Michael S Daubs

Influencers attract praise—and censure—for how they are perceived to influence followers. These discussions are strongly gendered: representations of mainstream influencers are highly feminised, and it is typically women and girls who are imagined as the targets—or victims—of influence. We suggest that the value influencers can offer is increasingly understood in affective and emotional terms and materialises in the form of mindset advice and modelling emotional management strategies. In this paper, we draw on theories of affective practice to examine “teachable moments” of positivity, optimism and resilience as influencers model and educate followers in emotion-laden styles and standpoints. Our analysis centres on data gathered in confidential interviews with eight established and aspiring Instagram influencers, who work in mainstream, lifestyle domains. We focus on the affective pedagogies influencers mobilise to show followers how to adopt culturally favoured emotional styles. Our analysis sheds light on the pedagogical work of influencing as gendered labour, its psychosocial utility and socio-political entanglements. To conclude, we reflect on how the patterns we identify index broader shifts in neoliberal wellness repertoires away from the management of time and towards the management of emotional energy.

As a part of 2016’s te wiki o te reo Māori (Māori language week), reporters on Radio New Zealand (RNZ), started signing off reports in te reo Māori (the Māori language). While some listeners praised the regular inclusion of te reo, others complained about the “over-Maorification” of the station. Through a rhetorical analysis, this article situates two key public complaints about te reo on RNZ within a history of colonialism. However, noting increased interest in Māori language courses, this article argues that, despite ongoing challenges, RNZ’s use of te reo also represents a “toddler step” toward decolonization.

This paper contextualizes and critically examines the incorporation of transactional features into two popular mobile social media apps: Instagram and Snapchat. It examines how mobile social media acts as an interface between culture and commerce. We situate this interface within a larger political economic context in which tech companies are embracing 'fintech' to drive growth. We argue that mobile social media platforms play a unique role in monetising personal data and context awareness through their development of 'transactional affordance'-a term we develop to understand new features allowing users to connect content to forms of payment. We argue that the success of these affordances is tied to labour associated with the 'performative authenticity' of social-media influencers. Our first case study examines the recent development of 'shopping' and 'checkout' features on Instagram, and the significance of this feature for the economic growth of parent company Facebook. We then look at how the specific development of augmented reality features on Snapchat serve as the basis for new transactional affordances in everyday contexts. We conclude the paper by arguing that the contextual commerce these phenomena entail signals a shift to a transactional culture in which everyday interactions become opportunities for consumption.

This paper contextualizes and critically examines the incorporation of transactional features into two popular mobile social media apps: Instagram and Snapchat. It examines how mobile social media acts as an interface between culture and commerce. We situate this interface within a larger political economic context in which tech companies are embracing ‘fintech’ to drive growth. We argue that mobile social media platforms play a unique role in monetising personal data and context awareness through their development of ‘transactional affordance’ – a term we develop to understand new features allowing users to connect content to forms of payment. We argue that the success of these affordances is tied to labour associated with the ‘performative authenticity’ of social-media influencers. Our first case study examines the recent development of ‘shopping’ and ‘checkout’ features on Instagram, and the significance of this feature for the economic growth of parent company Facebook. We then ...

Full text available at https://firstmonday.org/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/10430

This contribution argues that companies such as Apple, Facebook, and Google are increasingly incorporating features that supposedly promote “digital well-being” to forestall regulation of their platforms and services. The inclusion of these features, such as Apple’s Screen Time, frames these commercial platforms as providing a social good by promising to encourage more “intentional” or “mindful” use of social media and mobile devices. As a result, oft-critiqued platforms are increasingly adopting the language of their critics in order to frame themselves as a social good. This strategy mimics that used by radio executives in the United States in the early twentieth century, where the medium developed as a predominantly commercial enterprise. To avoid regulation, it became necessary to perpetuate the perception that commercial broadcasters were also a social good that fulfilled a public service function. Platforms today, we assert, are inadvertently or purposefully adopting a similar tactic to position themselves as leaders in a developing digital wellness market in the hopes of avoiding future governmental regulation.

This article provides an analysis of the US-based Occupy Wall Street movement and its apparently more egalitarian deployment of the Internet. It considers how protest movements have been symbolically mediated through the social media tropes associated with the decentralization of power. However, it is necessary to review the complexities of horizontal social movements, the ambiguities of networked forms of communications and the more individualized types of political discourse that have been associated with ‘lifestyle’ anarchist or alternative groups. Therefore, the online protest paradigm does not simplistically equate with a mythologized equality. Instead, it is necessary to address a more complex series of cultural and material variables that have emerged in the wake of online activity.

This research explores issues of convergence, value and labour through a case study of the Google 'Trekker' programme: a crowdsourcing initiative in which volunteers carry camera-outfitted 'trekker packs' to capture remote or hard to reach landscape imagery for Google Maps. We theorise how 'ubiquitous mapping' redefines traditional spatial boundaries, and how these new forms of convergence redefine notions of value around both labour and cultural space. Simultaneously physical and virtual, manual and digital, material and immaterial, Google Trekkers voluntarily produce immaterial goods via manual processes, problematising existing critiques around the social relations of production. From this context, we discuss how Google Trekker expands the company's commercial value at the expense of consumer and citizen privacy, while retaining control over the construction and meaning of space.

This study examines how Occupy Wall Street (OWS) protestors' practices and stated understanding of media act on social perceptions of networked media. It stems from a discursive content analysis of online commentary from OWS protestors and supporters, using different sources from the first Adbusters blog in July 2011 until May 2012. We demonstrate how the belief in the myth of an egalitarian Internet was incorporated into the offline structure of OWS and led OWS participants to adopt rhetoric that distances the movement from past protest actions by stating the movement was " like the Internet " .

This paper traces linkages between the commoditisation of the Web and "app-centric media" , an environment composed of a multitude of concrete-but-connected software applications. Within this environment, multiplatform HTML5 apps are often framed as the antithesis of Apple's iOS and Google/Android "siloed" mobile app platforms, but this rhetoric of openness masks corporate involvement in the development of HTML5 and the commoditisation of the very protocols used to build the Web. To illustrate this process, this paper examines one new element of HTML5 that was hotly debated: the inclusion of digital rights management (DRM) protocols. Proponents of DRM in HTML5 argued it would increase overall interoperability while balancing the rights of content creators, providers and users. This paper argues, however, that it instead essentially legitimises U.S.-centric copyright protections on a global scale and allows the future development of the Web to be dominated by a select group of media institutions.

In November 2011, Jack Womack, a senior vice president at the US-based cable news station CNN, announced that the network would lay off approximately fifty workers, in part because “new technology in desk-top editing and user-generated content and social media have made some editing and photojournalism positions redundant.” Within days of this announcement, CNN re-launched their citizen journalism website iReport.com. The site had been in operation for five years, collecting user-generated content in exchange for the promise to “take part in the news with CNN.” However, many people simply want to share with a small circle of friends or family. Newly-incorporated social networking elements thus emphasize participation within a community, disguising the generation of labour as socialization and play. By associating iReport with this community-driven ethos, CNN is able to guarantee the production of specialized content and capitalize on the immaterial labour of online iReport communities.

New Zealand's Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment's Review of the Telecommunications Act 2001, released in 2013, highlighted an increased demand for mobile broadband service, particularly in relation to the 700 MHz spectrum auction of 14 January 2014 - space ideal for next-generation 4G or Long Term Evolution (LTE) mobile services. The government seemingly adopted a 'wait and see' approach to mobile broadband regulation, however, delaying its development until 2020 when there will be 'a clearer sense of the impact of new networks and technology'. One can look to Canada to see the need for robust mobile broadband policies. Like New Zealand, Canada has relied primarily upon spectrum auctions to stimulate market competition. The spectrum auction frameworks used there, however, have done little to promote market competition. Applying the lessons learned from Canada to a New Zealand context, this article argues for a more assertive regulatory framework sooner rather than later.

User-produced media are often presented as political reform, moving the locus of control over cultural production away from mass media such as television and toward the individual. This is true for Flash animation or Flashimation, which is frequently positioned as a democratizing media form that allows a formerly passive audience to produce independent, personal, and potentially revolutionary media texts free from corporate control.  The Flash software allows user-producers to decrease production time while increasing their control over the final product.  Thus, it is assumed that Flashimation is a subversive form that challenges the dominance of centralized mass media, particularly television. This assumption, however, ignores the complex, sometimes hegemonic relationships between the supposedly “liberated” Flashimation producers and television, and falsely equates production and participation with democratization.  This paper questions assumptions concerning Flashimation’s subversive potential and argues that television’s aesthetic remediation of Web animation reasserts its position as society’s dominant cultural form.

The online spread of white extremist content is a topic of increasing interest both in New Zealand and internationally, particularly after the Christchurch mosque attacks in March 2019 and the subsequent Christchurch Call. Far right groups in New Zealand have long had connections with far right groups in other countries such as the KKK in the United States. The Internet, however, has made establishing and maintaining such relationships more convenient, increasing their scope and scale.

With the Christchurch mosque terrorist attacks as a focal point, this chapter outlines the international spread of the far right and white extremism via the Internet. It proposes a critical reconceptualization of what Manuel Castells calls the “Network Society”, i.e., one in which networks are the predominant organisational form and the driving force of innovation in society. Castells argues that the Network Society has four main “dimensions”. It is brought about by information technologies that “allow the formation of new forms of social organization and social interaction”; is financially global; is based and/or dependent upon interactions between people, and results in the “demise of the nation state” and the emergence of international organisations.

While Castells sees the Network Society as the “driving force of innovation”, I argue that the far right benefits from these characteristics by becoming increasingly networked and internationalised. Through a critical discourse analyses of the Christchurch terrorist’s manifesto, and interviews with government representatives, Internet experts, and deradicalized members of the far right in New Zealand, this chapter details how members of the far right use websites, social networks, and messaging systems to share messages, memes, and other content and spread far right ideologies. This far right network increasingly challenges the regulatory powers of individual nation states, encourages more online extremist activities, and inspires terrorist attacks in other countries.

This contribution demonstrates how the term “fake news” has been redefined by the political right in order to delegitimise the journalistic press and argues that this development requires a reversal in the traditional relationship between the Fourth and Fifth Estates. Whereas the press was once seen as the defender of the people and mediator between the state and its citizens, the press now needs citizens to defend it, just as public confidence in the press is at an all-time low. The combination of the deployment of fake news as a combative term to marginalise journalists and the lack of confidence in the press represent a threat to press freedom, the ability for people to be informed and engaged citizens, and to democracy itself. Through a content/discourse analysis of comments and online content from US President Donald Trump, his surrogates, and other government officials, combined with a comparative historical analysis, this chapter illustrates how the term “fake news” has been reconfigured into the modern evocation of Lügenpresse, the German propaganda term meaning “lying press” used by the Third Reich to incite hatred against groups such as the Jews and communists and discredit Hitler’s (Noack, 2016).

The result is weakening of the press role as the “Fourth Estate”. While early newspapers were often politically biased and even established by political parties, the idea of the press as a defender of public emerged during the “civic populism” movement in the late Victorian era. During this movement, the press became considered as a “public utility” that could act as a watchdog against corruption, guarantee honesty in government, and educate and defend the public. This idea is reflected in Jürgen Habermas’s (1990) conceptualisation of the public sphere, in which the press acts as an institution of the public. The decline of press freedom in places like the United States has been noted by organisations such as Reporters Without Borders (2018).

This decline in press freedom due to attacks against the credibility of journalists and institutions is the impetus for the need for citizens (the Fifth Estate) to now come to the defence of the press (the Fourth Estate). However, inspiring such action is exceedingly difficult. Trump and other politicians repeatedly refer to news organisations as Fake News on an almost daily basis, and others, including their supporters and other citizens, happily, enthusiastically, and unquestioningly echo these claims. Because of the “extreme commercialisation” of the news detailed by Pickard, audiences, in general, discuss and act less, and instead wait for the next bit of news, the next spectacle, the next controversy. Thus, in many ways, the press itself is responsible for the lack of public action against politicians’ denigration of journalists. The fact that some, like Trump, use digital platforms such as Twitter to spread attacks against journalists only exacerbates this tendency since, according to Mark Williams (2003, p. 163), our experiences with digital media are always “propped on the near future.” As a result, the increasingly ubiquitous presence of the “fake news” critique and the constant campaign to delegitimise journalists and journalistic institutions represents a threat to press freedom and our ability to remain informed, engaged citizens.

No, writes Michael S. Daubs: Because traditional journalistic institutions maintain a privileged position to select and contextualise the contributions of users, Internet-distributed user-generated content in the form of citizen journalism often reaffirms the authority, power and centrality of these organisations and their journalists rather than democratising journalism.

Debates on network neutrality often centre upon issues that concern users’ ability to access information and engage in interpersonal communication. The potential for Internet providers to block certain websites and file-sharing programs or “throttle” (i.e., limit download speeds of) certain online applications, for example, are often cited as reasons for the need for regulations that ensure network neutrality (see, for example: Stover, 2010; van Schewick & Farber, 2009). Equally important, however, is an examination of how regulatory policies concerning net neutrality also affect the ability for users to contribute to social debates. Barbara van Schewick (van Schewick & Farber, 2009, p. 33) asserts that the Internet has “improved democratic discourse, and created a decentralized environment for social and cultural interaction in which anyone can participate.” Jeffrey Wimmer (2007, p. 139) suggests that a special democratizing potential has always been attributed to digital media. Terry Flew and Jason Wilson (2010, p. 132) similarly note that academic and popular discourse has paid a considerable amount of attention to digital media forms that “generate content and comment ‘from below’ and reinvigorate the public sphere”, while Axel Bruns (2005) argues that “produsers”—a combination of “users” and “producers”—can fundamentally alter the production of information and inform public debates.

This can be seen in the case of Internet-capable smartphones which, in combination with online services such as YouTube and Twitter, are often cited as integral to the success of modern activist movements from the Green Wave in Iran (Grossman, 2009) to, more recently, the #Occupy movement. Indeed, several applications have been developed for a variety of smartphones for the #Occupy movement in particular. These apps allow users to search for and publicize protests, anonymously share photos and videos, follow and share news feeds, or report to friends that they are being arrested (Cabebe, 2011; Chima, 2011; Faust III, 2011). While the December 2010 ruling of the U.S. Federal Communication Commission (FCC) did stipulate that fixed broadband Internet providers “may not block lawful content, applications, services, or non-harmful devices”, it prevents mobile network providers only from blocking websites and “applications that compete with their voice or video telephony services.” In other words, mobile data providers are still allowed to prevent the use certain mobile applications.

As Jennifer A. Chandler (2007, p. 1098) argues, “[i]f selection intermediaries block or discriminate against a speaker on grounds that listeners would not have selected, that speaker's ability to speak freely has been undermined.” This chapter would argue that limiting access to these applications would severely constrain the voices of those within activist movements that increasingly rely on mobile media—including a growing number of specialty mobile applications—to organize their activities, publicize their goals, and thus be detrimental to the ability for users to participate freely in public debates. Indeed, the FCC’s current network neutrality policy allows mobile network providers to act as a new “selection intermediary” and effectively prevents the formation of the “decentralized environment for social and cultural interaction” described by van Schewick above.

Dieser Beitrag ist eine theoretische Provokation – ein Versuch, die Mediatisierung (Hjarvard 2008; Krotz 2009) sozialer Bewegungen zu kontextualisieren, wobei problematische Ausdrücke wie „Twitter-Revolutionen“ vermieden werden. Das Anliegen dieser Untersuchung ist es, nicht nur nachzuvollziehen, wie das heutige Verständnis von Medien die Mediennutzung jüngster sozialer Bewe-gungen beeinflusst, sondern auch die Struktur, Entwicklung, Erwartungen, und sogar Offlinetätigkeiten dieser Bewegungen zu untersuchen.

Dieser Beitrag vergleicht die Mediennutzung und organisatorischen Strategien von zwei verschiedenen Protestaktionen: der Anti-World-Trade-Organization(Anti-WTO)-Proteste in Seattle im Jahre 1999 (bei denen das junge Web und die Mobilkommunikation Schlüsselfaktoren waren) und der Occupy-Bewegung im Jahre 2011 (bei denen soziale Medien eine Hauptrolle spielten). Diese Untersuchung besteht aus vier Teilen. Der erste Teil skizziert, wie die Medi-ennutzung während der Anti-WTO Proteste sowohl eine Folge der organisatori-schen Struktur dieser Bewegung als auch eine Medienlogik im Einsatz darstellte. Dann beschreibe ich die Gründung von Indymedia als eine Absage an die wahr-genommene Einseitigkeit der Massenmedien. Anhand einer kurzen qnualitativen Inhaltsanalyse von aktuellen Blogeinträgen und späteren akademischen Schriften, demonstriert der dritte Teil wie diese Ideale die Organisation der Occupy-Bewegung beeinflusst haben.

Obwohl viele Wissenschaftler das Verhältnis der Occupy-Bewegung zu den Medien aus einer strukturalistischen Perspektive heraus beschreiben, welche die Idee einer Medienlogik wiedergibt, vertrete ich den Standpunkt, dass Occupy die Mediatisierung der sozialen Bewegung darstellt – ein Prozess, der eventuell auf das Potenzial dieser Bewegung eingewirkt hat. Diese Analyse legt den Grundstein für die These, die ich im letzten Teil ausarbeiten werde, dass die Nutzung und das soziale Verständnis des Internets die Offlineprozesse von Anerkennung, Einbe-ziehung und Kollektivität im Rahmen der Occupy-Bewegung – d. h. die Idee von Integration durch Diversifikation – gestaltet haben.

This paper examines the political and economic implications of crowdfunding platforms by using the context of the 2022 “Freedom Convoy” and related blockades that culminated in the first ever implementation of the Emergencies Act in Canada. In the stated reasons for engaging in this unprecedented move, the government highlighted the need to regulate crowdfunding platforms as part of the overall strategy to end the blockade that had spread to important trade chokepoints like the Ambassador bridge. However, as this paper will argue, conceptualized as an “integrated media spectacle,” the convoy was as much an expression of the interlinking actions and attentions of online audiences, users, and funders as it was a protest manifested in physical space. This networked dynamic was visible in copycat protests such as the "freedom convoy" in New Zealand, which ended in a three-week occupation of Parliament grounds there in February-March 2022. We will highlight the roll that crowdfunding played in both supporting the convoy blockades as well as in justifying the usage of the Emergencies Act.

More broadly, the paper will examine how crowdfunding platforms, and their affordances are nodal points in the larger creation of “transactional cultures” in which the networked individualism enabled by modern media creates overlapping configurations of audiences, users, and funders. One particularly important dimension is the way that networks of economic and financial transactions are readily built into and embedded into the ubiquitous and personalized devices we use. This paper examines how crowdfunding platforms are one part of a larger constellation of media platforms and transactional affordances, thereby providing an opportunity to reflect on the political implications of modern digital media and the many ways that online networks of information, cultural and finance spill over and reshape the physical world.

The paper will develop this analysis through the following components:

1. A contextualization of the Freedom Convoy as an integrated media spectacle that mobilized audiences, users, and funders.
2. An examination of the governmental response, with a specific focus on the legal and regulatory dimensions aimed at crowdfunding platforms, as well as implications for other related digital media.
3. A political economic analysis of the role of crowdfunding platforms within a larger ecosystem defined by intertwining configurations of “networked individualism” as audiences, users, and funders.
4. Situating crowdfunding platforms and their transactional affordances within the development of overlapping “transactional cultures.”

This presentation addresses how online networks enable the spread of misinformation and pseudoscience that open receptive individuals to international extremist ideologies. It proposes a critical reconsideration of what Manuel Castells calls the “Network Society”, i.e., one in which networks are the predominant organisational form and the “driving force of innovation” in society. While Castells sees positive potential in the network society, the communicative affordances of online platforms and tools also enable the propagation of extremist, anti-government beliefs that sow chaos and political tension—in other words, accelerationism in action.
This dynamic was visible during the so-called ‘freedom convoy’ protest that culminated in the occupation of Parliament grounds in Wellington. During this time, on social media platforms such as Telegram, posts demonstrate the overlap of wellness-based anti-vax discourse, conspiracy theories, and extremist content that heightened anti-government rhetoric. This mix is potentially dangerous and effective because those espousing more extremist views were addressing a highly receptive and emotionally charged audience of people affected by the vaccine mandate. In short, the parliament protest is just one example of the challenges social media present to governments and those working to limit the spread of extremist ideologies.

Round table discussion with Sarah Florini, Catherine Knight Steele, and Kevin Winstead.

This round table interrogates the intersection of two of the most urgent issues in contemporary internet studies: the crisis of disinformation and the resurgence of global right-wing white supremacy. Disinformation played a role in events such as Brexit and the 2016 U.S. presidential elections. It has led to COVID denial protests in New Zealand and now has the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation warning of disinformation-driven violence during upcoming elections. All of these seemingly disparate disinformation campaigns share a grounding in global white supremacist reactionary politics. Black people, in particular, are often cast as villains and exploited as targets in such global disinformation efforts. Bringing together some of the foremost scholars of Black Digital Studies with experts on whiteness and technology, this round table will initiate discussion among AoIR’s international membership about race, racism, and disinformation.

The Russian government has simultaneously become a major driver of dangerous disinformation and a beacon of white imperial power, internationally celebrated by white supremacists. For nearly 100 years, the Kremlin has targeted U.S. racial tensions and Black American communities with propaganda and disinformation, and Black feminists were the first social media users to sound the alarm about sock puppet accounts that were later revealed to be Russian intelligence. Such disinformation efforts have not only harnessed white supremacy itself, but also the trauma it inflicts on those most effected. Simultaneously, they have nurtured the retrenchment and resurgence of reactionary white supremacists politics worldwide.

In keeping with AoIR’s 2022 theme, Decolonizing the Internet, we see the contemporary disinformation crisis as inseparable from global white supremacy and imperialism. We aim to foster a discussion that will reveal potentially powerful future collaborations and research trajectories among AoIR researchers seeking to further interrogate international flows of disinformation and their relationship with global racial domination.

With the Christchurch mosque terrorist attacks and information from the Royal Commission of Inquiry report into that attack as a focal point, this paper proposes a critical reconsideration of what Manuel Castells calls the “Network Society”, i.e., one in which networks are the predominant organisational form and the “driving force of innovation” in society. While extremism in Aotearoa has long had an international dimension (see, for example, Ballantyne, 2012), the content shared by the perpetrator of that attack, provide cogent examples of how the communicative affordances of online platforms and tools—i.e., the “possibilities for action that emerge from the affordances of given technological forms” (Hutchby, 2001, p. 30)—support the internationalisation of the modern far right.

Through a discourse analyses of the Christchurch terrorist’s manifesto, supported by content from the Royal Commission of Inquiry report and interviews with experts on the far right in New Zealand, this paper details how network society supports development of an international far right community that operates in New Zealand and facilitates the development of a “trans-local white identity” that is “shaped through global information technologies rather than in opposition to them” (Daniels, 2009, p. 46). Thus, while governments and law enforcement agencies tend to view extremism as a domestic issue (Beirich qtd. in Cai & Landon, 2019), the development of international white extremist networks presents specific challenges to those working to limit the spread of extremist ideologies and prevent future attacks.

Te reo Māori (the Māori language) became an official language in Aotearoa New Zealand in 1987. Even so, the number of people who could speak te reo declined steadily throughout the early 2000s. In recent years, however, there has been a surge in interest in te reo from both Māori and Pākehā (white New Zealanders of European descent), in part due to digital tools. Supporters of these tools argue that they are ideal for preserving and promoting Māori language and culture. Critics, however, argue that they separate Māori language and culture from colonial English-speaking Pākehā culture in New Zealand.

Importantly, renewed interest in te reo coincides with two other non-digital media developments: the launch Māori TV in 2004, which provides non-Pākehā perspectives to a broad audience, and the increased use of te reo on Aotearoa’s public broadcaster Radio New Zealand (RNZ), which started during 2016’s te wiki o te reo Mori (Māori language week). In contrast to digital tools, these media ‘mainstream’ Māori language and culture, which provides more opportunities to hear te reo and stimulates further commitment to the language.

Considering these developments, in conjunction with record enrolments in te reo Māori language courses across Aotearoa in recent years, this contribution argues that each of these media operate as a “sites of struggle” that work in cooperation as a “media ensemble” to support Māori language and cultural revitalisation. This approach provides a potential blueprint for how other nations can recognise and honour minority or indigenous languages and cultures.

This paper, which is a small part of an ongoing project on networks of white extremism, examines the increasingly frequent emergence of extremist themes in wellness discourse. It incorporates an analysis of content from Canadian psychologist and wellness figure Jordan Peterson, perhaps best known for his self-help book 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos and his recent follow-up book Beyond Order. This analysis is juxtaposed with a discussion and analysis of Australian celebrity chef and self-described “qualified health coach Pete Evans’ history of sharing pseudoscientific discourse, QAnon-inspired anti-vax conspiracies, and extremist ideologies.
The goal of this comparison is to demonstrate the frequent overlap between (often pseudoscientific) wellness discourse and extremist discourse, or at lease discourse that supports extremist ideologies, to argue two key points: first, that this overlap propagates extremist themes in a way that naturalises extremist ideologies in mainstream discourse and, second, that “social networking between influencers makes it easy for audience members to be incrementally exposed to, and come to trust, ever more extremist political positions” (Lewis, 2018, pp. 36-37).
The discussion begins with a brief critical discourse analysis (CDA) of Jordan Peterson’s comments regarding IQ and ethnicity made during an interview with Douglas Murray of UnHerd, an online platform that “aims to do two things: to push back against the herd mentality with new and bold thinking, and to provide a platform for otherwise unheard ideas, people and places” (UnHerd, n.d.). As Ruth Wodak (2001, p. 2) notes, CDA is “fundamentally concerned with analysing opaque as well as transparent structural relationships of dominance, discrimination, power and control as manifested in language.” Peterson’s comments on a link between race or ethnicity and IQ is a primary example of how wellness content and reflect or even reinforce the systems of discrimination and control found in extremist discourse.
In his interview with UnHerd, Peterson called IQ “the best predictor of long-term life outcome.” He also insisted that differences in IQ are tied to ethnicity, stating “if you use the typical groupings, you do get ethnic differences” (Murray & Peterson, 2018). These claims contradict the vast majority of academic literature on IQ tests, which argues that IQ tests are not a useful measure of intelligence and that cultural biases in IQ tests may disadvantage certain cultural and ethnic groups. However, in that interview, Peterson separates himself from accusations of racism by noting that the “ethnic differences” he mentions are “horrible” and then marginalises accusations of racial bias in IQ testing by citing the example of Ashkenazi Jews, who he claims are “overrepresented in most positions of competence, let’s say, and authority—radically overrepresented, especially at the top” (Murray & Peterson, 2018). Although he frames it as a compliment, Peterson’s mention of Ashkenazi Jews provides ideological support for extremist claims of inherent differences between races and ethnicities, further bolstered by Peterson’s status as a clinical psychologist and academic. In short, Peterson exposes a receptive audience, those actively seeking advice and guidance, to ideas that reflect extremist talking points.
Peterson’s mix of wellness discourse in the form of self-help content and extremist themes is echoed by Pete Evans, who primarily gained fame as a judge on the cooking show My Kitchen Rules on the Seven Network in Australia between 2010 and 2020. While Evans does not have Peterson’s academic or scientific credentials, he does similarly frame himself as a wellness expert by describing himself as “a qualified health coach with the authority to speak on the topic of healthy eating” (Evans, 2014, p. 7). Over time, however, Evans’ claims have increasingly promoted pseudoscientific ideas. For example, in the 2017 Netflix The Magic Pill, Evans claimed without evidence that the keto diet for which he advocated could tread a number of health issues including cancer, asthma, and even autism. In 2020, Evans was fined AU$25,200 for claiming in a Facebook live stream that a machine called the BioCharger, which he was selling on his website for AU$14,900, could sharpen mental clarity, restore strength and stamina, and even cure the coronavirus.
This latter example is just one example of Evans’ transformation into an anti-vax figure. Throughout the pandemic, Evans has repeatedly called COVID-19 a scam and shared content from QAnon adherents through his Facebook and Instagram accounts, exposing his followers to not just (dubious) wellness advice, but also conspiracy theories and, increasingly, content that espouses extremist ideologies. The link to extremism became starkly evident in November 2020, when Evans posted a cartoon to his Instagram account featuring a caterpillar in a ‘MAGA’ hat talking to a butterfly with a neo-Nazi symbol on its wings called the Sonnenrad, which appeared in the manifesto uploaded to the website 4chan by the perpetrator of the 2019 terrorist attack against Christchurch mosques in advance of his attack.
Sophie Aubrey (2020) of the Sydney Morning Herald notes that “just because Evans has posted material that supports some QAnon rhetoric does not mean he supports all of the movement's ideas, including its central beliefs, or that he identifies as part of the movement.” Similarly, Davie Neiwerd of the Southern Poverty Law Center (quoted in Lynskey, 2018) has stated that he does not believe Jordan Peterson is a white nationalist but argues that the “arc of radicalisation often passes through these more ‘moderate’ ideologues” like him. Peterson, for example, repeated his comments linking race and IQ in a conversation with fellow Canadian Stephan Molyneux, who is described in the Royal Commission of Inquiry report on the attack on the mosques in Christchurch as a “prominent member of the far right” (Young et al., 2020, p. 180).
Peterson and Evans demonstrate how people can be incrementally led from self-improvement to possible extremism, a development exacerbated by the trust wellness and self-help influencers inspire in those that access their content. Furthermore, moderating their content is exceedingly difficult because it often uses ambiguous language and codes, leaving  receptive audiences exposed to a complicated mix of advice, guidance, and, occasionally, extremist ideologies.

This contribution argues that companies such as Apple, Facebook, and Google are increasingly incorporating features that supposedly promote “digital wellbeing” to forestall regulation of their platforms and services. The inclusion of these features, we suggest, frames these commercial platforms as providing a social good by promising to encourage more “intentional” or “mindful” use of social media and mobile devices. Apple’s June 2018 iOS update, for example, included a new function called Screentime, which incorporates features similar to other digital wellbeing mobile apps including the ability to impose time limits on the use of specific apps and data analytics on amount of time a user spends on their device.

The introduction of these features demonstrates how oft-critiqued platforms are increasingly adopting the language of their critics in order to frame themselves as a social good. This strategy mimics that used by radio executives in the United States in the early 20th century, where the medium developed as a fully commercial enterprise. To avoid regulation, it became necessary to perpetuate the perception that commercial broadcasters were also a social good that fulfilled a public service function. Popular entertainment programming was thus supplemented with “high culture” music programmes (e.g., classical music), news, and “home services” shows. Platforms today, we assert, are inadvertently or purposefully adopting a similar tactic to position themselves as leaders in a developing digital wellness market in the hopes of avoiding future governmental regulation.

In an app-centric media environment “composed of a multitude of concrete-but-connected software applications and their associated protocols, platforms, frameworks, and institutions”, mobile apps are becoming both increasingly ubiquitous and also the default “organizing logic of the Internet” (Daubs and Manzerolle 2015, 53). This logic is visible both in the development of key native app platforms such as iOS and Android and in the transformation of the Web into a “platform for applications” (Anthes 2012, 16). As Bratton notes, however, the mobile app is really just an interface to the “real” application which “connects the single remote device to an ocean of data and brings that data to bear on the user’s immediate interests” (2014, 3). The purpose of the app-as-interface is to make data intelligible as information (Shedroff 2001, 37), which makes the app a “a powerful platform for the action and movement of culture” (Goggin 2011, 156).

One of the primary ways the app makes data, and therefore the world, intelligible is by making it consumable, i.e., by converting everyday experiences, interactions with those within friends and family circles, and culture itself—images on Instagram, reviews on TripAdvisor, projects on Etsy—bite-size consumable chunks. This process is exemplified by Snapchat’s visual product search feature, which enables users to take a photo of an object and buy it on Amazon (Constine 2018), and shopping features on Instagram, which make it easier for users to purchase tagged items in Instagram posts and stories (Galligan 2018).

By capitalising on personal relationships and converting individual interests into consumable, apps therefore demonstrate a prevalence of a “transactional ecosystem” that merges frictionless consumption and the attention economy in ways that “enables the embedding of market relations into now essential media devices and practices” (Manzerolle and Wiseman 2016, 393-394). This paper thus argues that while the “spreadability” of culture via digital, networked media is celebrated by some (see, for example, Jenkins et al. 2012), the spreadability of data via the cloud and made accessible via app interfaces also “spreads” a world of image, branding and consumption—i.e., a global dissemination of trends and, via apps, transactional functions. In short, app-centric media capitalize on the perceived immediacy of interpersonal relationships to accelerate the spread of transactional culture that underpins or even drives spreadability of culture. Furthermore, through case studies of influencers and native advertising on Instagram as expressions of transactional culture, our paper outlines how transactional functions, increasingly embedded in app-centric media, provide a means by which financial networks and data interface with culture.

As academic debates about a “post-truth era” and its impact on politics develop, one emerging refrain is that this era, and related concepts such as “fake news”, are the products of postmodernism tied to leftist thinkers such as Jacques Derrida, Michel Foucault, and Gilles Deleuze (Koschorke, 2018; McIntyre, 2018). In the process, these arguments suggest that the post-truth era is an unparalleled historical development. This paper casts doubt on this argument through a discursive analysis of comments and online content from Donald Trump, his surrogates, and other global politicians. Through a comparative historical analysis, it illustrates how the term “fake news” has been appropriated and reconfigured into the modern “Lügenpresse”, the German propaganda term used by the Nazis to incite hatred against groups such as Jews and communists and discredit Hitler’s critics (Noack, 2016). This historical comparison of “fake news” to Lügenpresse demonstrates the flaw in arguments that see a causal link between postmodernism and a post-truth era.

As a part of te wiki o te reo Māori (Māori language week) in 2016, reporters for Aotearoa New Zealand’s public radio broadcaster, Radio New Zealand (RNZ), began signing off reports in te reo Māori (the Māori language). At the suggestion of Brent Edwards, RNZ’s news manager at the time, the station’s reporters continued to sign off in Māori after Māori language week was over. Public reaction to the increased Māori content on RNZ was decidedly mixed. While many listeners, both Māori and Pākehā (descendants of white European settlers), praised the regular inclusion of te reo in RNZ’s broadcasts, many listeners also complained both to the station and to the New Zealand Broadcasting Standards Authority (BSA) (Haunui-Thompson; McConnell).

The incorporation of te reo into daily broadcasts was intended both as a way to help preserve the indigenous language and as a recognition of the importance of Māori language and culture to Aotearoa New Zealand (Ainge Roy). In fact, te reo is one of Aotearoa New Zealand’s three official languages (along with English and New Zealand Sign Language) and the RNZ’s charter, as defined in the Radio New Zealand Act of 1995, dictates that RNZ should “reflect New Zealand’s cultural identity, including Māori language and culture” (“The Radio New Zealand Charter”).

This paper is an investigation of responses to the use of te reo in RNZ’s broadcasts. Through a discourse analysis of public comments news stories about RNZ’s use of te reo Māori on popular news websites such as Stuff (stuff.co.nz), as well as editorials and op-eds on the topic, it contextualises public responses within a history of colonialism as well as public attitudes towards both mass and networked media and recent media-supported attempts to preserve Māori language and culture. Ultimately, this paper argues for a “decolonisation” of mass media, which has bolstered interest in Māori language and culture in New Zealand.

The paper argues that the term “fake news” has been appropriated by President Trump and others on his staff to delegitimise the journalistic press. Through a content/discourse analysis of Trump’s tweets, press conferences, and interviews combined with a comparative historical analysis, I illustrate how Trump has reconfigured “fake news” into the modern “Lügenpresse”, the German term meaning “lying press” used by the Third Reich to incite hatred and discredit Hitler’s critics. Trump supporters actually referred to journalists as Lügenpresse during a Trump rally in October 2016. Since his inauguration, however, both Trump and others on his staff have instead accused critics, the US intelligence community, and entire news organisations of spreading “fake news.” The misuse of this term allows Trump to avoid the negative connotations associated with Lügenpresse while deflecting criticism and delegitimising the popular press, which represents a threat press freedom and our ability to remain informed, engaged citizens.

This past September marked the fifth anniversary of the Occupy Wall Street (OWS) movement. Since that time, several facets of the movement – including its success, failures, and even its very nature – have been subject to debate in both the popular and academic press. One common thread in these debates, however, has been the movement’s important relationship with various forms of media. In the introduction to their edited volume Mediation and Protest Movements, Bart Cammaerts, Alice Mattoni and Patrick McCurdy (2013, 11) argue that media are important to social movements because “without (self-) mediation, insurrectionary performances and acts of resistance become meaningless.” They assert that social movements should organise staged events that lead to visibility in a mass mediated public sphere (Cammaerts, Mattoni, and McCurdy 2013, 11).

While staging “dramatic” events was occasionally mentioned in early communications about OWS, the role that digital, networked media played in OWS and other “New Social Movements” or NSMs (see Lievrouw 2011) that combine an emphasis upon collective, long-term actions supported by social media, eventually became the a primary focus. Manuel Castells (2012, 229) argues, for example, that Occupy is specifically a unique product of an Internet age by saying it was “born digital.”

In this paper, we question this claim and argue that OWS instead both incorporates long-standing protest practices while simultaneously adopting rhetoric distanced OWS from past protest actions, positioning the movement as representative of a new era of social movements. The myth of an egalitarian Internet has become a central component of the “culture” many OWS participants claim is the source of the moment. As a result, comments from protestors privilege the role of digital, networked media, which obfuscates the long history of social movements that also informed OWS and oversimplifies a complex set of material conditions that also ignited the movement.

Dieser Vortrag ist ein Versuch, die Mediatisierung sozialer Bewegungen zu kontextualisieren, wobei ich die Mediennutzung und organisatorischen Strategien von zwei verschiedenen Protestaktionen vergleiche: die Anti-World Trade Organization Proteste in Seattle im Jahre 1999 (bei denen das junge Web und die Mobilkommunikation Schlüsselfaktoren waren) und die Occupy-Bewegung (bei denen soziale Medien eine Hauptrolle spielten). Cammaerts, Mattoni und McCurdy, dass Medien wichtig für soziale Bewegungen seien, weil „without (self-) mediation, insurrectionary performances and acts of resistance become meaningless.”  Sie nennen diese Idee eine „neue Medienlogik“ und schlagen vor, dass das Hauptziel einer sozialen Bewegung die Organisierung von veranstalteten Ereignissen sein sollte, die zu Sichtbarkeit in einer massenmedialen Öffentlichkeit führen.

Dieser Ansatz wurde während der Proteste in Seattle im Jahr 1999 gegen die WTO, des sogenannten „Kampfes von Seattle“, benutzt. Protestleiter benutzten eine Vielzahl von Webseiten und andere Onlineressourcen, um Protestaktionen zu organisieren, die etwa zwischen 40 000 und 50 000 Aktivisten in Seattle anzogen. Ob diese Sichtbarkeit Erfolg versprach oder nicht ist jedoch eine ganz andere Frage, besonders als Zeitungen und Fernsehnachrichten die Berichterstattung übernahmen. Shanto Iyengar vertritt den Standpunkt, dass die Massenmedien oft einen „episodic frame“  einsetzen, damit sie sich auf konkrete Handlungen und Ereignisse konzentrieren können—d.h. brutale oder destruktive Elemente eines Protests—statt die Gründe dafür zu nennen.  Demonstranten werden deshalb als Abweichler dargestellt und der Status quo wird verstärkt. So war es mit den Anti-WTO Protesten. Viele der Anti-WTO-Aktivisten, die den Massenmedien nach den Ereignissen in Seattle misstrauten, haben eine Bürgerjournalismus-Website gegründet, die „Independent Media Center“ oder einfach „Indymedia“ genannt wurde, um unfaire Darstellungen in Massenmedien zu entgegnen. Die Webseite ermutigte Aktivisten dazu, selbst zu Medien zu werden, in dem sie ihre eigenen Beiträge wie Kommentare, Fotos, Videos, oder andere Schriften veröffentlichen. Obwohl es viele Anhaltspunkte dafür gibt, dass Indymedia als ein gutes organisatorisches Werkzeuge für Bürgerinitiativen und soziale Bewegungen funktioniert, ist die Auswirkung dieser Webseite außerhalb dieser Grüppen schwer einzuschätzen.

Die Occupy-Bewegung, die in einer Web 2.0-Lebenswelt von Interaktivität und Personalisierung entstand, zeigt viele Unterschiede zur Struktur der Anti-WTO Proteste aus der sogenannten „Web 1.0“-Ära. In vielfältiger Weise ist Occupy eine Reaktion auf die Entwicklung kleiner „persönlicher Öffentlichkeiten“ und sogenannter „echo chambers“, wie dies bei Indymedia der Fall war. Stattdessen organisierten Occupy-Aktivisten langlaufender Protestaktionen, die von sozialen Medien unterstutzt werden. Manual Castells sagte, zum Beispiel, dass Occupy digital geboren sei. Das Internet ermögliche eine führerlose Bewegung, um zu debattieren, zu planen, zu weiterleben und zu expandieren. Mit dieser Bemerkung scheint es, als ob Castells Occupy als ein Produkt einer Medienlogik sieht. Im Gegensatz dazu vertrete ich den Standpunkt, dass Occupy die Mediatisierung der sozialen Bewegung darstellt. Obwohl die Besetzung von öffentlichem Raum der Grundstein der Occupy-Bewegung ist, manifestiert sich diese Zentralität der Medien in den Offlineprozessen von Anerkennung, Einbeziehung und Kollektivität im Rahmen der Occupy-Bewegung. Das Bestehen auf eine führerlose, horizontale Struktur spiegelt, z.B, die wahrgenommene offene und egalitäre Beschaffenheit des Internets wider. Diese Vorstellung stammt aus einem falsch erkannten Zusammenhang zwischen dem Internet und der Gegenkultur der 60er Jahre in den USA. Diese Beschreibungen zeigen an, dass die Occupy-Bewegung eine Art Integration durch Diversifikation versucht. Schlagworte wie „We are the 99%“, die die Meinungsvielfalt und gleichzeitig die Inklusivität der Bewegung betonen, veranschaulichen diese Philosophie.

Dieser Vortrag untersucht, wie das heutige Verständnis von Medien nicht nur die Mediennutzung jüngster sozialer Bewegungen beeinflusst, sondern auch die Struktur, Entwicklung, Erwartungen, und sogar Offlinetätigkeiten dieser Bewegungen. Das heißt: wird die Vorstellung von sozialen Bewegungen durch die Medienerfahrungen der Aktivisten, entweder bewusst oder unbewusst, geprägt? Wenn ja, welche Gelegenheiten wurden ermöglicht und welche wurden verhindert? Wie haben Medienentwicklungen sich auf die Diversifikation oder Integration dieser Bewegungen ausgewirkt? Der Begriff von Mediatisierung bietet eine grundlegende Struktur, um diese aufeinander wirkenden Entwicklungen zu untersuchen, weil man Medien „de-zentrieren“ muss.  Mit solch einer Perspektive wird man Medienwandel und Kulturwandel nicht zusammenfassen, sondern verstehen, wie Medien „in heutigen Medienkulturen als zentral konstruiert werden.“ Wenn Castells sagt, dass Occupy „digitale geboren“ wurde, trennt er die Bewegung von der Geschichte und deutet an, dass es etwas Neues und Einzigartiges ist. Occupy wird einfach als „wie das Internet“ verstanden. Solch ein Verständnis könnte nicht nur soziale Bewegungen völlig außer Acht lassen, sondern auch die Verhältnisse, die diese Bewegungen verursachen.

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The purpose of this exploratory paper is to conceptualise the mediatisation of protest movements through an historical approach that compares protest actions from two different events—the anti-World Trade Organization (WTO) protests in Seattle in 1999 (in which the early Web and mobile media played a key role) and the Occupy movement (engaged with social media).  Cammaerts et al. assert that media are important to social movements because “without (self-) mediation, insurrectionary performances and acts of resistance become meaningless.” They assert that social movements should organise staged events that lead to visibility in a mass mediated public sphere and ask how “media logic” can “shape, inform or constrain the way activist conceptualize and enact protests.”

This approach was applied during the protests against the WTO during their annual meeting in Seattle in 1999, sometimes referred to as “The Battle in Seattle.” The protests garnered a significant amount of media attention from news organizations in multiple countries. However, as Shanto Iyengar argues, mass media tend to use an “event framing” to focus on “compelling” (i.e., violent or destructive) elements of protest actions rather than the reasons behind the protests, leading to a presentation of protestors as deviant and a greater likelihood that the general public will support the “status quo.”. This was certainly the case with the anti-WTO protests. Some activists involved in these protests, upset or mistrustful of mass media coverage, attempted to combat what they felt was unfair representation by establishing Indymedia as a hub for user-generated media on the protests. Activists and independent journalists posted a number of articles, videos, and photos on the site in an effort to provide personal, “unbiased” coverage of the event or to correct what they felt were falsehoods being disseminated in mass media coverage. However, while there is ample evidence to suggest the various Independent Media Centres or IMCs operate quite well as organizing tools for grassroots social and political movements, there is little evidence that Indymedia has regular and significant impact outside the activist groups.

The Occupy movement, emerging in a Web 2.0 environment, exhibits several significant differences from the organisation of the “Web 1.0 era” anti-WTO protests. Indeed, Occupy is in many ways a response to the diversification or splintering of society into small, issue-based groups and “echo chambers” as seen in the Indymedia example. Instead, the movement places a greater emphasis upon collective, open, long-term actions supported by social media. Manuel Castells, for example, says Occupy was “born digital” and that the Internet “allows a leaderless movement to survive, deliberate, coordinate and expand.” Comments such as this demonstrate that it is still valid to consider how a “media logic” influences the development of protest movements. Although the occupation of public space is the cornerstone of the Occupy movement, the Internet had a marked effect even on offline incarnations of the movement. Claims that position the Internet—particularly social media—as a new, digital public sphere are reflected in the Occupy movement’s offline processes of recognition, inclusion, and consensus formation. Its insistence on a leaderless structure likewise mirrors the perception of the Internet as an egalitarian and democratising space, an idea rooted in the (mistaken) association of the Web with 1960s counterculture. In short, the Occupy movement is attempting integration through diversification. This philosophy is exemplified by popular slogans such “We are the 99%” which emphasise the diversity of opinion within the movement while simultaneously asserting its inclusiveness.

This comparative, historical analysis aims to examine the ways in which the contemporary media logic influenced not only the media activities of these movements, but also their structure, development, expectations, and activities (both offline and online). Did interactions with media inform, consciously or unconsciously, these movements? What possibilities were enabled through this mediatisation, and which were foreclosed? How have media developments affected the diversification or integration of activist movements, both internally and within society? It is hoped this discussion can be used as a framework for understanding the development of other social movements in a way that resists generalising assumptions about media and instead takes sociohistorical context into account.

Cammaerts et al. (2013) argue that media are important to social movements because “without (self-) mediation, insurrectionary performances and acts of resistance become meaningless” (11). They assert that social movements should organise staged events that lead to visibility in a mass mediated public sphere and ask how “media logic” can “shape, inform or constrain the way activist conceptualize and enact protests” (11). Recent social movements, however, suggest a greater emphasis upon collective, long-term actions supported by social media. For example, many in the popular press and academia have linked the emergence of the Green Wave in Iran (Afshari, 2009, Grossman, 2009), the Arab Spring (see Howard and Hussain, 2011) and the #Occupy movement  to services such as Facebook and Twitter. Castells (2012), for example, says Occupy was “born digital” and that the Internet “allows a leaderless movement to survive, deliberate, coordinate and expand” (229). Others are less enthusiastic, critiquing social media for enabling “slacktivism” (cf. Barney, 2008, Morozov, 2011).

These debates demonstrate that, despite changes, it is still valid to consider how a “media logic” influences the development of protest movements. Indeed, the Internet had a marked effect on even offline incarnations of the Occupy movement in particular. Its insistence on a leaderless structure, for example, mirrors the Internet’s perceived open and egalitarian form of participation, an idea rooted in the (mistaken) association of the Web with 1960s counterculture. Critiques of the movement demonstrate similar parallels. Dean (2008), for example, argues that openness of the Internet leads to “the multiplication of resistances and assertions so extensive that it hinders the formation of strong counterhegemonies” (102). The Occupy movement has been similarly criticised for multiple, ambiguous and ultimately unachievable demands (Castells, 2012: 187). Barney (2008) cautions that online exchange often “stands in for motivation, judgement and action” because communication is “culturally coded, in advance, as political, eliminating any motivation (or obligation) to take on heavier burdens of judgment and action” (101). Claims that the “process is the message” of the Occupy movement (Castells, 2012: 185) similarly suggest that discussing issues is just as “political” as achieving discrete goals.

The purpose of this exploratory paper is to conceptualise this mediatisation (see Hepp et al., 2010) of protest movements through an historical, comparative approach that examines media logic and protest actions from two different events—the WTO protests in Seattle in 1999 (in which mobile media played a key role) and the Occupy movement (engaged with social media)—in order to examine the ways in which the contemporary media logic influenced not only the media activities of these movements, but also their structure, development, expectations, and activities (both offline and online). In other words, did interactions with media inform, consciously or unconsciously, these movements? If so, what possibilities were enabled through this mediatisation, and which were foreclosed? It is hoped this discussion can be used as a framework for understanding the development of other social movements in a way that resists generalising assumptions

"In November of 2011, Jack Womack, a senior vice president at the US-based cable news station CNN, announced the network would lay off approximately fifty workers, in part because "new technology in desk-top editing and user-generated content and social media have made some editing and photojournalism positions redundant" (Guthrie). Within days of this announcement, CNN re-launched their citizen journalism website iReport.com. The site had been in operation for five years, collecting user-generated content in exchange for the promise to "take part in the news with CNN."  This ostensible democratization of media production, however, is rarely a goal of user participation. José van Dijck (2009, p. 51), for example, notes that many people are simply "enthusiasts who make home videos for a small circle of family and friends." Producing and sharing content is thus considered play instead of work.

This paper argues that the recent rebranding of the iReport website as a social network indicates CNN's recognition of the role of community in encouraging user production. While the iReport site still incorporates democratization-based rhetoric, newly-incorporated social networking elements emphasize participation within a community; the site's "iReporters" can "follow" other site members, for example, and join groups dedicated to particular topics. The generation of labour in the form of citizen journalism is thus disguised as socialization, community participation and play. By associating iReport with this community-driven ethos, CNN is able to guarantee the production of specialized content since, as Axel Bruns (2008) argues, the survival of user-driven communities is dependent on the contributions of  "produsers." The news network is then able to capitalize on the immaterial labour (Terranova, 2000) of online iReport communities while maintaining its traditional gate-keeping role, an arrangement that provides CNN with significant economic and ideological benefits.
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Mathes and Pfetch (1991) note that, in certain situations, issues discussed in alternative media can "spill over" into established media so that what was once a counter-cultural issue becomes a "general, public issue." Generating this "spill over" is a task often assumed to be made easier through the use of digital media. This assumption seemingly creates an "old versus new media" framing that ignores the complexities of the current media environment. Indeed, Morley (2007) argues that we must "understand the variety of ways in which new and old media accommodate to each other and coexist in symbiotic forms[.]" Neuberger and Nuernbergk (2010) similarly suggest that more research needs to be undertaken in order to explore the use of user-generated material and "their impact in terms of inter-media agenda setting."

The Occupy Wall Street movement provides the perfect opportunity to analyze the relationship between user-generated and mass media and the process of inter-media agenda setting. This paper argues that the current global economic instability has generated what Habermas (1996) refers to as a moment of "crisis" or period in which there is political and ideological uncertainty. During these "moments of crisis", media are seen as a "servant of the people", which allows for the increased representation of counter-cultural ideas. Through the strategic use of "real-world" protest actions coupled with grassroots media such as YouTube, Twitter, and live-streaming, the #Occupy movement has successfully capitalized upon the current "moment of crisis" to focus mass media and popular attention upon issues of economic inequality.

The Pirate Party began in Sweden as an anti-copyright organization called Piratbyrån (Bureau of Piracy), which launched the file sharing website The Pirate Bay in 2003 and established an official political party in Sweden (Piratpartiet) in 2006. The detainment of three Pirate Party members for the illegal dissemination of copyrighted material on the Internet both ignited international debate on file sharing and increased the popularity of the party and its goals (Miegel & Olsson, 2008, p. 211). Since then, the Pirate Party has become an international movement with active political groups in over 25 countries.

This paper explores the growing influence of mediatization by analyzing the emergence of this political and social movement. While the development of the Pirate Party can be understood simply as an example of the increasing influence of the Internet in politics, it is also representative of an ideological clash between mass media institutions and individual users, one which positions access to and control over media as essential to social participation and existence. Nick Couldry (2003, pp. 2,47) refers to the social practices that naturalize and legitimize media power as the “myth of the mediated centre”. This concept is related to that of the habitus, which Bourdieu (2008, p. 82) describes as a product of history which also “produces individual and collective practices, and hence history, in accordance with the schemes engendered by history.” Jonathan Sterne (Sterne, 2003, p. 382) links media to the habitus, suggesting they contribute to the organization of social practice as much as family, school, and religion.

This paper uses these concepts of the habitus and the mediated centre as a theoretical foundation to analyze the “process by which the media are constructed as central in present societies” (Hepp, 2009, p. 43). This analysis begins with an historic examination of the practices and discourses that established mass media, specifically television, as both a sociocultural necessity and an ideological enforcer, and suggests that this positioning was so successful that it dialectically inspired the beliefs that led to counter-hegemonic grassroots media movements such as the Pirate Party. In the process, this paper suggests that, as it works to destabilize mass media’s influence, the Pirate Party paradoxically reifies mass media as central to society.

The term “new media” is often used to suggest that digital media are inherently different from “old” media such as television. Implicit in this distinction is the promise of a new participatory grassroots culture that shifts power away from mass media institutions and towards the individual. Some suggest that “ordinary citizens” are able to participate culturally and politically through media production, as videos in the vein of citizen or participatory journalism have become a staple of news broadcasts, especially in the US. Yet the use of webcam and mobile phone videos on television suggests that, rather than being vulnerable to them, television has been quite successful at assimilating user-produced texts.This paper examines claims that user-produced media represent a grassroots rebellion against mass media and argues that the increased appropriation of participatory journalism and other user-produced media actually reinforces television’s position as a sociocultural authority.

User-produced media are often presented as political reform, moving the locus of control away from mass media and toward the individual. The same is true for Flash animation or Flashimation. The Flash software allows user-producers to decrease production time while increasing their individual control. Thus, it is assumed that Flashimation is a subversive form that challenges the dominance of mass media, but this assumption ignores the complex, sometimes hegemonic relationships between Flashimation and television. This paper examines these relationships and questions whether Flashimation truly is subversive, or if aesthetic convergence and remediation reasserts television’s position as society’s dominant cultural form.

Advances in the technical capabilities of personal computers, combined with the increasing ubiquity of Internet access, allow the personal computer to become a single site for the production, dissemination, and reception of media texts. This ability, contend scholars such as Peter Lunenfeld, allows for alternative forms of media production. Yet it is often assumed that the transformation of a “passive” audience into active “user/producers” allows for greater independence – a break from television’s hegemonic control over cultural production. If true, why do television producers actively engage with and assimilate new media aesthetics? Using semiotic analysis, this paper decodes the aesthetics of user-produced web sites and entertainment texts such as webcam videos and Flash cartoons, and posits how television’s appropriation of this new visual culture illuminates issues of control, democratisation and the relationship/rivalry between media corporations and independent user/producers.

On October 15, 1997, Spumco, an animation house formed by Ren & Stimpy creator John Kricfalusi (commonly known as John K.), produced the first instalment of The Goddamn George Liquor Program after experimentation with Marcomedia’s animation and interface development program Flash.  This cartoon, the first ever produced solely for the web, launched a new style or genre of animation which has since earned the unofficial nickname of “Flashimation.” 

Since then, Flash animated cartoons such as Harvey Birdman: Attorney At Law have appeared on television, initially in the form of adult-oriented programming including cartoons produced for the Adult Swim block of programs on Cartoon Network (United States) and The Detour on Teletoon (Canada).  These initial examples of Flashimation on television combined Flash animated segments with more traditional animation processing techniques.  More recently, children’s cartoons completely produced within Flash, such as Foster’s Home for Imaginary Friends, have also debuted.

This paper will examine the brief history of Flashimation, tracing its origins to “limited” cell animation of the 1950-1960s United States, its development on the web, and its appropriation for use on television in North America.  Then, drawing upon the work of television and new media scholars such as Spiegel, Williams, and Manovich, this history will be used as a framework to posit explanations for the appearance of this formerly web-specific genre on television.  Finally, this discussion will be used as a foundation for broader mediations on the exchange between television and new media and the cultural implications of this interaction.

This paper examines the transactional features on the popular mobile social media app Snapchat to describe how mobile social media act as an interface between culture and commerce. In particular, we examine Snapchat's extensive Augmented Reality (AR) features which its parent company, Snap, Inc., has been developing and investing in heavily since 2014. Snapchat Lenses, an in-app feature which layers graphics and designs over real-world objects when viewed through a smartphone's camera, are the most popular and visible of these AR experiences. While Lenses are often associated with features that augment users' faces in their photos by overlaying graphics through facial tracking, other AR features on Snapchat can identify and interact with object and environments. These Lenses power a feature called "Snapchat Scan" which, as we detail, makes it easier to incorporate e-commerce opportunities into the app, particularly since Snap initiated a partnership with online retail giant Amazon.