Political Waves
Alt-Rhet: Poetic Responses to the Alt-Right's "Alternative Fact" Intersubjectivity
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Jahman Ariel Hill
In this paper, we examine the contemporary emergence of the "alternative fact" as an epistemological weapon of the American Alt-Right. Utilizing Robert L. Scott’s (1967) notion of rhetoric as epistemic in conjunction with Barry Brummett's work on intersubjectivity (1976), I posit that the Alt-Right exploits vulnerabilities in social knowledge formation as a means to build community. Our scholarly analysis is complemented by a poetic performance to embody and critique features of what we refer to as the “Alt-Rhet.”
Mobile Chat Applications and Political Protests in Contexts of Surveillance
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Colin Agur
This paper identifies and conceptualizes the role of mobile chat applications (WhatsApp, WeChat, LINE, KakaoTalk, Snapchat, Firechat, Signal, Telegram, and others) as tools of political protest. Drawing on several dozen interviews with activists and journalists in Hong Kong and China, the paper focuses on political activism from 2014-present, emphasizing the significance of chat apps in contexts of surveillance. It explores the ways that mobile-first tools have changed the organization and mobilization of protest movements, as well as the ways that leaders and other participants seek to persuade those outside the movement. The paper also considers the vast amount of content that chat apps have produced (from intra-group chats to communiques aimed at journalists, to memes and art, to photos and clips, to dis- and misinformation) and the ways that news organizations have used chat apps as tools for covering large-scale protests. The paper emphasizes the shift from open social media (e.g. Twitter) to a still-evolving mix of open and closed conversations in chat apps.
Media as Sources of Political Information: Comparative Analysis of Young People's Behavior before Presidential Elections in Poland and Lithuania
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Anna Mierzecka
The importance of political communication channels used by young people is clear in the light of numerous research which shows a growing political apathy of youth (Macintosh, 2008; Van Biezen, Mair and Poguntke, 2012). Some researchers disagree with this statement and describe the phenomenon of cultural displacement, which includes diverse political and civic activities, emphasizing the wide range of opportunities for social and political behavior offered by the Internet (Loader et al. 2014). This point of view also implies the significance of young people's political communication behavior recognition. This research looks to answer the question, how the younger generation uses media as sources of political information. Being aware of the significance of local conditions in this context we investigate this topic by conducting a survey among young citizens in Poland and Lithuania. The comparison of results from those two countries is possible thanks to similar historical and cultural experience (i.e. in both countries, after II World War, democratic transitions started in the nineteen nineties). The survey was conducted using a technique of Paper and Pen Personal Interview among the students (n=852) from University of Warsaw (Poland) and Vilnius University (Lithuania) two weeks before the last presidential elections in both countries. The students were chosen as respondents as the most active group of young people in the context of media usage. The objects of our interest were everyday patterns of media usage, the usefulness of different media channels as the sources of political information, and the level of active online media usage. Special attention was paid to usage of different media types, such as traditional like newspapers, radio, and television and digital ones like news portals. Additionally, social media and their usage were analyzed because of their potential to increase political engagement. The results show that despite the fact that the newspaper and radio are rarely used sources of information, the television still surprisingly plays an important role for young people. The same is with digital sources of information like news portals and social media; however the level of their interactive usage is quite low in the context of politics. The results were analysed using as independent variables the nationality, the political orientation of respondents, declarative level of political engagement, but also the area of study. The respondents represented humanities and social science (n=462) and science (n=390). This allows us to create a detailed picture of media usage for political purpose by young people from Poland and Lithuania.
