Social Media and Urban Social Movements

2019 ◽  
Vol 12 (2) ◽  
pp. 25-52 ◽  
Author(s):  
Magdalena Karolak

The goal of this research is to explore the opportunities brought about by the use of new media in urban protests. Specifically, it investigates the use of the Internet in modern protest movements that failed to bring about the changes they sought, using Bahrain as a case study. The focus is put on urban movements that continue revolutionary activism off- and online in the sixth year after the failure of the Bahraini uprising. This research assesses the need to maintain an online presence for these cities and explains the goals of their online presence. The paper also aims to understand what type of variations exist within these urban movements; and analyzes the interplay between such online manifestations and online censorship. This research is based on the critical discourse analysis of web content and graphic representations produced by Bahraini activists on particular online sites pertaining to each city in question.

2020 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 57-66
Author(s):  
Francesco Fabbro

The paper presents Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) as a qualitative research method particularly suitable for the study of media education practices. The contribution highlights how the CDA allows to focus on social functions, identities and power relations mediated by language(s) in educational settings and then it presents an analytical framework widely adopted in social and educational research. Secondly, it exemplifies the application of CDA by presenting a case study on literacy education. Finally, after underlying the convergence between new media literacies and CDA perspectives on the concept of learning, it outlines some possible applications of CDA for the empirical study of media education practices.


2020 ◽  
pp. 095792652097721
Author(s):  
Janaina Negreiros Persson

In this article, we explore how the discourses around gender are evolving at the core of Brazilian politics. Our focus lies on the discourses at the public hearing on the bill 3.492/19, which aimed at including “gender ideology” on the list of heinous crimes. We aim to identify the deputies’ linguistic representation of social actors as pertaining to in- and outgroups. In addition, the article analyzes through Critical Discourse Analysis how the terminology gender is represented in this particular hearing. The analysis shows how some of the conservative parliamentarians give a clearly negative meaning to the term gender, by labeling it “gender ideology” and additionally connecting it with heinous crimes. We propose that the re-signification of “gender ideology,” from rhetorical invention to heinous crime, is not only an attempt to undermine scientific gender studies but also a way for conservative deputies to gain more political power.


2021 ◽  
pp. 001458582098650
Author(s):  
Gloria De Vincenti ◽  
Angela Giovanangeli

Researchers examining nationalistic conceptions of language learning argue that nationalist essentialism often shapes the way languages are taught by educators and understood by learners. While numerous studies focus on how frameworks informed by Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) and intercultural education offer alternative approaches to national stereotyping, these studies tend to focus on theoretical approaches, teacher perspectives or innovative teaching and learning resources. The literature to date, however, does not provide case studies on student responses to activities designed by the teacher to open up the classroom with opportunities that move beyond essentialist representations. This article responds to the need for such scholarship and presents a case study involving a focus group with tertiary students in an Italian language and culture subject. It reveals some of the ways in which students enacted and reflected upon alternatives to nationalist essentialising as a result of language learning activities that had been informed by the discursive processes of CDA. The findings suggest that students demonstrated skills and attitudes such as curiosity, subjectivities and connections with broader social contexts. Some of the data also indicates student engagement in critical inquiry and their potential for social agency.


2011 ◽  
Vol 2011 ◽  
pp. 1-7 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ahmad Nazari

This paper is an attempt to analyse one of the documents which may affect the classroom activities of English as a Foreign Language (EFL) teachers, namely teachers' guides. It also explores the context at which the document is aimed and critiques how EFL teachers are advised to teach as well as how EFL is taught. As such, the paper stands where critical discourse analysis and language policy come together in the study of language policies in education. The teachers' guide chosen and the analysis carried out here are not necessarily concerned with their representativeness and typicality but with the opportunity they provide to the researchers and teachers to learn about such language policy documents and how language and language teaching objectives are represented in them. The issues raised in this paper will have relevance to the EFL teachers' guides and EFL education in other contexts, as these issues are likely to be true of other EFL milieux.


2018 ◽  
Vol 65 (5) ◽  
pp. 591-607 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elisa Bellè ◽  
Caterina Peroni ◽  
Elisa Rapetti

The aim of this article is to furnish insights of the Italian public debate on the recognition of LGBTQ rights, which can be understood as an interesting case study of the complex relationship between (multi)secularisation processes and re/definition of citizenship models. More specifically, the article analyses two political events related to this debate that took place in Rome in June 2015. The first is the Family Day demonstration, promoted by conservative Catholic groups; the second is the LGBTQ Pride parade, promoted by various gay, lesbian and transsexual/gender associations. We analyse the official statements issued by the two organising committees of the demonstrations, adopting the framework and methods of the Critical Discourse Analysis. Above and beyond an evident political conflict between the two discourses, we try to shed light on their mutual construction on the basis of what we call ‘naturalization’ and ‘universalization’ processes.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Aneta Duda

"This article discusses the concept of corporate social responsibility (CSR) in the particular case of a controversial Dove campaign for Real Beauty (CFRB) and its role in the production and consumption of contemporary popular meanings of empowerment, social change, and female beauty in global consumer culture. Because in some instances such corporate strategies appear well received, we move beyond cynical dismissal to analyze corporate discourse to identify its transformative possibilities and contradictions. The analysis replaces the oversimplifying approaches to the ethics of CSR with a communicative perspective that highlights the need for a contextual examination of the ethical dilemmas that arisen from CSR practices. In this article, I engage with this CSR campaign, using critical discourse analysis (CDA) to uncover its mechanisms and ideological functioning. CDA of the print, television, and new media texts reveals a certain juxtaposition between liberation and oppression of CFRB. The analysis show how Dove was able to transform an ordinary commodity, skin cleansing products, into a consumer activist brand through which consumers could take part in solving self-esteem and social problems. My analysis of CFRB shows the ways that CSR often operates to co-opte the criticism by embracing it, consolidating brand loyalty and corporate profits, and defuse struggles around consumption. By doing so, CSR forms a complex strategy to legitimize particular brands and commodities, so it can be seen as the ideological force of contemporary consumer capitalism."


2019 ◽  
Vol 18 (2) ◽  
pp. 252-271 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mark Nartey

Abstract This paper presents a discourse-mythological analysis of the rhetoric of a pioneering Pan-African and Ghana’s independence leader, Kwame Nkrumah, drawing on Ruth Wodak’s discourse-historical approach to critical discourse analysis. The thesis of the paper is that Nkrumah’s discourse, in its focus on the emancipation and unification of Africa, can be characterized as mythic, a discursive exhortation of Africa to demonstrate to the world that it can better govern itself than the colonizers. In this vein, the paper analyzes four discursive strategies employed by Nkrumah in the creation and projection of his mythology: the introduction or creation of new discourse events, presupposition and implication, involvement (the use of indexicals) and lexical structuring and reiteration. This study is, therefore, presented as a case study of mythic discourse within the domain of politics.


2020 ◽  
Vol ahead-of-print (ahead-of-print) ◽  
Author(s):  
Tiia-Lotta Pekkanen ◽  
Visa Penttilä

PurposeThe study examines the responsibilisation of an ethnocentric consumer in commercial, meta-organisational discourses. In addition to nationalistic and patriotic discourses, the focus is on wider conceptualisations of consumer responsibility.Design/methodology/approachThe paper uses critical discourse analysis as a methodological approach to conduct an empirical case study on the texts of two producer-driven labelling campaigns.FindingsThe campaign texts create possibilities for ethnocentric consumption with positioning, argumentative and classificatory discourses. Patriotic responsibilisation is emphasised, together with rationales to take action on environmental concerns.Practical implicationsThe study highlights the responsibility of marketers over their corporate responsibility communication, suggesting that ethnocentric promotions may have the power to alter how consumers take action on various responsibility concerns.Social implicationsThe study surfaces the tensions that responsible consumption can entail for consumers. Indeed, nationalistic and patriotic discourses may alter our understanding of responsibility issues that may seem completely separate from the concepts of nationalism and patriotism.Originality/valueThe paper shows how different organisational texts are deployed to bring about the idea of ethnocentric consumption and how this relates to responsibility discourses, nationalism and patriotism.


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