{"title":"The interplay of personal storytelling with rational justifications in online discussions: A qualitative exploration of news user comments","authors":"Julia Jakob","doi":"10.1080/13183222.2022.2149219","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/13183222.2022.2149219","url":null,"abstract":"In light of theoretical controversies among deliberation scholars, this study thoroughly explores the interplay of personal storytelling with rational justifications in online discussions. In a qualitative content analysis, it examines how this relationship manifests in online news user comments on the public role of religion and secularism in society from the period of August 2015 until July 2016. To provide more general interpretive insights, the study analyses highly comparable data from multiple countries. The material stems from the websites of nine daily news media in Australia, the United States, Germany and Switzerland. In the investigated online news user comments, personal storytelling regularly interplays with rational justifications in the shape of a narrative rationality and a supportive narrativity. While narrative rationality relies on personal narratives to make a point in the form of a rational justification, supportive narrativity builds on personal experiences referenced in passing to further reinforce a general line of reasoning. Personal storytelling thus plays a vital role in justifying the normative rightness of the positions that the commenters take on the contested issue. This supports normative theories that acknowledge the merit of personal storytelling for public deliberation and provides new impulses for their specification.","PeriodicalId":93304,"journal":{"name":"Javnost (Ljubljana, Slovenia)","volume":"29 1","pages":"403 - 419"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-10-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42951057","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Visual, Popular and Political: The Non-profit Influencer and the Public Sphere","authors":"Luise Salte","doi":"10.1080/13183222.2022.2147776","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/13183222.2022.2147776","url":null,"abstract":"The influencer has become a common phenomenon in digital societies. The emphasis on exposure and popularity in social media is materialised through the growing prominence of these popular individuals with large audiences. This article examines the rhetoric of two “non-profit influencers” on Instagram, demonstrating that they can be understood beyond economics, fandom and traditional politics. Rather than being profit-focused as the more commonly known influencer, they are normatively oriented. Their communication reflects rhetorical demands prompted by the public matters they address and the social media environment. This study suggests that the non-profit influencer may be seen as a phenomenon crystallising social and technological emphases on the individual. It contends that the non-profit influencer may be located in the popular cultural public sphere, illustrating social media’s role as relevant arenas in deliberative democracy.","PeriodicalId":93304,"journal":{"name":"Javnost (Ljubljana, Slovenia)","volume":"29 1","pages":"371 - 387"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-10-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43313493","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Talking Communication Studies: Negotiating Power and Promise","authors":"J. Klaehn, Florian Zollmann, Marcus Kahn","doi":"10.1080/13183222.2022.2079055","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/13183222.2022.2079055","url":null,"abstract":"Consensus regarding what becomes mainstream, popular, and commonplace within academia is subtly managed in accord with conformity of thought, contemporary popular ideas, and major assumptions/paradigms predominating fields, which in turn are comprised of hegemonic, ideological ideas, frameworks and arguments that are informed and bound by power. Power, professionalisation, and dominant ideological currents inform and legitimise paradigmatic ideas, which in turn influence perceptions and reception. This paper explores how Communication Studies have been impacted by dominant configurations of power and encourages debate on the extent to which ideological bias and ideological marginalisation are normative dimensions of Communication Studies.","PeriodicalId":93304,"journal":{"name":"Javnost (Ljubljana, Slovenia)","volume":"29 1","pages":"337 - 353"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-06-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43728589","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Public Broadcasting and Topic Diversity in The Netherlands: Mentions of Public Broadcasters’ Programming in Newspapers as Indicators of Pluralism","authors":"Joris Veerbeek, Karin van Es, E. Müller","doi":"10.1080/13183222.2022.2067956","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/13183222.2022.2067956","url":null,"abstract":"Following debates on media pluralism and decentralised public service media, this article discusses the contribution of Dutch public broadcasters to pluralism. While the Dutch system operates under the assumption that external pluralism of broadcasting associations contributes to diversity, here we empirically explored this relation with respect to topics within societal discourse. We argue that mentions of public broadcasters’ programming in newspapers can function as indicators of diversity. As such, we traced mentions of all television and radio programmes by eleven Dutch public broadcast associations in a collection of 263,476 Dutch newspaper articles published during the 2017–2018 TV and radio season. Employing Latent Dirichlet Allocation topic modelling, we thematically contextualised those mentions, which then allowed us to map the breadth of topics associated with programming by different public broadcast associations as well as the extent to which individual public broadcasting associations play a distinct role within a characteristic set of topics. The results of our exploratory analyses support the idea that the external pluralism of the Dutch system produces diversity in alignment with the intentions of the distributed system.","PeriodicalId":93304,"journal":{"name":"Javnost (Ljubljana, Slovenia)","volume":"29 1","pages":"420 - 438"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-06-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43183014","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Representing European Civil Society: A Decentred and Political Approach","authors":"Acar Kutay","doi":"10.1080/13183222.2022.2067974","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/13183222.2022.2067974","url":null,"abstract":"From the Maastricht treaty to the economic crisis in 2008, the practitioners were inclined to associate European Civil Society (ECS) with the EU supported- large NGOs located in Brussels. The EU institutions, particularly the European Commission, aimed to involve the citizens' interests, demands, and concerns through the organised actors of civil society when the EU was deemed to suffer from a democratic deficit and political legitimacy. This practice of mobilizing the organised actor of civil society within the scope of participatory governance would allay these concerns. Nonetheless, since the economic crisis in 2008, the EU institutions' focus on Brussels-based NGOs has become less prominent. On the one hand, the launching of the European Citizens Initiative opened new venues for the EU to contact citizens directly. On the other hand, in addition to the economic crisis in 2008, other pressing issues, including the rise of the populist right, Brexit, and migration, had a tectonic effect on ECS. Such effects are yet to be analyzed, and this article offers a conceptual/interpretive analysis of this change. This new perspective decentres ECS and reconsiders how citizens' interests can be linked to the European governance and what it means to represent the EU's social constituency.","PeriodicalId":93304,"journal":{"name":"Javnost (Ljubljana, Slovenia)","volume":"29 1","pages":"250 - 266"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-05-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42000017","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Islamic Worldview as a Model for De-Westernising Journalism Studies and Profession","authors":"Basyouni Ibrahim Hamada","doi":"10.1080/13183222.2022.2067955","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/13183222.2022.2067955","url":null,"abstract":"Despite the various attempts to de-Westernise journalism studies and profession, the dominance of Western theories and practices remains absolute. This article seeks to develop a hybrid Islamic/Western worldview that represents a comprehensive, flexible and multicultural paradigm that emphasises sharing rather than imposing one’s heritage and view. The article particularly reflects on resolving the existing ontological, epistemological and methodological issues as a crucial task in overcoming obstacles and stagnation related to the hybridisation of theory-building efforts. This article demonstrates how the proposed normative paradigm can be grounded in the realistic context of journalistic practice by examining two research issues: media and democratisation and the globalisation of journalism ethics.","PeriodicalId":93304,"journal":{"name":"Javnost (Ljubljana, Slovenia)","volume":"29 1","pages":"354 - 370"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-05-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49004211","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Between Europeanism and Nativism: Exploring a Cleavage Model of European Public Sphere in Social Media","authors":"Hakan G. Sicakkan, R. Heiberger","doi":"10.1080/13183222.2022.2067724","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/13183222.2022.2067724","url":null,"abstract":"The European Union’s common public sphere project dates back to the 1960s and relies on Europeanisation through the gradual eradication of communication boundaries between its member countries. However, it is evident by now that Europeanisation of national public spheres is hard to achieve by increasing overlaps between national public spheres, synchronisation of news reporting across national boundaries, or diffusion of Europeanist norms into national politics. The European Union’s common public sphere project may hence be in danger. This calls for explorations of other imaginable models of the public sphere for Europe. Are there traces of other modes of transnational public sphere emerging in Europe? In this article, we explore a models of the transnational public sphere which is based on an alternative concept of Europeanisation derived from the cleavage theory. By drawing on social media data and employing tools of social network analysis, we demonstrate the empirical possibility of a cleavage model of the European public sphere.","PeriodicalId":93304,"journal":{"name":"Javnost (Ljubljana, Slovenia)","volume":"29 1","pages":"231 - 249"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-05-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43982623","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Covid Publics and Black Lives Matter: Posts, Placards and Posters","authors":"Pollyanna Ruiz","doi":"10.1080/13183222.2022.2042787","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/13183222.2022.2042787","url":null,"abstract":"This article will examine the ways in which COVID has reconfigured the boundaries between online and offline, as well as public and private spaces. The threat posed by the global pandemic meant that public spaces quickly emptied, work zoomed into the home, and windows became notice boards filled with moraleboosting messages. Every Thursday, UK doorsteps became the space in which private individuals emerged from their own homes to express their gratitude to key workers in general and the NHS in particular. Whilst posters calling for better provision of PPE occasionally appeared in people’s windows, online talk about Booing for Boris never fully materialised into offline action, and the doorstep continued to function as the threshold between public and private space. However, the killing of George Floyd radically disrupted these threshold spaces. Information about Black Lives Matter demonstrations leapt from activists’ digital networks into the hyper-local and granular chains of communication established by COVID mutual aid groups, grassroots communities of care and small clusters of neighbours. Similarly, the slogans which had been circulating within activist networks for years quickly appeared on the placards of protesters as they moved through city spaces, before finally settling in people’s windows alongside rainbow posters urging neighbours to “stay safe.” When—on the first Thursday after the final NHS clap—many individuals chose to relinquish the comforting anonymity afforded by mass demonstrations and take the knee on their doorstep, they called their neighbours, as well as their government, into a dialogue about race. In this way, the windowpane and the doorstep finally became a dynamic space which both separated and connected online and offline as well as public and private spaces.","PeriodicalId":93304,"journal":{"name":"Javnost (Ljubljana, Slovenia)","volume":"29 1","pages":"165 - 178"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-04-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46352185","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The Datatext: A Multilevel-discursive Theory For Improved Public Health Data Visualizations","authors":"M. Dick","doi":"10.1080/13183222.2022.2042785","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/13183222.2022.2042785","url":null,"abstract":"In the run up to the COVID-19 lockdown in March 2020, Prime Minister Boris Johnson challenged the British public to “squash the sombrero,” and so save thousands of lives in the event of the pandemic overburdening an already stretched National Health Service. There was a jarring sense of incongruity between this tabloid metaphor, and the minimalist line-graph to which the prime minister was referring. Best practice in infographic design may be well-suited to the communication of data amongst scientists and other literate audiences. But today matters of public health are subject to debate between citizens who are actively engaged in creating and circulating knowledge amongst wider publics with variable levels of literacy. Here a different epistemic approach, and different assumptions about design, are required. When conceiving of the infographic in public health as a multilevel discourse containing visual arguments mutually re-enforced by combinations of words, numbers and images, what I call a datatext (after W.J.T. Mitchell), it may be possible to design more effective communications. In this paper I set out a theoretical approach to infographic design drawing upon image schema theory, as well as conventional best practice. I conclude with recommendations for designing effective datatexts for optimal biocommunicability.","PeriodicalId":93304,"journal":{"name":"Javnost (Ljubljana, Slovenia)","volume":"29 1","pages":"130 - 146"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-04-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45017538","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Public Reason in the TIme of Covid-19","authors":"J. Hands","doi":"10.1080/13183222.2022.2042784","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/13183222.2022.2042784","url":null,"abstract":"In the long history of democracy some notion of rational intercourse has always played its part. A common arena, whether concrete or abstracted, has provided a capacity for the exchange of opinion, argument and for arbitration and decision making. While the nature of this arena has evolved, a shared understanding of what the grounds of agreement, and disagreement, has usually been evident. This consensus has come under radical question in contemporary politics. The attendant concepts of communicative, or public reason — the former most closely associated with the critical theorist, philosopher and sociologist, Habermas, and the latter with the political philosopher Rawls has also been challenged from left and right. This article will present a defence of the use of public reason as an important component of the fight against COVID-19, and in the cause of both democracy and social solidarity — as these ideals have come under strain in the first decades of the twenty-first Century.","PeriodicalId":93304,"journal":{"name":"Javnost (Ljubljana, Slovenia)","volume":"29 1","pages":"115 - 129"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-04-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45846482","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}