Dafne Calvo, Jaseff Raziel Yauri-Miranda, Carmen Haro-Barba
{"title":"Design, Manufacture and Save. Coronavirus Makers During the COVID-19 Crisis in Spain","authors":"Dafne Calvo, Jaseff Raziel Yauri-Miranda, Carmen Haro-Barba","doi":"10.1080/13183222.2021.1969618","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/13183222.2021.1969618","url":null,"abstract":"This research analyses the Coronavirus Makers in Spain, focusing on three characteristics: the hybrid organisation, the use of technologies, and the cultural impact. To do so, we carried out a multimodal ethnography (Dicks, Bella, Bambo Soyinka, and Amanda Coffey. 2006. “Multimodal Ethnography.” Qualitative Research 6 (1): 77–96) from March to June 2020, during the first wave of the COVID-19. Coronavirus Makers’ activity can be framed as a pandemic movement, enhancing expressions of solidarity, social mobilisation, and resilience. The decentralised collective work and the anti-commercial logic (i.e. promoting open designs and protocols) tackled the immediate shortage of medical materials and structural deficits in health services. This network embraced the Spanish legacy of social mobilisation, as during the 15M, yet it presents actions that are circumscribed to the pandemic context and deserve further attention.","PeriodicalId":93304,"journal":{"name":"Javnost (Ljubljana, Slovenia)","volume":"28 1","pages":"273 - 289"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-07-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41439383","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":"Paradoxes of Reactance During the COVID-19 Pandemic: A Social-psychological Perspective","authors":"Katharina V. Hajek, M. Häfner","doi":"10.1080/13183222.2021.1969619","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/13183222.2021.1969619","url":null,"abstract":"This study aims to explain the dynamics of compliance towards the measures to contain the coronavirus in 2020 by drawing on the theory of psychological reactance. We discuss our findings in a model that distinguishes between catalysts and buffers of reactance arousal on an individual level and hypothesises how these may lead to compliant or resistant behaviour as acts of resilience in the public sphere. In an online survey (N = 766, May 2020, Germany), we found that reactance arousal towards the restrictions to contain the coronavirus depended on the individual assessment of the limitations of freedom. Data suggest that health related fear buffers reactance arousal, whereas surprisingly, sorrow and cognitive dissonance amplify it. Anger and a critical political attitude towards the government correlate positively with the mobilising power of reactance. We argue that these are essential elements that push individual reactance arousal over the threshold into the public sphere, where it serves to shove resilience towards resistance. Our study expands this essential social-psychological theory to be a driver not only in the individual but also in public behaviour, opening a new perspective on the tipping point between resilience and resistance in the public sphere during this crisis and beyond.","PeriodicalId":93304,"journal":{"name":"Javnost (Ljubljana, Slovenia)","volume":"28 1","pages":"290 - 305"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-07-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46273649","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":"Beliefs, Attitudes, and Communicative Practices of Opponents and Supporters of COVID-19 Containment Policies: A Qualitative Case Study from Germany","authors":"David Schieferdecker","doi":"10.1080/13183222.2021.1969620","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/13183222.2021.1969620","url":null,"abstract":"In many countries, intense political contestation unfolded around the question of how Sars-CoV-2 should be contained. In this case study, I try to understand why members of the German public came to vastly differing judgements on the containment policies. In summer 2020, I conducted 48 semi-structured interviews to investigate respondents’ belief systems, attitude structures, and communicative practices. I found that disparate policy preferences were partly based on incompatible interpretations of the crisis and went hand in hand with deep institutional mistrust between strict opponents. Stereotypes about supporters and opponents had formed, and people avoided discussions with opposing camps. However, my data also suggest that moderate opponents and supporters overlapped in their criticism of anxiety-inducing media coverage and fuzzy governmental communication. No fully-fledged social identities had formed, and respondents were forcibly exposed to other opinions in their close personal networks. Altogether, my study extends the knowledge of political polarisation around COVID-19 by unravelling the interpretations and mechanisms that underlie disparate policy preferences during the pandemic.","PeriodicalId":93304,"journal":{"name":"Javnost (Ljubljana, Slovenia)","volume":"28 1","pages":"306 - 322"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-07-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42321264","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":"Polarisation and Silencing Others During the COVID-19 Pandemic in Germany: An Experimental Study Using Algorithmically Curated Online Environments","authors":"Tim Neumann, Ole Kelm, Marco Dohle","doi":"10.1080/13183222.2021.1969621","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/13183222.2021.1969621","url":null,"abstract":"In 2020, societies debated the use of government restrictions on public life to stem the COVID-19 pandemic. Many of these debates took place online. The Internet enables people to come into contact with like-minded content. Algorithms based on collaborative filtering can contribute to this process and might lead to homogenous like-minded online environments that contribute to a polarisation of society. This article therefore examines the effects of (1) like-minded versus opposing online environments, which were (2) randomly versus algorithmically curated. Data from a between-subject experiment embedded in a two-wave panel survey of German citizens (n = 318) show that attitude polarisation as well as affective polarisation are largely independent of exposure to different online environments. Moreover, the results indicate that polarised attitudes of supporters and opponents of the COVID-19-related restrictions relate to varying degrees of beliefs in the importance of silencing people with opposing opinions: While supporters’ polarised attitudes are positively related to the belief in the importance of silencing others, opponents’ polarised attitudes are rather negatively related to such beliefs.","PeriodicalId":93304,"journal":{"name":"Javnost (Ljubljana, Slovenia)","volume":"28 1","pages":"323 - 339"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-07-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46539694","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}
A. Haywood, P. Aufderheide, Maria T Sanchez Santos
{"title":"Community Media in a Pandemic: Facilitating Local Communication, Collective Resilience and Transitions to Virtual Public Life in the U.S.","authors":"A. Haywood, P. Aufderheide, Maria T Sanchez Santos","doi":"10.1080/13183222.2021.1969617","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/13183222.2021.1969617","url":null,"abstract":"This article examines how US community media organisations anchored to public, educational and government (PEG) cable channels facilitated community resilience during the 2020 pandemic. We find evidence that they served as active “meso-agents” (institutional actors) in local communication networks. Some 230 completed survey responses and 10 open-ended interviews with PEG staffers demonstrated that access media commonly performed essential functions including official and community communication and teacher training in new virtual platforms; providing news, especially coordinating official information; and providing “contactless community,” with virtual versions of ritual occasions. These creative responses also suggest new ways to address “news deserts” in the US, if chronic problems with spotty broadband, underfunding of PEG services and lack of federal incentives can be addressed.","PeriodicalId":93304,"journal":{"name":"Javnost (Ljubljana, Slovenia)","volume":"28 1","pages":"256 - 272"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-07-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43315959","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}
S. Elstub, R. Thompson, O. Escobar, J. Hollinghurst, Duncan Grimes, M. Aitken, A. McKeon, K. Jones, Alexa Waud, N. Sethi
{"title":"The Resilience of Pandemic Digital Deliberation: An Analysis of Online Synchronous Forums","authors":"S. Elstub, R. Thompson, O. Escobar, J. Hollinghurst, Duncan Grimes, M. Aitken, A. McKeon, K. Jones, Alexa Waud, N. Sethi","doi":"10.1080/13183222.2021.1969616","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/13183222.2021.1969616","url":null,"abstract":"Quality deliberation is essential for societies to address the challenges presented by the coronavirus pandemic effectively and legitimately. Critics of deliberative and participatory democracy are highly skeptical that most citizens can engage with such complex issues in good circumstances and these are far from ideal circumstances. The need for rapid action and decision-making is a challenge for inclusivity and quality of deliberation. Additionally, policy responses to the virus need to be even more co-ordinated than usual, which intensifies their complexity. The digitalisation of the public sphere may be seen as a further challenge to deliberating. Furthermore, these are stressful and emotional times, making a considered judgement on these issues potentially challenging. We employ a modified version of the Discourse Quality Index to assess the deliberative quality in two facilitated synchronous digital platforms to consider aspects of data use in light of COVID 19. Our study is the first to perform a comprehensive, systematic and in-depth analysis of the deliberative capacity of citizens in a pandemic. Our evidence indicates that deliberation can be resilient in a crisis. The findings will have relevance to those interested in pandemic democracy, deliberative democracy in a crisis, data use and digital public spheres.","PeriodicalId":93304,"journal":{"name":"Javnost (Ljubljana, Slovenia)","volume":"28 1","pages":"237 - 255"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-07-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43106096","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 Rupaul Paradox: Freedom and Stricture in a Competition Reality TV Show","authors":"J. Hermes, Michael Kardolus","doi":"10.1080/13183222.2021.1924541","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/13183222.2021.1924541","url":null,"abstract":"Drag culture in the 1990s seemed to signify emancipation and liberation of enduring and stifling definitions of gender and sexuality. The uptake of drag and camp in mainstream culture were felt to usher in an era of gender freedom coinciding with new appreciation for popular cultural forms. A quarter century on, popular culture no longer connotes bad taste. The realignment of taste and cultural capital has not coincided with decreased social inequality however, and popular media culture appears to have remained the training ground for what Miller (1993. The Well-Tempered Self. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press) called “the daily organisation of fealty to the cultural-capitalist state.” This paper will inquire into how today’s neo-liberal governmentality and its defining form of offering freedom and stricture at the same time is exemplified by the show hosted by drag queen, singer and television presenter RuPaul (RuPaul’s Drag Race Logo, VH1 2009-today and available on Netflix). Taking as our point of departure our own double-edged sentiments about the show and its host, and the ways queens are divided into role models versus underperformers, we will discuss how race, gender and English proficiency are policed.","PeriodicalId":93304,"journal":{"name":"Javnost (Ljubljana, Slovenia)","volume":"29 1","pages":"82 - 97"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-06-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/13183222.2021.1924541","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48245609","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":"Roamers: Audiences on the Move Across Entertainment Platforms In Southeast Asia","authors":"A. Hill, Jian Chung Lee","doi":"10.1080/13183222.2021.1932985","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/13183222.2021.1932985","url":null,"abstract":"Media industries recognise the extent to which the potential audiences for their products are now made up significantly of “roamers,” people finding diverse routes through the options available and combining them in different ways. The main research question in this article is: what sort of precise movements, combinations and connections become possible for roaming audiences in rapidly expanding commercial entertainment platforms? The article draws on emergent findings of a qualitative audience study in Malaysia and Indonesia, analysing patterns of movement across streaming services, e.g. Netflix, entertainment platforms, e.g. YouTube, and national cable and public television channels. Through empirical and theoretical research, we critically examine how the virtual and material are intertwined in audience mobility and motility. Through the use of visualisations of the media landscape by roamers, the trope of the “Netflix Park” signifies how motility is closely tied to media freedom and power. In our study, audiences adapt to life in a commodified culture; roamers combine global entertainment platforms and other piracy services, becoming enmeshed in the commercial foreclosure of new media spheres.","PeriodicalId":93304,"journal":{"name":"Javnost (Ljubljana, Slovenia)","volume":"29 1","pages":"98 - 114"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-06-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/13183222.2021.1932985","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45392759","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":"Voice, Capabilities and the Public Sphere: Assessing the Legitimacy and Efficacy of Media Freedom(s)","authors":"S. Dawes","doi":"10.1080/13183222.2021.1921967","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/13183222.2021.1921967","url":null,"abstract":"Following previous work in applying the capabilities approach to the study of media, communications and culture, this article will consider the merits of applying a capabilities-supplemented account of cultural citizenship for evaluating the legitimacy and efficacy of the public sphere. Drawing on the work of Nancy Fraser on the public sphere and Nick Couldry on voice, the article will focus on the extent to which “voice” can be understood as a “fundamental capability.” For Couldry, “voice” can also be articulated as a “connecting term” alongside other normative frameworks, such as citizenship or the public sphere. Such a supplementary approach is necessary to avoid the universalism and paternalism to which normative and prescriptive accounts of citizenship and the public sphere are prone, as well as the absolutist libertarianism of free speech fetishists that often serves the benefit of those with rather than without voice. It also serves the function of grounding such abstract concepts in more concrete and measurable practices and social processes, while politicising the depoliticised accounts of rights and freedoms the capabilities approach tends to produce. Ultimately, it also enables a recasting of media freedom in terms of a focus on the public rather than the media.","PeriodicalId":93304,"journal":{"name":"Javnost (Ljubljana, Slovenia)","volume":"29 1","pages":"1 - 16"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-06-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/13183222.2021.1921967","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48834558","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}
Adrian Rauchfleisch, Daniel Vogler, Mark Eisenegger
{"title":"Public Sphere in Crisis Mode: How the COVID-19 Pandemic Influenced Public Discourse and User Behaviour in the Swiss Twitter-sphere.","authors":"Adrian Rauchfleisch, Daniel Vogler, Mark Eisenegger","doi":"10.1080/13183222.2021.1923622","DOIUrl":"10.1080/13183222.2021.1923622","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>In modern democracies, large societal crises like the COVID-19 pandemic are accompanied by intensified public discourse about which policies and strategies are adequate to fight the crisis. In such times, the public sphere switches to crisis mode with fundamentally different communicative dynamics compared to routinised periods. Data from social media platforms like Twitter offers new possibilities to study such dynamics. However, comprehensive studies on how crises affect discourse in distinct national publics are missing up to now. Based on 1,762,262 tweets referring to COVID-19 written between 1 January and 30 April 2020 by 56,418 validated Swiss users, we illustrate how the lockdown of public life in Switzerland affected the discourse in the Swiss Twitter-sphere. Based on public sphere theories, we identify four crisis-related dimensions for our analysis. We show that the pandemic led to a narrowing of the topic agenda and to a more inwardly oriented public sphere with increased Twitter activity by experts. Furthermore, actors from the social periphery were able to reach the centre of public discourse with their tweets. Overall our study shows how methodological innovation allows us to better connect an empirical analysis with the concept of a public sphere as a communication network.</p>","PeriodicalId":93304,"journal":{"name":"Javnost (Ljubljana, Slovenia)","volume":"28 2","pages":"129-148"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-05-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://ftp.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pub/pmc/oa_pdf/9e/d2/RJAV_28_1923622.PMC8336575.pdf","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"39311937","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}