way in which scholars approach the past. Rather than being a sequence of objective events, history came to be understood as a social construction, emerging from narratives and interpretations generated by the stories told by people, official rituals of memorization and even the symbolic environment of artefacts and everyday objects. In the constructivist view, history is fluid, malleable and ambiguous and thus open to evaluative contestation and re-invention. Current conflicts and social transformations frequently trigger the search for meaning and explanation in historical events, thereby re-inventing how the past is understood. It can therefore be argued that the present shapes the past as much as the past shapes the course of present events.
Most of the existing research focuses on the role of collective memories in the formation of social and cultural identities. Less attention has been given to narratives of the past that utilize historical frames in order to achieve political goals. Moreover, we know very little about the role of frames of the past in international politics where different narratives intersect, compete and collide.
The papers of this panel aim to address these gaps by addressing the strategic role of history and collective memories in processes of power struggles and contested politics in the context of international relations and global developments. All studies presented in this panel focus on particular moments of rupture and discontinuity: Two papers (Krstic and Milojevic; Lohner, Banjac and Neverla) explore how the regime transition from authoritarianism to democracy is interpreted and contested in public discourses. Two other papers (Baden and Tenenboim-Weinblatt; Sangar) use sophisticated methodologies to investigate conflict discourses in different Western and non-Western contexts. And O’Loughlin and Miskimmon the role of strategic narratives in international negotiations. In all cases, the framing of the past played a crucial role in the dynamics and outcomes of the contestation. However, while there are clear indications that the mobilisation of the past perpetuates and intensifies conflict, there is evidence that the past can also serve as a force to broker consensus and reconciliation.
Another theme that runs through the five papers of this panel is the role of the media and journalism in constructing the past. In ongoing conflicts and social upheavals the media serve as a forum where narratives of the past are remediated and reinterpreted. Periods of social and political discontinuities therefore fundamentally challenge the position of journalism and journalists, forcing them to forge new professional identities between the legacies of the past and the changing realities of the present.
Taken together, this panel provides insights into the role of narratives of the past in contemporary conflicts and power struggles. The analysis of international conflicts and global ruptures helps to understand the ambivalent role of history frames as both a polarizing and a bridging force. Furthermore, the studies presented open up new avenues for future research in an emerging field.
Thanks to Katrin Voltmer and Davor Marco for organising this panel.
Ben will also be chair and discussant for the panel Performing Military Identities and Communities Through the Media. This features a fantastic line-up of researchers in the field of media and conflict: Katharine Millar, Sarah Maltby, Lisa Silvestri, Maria Hellman, and Katy Parry. Do join at 16:00 - 17:30 on Saturday 12th November at the venue Terrace 2.
Journalistic Representations of Jeremy Corbyn in the British Press: From “Watchdog” to ”Attackdog”
Dr Bart Cammaerts, London School of Economics and Political Science
Wednesday, 9 November
Windsor-0-05
4-5:30pm
We hope to see you there!
A new article by Cristian Vaccari on how mobilization messages received via email and social media may affect political participation has just been published in the high-impact journal Political Communication.
Based on unique survey data collected as part of a large comparative project funded by the Italian Ministry of Education, Dr Vaccari found that citizens who receive messages via email or social media inviting them to vote for a party or candidate are substantially more likely to engage in a variety of political activities besides voting, even after controlling for most known covariates of political participation and even after pre-processing the data to take into account self-selection biases in who receives online mobilization messages, and recalls receiving them.
The full abstract of the article, available here, reads as follows:
This study analyzes the relationship between online voter mobilization and political engagement in Germany, Italy, and the United Kingdom during the 2014 European election campaign. Internet surveys of samples representatives of these countries’ populations with Internet access show that respondents who received an invitation to vote for a party or candidate via e-mail or social media engaged in a significantly higher number of political activities than those who did not. Moreover, the relationship between mobilization and engagement was stronger among those who followed the campaign less attentively, as well as in countries where overall levels of engagement with the campaign were lower (Germany and the United Kingdom) than where they were higher (Italy). These findings indicate that online mobilization may contribute to closing gaps in political engagement at both individual and aggregate levels, and thus suggest that digital media may contribute to reviving democratic citizenship.
The article is part of a special issue on "Digital Politics: Mobilization, Engagement, and Participation", co-edited by Karolina Koc-Michalska and Darren Lilleker.
