Popular Engagement
Cultural Practices of New Nationalism in Poland
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Piotr Zanko, Michał Rauszer
After the collapse of communism in 1989 in Poland the National Independence Day was revived on the 11th of November. To commemorate the anniversary of the restoration of Poland’s sovereignty in 1918 marches have been organized by different patriotic groups. However in 2009 a few fascists organizations joined the celebrations, gathering hundreds of thousands of people. It wasn’t until 2010 that the situation changed and November 11th became a platform for new nationalism. The nationalist sentiments were triggered by the presidential plane crash in Smolensk in April 2010. Simultaneously in Polish public discourse the term “lewactwo” – which is a derogatory combination of the words “left wing” and “worms” – was coined. This word has become the symbolic foundation for the new nationalism discourse. Moreover, the nationalists have started using the cultural practices characteristic for subcultures and alternative cultures, making it a platform very popular among young people. These local practices coincided with the rise of a global phenomenon labeled as new nationalism. In Poland it inscribes into the structures of alternative information and web discourse against “lewactwo,” which can be found in the combination of patriotic motives with alternative culture. We analyze the performative and media practices of new nationalism such as marches, posters, graffiti, clothing, lyrics of rock and hip-hop music, etc. We also show what elements of social discourse this “patriotic subculture” is questioning and what alternative visions of the world it creates.
Reading China: Measuring Policy Change with Machine Learning
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Weifeng Zhong
While China’s industrialization process has long been a product of government direction until now there has been no quantitative measures of the Chinese government's policy priorities over a long period of time. We fill this gap by devising the first of such measures, the Policy Change Index (PCI) of China, which runs from 1952 to the present. We use the full texts of the People’s Daily, the official newspaper of the Communist Party of China, as raw data to construct the PCI. Our method is based on LSTM networks (à la Hochreiter and Schmidhuber, 1997) and the CUSUM test (à la Page, 1954) to detect significant changes in the policy-importance of People’s Daily articles. This method allows us to infer the shift in the priorities of the Chinese government's policies. The constructed PCI not only matches important policy changes that have taken place in China---such as the Great Leap Forward, the Cultural Revolution, and the economic reform program---but is also able to make short-term predictions about China’s future policy directions.
Branded Media and Redefining Fatherhood: Are Marketers Keeping Up?
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Margaret A. Murphy
Parenting and stereotypical gendered roles are evolving in society today as dual income families become the norm, single parent households are on the rise, and family household activities become redistributed. This inquiry, supported by academic and industry research, as well as original primary research challenges whether contemporary brands are keeping pace with these evolving gendered parenting roles. A content analysis of 637+ high profile advertisements evaluates recent branded messages in terms of portrayals of father figures, familial activities evidenced, and parent-child gendered relationships. A growing number of these high-profile branded messages align with documented societal shifts, but others remain rooted in stereotypical depictions of fathers as distant authority figures and/or buffoonish bumbling sidekicks. This contemporary branded media investigation concludes with recommendations for both next steps in this research inquiry and preliminary suggestions for more consistently responsible representations of contemporary fathers in today's evolving popular culture.
