2010-06-03 Unclenching Fists: Dialogue and Diversity in Diplomatic Interaction

On 3-5 June 2010 Ben O'Loughlin will present a paper, 'How do we talk about nukes? EU, US and Iranian Strategic Narratives in Contemporary Diplomacy' at a symposium in Hamburg, Unclenching Fists: Dialogue and Diversity in Diplomatic Interaction. The paper, co-authored with Alister Miskimmon (Royal Holloway) continues the NPCU's research on 'strategic narratives'. 

A strategic narrative is a narrative forged by a state with the express purpose of influencing the foreign policy behavior of other actors. This paper will examine whether the EU and the USA’s strategic narratives concerning Iran have been complementary or competitive, taking as its focus the 2009 Geneva talks between the EU3, USA, and Iran concerning Iran’s nuclear programme.  Such moments of high politics represent ‘tests’ in which the (moral, political) criteria of worth present in each actor’s narrative is evaluated by others with reference to an empirical problem: in this case, Iran’s nuclear programme (Boltanski and Thévenot, 1991/2006).  We examine the narrative strategies employed by each participant, respectively, as well as the style and mode of delivery or projection, and the manner in which each took the others’ strategic narrative and its delivery into account during interactions in this period. To what extent did each actor take into account the others’ criteria of worth and alter the content and register of their own narrative work by accounting for the perspective of the others; when was this useful and when not, when did this work and when not? How were principles of justice, legality, legitimacy and so forth invoked and negotiated as each actor pursued their interests? We explore the forms of evidence presented and made public by each actor, and the visual and rhetorical modes used to contextualise and frame the meaning of the evidence presented. We also analyse how these stylistic and evidentiary aspects of each actor’s diplomacy was received in the national media of each actor, and the degree to which this fed back into the process being reported on.

2010-04-29 Culture, Politics & Media @LSE

LSE DEPT. OF MEDIA AND COMMUNICATIONS

Research Dialogues 2009-10

THURSDAY 12:30 – 2:00

Room H202, Connaught House

Culture, Politics and Arab Media

Speakers:

Mina Al-Lami, Visiting Fellow, Department of Media and Communication, LSE

Shawn Powers, Visiting Fellow, Department of Media and Communication, LSE

Respondent:

Dr. Ben O'Loughlin, Reader in International Relations and Co-Director of the New Political Communication Unit, Royal Holloway, University of London

Abstracts

Virtual Spaces of Contestation and the futility of closing Jihadist websites

Mina Al-Lami

On 10 September 2008 the three top Jihadist sites sponsored by Al-Fajr Media Centre, an Al-Qaeda media wing, were closed simultaneously. It wasn’t long before the remaining major Jihadist sites were similarly mysteriously closed, forcing Jihadists to look for alternative platforms. The persistent closure of the three Al-Fajr sites, still down today, and “attack” on others prompted rigorous discussions and debates amongst Jihadist forum administrators and members on how to counter this “media attack”. While the closing of the Al-Fajr sites shortly disturbed Jihadists in terms of finding new trustworthy and credible platforms, it did nothing to obstruct the flow and accessibility of Jihadist media nor regrouping of Jihadists. If anything, the closing of the sites - seen as yet another “crusade” by the West - further radicalized Jihadists. It drove them to increase their “media Jihad” efforts and come up with innovative means to survive in a hostile virtual environment.

This paper will try to argue that closing and/or curtailing of Jihadist sites as a means of countering online extremism in general and Al-Qaeda propaganda in particular is technically ineffective in the presence of web 2.0 and morally counterproductive. The paper suggests that allowing Jihadists a platform is more effective in exposing their violence and undermining their narratives. The case of the leading Arabic forum Al-Jazeeratalk, which does allow Jihadists a voice, is used to illustrate such a potentially successful counter-extremism measure.

The Politics of Exclusion: An Examination of American Efforts to Silence Arab Satellite News

Shawn Powers

Manuel Castells (2009) argues that an important area of inquiry in today’s Network Society is that of the politics of inclusion and exclusion into critical networks of power. The three principle types of networks—media, political and financial—provide the backbone for modern society, and those people, groups, organizations and states that are excluded from these networks can thus be shut out of the increasingly essential circuitry of today’s world. Whereas in previous generations exclusion was often identified and examined in more tangible, physical processes, today exclusion to and from critical networks of power—all tied together via the global media—must also be examined as it has profound consequences on how power relations are negotiated and shaped.

This paper examines contemporary American efforts at excluding Arab-based news networks from reaching their target audiences. Two case studies will be examined: Al Jazeera English’s (AJE) attempts to access audiences in North America, and the US government’s recent attempt to sanction satellite providers carrying television networks classified as “terrorist entities” by the American Congress. Each case study will be analyzed in an effort to better understand how corporate and government policymaking influence the flows of international communication, though not always in the ways intended.

2010-09-02: Andrew Chadwick and James Stanyer presenting at the 2010 American Political Science Association Annual Meeting, Washington, DC

Update August 31, 2010: full details and the paper are now available on the NPCU blog.

Professor Andrew Chadwick and Dr James Stanyer will be presenting a paper based on their ongoing research on change in the systemic characterstics of the British political communication environment to the 2010 APSA Annual Meeting in Washington, DC.

The conference runs September 2-5, 2010. Scheduling details will be announced in the summer.

2010-03-17 Christina Slade: Transnational Television Cultures: Reshaping Political Identities in the European Union

Christina Slade - Dean of Arts and Sciences,City University

Wednesday 17^th March 2010, 5pm – 6.30pm

Founders West 101

This paper deals with the case of Arabic speakers in the EU, and the results of a seven nation (FP7 funded) enquiry into the ways they use Arabic television and its impact on their identities as citizens of the EU. In the EU Arabic speakers have access to a wide range of transnational television, as well as hundreds of rebroadcast national television channels. Our study is the first broadly based quantitative and qualitative study of these audiences, and raises fundamental questions about the new landscapes of cultural citizenship in the EU. This paper addresses both descriptive and analytic problems that have arisen from the data. How do we describe super (and sub-) national public spheres of this sort, and how do we analyse that data? Some of the conclusions were unexpected:  some communities are primarily bicultural (or translocal) watching local media from the their two nations of belonging, while others engage with  transnational media in Arabic, English and other languages and develop a more archetypally  ‘cosmopolitan’ viewpoint. Paradoxically it is those who travel regularly to their country of origin who are often bicultural, while refugees, students and others more firmly rooted in the EU are transnational in view.

Christina Slade is Dean of Arts and Social Sciences at City University London. She was Dean of Humanities at Macquarie University from 2003-8 and has taught at a number of universities including Universiteit Utrecht, as Professor of Media Theory, New York University, La Universidad Ibero Americana and the ITESM, in Mexico City. Her research interests range from issues in the philosophical foundations of communication theory, through issues of the global public sphere and its fragmentation under the impact of new technologies to questions relating to the development of reasoning skills using television product. She leads a seven nation EU-funded FP7 project entitled Media & Citizenship: Transnational Television Cultures: Reshaping Political Identities in the European Union.

For further information about the seminar please contact Ben.OLoughlin@rhul.ac.uk.



2010-03-01 Mapping the Impact of Online Information on the Political, Economic and Social Sphere, Google, London

1 March 2010, London

Co-Sponsored by Google UK and the University of Glasgow

The amount of information online is expanding daily: what do these changes mean for society? How does online information empower citizens and consumers? How does it challenge them? How can we predict the effect of new information technology on British society and its citizens? How are the working practices and traditions of academics and engineers inspired or challenged by the brave new information world?

Ben O'Loughlin will participate in a one-day closed conference bringing together Google employees, government officials, academics and journalists to reflect on the way the delivery of information is reshaping our world. The event is designed to launch innovative dialogue, ideas and collaborations working to understand our new, networked society. 

The conference is convened by Prof. Sarah Oates, University of Glasgow, and Sarah Hunter of Google London.

2010-02-11 7/7 Five Years on: Reflections on the Future of Counter-terrorism

Ben O'Loughlin (NPCU) and Andrew Hoskins (Warwick) will speak at Chatham House on 11th February 2010 to a closed meeting focusing on the future of counter-terrorism, ahead of the launch on 7 July - five years since the 7/7 London bombings - of a special issue of International Affairs.

The paper will focus on the role of media in counter-terrorism, especially the issue of how 'extremist' materials are translated and remediated for Western publics. Click here for their extended abstract. 

2010-02-03 Prof. Stuart Allan: The Future(s) of Photojournalism in wartime

‘The Future(s) of Photojournalism in Wartime’ 

Stuart Allan

Dept. of Politics and International Relations, FW101

5pm - 6.30pm, Wednesday 3 February 2010

Visual imagery of warfare is a routine, everyday feature of our news media. For the photographer confronted with the challenge of bearing witness to conflict on our behalf, the effort to record its human consequences raises important issues of interpretation. This paper seeks to show how familiar assumptions about photojournalism’s capacity to represent violence in an impartial manner are being decisively recast by the ‘digital revolution’ in photographic technologies. In examining ‘our camera-mediated knowledge of war,’ to use Susan Sontag’s phrase, it explores a number of questions confronting the photojournalist – both professional and amateur alike – committed to ‘making real’ the horrors of human suffering. Evidence is drawn from several case studies in order to assess the implications of digitalization for the future of photojournalism in wartime, with particular attention devoted to photojournalism’s moral responsibilities where visual truth-telling is concerned.

Stuart Allan is Professor of Journalism at Bournemouth University, UK. His recent books include Digital War Reporting (co-authored with Donald Matheson) and Citizen Journalism: Global Perspectives (co-edited with Einar Thorsen). He is a book series editor, and serves on the editorial boards of several peer-reviewed journals.

2010-03-29: Andrew Chadwick and James Stanyer presenting at UK Political Studies Association Annual Conference

Andrew Chadwick (Royal Holloway) and James Stanyer (Communication and Media, Loughborough University) will be presenting a paper, "Political Communication in Transition: Mediated Politics in Britain’s New Media Environment" at the UK Political Studies Association's 60th Anniversary Conference at Edinburgh, March 29-April 1, 2010.

The paper is part of a panel on "New Media and Democracy" sponsored by the PSA's Media and Politics Section.

The final schedule is due to be published in January 2010.

2010-03-29: Communicating Terror at the PSA

The Political Studies Association annual conference for 2010 will be held in Edinburgh on 29 March - 1 April. Ben O'Loughlin will take part on a panel 'communicating terror' organised by Piers Robinson at the University of Manchester. Combining arguments from the forthcoming book on Diffused War (with Andrew Hoskins) and the NPCU's work on strategic narratives, the paper will examine how different actors are getting to grips with communication nearly five years on from the 7/7 London bombings.

At the time, digitization was creating dynamics of emergence; a residual contingency due to the potential for images and other media content to emerge at unforeseen times to disrupt settled narratives. The BBC invited a deluge of mobile phone images on the day of 7/7, but also faced the prospect of 'counter'-images or evidence later emerging that would contradict the narrative emerging on the day of the attacks (creating problems that BBC World's Nik Gowing has explored). Recently, political leaders’ strategies have switched from directing information flows to harnessing the ‘flux’ of user-generating content around terrorism. But will control of the diffuse simply generate another set of dynamics?

2009-11-30 NPCU Sydney workshop on Media & Multiculturalism

The NPCU will run a workshop on 30 November and 1 December 2009 at the University of Western Sydney examining how news and drama contribute to multicultural life, based on audience research in the UK and Australia. The workshop includes a special focus on the acclaimed SBS drama, East West 101.

The event is in partnership with SBS (Special Broadcasting Service), CCR (Centre for Cultural Research) and CRESC (Centre for Research on Socio-Cultural Change), and funded by Royal Holloway's Research Strategy Fund. For further information contact Ben.OLoughlin@rhul.ac.uk.