Journal articles by Ella Lillqvist
VAKKI Publications, 2023
Over the past few years, individuals have become increasingly interested in investing and this in... more Over the past few years, individuals have become increasingly interested in investing and this investment boom is also reflected in news media content. Investing is an activity based on predictions and expectations about the future that seeks to actively influence accumulation of wealth and thus one’s own future. This study focuses on imagined futures in investment discourse and the performative role of imagined futures in the construction of financial markets and market society as a whole. The data spans the years 2015–2022 and consists of a 1.2-million-word corpus of articles and reader comments from four Finnish newspapers. This corpus is analysed using corpus-assisted discourse studies, combining quantitative and qualitative text analysis. In the light of the material, the future is imagined both from an individual perspective and from broader global or societal perspectives. Investors’ individualistic futures are mainly imagined as positive and can therefore motivate people to invest. Broader visions of the future are more negative, for example the idea that in the future society will not afford to pay pensions, which in turn requires the individual to prepare through investing. The investor is predominantly seen as a neoliberal subject who takes responsibility and is able to influence their own future.
Consumption Markets & Culture, 2023
This paper extends recent theorising on “market violence”, defined here as a type of structural a... more This paper extends recent theorising on “market violence”, defined here as a type of structural and cultural violence that takes place through an assemblage in the market environment. The Finnish “instant loan” market (similar to payday loans) has been widely criticised, e.g. for excessively high interest rates; in this paper, debtors’ anonymous narratives on the discussion forum Suomi24 are used to analyse the instant loan market as a case of market violence. The study contributes to a deeper understanding of the role of culture and affect in market violence and presents a model of cultural market violence showing how affects (here: hope, shame, despair and sense of urgency) can play a key role in mediating between cultural ideals (here: those of individual responsibility and the “good life”) and concrete business practices, thus enabling market violence.
Kansantaloudellinen aikakauskirja, 2020
Tässä artikkelissa tuomme suomalaiseen talouden tutkimukseen uuden menetelmällisen ja teoreettise... more Tässä artikkelissa tuomme suomalaiseen talouden tutkimukseen uuden menetelmällisen ja teoreettisen tavan tarkastella julkisyhteisöjen velkaa. Artikkeli laajentaa ja jatkaa aiempaa retorista, narratiivista ja diskursiivista taloustieteellistä tutkimusta, erityisesti Robert Shillerin avausta narratiivisesta taloustieteestä, esittelemällä talouden imaginaarien eli mielikuvastojen käsitteen ja hyödyntämällä suuria tekstiaineistoja julkisen keskustelun talouskäsitysten tutkimiseen. Artikkelin ensimmäisessä osassa tarkastelemme korpusavusteisen diskurssianalyysin avulla julkista velkaa koskevia Suomi24:n, Ylen uutisten ja eduskunnan tekstejä. Toisessa osassa peilaamme tekstiaineistojen näkemyksiä julkisen velan tilastollisen kehitykseen Euroopassa vuosina 2000–2020 sekä avaamme julkiseen velkaan liittyvää tilastointia ja eri velkakäsitteiden eroja. Tilastollisten aineistojen luoma kuva julkisesta velasta on varsin erilainen kuin tekstiaineistojen. Tekstiaineistoissa vallitsee hyvin laaja yksimielisyys siitä, että Suomen velka lisääntyy nopeasti ja on aivan liian suuri. Lisäksi kansalaisten kirjoittelussa huomio kiinnittyy pessimistisiin ennusteisiin sekä oletettuihin syyllisiin, motiiveihin ja kärsijöihin. Sen sijaan tilastollinen käsiteanalyysi ja eri maiden tilastojen pohjalta tehty klusterianalyysi osoittavat, että Suomi on kuulunut koko 2000-luvun ajan maltillisiin velkaantujiin.
Participations, 2020
Open access. Please read on the journal's own website: https://www.participations.org/Volume%2017... more Open access. Please read on the journal's own website: https://www.participations.org/Volume%2017/Issue%201/5.pdf. Abstract: Applying Althusser’s concept of interpellation, this study proposes a discourse theoretical approach to help understand the constitution of activist fan communities. In a discursive process, an ideology (defined as a framework of ideas through which we understand social existence) opens up a specific subject position that some people recognise and identify with. They are thus drawn into a certain way of thinking, speaking, and acting – as well as into a group or a community. The paper extends ideology theory by arguing that interpellation involves two stages: ‘recognition’ and ‘reaction’. Recognition involves ideology grabbing someone’s attention, and reaction, in turn, refers to that person either accepting or rejecting the ‘call’ of that ideology. The metaphor of interpellation helps make sense of how discourses and ideologies are acquired and spread and how groups and communities form around them. It is also suggested that ideology, in this sense, can inspire fan activism and empower members by making them aware of the possibility to act collectively. Empirically, the interpellative constitution of communities is demonstrated using the case of Nerdfighteria, an activist fan community formed around the YouTube channel Vlogbrothers.
Keywords: fan communities, fan activism, Nerdfighters, ideology, interpellation, discourse, social media, YouTube
Kulutustutkimus.Nyt, 2019
Open access. Please read on the journal's own website: https://journal.fi/kulutustutkimus/article... more Open access. Please read on the journal's own website: https://journal.fi/kulutustutkimus/article/view/84608
Title in English: Corpus-assisted discourse studies as a method in consumer research: Exploring talk about instant loans on the Suomi24 discussion forum)
English abstract:
This study presents corpus-assisted discourse studies (CADS) that draws on the tradition of quantitative linguistics, and contributes thus to recent discussion concerning methods for analysing large quantities of text. The article illustrates CADS techniques relevant to consumer research by analysing how users of the Suomi24 discussion forum have discussed instant loans (similar to payday loans in English-speaking countries) during the first decade of the phenomenon in Finland, 2005–2015. In addition, the study applies and develops various types of data visualization suitable for CADS. CADS offers versatile tools for consumer research: It helps get an overview of themes present in a corpus for example by examining the lexical characteristics of the target corpus in relation to a reference corpus or, in a longitudinal corpus, by analysing words that become more or less common over time. Moreover, it is possible to observe and visualize the text contexts of certain words that are of interest to the researcher; those words may arise inductively from a general examination of the corpus or deductively from previous research. CADS also enables moving flexibly between quantitative and qualitative analysis. Corpus analysis software can be used for both pre-existing corpora and corpora collected by the researcher. CADS is suitable especially for consumer researchers who are interested in common discourses in large quantities of text, relating to some theme that is manifested in specific vocabulary, such as a product, product category or cultural consumption phenomenon.
Tiivistelmä:
Tämä tutkimus osallistuu viimeaikaiseen keskusteluun suurten tekstimäärien analyysimenetelmistä esittelemällä kielitieteen määrälliseen tutkimusperinteeseen pohjautuvaa korpusavusteista diskurssianalyysia (corpus-assisted discourse studies, CADS). Artikkelissa havainnollistetaan CADSin olennaisimpia menetelmiä kuluttajatutkimuksellisessa kontekstissa analysoimalla, miten Suomi24-keskustelufoorumin käyttäjät ovat keskustelleet pikalainoista ilmiön ensimmäisellä vuosikymmenellä Suomessa eli vuosina 2005–2015. Lisäksi artikkelissa kartoitetaan ja kehitetään CADSin yhteyteen soveltuvia visualisointitapoja. CADS tarjoaa monipuolisia välineitä kuluttajatutkimuksen työkalupakkiin: Sen avulla voidaan saada yleiskuva suuressa tekstimäärässä käsitellyistä teemoista esimerkiksi tarkastelemalla aineiston erityispiirteitä suhteessa vertailuaineistoon tai pidemmän aikavälin kattavassa aineistossa yleistyviä ja harvinaistuvia sanoja. Lisäksi voidaan tutkia ja havainnollistaa visuaalisesti tiettyjen tutkijaa erityisesti kiinnostavien sanojen esiintymiskonteksteja – nousivat nuo sanat sitten aineistolähtöisesti korpuksen yleistarkastelusta tai teorialähtöisesti aiemmasta tutkimuksesta. Myös siirtyminen määrällisen ja laadullisen analyysin välillä on joustavaa. Korpusanalyysiohjelmistot mahdollistavat sekä valmiiden että itse kerättyjen korpusten analyysin. CADS sopii erityisesti kuluttajatutkijoille, joita kiinnostavat yleiset puhetavat isossa tekstiaineistossa koskien jotakin selkeästi sanallistettavaa teemaa kuten tiettyä tuotetta, tuotekategoriaa tai kulttuurista kulutusilmiötä.
Open Cultural Studies, 2018
Marxist Internet scholars have recently shed light on the commodification and exploitation of soc... more 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 commodification of online sociality in critical Internet and media studies by offering a revised interpretation of Marx’s ideology theory that highlights the discursive and cognitive nature of ideological processes, and by elaborating on the workings of ideology in the specific context of corporate social media.
Critical Approaches to Discourse Analysis across Disciplines (CADAAD Journal), 2018
OPEN ACCESS, HERE IS THE LINK: http://www.lancaster.ac.uk/fass/journals/cadaad/wp-content/uploads... more OPEN ACCESS, HERE IS THE LINK: http://www.lancaster.ac.uk/fass/journals/cadaad/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/04-Lillqvist-Harju.pdf
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 connection, and a general altruism on the part of the corporation. Thus, this study sheds light on how users are enticed discursively by the social media company and the ways in which they either accept the discourse or resist it.
International Journal of Consumer Studies
Previous research has shown that consumers increasingly challenge the legitimacy of marketers and... more Previous research has shown that consumers increasingly challenge the legitimacy of marketers and unsolicited marketing communication in online contexts. Based on a qualitative study, this article examines how and for what reasons consumers challenge marketer legitimacy—the perceived appropriateness of marketers and their activities—in the empirical context of Reddit, a popular social news and community website. The study suggests that consumers challenge or accept marketer legitimacy in online communities based on particular, community and situation specific, legitimacy criteria that reflect and reproduce the values and norms of the community. In doing so, it is argued, consumers play a role as legitimating agents—consumer-citizens that have the power to confer or deny legitimacy in the context of business-society relations. Overall, the study advances knowledge in the field of consumer studies in two ways. Firstly, it builds a symbolic interactionist perspective on consumer-citizens as legitimating agents who enact their active citizenship role in the marketplace by assessing and constructing marketer legitimacy in online communities. Secondly, it offers an empirically grounded account of how and for what reasons consumer-citizens challenge or accept the legitimacy of marketers and unsolicited marketing communication in online communities.
Social media have inspired optimistic claims of empowerment of consumers vis-à-vis corporations; ... more Social media have inspired optimistic claims of empowerment of consumers vis-à-vis corporations; however, an ongoing commercialization of online contexts may compromise such equalization. This study takes a critical discourse studies perspective and contributes to a nuanced understanding of discursive power relations between companies and consumers on social media by analyzing the possibilities that corporate Facebook pages provide for consumer participation and criticism and for corporate manipulation of discourse. To do this, the study draws from Bakhtin׳s view of dialogue to shed light on contextual and discoursal features which operate to either promote or silence voices. We show how the features of Facebook provide methods for “monologization” making the discourse appear participative while still controlling which voices are heard.
Journal of Business and Technical Communication
PLEASE NOTE that the provided document is a draft version, there are some small differences to th... more PLEASE NOTE that the provided document is a draft version, there are some small differences to the final published article.
This study examines interaction between corporate representatives and critical consumers in today’s social media environment. Applying a microanalytical form of discourse analysis to a data set of corporate Facebook page discussions, the study contributes to a better understanding of the communicative resources that organizations use as part of their impression management (IM) for upholding their acceptability and promoting their credibility. The study also reveals the complexity of the work of corporate Facebook representatives, who need to align their individual IM with that of the organization while adjusting to the technologically mediated context.
Book chapters by Ella Lillqvist
Economic Sociology in Europe: Recent trends and developments
This chapter analyses economic imaginaries, defined here as widely shared ways of understanding t... more This chapter analyses economic imaginaries, defined here as widely shared ways of understanding the future, the present and the enduring principles of the economic world. Specifically, our focus is on imaginaries that relate to consumption. Economic imaginaries can undergo change particularly during crises; this chapter therefore examines, in the context of Finland, whether and how economic imaginaries related to consumption transformed during the COVID-19 pandemic. The study makes use of large-scale aggregated news and social media data covering the years 2015–2021. We analyse this material using corpus-assisted discourse studies, an approach that combines quantitative and qualitative textual analysis. The keyword analysis method enables a comparison between the time period immediately before the COVID-19 crisis and the period of the pandemic. The chapter contributes to economic sociology by extending the theoretical discussion on the fictional aspects of the economy, as well as by widening the spectrum of methodological approaches used in the field.
Kielentutkimuksen menetelmiä, 2020
in Luodonpää-Manni, M., Hamunen, M., Konstenius, R., Miestamo, M., Nikanne, U., & Sinnemäki, K. (... more in Luodonpää-Manni, M., Hamunen, M., Konstenius, R., Miestamo, M., Nikanne, U., & Sinnemäki, K. (eds.) Kielentutkimuksen menetelmiä [Methods in Linguistics]. Helsinki: Suomalaisen Kirjallisuuden Seura [Finnish Literature Society]
Peer-reviewed meeting abstracts by Ella Lillqvist
Academy of Management Annual Meeting Proceedings, 2016
Advances in consumer research, 2015
Conference Presentations by Ella Lillqvist
35th European Group for Organizational Studies Colloquium (EGOS), 2019
33rd European Group for Organizational Studies Colloquium (EGOS), Copenhagen, Denmark, 2017
Building a discursive leadership perspective on sensemaking and emotions, this paper focuses on h... more Building a discursive leadership perspective on sensemaking and emotions, this paper focuses on how top managers make use of emotions in their discourse in the context of strategic change in a large European media corporation. The paper contributes to sensemaking literature and to a discursive understanding of leadership by showing how emotions are used as discursive resources in leadership, enabling guided sensemaking of a change process. We offer an integrative framework of four ways of using emotions as discursive resources, 1) expressing, 2) evaluating, 3) explaining and 4) eliciting emotions. These enable managers to inspire and control followers and to legitimate themselves as well as the strategic change process.
67th Annual Conference of the International Communication Association, San Diego, CA, USA, 2017
6th international conference on Critical Approaches To Discourse Analysis Across Disciplines (CADAAD), 2016
This paper examines the problematic labour relations between social media organizations as capita... more This paper examines the problematic labour relations between social media organizations as capitalist enterprises and users as free labour, sold as audience commodity to advertisers. To better understand the ideological, discursive mechanisms facilitating the establishment of such labour relations, we introduce the term context manipulation and empirically shed light on the process of user commodification.
Since its beginnings, the Internet has inspired great hopes of increased democracy in this new “p... more Since its beginnings, the Internet has inspired great hopes of increased democracy in this new “public sphere”, but what may have started as an egalitarian project soon became marked by a commodified Internet economy (Fuchs 2009b). Most social media being free of charge makes it difficult for users to see platforms as capitalist endeavours: despite social media organizations controlling the resources, users still expect freedom of speech, seeing social media as a facilitator of their self-expression. Violation of this expectation results in public outrage; yet, users stay.
To investigate the contradictory relationship between users and platforms, this paper examines social media sites as “pseudo-public” spaces. We argue that expectation of “freedom” arises from a “cognitive illusion” (cf. Johnson-Laird & Savary, 1999; Maillatt & Oswald, 2009) of publicness that blurs the governing commercial rationale. Digital spaces are equated with offline public spaces, evoking expectations regarding freedom and regulation. This also leads to demands that platform owners take the role of public authorities, policing the space: regulation is both sought (privacy issues, troll control) and condemned (censorship, surveillance).
We critically analyze the discourses and understandings related to the expectation of “freedom” on popular social media sites. The paper sheds light on the symbiotic, yet problematic, relationship between platforms as capitalist, commercial organizations and users as unwitting commodities (cf. Fuchs, 2012). The study contributes to a theoretical understanding of commodification of online participation and discourse in informational capitalism (e.g. Fuchs, 2009a; 2010; 2014).
Keywords: social media, informational capitalism, pseudo-public space, commodification, cognitive illusion
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Journal articles by Ella Lillqvist
Keywords: fan communities, fan activism, Nerdfighters, ideology, interpellation, discourse, social media, YouTube
Title in English: Corpus-assisted discourse studies as a method in consumer research: Exploring talk about instant loans on the Suomi24 discussion forum)
English abstract:
This study presents corpus-assisted discourse studies (CADS) that draws on the tradition of quantitative linguistics, and contributes thus to recent discussion concerning methods for analysing large quantities of text. The article illustrates CADS techniques relevant to consumer research by analysing how users of the Suomi24 discussion forum have discussed instant loans (similar to payday loans in English-speaking countries) during the first decade of the phenomenon in Finland, 2005–2015. In addition, the study applies and develops various types of data visualization suitable for CADS. CADS offers versatile tools for consumer research: It helps get an overview of themes present in a corpus for example by examining the lexical characteristics of the target corpus in relation to a reference corpus or, in a longitudinal corpus, by analysing words that become more or less common over time. Moreover, it is possible to observe and visualize the text contexts of certain words that are of interest to the researcher; those words may arise inductively from a general examination of the corpus or deductively from previous research. CADS also enables moving flexibly between quantitative and qualitative analysis. Corpus analysis software can be used for both pre-existing corpora and corpora collected by the researcher. CADS is suitable especially for consumer researchers who are interested in common discourses in large quantities of text, relating to some theme that is manifested in specific vocabulary, such as a product, product category or cultural consumption phenomenon.
Tiivistelmä:
Tämä tutkimus osallistuu viimeaikaiseen keskusteluun suurten tekstimäärien analyysimenetelmistä esittelemällä kielitieteen määrälliseen tutkimusperinteeseen pohjautuvaa korpusavusteista diskurssianalyysia (corpus-assisted discourse studies, CADS). Artikkelissa havainnollistetaan CADSin olennaisimpia menetelmiä kuluttajatutkimuksellisessa kontekstissa analysoimalla, miten Suomi24-keskustelufoorumin käyttäjät ovat keskustelleet pikalainoista ilmiön ensimmäisellä vuosikymmenellä Suomessa eli vuosina 2005–2015. Lisäksi artikkelissa kartoitetaan ja kehitetään CADSin yhteyteen soveltuvia visualisointitapoja. CADS tarjoaa monipuolisia välineitä kuluttajatutkimuksen työkalupakkiin: Sen avulla voidaan saada yleiskuva suuressa tekstimäärässä käsitellyistä teemoista esimerkiksi tarkastelemalla aineiston erityispiirteitä suhteessa vertailuaineistoon tai pidemmän aikavälin kattavassa aineistossa yleistyviä ja harvinaistuvia sanoja. Lisäksi voidaan tutkia ja havainnollistaa visuaalisesti tiettyjen tutkijaa erityisesti kiinnostavien sanojen esiintymiskonteksteja – nousivat nuo sanat sitten aineistolähtöisesti korpuksen yleistarkastelusta tai teorialähtöisesti aiemmasta tutkimuksesta. Myös siirtyminen määrällisen ja laadullisen analyysin välillä on joustavaa. Korpusanalyysiohjelmistot mahdollistavat sekä valmiiden että itse kerättyjen korpusten analyysin. CADS sopii erityisesti kuluttajatutkijoille, joita kiinnostavat yleiset puhetavat isossa tekstiaineistossa koskien jotakin selkeästi sanallistettavaa teemaa kuten tiettyä tuotetta, tuotekategoriaa tai kulttuurista kulutusilmiötä.
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 connection, and a general altruism on the part of the corporation. Thus, this study sheds light on how users are enticed discursively by the social media company and the ways in which they either accept the discourse or resist it.
This study examines interaction between corporate representatives and critical consumers in today’s social media environment. Applying a microanalytical form of discourse analysis to a data set of corporate Facebook page discussions, the study contributes to a better understanding of the communicative resources that organizations use as part of their impression management (IM) for upholding their acceptability and promoting their credibility. The study also reveals the complexity of the work of corporate Facebook representatives, who need to align their individual IM with that of the organization while adjusting to the technologically mediated context.
Book chapters by Ella Lillqvist
Peer-reviewed meeting abstracts by Ella Lillqvist
Conference Presentations by Ella Lillqvist
To investigate the contradictory relationship between users and platforms, this paper examines social media sites as “pseudo-public” spaces. We argue that expectation of “freedom” arises from a “cognitive illusion” (cf. Johnson-Laird & Savary, 1999; Maillatt & Oswald, 2009) of publicness that blurs the governing commercial rationale. Digital spaces are equated with offline public spaces, evoking expectations regarding freedom and regulation. This also leads to demands that platform owners take the role of public authorities, policing the space: regulation is both sought (privacy issues, troll control) and condemned (censorship, surveillance).
We critically analyze the discourses and understandings related to the expectation of “freedom” on popular social media sites. The paper sheds light on the symbiotic, yet problematic, relationship between platforms as capitalist, commercial organizations and users as unwitting commodities (cf. Fuchs, 2012). The study contributes to a theoretical understanding of commodification of online participation and discourse in informational capitalism (e.g. Fuchs, 2009a; 2010; 2014).
Keywords: social media, informational capitalism, pseudo-public space, commodification, cognitive illusion
Keywords: fan communities, fan activism, Nerdfighters, ideology, interpellation, discourse, social media, YouTube
Title in English: Corpus-assisted discourse studies as a method in consumer research: Exploring talk about instant loans on the Suomi24 discussion forum)
English abstract:
This study presents corpus-assisted discourse studies (CADS) that draws on the tradition of quantitative linguistics, and contributes thus to recent discussion concerning methods for analysing large quantities of text. The article illustrates CADS techniques relevant to consumer research by analysing how users of the Suomi24 discussion forum have discussed instant loans (similar to payday loans in English-speaking countries) during the first decade of the phenomenon in Finland, 2005–2015. In addition, the study applies and develops various types of data visualization suitable for CADS. CADS offers versatile tools for consumer research: It helps get an overview of themes present in a corpus for example by examining the lexical characteristics of the target corpus in relation to a reference corpus or, in a longitudinal corpus, by analysing words that become more or less common over time. Moreover, it is possible to observe and visualize the text contexts of certain words that are of interest to the researcher; those words may arise inductively from a general examination of the corpus or deductively from previous research. CADS also enables moving flexibly between quantitative and qualitative analysis. Corpus analysis software can be used for both pre-existing corpora and corpora collected by the researcher. CADS is suitable especially for consumer researchers who are interested in common discourses in large quantities of text, relating to some theme that is manifested in specific vocabulary, such as a product, product category or cultural consumption phenomenon.
Tiivistelmä:
Tämä tutkimus osallistuu viimeaikaiseen keskusteluun suurten tekstimäärien analyysimenetelmistä esittelemällä kielitieteen määrälliseen tutkimusperinteeseen pohjautuvaa korpusavusteista diskurssianalyysia (corpus-assisted discourse studies, CADS). Artikkelissa havainnollistetaan CADSin olennaisimpia menetelmiä kuluttajatutkimuksellisessa kontekstissa analysoimalla, miten Suomi24-keskustelufoorumin käyttäjät ovat keskustelleet pikalainoista ilmiön ensimmäisellä vuosikymmenellä Suomessa eli vuosina 2005–2015. Lisäksi artikkelissa kartoitetaan ja kehitetään CADSin yhteyteen soveltuvia visualisointitapoja. CADS tarjoaa monipuolisia välineitä kuluttajatutkimuksen työkalupakkiin: Sen avulla voidaan saada yleiskuva suuressa tekstimäärässä käsitellyistä teemoista esimerkiksi tarkastelemalla aineiston erityispiirteitä suhteessa vertailuaineistoon tai pidemmän aikavälin kattavassa aineistossa yleistyviä ja harvinaistuvia sanoja. Lisäksi voidaan tutkia ja havainnollistaa visuaalisesti tiettyjen tutkijaa erityisesti kiinnostavien sanojen esiintymiskonteksteja – nousivat nuo sanat sitten aineistolähtöisesti korpuksen yleistarkastelusta tai teorialähtöisesti aiemmasta tutkimuksesta. Myös siirtyminen määrällisen ja laadullisen analyysin välillä on joustavaa. Korpusanalyysiohjelmistot mahdollistavat sekä valmiiden että itse kerättyjen korpusten analyysin. CADS sopii erityisesti kuluttajatutkijoille, joita kiinnostavat yleiset puhetavat isossa tekstiaineistossa koskien jotakin selkeästi sanallistettavaa teemaa kuten tiettyä tuotetta, tuotekategoriaa tai kulttuurista kulutusilmiötä.
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 connection, and a general altruism on the part of the corporation. Thus, this study sheds light on how users are enticed discursively by the social media company and the ways in which they either accept the discourse or resist it.
This study examines interaction between corporate representatives and critical consumers in today’s social media environment. Applying a microanalytical form of discourse analysis to a data set of corporate Facebook page discussions, the study contributes to a better understanding of the communicative resources that organizations use as part of their impression management (IM) for upholding their acceptability and promoting their credibility. The study also reveals the complexity of the work of corporate Facebook representatives, who need to align their individual IM with that of the organization while adjusting to the technologically mediated context.
To investigate the contradictory relationship between users and platforms, this paper examines social media sites as “pseudo-public” spaces. We argue that expectation of “freedom” arises from a “cognitive illusion” (cf. Johnson-Laird & Savary, 1999; Maillatt & Oswald, 2009) of publicness that blurs the governing commercial rationale. Digital spaces are equated with offline public spaces, evoking expectations regarding freedom and regulation. This also leads to demands that platform owners take the role of public authorities, policing the space: regulation is both sought (privacy issues, troll control) and condemned (censorship, surveillance).
We critically analyze the discourses and understandings related to the expectation of “freedom” on popular social media sites. The paper sheds light on the symbiotic, yet problematic, relationship between platforms as capitalist, commercial organizations and users as unwitting commodities (cf. Fuchs, 2012). The study contributes to a theoretical understanding of commodification of online participation and discourse in informational capitalism (e.g. Fuchs, 2009a; 2010; 2014).
Keywords: social media, informational capitalism, pseudo-public space, commodification, cognitive illusion
Keywords: institutional theory, legitimacy, social media, marketing communication
The method combines corpus methods with qualitative discourse analysis. The small-scale, non-annotated, tailored corpus includes texts from the Finnish law, brochures of the unemployment office, letters to the editor from a large Finnish newspaper, as well as blog posts and comments to them.
The main findings suggest, somewhat unsurprisingly in the present neoliberal context, that unemployment is generally seen as a person’s own choice or fault. In addition, work is commonly seen as an end in itself and people are apparently expected to want to work even without compensation, which raises questions of inequality and exploitation. The authorities emphasize that the job seeker should be “active”, but the analysis reveals that this activity is essentially defined as obeying orders. There is an implicit requirement that not only work, but also other measures equated to work by the authorities should be wanted by the job seeker. A genuine desire to engage in actions imposed from the outside and defined as useful by someone else may, however, be a paradoxical requirement. This exemplifies the (mis)use of power through the definition of concepts.
In the everyday discourses of the citizens, the unemployed are seen as others. The unemployed may, for example, be seen as living too comfortable and easy lives. A counter-discourse emphasizes the poverty and disadvantaged position of the unemployed. Those who support the unemployed focus on denying negative claims; more positive counter-discourses are strikingly absent. The study further discusses how alternative discourses may be created and supported.
Aalto University School of Business, Department of Communication
Recent developments in communication technologies have led scholars in various fields to claim that the so-called social media radically change the organization–stakeholder relationship, “empowering” consumers and enabling “co-creation” and “dialogue”. We wish to look at the issue critically and examine whether the discursive practices of company-consumer interaction on one of the most popular of these media, Facebook, can really be described as dialogue.
Approaching corporate Facebook pages as a genre, we draw from Bakhtin (e.g. 1984) who argued that different genres have different potential for dialogism and multi-voicedness. We therefore ask:
1) Are there carnivalistic features that might affect speaker/hearer roles and power distribution in this corporate communication genre?
2) What are the inherent possibilities for the presence of multiple voices?
We address these questions using a) in-depth, semi-structured interviews with corporate Facebook representatives and b) text data collected directly from corresponding corporate Facebook pages. Our analytical framework combines elements from Bakhtin’s theory and the North-American genre theory that views genre as social action (Miller, 1984).
Our analysis reveals dialogical and monologizing discursive dynamics in organizations’ interactions with their stakeholders and discusses how the discursive power of companies is embedded in generic conventions and the particular features of a medium designed to please companies. Certain carnivalistic features are present but counteracted by remnants of antecedent corporate communication genres and their aims to control stakeholder relations and minimize disagreement. We suggest that awareness and acknowledgement of the carnivalistic frame might make a genuine dialogue possible.
Keywords: genre, dialogue, corporate communication
References
Bakhtin, Mikhail 1984. Problems of Dostoevsky’s Poetics. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Miller, C. R. 1984. Genre as social action. Quarterly Journal of Speech, 70, 151–167.
A. Fuat Firat, University of Texas – Pan American & Aalto University School of Business
In much of the existing research on online communities, social media and the Internet are discussed as new sites of either consumer empowerment or exploitation. On one hand, the new digital media enables consumers to take more powerful roles as market actors (Denegri-Knott 2006) by actively engaging in positive participation (Cova and Pace 2006), negative anti-corporate activity (Juris 2005), or collaborative value creation (Kozinets, Hemetsberger, and Schau 2008; Schau, Muñiz, and Arnould 2009). On the other hand, the continuously proliferating new social media platforms render consumers evermore susceptible to new, and more insidious forms of corporate exploitation, as people engage in “immaterial labor” (Arvidsson 2008) as “consumer workers” (Cova and Dalli 2009; Zwick, Bonsu, and Darmody 2008) who generate profits for corporations receiving little or no remuneration for their labor input.
In this paper, we wish to problematize – or at least bracket - this type of dichotomous thinking and set out to work toward a new theoretical perspective on consumer engagement in online environments as symbolic interaction and inter-subjective negotiation (Blumer 1969; Goffman 1959) through which consumers and corporate actors continuously discuss and debate on the terms of their relationship through social media platforms. From this perspective, social media is conceptualized not so much as a simple tool or technology for either consumer of corporate power but rather a new kind of “digital social site” where consumers and marketers interact and negotiate the situationally specific roles and responsibilities, as well as the rules of interaction that are appropriate for both consumers and corporate actors at the online site.
In building our perspective, we draw on the “intersubjectivist” approach to social theory and locate the ‘social’ in interactions between members of a social community (Reckwitz 2002). More specifically, we draw from symbolic interactionism, and the idea that meaning is created in interaction through the symbolic means of language and thought (Blumer 1969). Particularly relevant, for building our perspective, is the concept definition of situation, i.e. negotiation and agreement as to whose claims concerning what issues will be temporarily honored (Goffman 1959).
References
Arvidsson, Adam (2008), "The Ethical Economy of Customer Coproduction," Journal of Macromarketing, 28 (4), 326-38.
Blumer, Herbert (1969), Symbolic Interactionism; Perspective and Method, Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.
Cova, Bernard and Daniele Dalli (2009), "Working Consumers: The Next Step in Marketing Theory?," Marketing Theory, 9 (3), 312-39.
Cova, Bernard and Stefano Pace (2006), "Brand Community of Convenience Products: New Forms of Customer Empowerment - the Case "My Nutella the Community"," European Journal of Marketing, 40 (9/10), 1087-105.
Denegri-Knott, Janice (2006), "Consumers Behaving Badly: Deviation or Innovation? Power Struggles on the Web," Journal of Consumer Behaviour, 5 (1), 82-94.
Goffman, Ervin (1959), The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life, Garden City, NY: Doubleda.
Juris, Jeffrey S. (2005), "The New Digital Media and Activist Networking within Anti-Corporate Globalization Movements," Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 597, 189-208.
Kozinets, Robert V., Andrea Hemetsberger, and Hope Jensen Schau (2008), "The Wisdom of Consumer Crowds: Collective Innovation in the Age of Networked Marketing," Journal of Macromarketing, 28 (4), 339-54.
Reckwitz, Andreas (2002), "Toward a Theory of Social Practices. A Development in Culturalist Theorizing," European Journal of Social Theory, 5 (2), 243-63.
Schau, Hope Jensen, Albert M. Muñiz, and Eric J. Arnould (2009), "How Brand Community Practices Create Value," Journal of Marketing, 73 (5), 30-51.
Zwick, Detlev, Samuel K. Bonsu, and Aron Darmody (2008), "Putting Consumers to Work ‘Co-Creation’ and New Marketing Govern-Mentality," Journal of Consumer Culture, 8 (2), 163–96.
The aim of the dissertation is to understand the discursive processes and cultural and technological affordances involved in the discursive struggle on social media. These issues are examined in four essays. Essay 1 explores how organizations attempt to gain an advantage by discursively managing impressions of themselves and others in online communication. Essay 2 focuses on the presence of divergent voices and the control or silencing of those voices by organizations as a process in the discursive struggle. Essay 3 focuses on how organizations and their promotional communication are (de)legitimated by social media users; attention is therefore shifted to the discursive power that consumers have over organizations. Finally, essay 4 takes a different perspective to both organizations and discursive struggle and illustrates how uniform and insider-oriented groups can be formed through discursive means, which can lead to a suspension of discursive struggle.
The main method used is detailed (micro-level) discourse analysis. Textual data were collected from corporate Facebook pages (essays 1 and 2), Reddit (essay 3) and YouTube (essay 4). In addition, netnography (a form of online ethnography) and semi-structured interviews were used to provide contextualizing data.
The findings of this dissertation elucidate, on the one hand, manipulative communicative processes employed by organizations; these include preventing or removing unwanted consumer contributions (coercion), diverting attention from uncomfortable topics (diversion), and convincing people to stop voicing criticism (persuasion). Manipulative processes also include concealing either the purpose or the author of promotional communication (misrepresentation) and construction of like-minded "fan" groups (interpellation). On the other hand, consumers use resistant communicative processes such as creative stretching or circumventing unequal affordances of the media, carnivalization and critical evaluation. Within organizational communication, this dissertation contributes to a better understanding, first, of organizations' involvement in discursive struggles as enabled by the current social media environment, and second, of the role of organizational outsiders, such as consumers, in organizational communication.