Global Links
Asynchronous Session
Bolsonaro, Fake News, and the Mainstream Media: The Political Communication of the Far-Right in Brazil
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Gabriel S Huland
The Brazilian far-right president Jair Bolsonaro adopts populist rhetoric as his primary communication strategy. He presents himself as an outsider, an anti-establishment politician who embodies the abstract idea of "new politics". Like Donald Trump, Bolsonaro's preferred communication channel is social media, which he uses to establish an emotional relationship with his support base. Relying extensively on "fake news," his 2018 campaign capitalized on a growing anti-corruption and anti-criminality sentiment extended throughout the Brazilian society. Once in power, the newly-elected Brazilian president built an ultra-conservative alliance with religious groups, ruralists, and the arms industry, among other fractions of the elite. Against this backdrop, Bolsonaro developed a conflictive relationship with the mainstream media. This study analyzes Bolsonaro's communication style and his political and economic agenda, pointing out its limitations and how it represents a significant threat to democracy and social justice.
Featured A Linguistic Study of Headlines in Media Discourse: A Case of Migrant Workers in India View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Khushboo Sahrawat
In the on-going pandemic, the migrant workers in India were stranded in different parts of the country when the states went under lockdown. This crisis is heavily reported by the news media houses even today. However, the month of May 2020 was the last month of the lockdown in India, where news outlets reported heavily on the politics of migrant workers who were struck or attempted to reach their hometowns on foot. For this purpose, this paper offers a comparative study of the headlines of two English medium digital newspapers of India, The Quint and Scroll. This paper, firstly, has a textual analysis of headlines, and secondly, identifies the registers through which the language links up to particular imagined audiences and social types. Through conducting a textual analysis and examining registers in selected headlines in the corpus, the paper determines the created reputations of migrant workers and propagates "public words" through the medium of newspapers. For this linguistic analysis, this study takes the headlines that have bigram "migrant workers" in its headlines to narrow down their meaning and identify a migrant worker's position in the pandemic crisis. Based on the analysis of the data, the paper concludes that The Quint's headlines are in contrast to Scroll with the classification of the words and expressions used in their headlines. There are certain differences in the linguistic linkages and textual strategies used by these two digital journalism platforms.
The Transformations of the Haitian Radio System from 1957 to 2020: Change and Continuity View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Wisnique Panier
My study looks at the transformations of the Haitian media system over the past 60 years. Its purpose is to examine changes in relations between different players in the Haitian media system based on three explanatory factors: linguistic, democratic, and technological. There is a question of the extent to which the Haitian radio system has reconfigured itself over the past six decades compared to the observed changes. I have hypothesized that the Haitian radio system would be transformed over the past 60 years under the influence of three sets of factors mentioned above. The combination of these three sets of factors creates favorable conditions for the transformation of the system. According to this hypothesis, the transformation would lead to a reconfiguration of the system. However, the study shows that despite the observed changes, the power structure in the radio system has remained largely intact. It doesn't change. In summary, the findings of this study show that the observed changes in relations between the players in the Haitian radio system do not lead to a real reconfiguration of the system. Despite the rise of Creole, democratic movements, the development of digital tools, fundamental characteristics (politicization, precariousness, corruption, the domination of the radio space by an elite...) of the system are unchanged. It is based on a qualitative analysis of observation and maintenance data.
Narcissism in the Global Village: What Would McLuhan Say About Social Media? View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Alice Orchard
Research in psychology suggests that the use of social media, particularly the curation and performance of identity through “selfies”, correlates with an increase in trait narcissism. Meanwhile the “24 hour news” cycle of social media binds us increasingly to our screens as we seek more information and more understanding about who we are in relation to the ever-morphing social media environment. We have also been able to witness recently the stunning rise of politicians who fit the profile of pathological narcissism - dealing in political stunts and “fake news” - yet who have amassed enormous followings using social media. McLuhan had a concept of narcissism as a “Narcissus-narcosis” - a “numbing” of the senses in response to “technological trauma”, which we can liken to Freud’s concept of narcissism as the conservation of energy through the looping of the drive back towards the self. Revisiting McLuhan’s ideas in relation to theories of “technology love”, “post-truth” politics, and “surveillance capitalism”, I bring to light some of the effects of our social media “narcosis”.
Media Cultures and Online Sympathy Strategies: #MeToo and #BlackLivesMatter View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Dt Spitzer Hanks
Humanity is at the cusp of a global climate disaster driven by overpopulation, social inequity, and late-capitalist rationalization. The proliferation of digital fora has created new opportunities for collaborative thinking about these exigencies, yet in many ways we are further apart both ideologically and emotionally than we have ever been. This paradox begs two questions: why are online sympathy strategies so commonplace, and yet so often unsuccessful? I explore these questions to bolster both academic and activist efforts at anti-sexist and anti-racist advocacy, particularly because the treatment of subaltern members of the human species often predicts and even guides the treatment of non-human animals and the global environment in general. While the exigencies we face as a species are overwhelmingly complex, communication studies can offer a way forward by first reminding us of the origin of our modern conception of sympathy in Adam Smith’s Theory of Moral Sentiments, which I do before applying Smith’s sociocognitive concept of sympathy to two online sympathy strategies with important offline components, #MeToo and #BlackLivesMatter. Noting the role of objectivism in the politics of likeness by which Smith says we adjudicate sympathy, and the ways that politics shapes online debate in specific instances, I conclude that sympathy is not and has never been a workable basis for equitable polity and suggest instead that we shift towards a recognition of our own radical interdependence with other humans and with non-human animals and members of the plant kingdom.
Kimjang Colonialism: (Re/De-)Constructions of Koreanness and Platform Imperialism Through Digital Kimchi Recipes View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Matthew Jungsuk Howard
I present a critical technocultural discourse analysis (CTDA) (Brock, 2018) of English-language kimchi recipe and cooking show videos on YouTube to interrogate the interplay of technological, cultural, and economic flows in online discourses around kimchi preparation, or kimjang. My objective is to better understand how kimjang presentations construct imaginaries of Koreanness on the YouTube platform, building on Robert Ji-sung Ku’s (2015) arguments about the ambiguous relationship between Korean diaspora and kimchi's semiotic significance. The distribution of cultural food practices via blogs and videos has become commonplace, and the ways that these media artifacts make forms of Koreanness knowable asks us to consider how kimjang -- a touchstone of Koreanness (Ku, 2018, p. 131) -- moves through the Internet’s webs of cultural production and labor. From a media studies angle, addressing kimjang's intersection with digital media means confronting processes of platformization (Nieborg & Poell, 2018) and audience constitution (Smythe, 1981; Bratich, 2005) in Korean racializations. My argument is that English-language digital kimjang content re-presents the historical Western ideal of forcing Asian cultures and economies open to imperial adoption, appropriation, and exploitation by making foods like kimchi accessible, easy, modular, and knowable if removed from the Koreanness that makes that cultural artifact intimidating or difficult to approach. Further, YouTube's role indicates that platform imperialism does not only push outward into the world (Jin, 2013). It also falls back onto the people in the imperial center via U.S. multiculturalism's appropriation & dehistoricization that constructs a discrete archive of globalized Koreanness in North America.
Filipino Diasporic Identity and Space as Mediated by the ABS-CBN News Channel Online View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Marion Nina Nicole Goyena
The history of the Filipino diaspora has been traced back to 1565 and this phenomenon incessantly prevails until present times, leading to the creation of multiple cultural identities and communities. Given this, there is a constant need for media to expand and evolve, regardless of geographical space and time, through the advancing accessibility of media platforms and the globalization of content. This study, anchored on Daniel Dayan’s Media and Diasporas (1997), sought to provide a better understanding of diasporic media content as well as its corresponding influence on Filipino diasporans through the use of the Constant Comparative Technique, which delved into the current status of the country’s diaspora, media penetration and ownership, the diaspora’s lived and imagined experiences of the homeland, and the construction and negotiation of diasporic identities as mediated by ABS-CBN News Channel’s adaptation of globalization. The findings of the study show that ABS-CBN News Channel portrays a vital role in the representation and transmission of cultural and social consciousness of which affect the media reception, intrapersonal and interpersonal engagements, and identity construction of the diasporic audience. It is also able to sustain cultural affiliations through providing relevant information that elicit involvement among its audience and support the need for the production and distribution of diasporic content. However, a notable learning is that people’s perceptions are more likely to create an impact on one’s identity and ABS-CBN News Channel content are merely mediators.
Uses and Abuses of YouTube: The Strange Case of Banu Berberoğlu View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Özlem Yıldız
The subject of this paper, Banu Berberoğlu is a Turkish YouTube personality who used to publish vlogs about her humble life in a provincial city of northern Turkey. Berberoğlu’s online presence and visibility made her subject to public ridicule, as mocking her turned into communal entertainment for those familiar with the persona. Though not expressed explicitly, the fuss around Berberoğlu seems to revolve around her “claim” to be a YouTuber, anti-fans assuming that she does not “deserve” the title. Though many attack Banu’s personality, the fracas seems to pinpoint the question of who can be on YouTube with what content. Many find it objectionable the content Banu produces and scold her for holding a camera and nattering on, rather than offering the audience something tangible to watch. We see Banu roaming about with her boyfriend, eating junk food, presenting her newly bought clothes etc., accompanied by a monotonous speech giving us a simultaneous account of her actions. Her videos are so unintentionally uninteresting that some urged her not to shoot again. Did Banu get Youtube wrong? What is at stake in Berberoğlu’s reception is the very question of what, YouTube is for; and through the elaboration of Berberoğlu’s YouTube channel as a case study, the work aims to open further discussion about what in Turkey means to publish on YouTube, based on a case, which, apparently, has been deemed as an abuse.
