Anu A Harju

The live character of suddenly breaking global media events along with the massive volume of digital traces they produce pose considerable challenges for research in the current communication environment. In this methodological article, we use the 2019 Christchurch mosque attacks as an empirical context for methodological reflection. We suggest a new type of ethnographic investigation of events—a digital team ethnography augmented by computational methods for studying media events. We show how “fieldwork” and the related “field” are constructed as part of the empirical workflow and present a four-phase model to structure the research process: (1) research readiness, (2) mobilization of fieldwork, (3) exploring the computationally organized ethnographic field, and (4) deep dives that enable thick description on social media. We conclude with a reflection on the benefits and limitations of the proposed methodological approach for the study of global media events.

This paper offers a critical exploration of the notion of liveness and, in particular, the production of liveness in the context of hybrid media event of terrorist violence. With Christchurch mosque attacks of March, 2019, as the empirical context of study, the paper demonstrates i) how the perpetrator produced liveness through the live streaming of the massacre in digital media; ii) how this material circulated in diverse digital platforms; and iii) what kind of struggles emerged around visibility and erasure by way of removal as carried out by different platforms (e.g. YouTube, Facebook, Twitter). The empirical data collection and analysis is based on a method of digital media ethnography. We posit that live streaming of the Christchurch mosque attacks resulted in the weaponization of liveness (Callahan 2017), accelerating the experience of ‘real time’ witnessing of death on multiple levels. While a relatively small number of people watched the massacre take place in ‘real time’ (...

One of the growing research interests in media and Internet studies concerns how the self is constructed in the digital environment, while the complex relationship between the self and consumption continues to be of interest in consumer research. This thesis is an examination of relational being at the intersection of digital media and consumer culture.  The thesis takes a critical perspective to examine the conditions under which the contemporary self is constructed and how the self is articulated in digital contexts, and thus views the online as embedded in the offline. Rooted in social constructionism, the relational perspective sees the self as an intersection of multiple and shifting relations. The aim of the study is to gain a deeper understanding of the complexity of self-construction in our media-saturated consumer society.  The study examines bloggers and fans and their mediated consumption practices through the lens of the social imaginary. The empirical material is collec...

The rapidly changing media environment fosters an increasing array of communication. It changes not only the way we interact, free from set time frames or places, but equally provides new possibilities of sharing experiences online, for example, when faced with death. In April 2014, researchers from all around the world gathered in Durham, UK, to attend the first Death Online Research Symposium (DORS). They represented various disciplines, including the humanities and social sciences, for example, communication studies, psychology, law and linguistics, and media studies. The Symposium topics varied from online memorial sites to new modes of grieving by way of social media to mobile technologies in graveyards. This review provides an overview of the current research in the field of online death and digital memorial culture as presented at the Symposium. The structure follows the thematic structure of the symposium: in addition, at the beginning of each theme a short introduction is provided. The review ends with future directions and recommendations.

In this article, we examine how journalists address and tackle online harassment by connective practices that involve joint action with peers and editors that we find are particularly effective in addressing the emotional effects of harassment. Theoretically, we bridge community of practice research with theories of emotional labour to develop a novel perspective to examine online harassment. Drawing on 22 interviews with Finnish journalists, we find three categories of connective practices that are particularly effective in tackling harassment: (1) supportive connection between the journalist and the editor; (2) shared collegial practices among peers in the newsrooms and (3) emotional engagement among peers outside the newsroom. All three categories illustrate how journalists as a community of practice develop new practices through dynamic processes innovation, improvisation, trial and error, reciprocal learning and mutual engagement. Importantly, emotional labour forms an importan...

In gender studies considerable attention has been paid to the marginalisation of overweight people (Sujata Moorti & Karen Ross 2005) and their stigmatization in our weight-obsessed society. The empowerment of marginalised groups on various social media sites has also been studied (Ciszek 2013), as well as online community interaction having positive effect on self-image negotiation (Tiidenberg 2014). However, within marginalized consumer groups, fashion and identity from a gender point of view is still an under-researched area (e.g. Downing Peters 2014). Plus-sized women have traditionally been viewed as ‘othered’, displaced, and non-hegemonic objects, as subjects without power. Often, plus-sized women are seen as forming a homogeneous group without paying attention to intra-group diversity. Drawing on the gender studies literature, particularly the Butlerian notion of undoing gender as resistance, as well as research on identity and self-presentation in social media (e.g. van Dijck 2013), this paper examines identity construction and the struggles of fatshionistas; fatshionistas are plus-sized fashion bloggers, marginalized among fashion bloggers generally but also within the wider norms of Western beauty ideals. Using Bourdieu’s conceptualisation of different types of capital, we argue that fashion and knowledge thereof is a form of social and cultural capital that can be used to position oneself favourably, thereby attaining a more acceptable social role in our society. The empirical materials of the study consist of twenty fatshion blogs. These blogs form a representative selection of active blogs belonging to what has been called the fatosphere (Scaraboto & Fischer 2013). The authors also consulted Instagram, Twitter and Pinterest using the #fatshionista hashtag to further establish and validate the self-representations resorted to by the fatshionistas. The methods used to analyse both the visual and verbal meanings in the blogs are based on the tradition of critical discourse analysis. CDA allows the examination of culturally diverse material and helps uncover the underlying power positions and struggles affecting the complex mechanisms of identity construction. A careful analysis of the empirical material revealed different discursive practices employed by the fatshion bloggers in their identity construction: on the one hand, they separate themselves from other fashion bloggers, but on the other hand seek similarity with and acceptance by mainstream fashionistas. The discursive strategies include, for example, separation from the mainstream by reference to the group as fatshionistas instead of fashionistas, thus underlying a difference based on size, yet similarity-seeking by way of visually mimicking and reproducing assumptions and representations associated with fashion that contribute to the narrow female representations. The analysis shows that in their resistance, the fatshionista bloggers nevertheless conform to the traditional representations of women, and thereby effectively act as social gatekeepers controlling the norms of acceptable femininity in the fatosphere. At the same time, by using this strategy the fatshionistas fail to promote equality for all overweight individuals. Keywords: Fashion blogs, fatshionista, identity, gender, social capital, plus-size

Research on the processes of mediatization aims to explore the mutual shaping of media and social life and how new media technologies influence and infiltrate social practices and cultural life. We extend this discussion of media’s role in transforming the everyday by including in the discussion the mediatization of emotion and discuss what we conceptualize as digital affect culture(s). We understand these as relational, contextual, globally emergent spaces in the digital environment where affective flows construct atmospheres of emotional and cultural belonging by way of emotional resonance and alignment. Approaching emotion as a cultural practice, in terms of affect, as something people do instead of have, we discuss how digital affect culture(s) traverse the digital terrains and construct pockets of culture-specific communities of affective practice. We draw on existing empirical research on digital memorial culture to empirically illustrate how digital affect culture manifests o...

Marxist Internet scholars have recently shed light on the commodification and exploitation of social media users. While some of these studies have also acknowledged the ideological nature of how online sociality is understood and discussed, they have not yet addressed in great detail the ways in which ideology figures in the process of commodification of social media users. We address this question by combining Marxist ideology theory with insights from cognitive pragmatics. Focusing on the idea of illusion, we draw on Relevance Theory and employ the notions of “relevance” and “cognitive illusion” to discuss the ideological process we call context manipulation, a concept that helps bring to focus the discursive obscuring of the capitalist operational logic of social media corporations. We illustrate our cognitivepragmatic model of ideology with examples of Facebook’s discursive practices. The paper contributes to the discussion on ideology in cultural studies and the discussion on c...

This paper examines the ways in which fans employ the mythological hero narrative after the loss of their object of fandom to make sense of and rationalise the past events. The study focuses on Steve Jobs fans and their online memorialisation practices and looks at how the fans as consumers construct the post-mortem identity of Jobs as a hero of our times. Our analysis suggests that through these communal memorialisation practices the fans engage in practices of fandom and identity work in ways that typically characterise religious groups. While death marks a separation in fan relationship, it also offers a threshold to the sacred realm and via memorialisation a continued and renewed connection with the object of fandom. 'Death is very likely the single best invention of Life.' Steve Jobs, 2005, Address to Stanford University.

With focus on Facebook, this paper contributes to the scholarly discussion that draws from Marxist concepts to examine “labour relations” between social media organizations as capitalist enterprises and users as both free labour and unwitting commodities sold to advertisers. This critical stream of research has not yet paid much attention to the ​ideological processes that may be facilitating the establishment and maintenance of such exploitative relations. We adopt a discursive perspective and draw on linguistic pragmatics to shed light on these processes. In particular, we employ the notions of ‘relevance’ and ‘cognitive illusion’ to explore in detail the discourse that influences how the user­platform relationship is, firstly, constructed in and by Facebook’s organizational communication, and secondly, understood by social media users. We introduce a discursive process we call​context manipulation​; it is an analytical concept that helps bring to focus the discursive obscuring of...

In March 2019, the first ever act of terrorist violence in New Zealand was live-streamed on social media, making many social media users unwitting witnesses to the massacre on their devices. The Christchurch mosque attacks revealed a particular digital and emotional vulnerability embedded in the digital media infrastructure. The last words of the first victim soon transmorphed into #hellobrother that, as a digital artefact, participated in shaping the emotional landscape. Combining real-time digital media ethnography on Twitter with data science and computational tools, this multi-method study has two aims: first and foremost, to develop and apply new methodology for the study of unexpected, mediated events as they unfold in real time; second, to explore post-death digital artefacts through the concept of digital afterlife that we approach through two complementary perspectives, data afterlife (the technological) and data as afterlife (the emotional). Adopting a relational perspecti...

Public mourning and collective displays of solidarity after terrorist violence are established cultural practices that bring people together at times of tragedy and loss. While it remains common to gather at the site of tragedy, to construct temporary memorials of candles and flowers in memory of the victims and to come together as community, mediated practices of commemoration have become equally important. Sharing solidarity symbols facilitating connective participation is one of the most prevalent and visible ways of joining in public mourning in digital spaces. One of the most popular solidarity symbols to date is #JeSuisCharlie, created after the Charlie Hebdo attack in Paris, 2015. It has since inspired numerous renditions, including #JeSuisMuslim that emerged after the Christchurch mosque attacks in March, 2019. This media-ethnographic study focuses on solidarity symbols circulating on Twitter after four terrorist attacks: Paris in January, 2015, and again in November, Beirut...

With much contemporary discussion on social media and the ethics and transparency of the way they operate, this article examines the discursive processes of user engagement as Baudrillardian solicitation. The concept of solicitation allows us to conceptualize social media use as a transactional process whereby the user is enticed by a promise of a ‘Gift’ and thus lured into using a service or a product. Simultaneously, the very act of participation implicates the user, albeit unwittingly, in the sanctioning and legitimizing of the operational logic behind social media. Adopting a CDS perspective, we explore the ways in which Facebook entices users through discursive processes of solicitation. We analyse, making use of corpus linguistic tools, both Facebook corporate communication and user reactions. Our findings show that the user is enticed by foregrounding the value of participation for the user and promising four types of Gift: protection, freedom of expression, personal connecti...

Digital Articulations of the Relational Self Identity continues to be one of the enduring topics in digital media research. This interdisciplinary take on the digital self extends the discussion in my dissertation (Harju) of contemporary articulations of the relational self in the digital context by focusing on potentiality of the evolving self. I adopt a relational approach to being (Gergen Relational) where the self is seen as always already a product of relations, borne out of them as well as dependent on them (Gergen Realities). The self as fluid and processual is reflective of our liquid times (Bauman), of globalisation and digitalisation where we are surrounded by global flows of images, taste and trends (Appadurai).The view of the self as a process underlies future-oriented action, emphasing the becoming of the self. The process of becoming implies the potential of the self that can be narrated into existence. The relational view of the self, perhaps indirectly, also posits t...

Digital Articulations of the Relational Self Identity continues to be one of the enduring topics in digital media research. This interdisciplinary take on the digital self extends the discussion in my dissertation (Harju) of contemporary articulations of the relational self in the digital context by focusing on potentiality of the evolving self. I adopt a relational approach to being (Gergen Relational) where the self is seen as always already a product of relations, borne out of them as well as dependent on them (Gergen Realities). The self as fluid and processual is reflective of our liquid times (Bauman), of globalisation and digitalisation where we are surrounded by global flows of images, taste and trends (Appadurai).The view of the self as a process underlies future-oriented action, emphasing the becoming of the self. The process of becoming implies the potential of the self that can be narrated into existence. The relational view of the self, perhaps indirectly, also posits t...

This article investigates how violence associated with religion, here namely Islam, functions as a trigger for public controversy in the Turku stabbings that took place in Finland in 2017. We begin by outlining the Lyotard-Habermas debate on controversy and compound this with current research on the digital public sphere. We combine cartography of controversy with digital media ethnography as methods of collecting data and discourse analysis for analysing the material. We investigate how the controversy triggered by violence is constructed around Islam in the public sphere of Twitter. We identify three discursive strategies connecting violence and Islam in the debates around the Turku stabbings: scapegoating, essentialisation, and racialisation. These respectively illustrate debates regarding blame for terrorism, the nature of Islam, and racialisation of terrorist violence and the Muslim Other. To conclude, we reflect on the ways in which the digital public sphere impacts Habermasia...

This article investigates how violence associated with religion, here namely Islam, functions as a trigger for public controversy in the Turku stabbings that took place in Finland in 2017. We begin by outlining the Lyotard-Habermas debate on controversy and compound this with current research on the digital public sphere. We combine cartography of controversy with digital media ethnography as methods of collecting data and discourse analysis for analysing the material. We investigate how the controversy triggered by violence is constructed around Islam in the public sphere of Twitter. We identify three discursive strategies connecting violence and Islam in the debates around the Turku stabbings: scapegoating, essentialisation, and racialisation. These respectively illustrate debates regarding blame for terrorism, the nature of Islam, and racialisation of terrorist violence and the Muslim Other. To conclude, we reflect on the ways in which the digital public sphere impacts Habermasia...

Social media, such as YouTube, is increasingly a site of collective remembering where personal tributes to celebrity figures become sites of public mourning. YouTube, especially, is rife with celebrity commemorations. Examining fans’ online mourning practices on YouTube, this article examines video tributes dedicated to the late Steve Jobs, with a focus on collective remembering and collective construction of memory. Combining netnography with Critical Discourse Analysis, the analysis focuses on the user comments where the past unfolds in interaction and meanings are negotiated and contested. The paper argues that celebrity death may, for avid fans, be a source of disenfranchised grief (Doka, 1999), a type of grief characterised by inadequate social support, usually arising from lack of empathy for the loss. The study sheds light on the functions digital memorials have for mourning fans (and fandom) and argues that social media sites have come to function as spaces of negotiation, legitimisation and alleviation of disenfranchised grief. It is also suggested that when it comes to disenfranchised grief, and grief work generally, the concept of community be widened to include communities of weak ties, a typical form of communal belonging on social media.

This paper examines the ways in which fans employ the mythological hero narrative after the loss of their object of fandom to make sense of and rationalise the past events. The study focuses on Steve Jobs fans and their online memorialisation practices and looks at how the fans as consumers construct the post-mortem identity of Jobs as a hero of our times. Our analysis suggests that through these communal memorialisation practices the fans engage in practices of fandom and identity work in ways that typically characterise religious groups. While death marks a separation in fan relationship, it also offers a threshold to the sacred realm and via memorialisation a continued and renewed connection with the object of fandom.

We live in times of affect economy. Death brings us together through mediated participation in online mourning rituals (Sumiala, 2013) where belonging is achieved through emotional identification with distant others. Mediated rituals have the capacity to evocate a sense of communal belonging (Pantti & Sumiala, 2009; Couldry, Livingstone & Markham, 2007).
Exploring social media as mediated public space (Couldry, 2012), the study focuses on the meanings assigned to the lives of deceased celebrities. Combining a social constructionist approach (Berger & Luckmann 1991/1966; Gergen 1997, 2009) with systemic functional linguistics (SFL) analysis (Halliday & Matthiessen, 2004; Martin & Rose, 2003), this study examines how a ‘lived life’ is (co)constructed in online memorising and embedded in digital memorials.
Actor Robin Williams died in August 2014, and Philip Seymour Hoffman in February the same year. Celebrity death disrupts normality, peaking also in social media. Perhaps due to the untimeliness of most famous deaths, they remind people of “what really matters”. This study looks at what kinds of meanings are assigned to the lives lived and lost, how celebrities gain meaning in and by death as these meanings are discursively and collectively constructed in social media and anchored in digital memorials. The study extends our understanding on, first, how digital memorials come to mean, and second, the role of online memorising in a sense of belonging.
Analysis is carried out using the analytical framework provided by SFL (Halliday & Matthiessen, 2004; Martin, 2004). The empirical material consists of YouTube memorial videos as well as #RIPRobinWilliams and #RIPPhilipSeymourHoffman tweets.  The results suggest meanings originate from the lives and needs of the mourning audience more than the actual lives of the celebrities, suggesting that digital memorials, while having a collective function, also harbour deeply personal meanings.

Combining systemic functional analysis (Halliday & Matthiessen, 2004; Martin & Rose, 2003) with a social constructionist approach (Berger & Luckmann 1991/1966; Gergen 1997, 2009), this study examines how a ‘lived life’ is constructed in acts of digital memorialisation, focusing on the meanings assigned to the lives of deceased celebrities from the perspective of an outside experiencer, the consumer of the celebrity figure. Exploring social media as mediated public sphere, the study examines how death brings us together through affective alignment (Martin 2004) and mediated participation in online mourning rituals. The significance of mediated rituals arises from the evocation of a sense of communal belonging, largely based on affect (e.g. Pantti & Sumiala, 2009; Couldry, Livingstone & Markham, 2007).

Actor Robin Williams died in August 2014, and Philip Seymour Hoffman in February the same year. Singer Whitney Houston passed away in February 2012. Celebrity deaths disrupt normality and routine, and perhaps due to the untimeliness of most famous deaths, they often remind people of “what really matters”. These events also peak in social media. This study looks at what kinds of meanings are assigned to the lives lived and lost, how celebrities gain meaning in and by death as these meanings are discursively and collectively constructed in social media and anchored in digital memorial tributes. The present study aims to extend our understanding on, first, how digital memorials come to mean, and second, the role of the digital media in memorising and sense of belonging.

Of the three metafunctions in the SFL framework (Halliday & Matthiessen 2004), the focus is on interpersonal and ideational levels of meaning. Martin (2004) discusses evaluation as a source of communality, showing how techniques of alignment are used to position readers. The coupling of evaluation and ideation posits attitude as being an interpersonal stance toward ideation: the analysis is thus informed by the Appraisal framework (Martin & White, 2005) to better account for the ways in which appraisal resources are employed in connecting with distant others. Using appraisal, Zappavigna (2011, 2012, 2014) has explored ‘ambient affiliation’ in the context of social media. The social and discursive construction of memory in online memorial sites has also been explored  (e.g. Jarvis, 2011), but this study brings these two frameworks together.

The empirical material consist of YouTube memorial videos and user comments of the aforementioned celebrities as well as tweets with #RIPRobinWiliams, #RIPPhilipSeymourHoffman and #RIPWhitneyHouston.  The results suggest meanings originate from the lives and needs of spectators more than the actual lives of the celebrities. Increasing digitalisation is but one reason for lives becoming digitally extended beyond the physical: we live in times of affect economy facilitated by social media and through emotional identification with distant others, we process a range of emotions. Online memorials are remarkably similar; yet more noteworthy is the similarity of responses. However, the emotional landscape at sites of digital memorising is a tumultuous one. Combining the constructionist framework with systemic functional analysis provides a more comprehensive understanding of the social phenomena of mediated belonging and online public mourning.


Keywords: Alignment; interpersonal meaning; digital memorials; social media; mediated participation; online mourning



References:

Berger, P. L. and T. Luckman (1991/1966) The social construction of reality. London: Penguin.

Couldry, N., S. Livingstone, & T. Markham (2007) Connection or disconnection? Tracking the mediated public sphere in everyday life. In: Butsch, R. (ed.) Media and Public Spheres. Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 28-42.
ISBN 9780230007215.
Downloaded from: http://eprints.bbk.ac.uk/4815/


Gergen, K. J. (1997) Realities and relationships: soundings in social construction. Harvard University Press. 

Gergen, K. J. (2009) An invitation to social construction. 2nd ed. London: Sage.

Halliday, M.A.K. and C. Matthiessen. (2004) An Introduction to Functional Grammar. 3rd edition. London: Hodder Arnold.

Jarvis, L. (2011) 9/11 Digitally Remastered? Internet Archives, Vernacular Memories and WhereWereYou.org. Journal of American Studies, 45 (2011) 4: 793-814.

Martin, J. R. and D. Rose. (2003) Working with Discourse: Meaning Beyond the Clause. London and New York: Continuum.

Martin, J.R. (2004) Mourning: how we get aligned. Discourse & Society, Vol 15 (2-3): 321-344.

Martin, J. R. and P. R. R. White. (2005) The language of evaluation: appraisal in English. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.

Page, R. (2012) The linguistics of self-branding and micro-celebrity in Twitter: The role of hashtags. Discourse & Communication 6: 181
DOI: 10.1177/1750481312437441

Pantti, M. and J. Sumiala (2009) Till death do us join: media, mourning rituals and the sacred centre of the society. Media, Culture & Society 31: 119
DOI: 10.1177/0163443708098251

Zappavigna, M. (2011) Ambient affiliation: a linguistic perspective on Twitter. New Media & Society 13 (5): 788 – 806. Originally published online 31 May 2011
DOI: 10.1177/1461444810385097

Zappavigna, M. (2012) Discourse of Twitter and social media: how we use language to create affiliation on the web. London: Continuum.

Zappavigna , M. (2014) Enacting identity in microblogging through ambient affiliation. Discourse & Communication 8 (2): 209 – 228. Originally published online 19 December 2013
DOI: 10.1177/1750481313510816

Struggling to find workers with relevant skills, IT companies have set out to entice ‘talent’ through recruitment advertising, including employer image communication. It is argued in this paper that ‘talent’ is a rhetorical construct more than a set of skills conjured up to court the applicant. This rhetorical strategy conceals the actual driver for ‘talent acquisition’: the dire need of workforce that companies need to maintain or acquire market share.

Drawing on Critical Discourse Studies (Fairclough 1989, 2004; van Dijk 2001) and Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL) (Halliday & Matthiessen 2004; Martin & Rose 2003), the data consists of several IT companies’ recruitment advert texts and employer branding videos on YouTube. Within SFL, Appraisal Theory (Martin 2000; Martin 2004; Martin & White 2005) is applied to elaborate on evaluation and attitude running through the texts. Evaluation and attitudinal alignment is seen as crucial in both ‘talent’ construction and workplace/employer image construction. Rhetorically, the message is built to attract what can be called the ‘putative’ applicant by way of ‘invitation to community’ (Martin 2004). Perceptions are everything; research in personnel psychology shows applicants tend to make decisions based on fit assessment (Collins and Stevens 1999; Ployhart 2006), and perceived sense of belonging to a group.

As representations and social practices are based on ideologies, by examining discourse(s) we can examine the underlying ideologies (van Dijk 2001). This paper seeks to uncover the ideological undercurrents guiding the text, and to shed light on the discursive strategies employed to construct ‘talent’ and blur capitalistic discourse. The results show that while ‘talent’ is enticed by promises highlighting individualistic values, in the end, ‘talent’ serves to feed the corporate in its quest for increased market share: the underlying ideology is strongly capitalistic and company-centred. The talent of today is the blue-collar worker of the past: a necessary, yet disposable, part in the engine that is the corporate.

"In today’s digital era, online communities abound, joined by a common cause and often by dedicated sites. Technology transcends physical distance and allows the like-minded to congregate and communicate. This paper addresses another type of online belonging, that of ‘imagined community’ (Andersen 1991) in the digital space. Public, technology-mediated mourning has in recent years become more common. This paper looks at fans’ online bereavement and act(s) of remembrance after the death of Steve Jobs as these emerge in non-dedicated digital spaces, e.g. YouTube viewer comments.

Of the three strands of meaning in the SFL framework (Halliday & Matthiessen 2004), the focus is on interpersonal and ideational levels of meaning, which are analysed to see how identity and set of shared beliefs are constructed in short, personal messages. Using the Appraisal Theory (Martin & White 2005; Martin & Rose 2003), the paper also looks at how appraisal resources are employed to create a sense of community with virtual strangers by way of inviting the reader to engage in a form of “attitudinal rapport” (Martin 2004: 323).
Data is collected from various online sites, including YouTube, newspaper article reader comments and comments made on Facebook and other social media fan sites. One dedicated site is included, which is maintained by Apple at www.apple.com/stevejobs. The preliminary results illustrate the emerging role and growing importance of online spaces for personal activities such as expression of grief and indicate the existence of technology-enabled communities where anonymity does not stand in the way of intimacy.

References:
Andersen, B. (1983/1991) Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism. London: Verso.
Halliday, M.A.K. and C. Matthiessen (2004) An Introduction to Functional Grammar.
3rd edition. London: Hodder Arnold.
Jarvis, Lee (2011) 9/11 Digitally Remastered? Internet Archives, Vernacular Memories and WhereWereYou.org. Journal of American Studies, 45 (2011) 4: 793-814.
Martin, J. R. and D. Rose (2003) Working with Discourse: Meaning Beyond the Clause.
London and New York: Continuum.
Martin, J.R. (2004) Mourning: how we get aligned. Discourse & Society, Vol 15 (2-3): 321-344.
Martin, J. R. and P.R.R. White (2005) The Language of Evaluation: Appraisal in English. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
"

"Complexities of meaning are often present in job recruitment advertisement texts; one example is the rec- ruitment advert texts of Nokia (2008). Tight competition over skilled labour drives corporations to resort to appraisal and manipulative language in order to stand out. The function of the recruitment advert text has thus become twofold; in addition to informing job seekers about the opening, the advert functions to positively appraise and evaluate, i.e. promote, the company. It is this projected positive employer image and the linguistic realisations that are explored in this paper by way of using the theory of SFL (Halliday 1985; 1994, Halliday and Matthiessen 2004) and the Appraisal Theory (Martin and White 2005; Martin and Rose 2003).
The data for this text-linguistic study consists of 20 Nokia job recruitment ads found on their website. Of the three metafunctions, experiential and interpersonal strands of meaning are examined and the text is reviewed in the context of the current global, web-based environment set against the current socio-economic and labour market situation.
The analysis of interpersonal meaning shows how the company presents itself to the applicant and what kind of power relations exist between the two. Experiential meaning exposes how the ideal applicant and the pro- jected company image are constructed; looking at transitivity we see who occupies which participant role and what types of processes hold between them. The shift in the labour market is also reflected in the genre, which now represents a genre hybrid.
The results represent complexity of meaning in an everyday text on many more levels than expected, e.g. the demands made on the applicant actually reflect on the company’s employer image. I suggest the overall message is implicitly conveyed in a complex way as the text unfolds and meanings interact in context."

One of the growing research interests in media and Internet studies concerns how the self is constructed in the digital environment, while the complex relationship between the self and consumption continues to be of interest in consumer research. This thesis is an examination of relational being at the intersection of digital media and consumer culture. It takes a critical perspective to examine the conditions under which the contemporary self is constructed and how the self is articulated in digital contexts, and thus views the online as embedded in the offline. Rooted in social constructionism, the relational perspective sees the self as an intersection of multiple and shifting relations.
The aim of the study is to gain a deeper understanding of the complexity of self-construction in our media-saturated consumer society. The study examines bloggers and fans and their mediated consumption practices through the lens of the social imaginary. The empirical material is collected from social media sites, plus-sized fashion blogs and YouTube, and analysed in the discourse analytic tradition combined with digital ethnography.
The findings of the empirical studies show how ‘aspiration’ is constructed in the imaginary, with two conflicting, yet mutually constitutive notions of ‘being yourself’ and ‘improving yourself’ being negotiated at the site of the self, in the relational flow of the Internet. The studies also discuss disenfranchisement and marginalisation as properties of relationships, and show how imaginaries, in offering a range of interpretative resources for the self, also provide opportunities for counter-discourses.
The study makes several theoretical and methodological contributions: within media and Internet studies, this thesis contributes to a better understanding of the embeddedness of the digital and to the ongoing discussion of how the digital is shaping the self; within consumer research, to the theorisation of relational self in the contemporary consumer context.
Treating imaginaries as semiotic systems allows us to see imaginaries as constructed terrains of aspirations with complex significations. Thus, as sources of relational tension, imaginaries can be seen as implicated in the positioning, even othering, of individuals. The study suggests that the self is a fluctuating process of various alignments and disalignments within the matrix of social, cultural, and economic forces, with momentary discursive and relational achievements translating into temporary and situated congruence with others.