Elinor Carmi has been appointed Teaching Fellow in Political Communication for 12 months from 1 September 2017. Elinor completes her PhD this month at Goldsmiths and is Visiting Lecturer at Winchester School of Art. Her primary interest is in sound and politics. She has published on themes of digital rights, activism, gender, and internet governance as well as a book TranceMission: The Psytrance Culture in Israel 1989-99. She is also a regular organiser of events and workshops. More details at her blog and Twitter.
Media, War & Conflict journal goes to four issues a year
Sage publishers have announced that the journal Media, War & Conflict will expand from three to four issues per year from 2018. The journal was launched in 2008 and this expansion indicates the journal has achieved a solid readership. The submission rate of research articles continues to increase and the journal is now listed in the Emerging Sources Citation Index (ESCI) within the Web of Science. With some excellent forthcoming special issues, the next decade for the journal looks extremely healthy.
Media, War & Conflict's current lead editor is Ben O'Loughlin; co-editors are Sarah Maltby, Katy Parry and Laura Roselle, and reviews editor is Debra Ramsey.
Best thesis award for James Dennis, @newpolcom PhD, at American Political Science Association
James Dennis has won the best PhD thesis award 2016-17 by the American Political Science Association's (APSA) Information Technology and Politics section. Dr. Dennis is now Senior Lecturer at the University of Portsmouth's School of Journalism. His thesis was supervised by Professors Andrew Chadwick and Ben O'Loughlin. Award panel member Ben Epstein added it was 'A theoretically, methodologically, & substantively rich dissertation'.
New article published on #PrayforParis and #PrayforSyria debates
Ben O'Loughlin, Cristian Vaccari, Billur Aslan and James Dennis have published a new article in Middle East Journal of Culture and Communication, Twitter and Global Political Crises: Cycles of Insecurity in #PrayforParis and #PrayforSyria. In the days and weeks after the Paris attacks in November 2015, the authors expected to find Twitter debates containing these hashtags to see users conflating migration, terrorism and social media in apportioning blame either for the attacks or for how users responded to the attacks. Instead of antagonism, however, we found high degrees of civility and agonistic exchanges of substantive claims and counter-claims.
We hope you will enjoy the article. If you cannot access it directly, email Ben.OLoughlin@rhul.ac.uk for a copy.
Abstract
This study examines social media responses to the 13 November 2015 Paris attacks by the Islamic State. First impressions of over 2,000,000 tweets containing hashtags #PrayforParis and #PrayforSyria suggested a conflation of three issues: (1) Migration: were the attackers homegrown or carrying overseas passports? (2) Violence: why was Paris attacked and why is France bombing the Islamic State? (3) Media: what role should mainstream and social media play during events that are local and global, unique and yet part of a series? However, instead of conflating media, migration and terrorism, we found users of both hashtags discussing Syria, foreign policy, and justice and fairness. Building on previous research exploring how social media affordances encourage certain communication behaviors, we test whether Twitter’s reply function is more conducive to antagonistic comments than retweets, which we hypothesise allow for an expression of solidarity and universalism. Conversations about Syria contain greater antagonism, explained by aspects of the tweet, user and network effects. The #PrayforParis and #PrayforSyria conversations exhibit neither the contestation of global attention nor a media-driven cycle of insecurity. The high frequency of agonistic and non-visual tweets, particularly about Syria, suggests a robust exchange of claims, refuting pessimistic depictions of Twitter as a space for superficiality and hate.
Thank you to Dina Matar of SOAS for convening the journal's special issue on Communication and Conflict. We would like to thank Marie Gillespie for her help theorising cycles of insecurity, and Deen Freelon for the use of ReCal.
August 2017 issue of Media, War & Conflict is published
The August 2017 issue of Media, War & Conflict has been published, with a great collection of research articles on historical and contemporary themes as well as some insightful book reviews.
Media, War & Conflict - Volume: 10, Number: 2 (August 2017)
Articles
Mark Major - The Dan Rather Maxim: Collective identity and news coverage of human rights and international law
Kathrin Maurer - Visual power: The scopic regime of military drone operations
Delphine Letort - Conspiracy culture in Homeland (2011–2015)
Øyvind Kalnes, Eva Bakøy - Diffused peace facilitation and the cosmopolitan filmmaker’s dilemma
Jacob Groshek, Lanier Frush Holt - When official consensus equals more negativity in media coverage: Broadcast television news and the (re-)indexing of the ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ repeal
Martin Kerby - A Shared Rhetoric: The Western Front in 1914/15 as reported by Harry Gullett and Philip Gibbs
Marc Jungblut, Abit Hoxha - Conceptualizing journalistic self-censorship in post-conflict societies: A qualitative perspective on the journalistic perception of news production in Serbia, Kosovo and Macedonia
Guy Richard Hodgson - Nurse, martyr, propaganda tool: The reporting of Edith Cavell in British newspapers 1915–1920
Book reviews
James Rodgers - Book review: Reporting Dangerously: Journalist Killings, Intimidation and Security
Nathaniel Brunt - Book review: Libyan Sugar
The editorial team (Ben O'Loughlin, Sarah Maltby, Laura Roselle, Katy Parry) send thanks as ever to editorial assistant Nic Barsdorf-Liebchen and all the team at Sage.
Congratulations to Dr. Matthew Hall - PhD on surveillance
On Tuesday 6 June 2017 Matt Hall successfully defended his PhD thesis, coming away with typographical corrections only. His examiners were Martin Coward (Reader, University of Manchester) and Lee Jarvis (Professor, University of East Anglia). Matt was supervised by Jonathan Seglow and Ben O'Loughlin. He was the winner of an ESRC DTC scholarship. Please find details below of his excellent thesis.
Liberal Democratic Surveillance: Rules, Legitimacy and the Institutionalisation of Domination
The proliferation of public debate around surveillance over the past couple of decades has been marked by defeat for those objecting to it. This thesis sets out to understand not what harms surveillance brings to values held dear to liberal democracy - like privacy, liberty and political rights to protest - but instead, why it is that surveillance is so widespread in societies that values these things.
Most public and liberal objections to surveillance commonly seek to use liberal values like privacy and liberty on the one hand, and democratic values such as equality on the other, to shield against the harms that surveillance can bring. Surveillance is seen broadly as an external harm to liberal and democratic values, and commonly the task of study is to identify instances where surveillance is perceived to be going wrong, being excessively harmful, being used disproportionately, or is mistaken. These kinds of common objections, confident in the role liberal values can play, implicitly hold that surveillance, when properly limited and justified, is nothing to be fearful of. I argue instead that liberal democratic values are implicated in surveillance, not independent protections against it. If rules govern how liberal democratic values are protected and/or violated then surveillance, as a ‘technique for securing full compliance with a given set of institutional rules’ (as I will define it), is inextricably part of the institutionalisation of liberal and democratic values. Drawing on ‘realist’ insights into institutional rule making, I seek to explain how value-laden rules, which guide surveillance into practice, are politically contested. If we want to understand the expansion of surveillance, and over whom it is most harmfully applied, we need to understand the politics behind the rules that surveillance enforces.
O'Loughlin to speak in Glasgow on Trump's Handshakes
Donald Trump and Justin Trudeau, 13 February 2017. (Wikimedia Commons)
On 14 June 2017 the University of Glasgow is convening a symposium, Trump and the Media. The organisers Catherine Happer and Andrew Hoskins write: This symposium brings together speakers from journalism and from academia to explore the social, economic, technological and political implications of President Donald Trump’s media use and relations, his self-proclaimed ‘war’ on mainstream news organizations and the role of digital technologies in his campaign and Presidency. To register to attend, click here.
NewPolCom's Ben O'Loughlin will present an analysis of the handshakes of the current US president. Details below:
Trump's Handshakes: Diplomatic Stand-offs in the Global Media
Ben O'Loughlin, Royal Holloway, University of London
After an Obama administration committed to "unclenching fists" in diplomatic affairs, global media have in 2017 reported President Trump using his hands to greet leaders with renewed American vigour. I argue these diplomatic encounters can be conceptualised as stand-offs: moments of uncertainty when nobody quite knows what will happen, including the people shaking hands. These moments are instructive. Following Wagner-Pacifici (2000: 3, emphasis in original) I treat stand-offs as 'action in the subjunctive mood': witnesses hypothesise about likely outcomes and their speculation is tinged with emotion - doubt, hope, fear. As Trump grabs the hands of Trudeau, Xi, and Theresa May walking down some steps, several dimensions of mediatization kick in. First, news values -- personalisation, calibration to powerful actors, and drama -- lead reporting to amplify these stand-offs into geostrategic moments signalling power relations in an uncertain global order; the subjunctive mood premediates World War III or an harmonious Russia-US alliance. Second, the digitally-enabled return to multisensorial mediums allows communication to return its focus to gesture. For Joyce, all communication was ultimately gesture. Decades of written political communication limited gestural opportunities, while risk-averse leaders carefully managed any television appearance. Trump bypasses that, firmly anchoring us in tactile communication; his bodily gesture is felt, at a distance, without control. Third, television and diplomatic handshakes have an entwined history; each new handshake can be framed through the lens of prior handshake stand-offs. Hence, while Trump's vigorous grabbing shook coverage for some months, news media are now containing his stand-offs and normalising his encounters. Overall, Trump's handshakes exemplify the potential to use stand-offs to gesture globally, digitally, but also how news media soon learn to contain and ritualise -- to the extent Trump's opponents have learned to turn these stand-offs to their advantage.
Event: June 22, 2017: Leticia Bode, "Wrong Again: Correcting Misinformation on Social Media"
Misinformation on social media is of increasing concern to academics and citizens alike. This research examines whether and how misinformation can be corrected on social media, by whom, and under what circumstances.
Leticia Bode (PhD University of Wisconsin) is an assistant professor in the Communication, Culture, and Technology program at Georgetown University. Her work lies at the intersection of communication, technology, and political behavior, emphasizing the role communication and information technologies may play in the acquisition and use of political information.
Date: June 22, 2017
Time: 3pm-5pm
Location: Founders West 101
See also: Past Events
Special issue of Media, War & Conflict on Reporting from the Front
A new special issue has been published in the journal Media, War & Conflict in which experienced frontline journalists reflect on their careers reporting from conflict zones. The issue focuses on journalism's continued importance to democracy even in unstable conditions and when journalists are themselves often at risk of violent attack. Amid the current storms about fact-checking and online verification, the figure of the journalist on the ground remains crucial. The special issue's guest editor is Dr. Linda Risso of the Institute of Historical Research in London. As well as reflections from self-styled 'old hacks', the issue includes an overview by Dr. Risso as well as a major scholarly study of journalists' experiences in Burundi from Dr. Marie-Soleil Frère. The table of contents is below, and to read the articles click here.
Special Issue: Reporting from the Front: First-hand experiences, dilemmas and open questions
Linda Risso - Reporting from the front: First-hand experiences, dilemmas and open questions
Richard Norton-Taylor - Forty years’ personal experience
Martin Plaut - Reporting conflict in Africa
Keith Somerville - Framing conflict – the Cold War and after: Reflections from an old hack
Marie-Soleil Frère - ‘I wish I could be the journalist I was, but I currently cannot’: Experiencing the impossibility of journalism in Burundi
Ben O'Loughlin and the rest of the MWC team are grateful to Dr. Risso and all the contributors.
New Article Out Now in Media, Culture & Society: A Primary Definer Online: the Construction and Propagation of a Think Tank’s Authority on Social Media
I have a new article out (co-authored with Nick Anstead) in Media, Culture & Society (in their Online First section)
Here’s the abstract:
Who has power in the construction of economic news in the United Kingdom? Are social media reshaping how this power is enabled? We examine the public Twitter interactions between journalists, political elites and, what is arguably the United Kingdom’s most important think tank, the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS), during the 2015 UK general election campaign. Combining human-coded content analysis and network analysis of Twitter discourse about the IFS during a 38-day period, we explain how and why the authority of this think tank is being translated to social media. We develop a new, social media theory of ‘primary definers’ and show how the political authority on which such roles rest is co-constructed and propagated by professional journalists and political elites. Central to this process is a behaviour we conceptualize and measure: authority signalling. Our findings call into question some of the more sanguine generalizations about social media’s contribution to pluralist democracy. Given the dominance of public service broadcasters in the processes we identify, we argue that, despite the growth of social media, there can be surprising limits on the extent to which contemporary media systems help citizens gain information about the assumptions underlying economic policy.
Keywords
austerity, authority signalling, economic policy, journalism, news, power, social media
This project was an opportunity to explore a puzzle that I’ve been pondering during many years of watching political coverage in the UK, but especially since the 2008 financial crisis and the Great Recession: why is it that the IFS is treated with almost universally reverential coverage by elite media in Britain? How and why does this work across digital media and broadcast media? And what are the implications for British democracy?
A second article is in progress (co-authored with newpolcom PhD students Declan McDowell-Naylor, Amy P. Smith, and Ellen Watts) examining the discursive authority signalling of the IFS in a sample of 130+ hours of broadcast news during the 2015 election.
This research was made possible by funding from the British Academy and the Leverhulme Trust, to whom I’m most grateful for support.
If you’re at the ICA conference in San Diego next week, I’ll be presenting on this topic on Monday at 2.15 in the Hilton Bayfront Hotel, Room Indigo 206, 2.
Link to my Articles page, where you can access the piece in published and pre-print versions.
[Cross-posted from Andrew Chadwick's Blog]