Online Lightening Talk Room 5
Emotional Public Engagement in a Post-truth Era: Voice and Sound in Contemporary Talk Shows
Virtual Lightning Talk Irati Agirreazkuenaga, Ainara Larrondo, Simon Peña
In the post-truth era, where emotions are much more influential in shaping public opinion than are objective facts, it is expected that citizen’s participation, whether offline or online, in programs dealing with issues of democratic consequences, are overflowing with this emotional component. While radio programs that appeal for popular culture, such as phone-ins or entertainment magazines, might not often delve into social problems with serious complexity, they offer structures that let audiences creatively start thinking of private and public concerns, a practice by which engagement can go beyond the popular to influence political perceptions and values (Dahlgren, 2009). Given that we live in an era consisting of lies that can go viral mainly through a media alliance, particularly with social media, this paper ought to detect the presence of feeling-driven and thought-driven comments in the mediatized messages of ordinary people. This paper contributes with a method that studies the form and content of conductors and participants, correlating the used emotion and topic. In this work, besides the content, the voice is a key factor. Thus, it will look at which type of emotions predominate depending on who talks (presenters or journalists that guide the program, citizens participating); and the topic those presenters, journalists, and participants are talking about. This research is an approach to the construction of an innovative methodology that correlates emotional-based and content-based variables. The study uses a semi-qualitative methodology based on content analysis of citizen’s contributions, as well as live managing of them– and in-depth interviews with main editors. The selected case studies are non-news programs that deal with political, social and entertaining issues that call for live online as well as offline participations through different channels, also known as TV talk shows or phone-in radio programs.
"Necestando Al Otro" (Needing the Other): Exploring Audience Presence in the Context of Installation
Virtual Lightning Talk David Schwittek, Alyshia Galvez
"Necesitando al Otro" is a multi-channel, interactive video installation exploring the Mexican migration. It detects the relative audience presence and, detecting a complete absence, enters the inactive state. In this state the video channels enter a phase of data corruption, analogous to the increasing denial of migrant struggles in our society. When the installation detects a partial presence (e.g. one or two people relatively nearby), it enters the partial state. In this state, the corruption of the video channels becomes increasingly more subtle, and the viewing less challenging. As the audience increases in number, the installation enters the active state, wherein video corruption becomes unnoticeable. This interplay of obscurity and visibility is designed to interrogate the Western Hemisphere’s indifference to the struggles of the Mexican migrant, and that an active interest in – and attention to – these struggles can provide a clearer understanding of our shared humanity.
Animals Australia: Shifting the Tide of Animal Activist Communications within Australia
Virtual Lightning Talk Jane Mummery, Debbie Rodan
In a state such as Australia with strong protections for primary producers and an alignment with a broadly neoliberal agenda, arguments by animal activists can receive short shrift in the public sphere. This is illustrated with the increase within Australia of calls for ag-gag laws and by the public labelling of animal activists as acting to the detriment of the Australian national interest. In this paper we detail the highly effective media communications strategies of "Animals Australia," a peak national body concerned with strengthening animal welfare policies and practices across Australia. "Animals Australia," as we show through discursive analysis of their campaigns and mainstream responses, has been able to access and engage both mainstream and alternative media in their communications strategies so as to develop a broad support base of everyday Australians and engage them in a range of large-scale protest activities. They have not just shifted the tenor of Australian attitudes towards livestock animals, but achieved policy change.
Satirizing Net Neutrality: Last Week Tonight
Virtual Lightning Talk Angela Hart
"Last Week Tonight" with John Oliver aired a long-form piece on the FCC and net neutrality spanning roughly thirteen minutes and eighteen seconds on June 1, 2014. Oliver painted the current state of the Internet as not just practical, but functional, “The Internet in its current form is not broken and the FCC is currently taking steps to fix that.” Oliver included the FCC website link prominently so that viewers would note and use the url. Immediately following the episode, the FCC received so much web-related traffic and interest that their website crashed (Felder 2016). Oliver’s FCC piece demonstrated the show’s influence not only educating viewers in regards to the online debate, but invigorating their audience to become active in a cause. I conducted a close-read of two segments which "Last Week Tonight" aired on net neutrality, noting dialogue, news box images, incorporated news footage, and the positions addressed. I utilized a framing perspective on the information relayed in the programs in regards to net neutrality.
Domestic Spatiality : Changes and Permanences in the Information Age
Virtual Lightning Talk Juan Manuel Lozano De Poo, Guadalupe Salazar González
Spatiality is the central theme of this research, demarcated by the domestication of the Internet within the middle-class household. This phenomenon is addressed from three constitutive realities of spatiality: habituality, interaction, and presence. Together they state how coexistence with digital space has produced profound changes in the way people inhabit at the household scale. Spatiality, under this approach, studies the production of social space based on the use given to physical space through the shift of meaning that lived space has had, before and after the assimilation of the Internet as the dominant communication system. How can domestic spatialities produced by the superposition of digital space as a new layer of social space be explained? The methodology designed, based on semi-structured interviews and surveys, allowed the interpretation of quantitative and qualitative data collected directly from selected homes and two control groups of college students from New York (SUNY) and Mexico (UASLP). The findings of the study reveal that everyday life practices are nowadays performed simultaneously in two types of spaces; one defined by the ever-present, being online and connected to the Internet; the other, configured by the physical-symbolical places of human existence. This new condition has modified the configuration process of spatiality, as observed through family tensions and members’ behavior, re-signification, compression, and indistinct use of domestic space and time. The implications of the results provide a rich source for socio-spatial studies through a complex understanding of interrelations between individuals, digital space, and lived space at home.
The Use of Twitter for Health Communication : A Social Network Approach
Virtual Lightning Talk Lina Gomez
This work examines how social media, particularly Twitter, is used for health information and communication. A quantitative content analysis and a social network analysis was performed on 1089 user profiles who used the hashtag #SaludTues. Salud Tuesday is a weekly chat that discusses health topics and issues for Latino communities in the United States. Tweets were recollected from September 13 to October 13, 2017, using the Netlytic software. A total of 4628 tweets were sent during the analyzed period. Results show that the most recurrent members of the #SaludTues community were mostly organizations (44%) and individuals (43%). Users that frequently posted regarding #SaludTues where health institutions (24%), citizens (18%), educators (9%), and professionals (6%). Tweets were mainly positive, and the most frequently used words were health, kids, Latino, healthy, join, and chat. The most recurrent posters (out-degree) and mentioned users (in-degree) were organizations, like @minorityhealth and @saludamerica. Other network characteristics such as diameter, density, and centralization were analyzed. For instance, diameter of the network was 11, this measure indicates the size of the network, and it calculates the longest distance between two members of the network. This research project helps to identify key influencers in the development of effective health strategies and campaigns through social media for specific communities. Social network analysis helps to understand how particular communities are built and how their properties impact the communication between members.
