ABSTRACT
The spread of the COVID-19 pandemic has allowed mechanisms of power and authority to enter new urban realms – especially the very relationships lived between friends and lovers in bedrooms and parks. All of a sudden, everyone has a right to know who we are close to, when and how, all for the sake of public health and safety, to ensure the further functioning of our established public health system. The new policies transform Western ideas of public and private spheres: our bedrooms have turned into the space of self-representation and workplaces at the same time. On the other hand, what had been known as public space before has turned into the space to be private in: a walk through the city alone or with an intimate person. Yet all of these tendencies come with increased surveillance, not only by our peers, but also through technologies such as tracing apps. The very possibility of privacy and 'active' publicity is being questioned, and, through this, the realm of the political. This paper traces the observed shifts in the nature of the private and public spheres through examples in German cities, tracing power via embodied experiences. Those traces are reorganised into three argumentative strands: re/constructing privacies, public space as non-place and the proliferation of the data body. Based on these observations the paper searches for emancipatory perspectives within the shifted spheres of urban social life. (English) [ FROM AUTHOR] 新冠疫情的蔓延使权力和权威机制进入了新的城市领域—尤其是朋友和恋人们之间在卧室和公园里的关系。突然之间，每个人都有权知道我们与谁、何时以及如何亲密接触，这一切都是以公共卫生和安全的名义，为了确保我们既定的公共卫生系统的进一步运作。新政策改变了西方对公共和私人领域的看法：我们的卧室同时变成了自我展示的空间和工作场所。另一方面，以前被称为公共空间的地方已经变成了私密的空间：独自或与亲密的人一起在城市中漫步。然而，所有这些趋势都伴随着越来越多的监控，不仅来自我们身边的人，还通过追踪应用程序等技术。隐私和"主动"曝光的可能性，进而政治领域正受到质疑。本文通过德国城市的例子（通过具身体验追踪权力）追踪观察到的私人和公共领域性质的变化。这些追踪被重组为三股争论：重新/构建隐私、作为非场所的公共空间和数据体的扩散。基于这些观察，本文在城市社会生活的变化范围内寻找解放性的视角。 (Chinese) [ FROM AUTHOR] Copyright of Urban Studies (Sage Publications, Ltd.) is the property of Sage Publications, Ltd. and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full . (Copyright applies to all s.)
ABSTRACT
The COVID-19 pandemic has had a disproportionately negative affect on women, especially women from minoritized groups. Minority news media are an important information source for these groups, when it comes to providing alternative views, and health related information. Whilst the poor representation of women in COVID-19 related mainstream news coverage is acknowledged, little is known regarding the representation of women in digital minority news content, during the pandemic and beyond. Considering this gap, we examine how women have been represented within a diverse corpus of minority news, and explore how these representations serve to bridge between different social groups. Critically analyzing the representation of these marginalized groups offers a lens through which we can better understand the function of minority news media in a democracy. Using critical discourse analysis, this study examines three online minority newspapers and one podcast from the US. Findings show that women are covered in an inclusive and empowering way, containing perspectives and concerns unique to the minority group, strengthening identities, platforming community-specific issues, communicating a call to action, and promoting intersectional solidarity. These representations also reveal the complex tensions between counterhegemonic and dominant publics which minority news media sources constantly negotiate through their content.
ABSTRACT
The mobility restriction during the COVID-19 pandemic did not stop the public from expressing their opinions. Since they could not go on demonstrations, they moved democracy to the digital sphere, such as on Twitter. Previous research has shown that Twitter users in Indonesia use the platform to express political views and opinions on governmental issues. The issue of the Nationalism Knowledge Test (TWK) at the Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK) was a trending topic on Twitter for a while. The issue spurred discussions on Twitter when 75 employees did not pass the KPK-TWK on May 2021. The discussion then stopped for a moment before picking up again during the official dismissal of the employees on 30 September 2021. This article focuses on the social network analysis of the public's responses to this issue on Twitter. Social network data were collected using Drone Emprit from May to October 2021 and analyzed using Gephi to generate graphical representations of the social networks. The results reveal the structure of the movement was centralized and dynamic. Regarding the dissemination of information, the most central was news media and anti-corruption activists' accounts. These accounts mobilized the community on Twitter to make a critical social movement. This means that the digital sphere can be an evolution of democracy form and activism, especially in the anti-corruption movement. © 2022 Rev. Archai. All rights reserved.
ABSTRACT
Disinformation and misleading narratives have been the prominent aspects of polluting public debate during the last US presidential elections and the Covid-19 pandemic. This paper attempts to evaluate the problem of freedom of speech through the lens of Ronald Coase's paradox about the similarities between the << market for goods >> and the << market for ideas >>. After discussing the suitability of the Coasian metaphor, according to which any form of interventionism on one of these spheres will produce outcomes on the other one, it states that this clearly emerges today insomuch online platforms, such as social networks, are becoming accountable for polluting (in terms of externalities) pieces of content shared by users.
ABSTRACT
Disinformation is not a new phenomenon. Even so, in recent years its relevance on the public agenda has increased, as the victory of Brexit supporters in the UK or the election of Donald Trump for US president have showed. Academic interest runs parallel to the consideration of disinformation as a growing priority for governments and international organizations. On the other hand, the emergence of the Covid-19 pandemic accelerated the decline of regional media, already affected by the digital transformation and declining business models, now challenged by the platforms, which became essential mediators in the advertising market. The decline of regional media leaves communities in a state of serious vulnerability as information is increasingly consumed through social media, where disinformation easily proliferates. As in the pandemic context, disin-formation is also a virus that spreads quickly and has a high potential for damage to democracy, namely at a local level. It is precisely where we intend to focus the debate, curiously where it has been little present. It is precisely from the local public sphere that responses to disinformation can emerge, namely in a collaborative relationship between journalists and (other) active members of the community.
ABSTRACT
The COVID-19 pandemic has monopolized communication and media information for months, becoming the first global social fact in the digital age. In a new and redefined communicative space, characterized by the pervasive presence of digital media, each information source needs to establish a specific positioning strategy in the crowded communication field. The article aims at investigating the impact of those processes on the production, spread and use of institutional information. It focuses the attention on the "communicative behaviors" of 12 Italian institutional, political and media players, analyzing their contents' production, the intensity and characteristics of this production and the communicative resources they used in managing their Facebook pages/profiles. In order to outline the players' digital strategies and to frame their positioning in the public sphere, different metrics were analyzed and the possible and meaningful connections among the different players and strategies were considered. From this study, a dense interweaving of voices seems to emerge, attesting the complexity of the communicative space, but also the "functionality" of each voice in a sort of inter-relational attitude.
ABSTRACT
The pandemic represents a global emergency that has a profound impact on the lives of citizens. The contraction of spaces for personal freedom and the suspension of certain rights have altered the relationship between citizens and institutions, further modifying and weakening the dimension of the public sphere. This inherently unstable dimension is further weakened by a policy that exploits disintermediation for a construction of power based on the cancellation of the process of the acquisition of knowledge to leave space for the dynamics of polarisation and public opinion based on misinformation. The ongoing pandemic crisis represents a factor of profound destabilisation because it has exacerbated the phenomena already underway. Social distancing and physical immobility have definitively moved the construction of public discourse on the network, thus giving life to what is called platform society, where platforms produce the social structures in which we live (Van Dijck et al., 2018).
ABSTRACT
Populism and the post-truth: two concepts often used simultaneously or interchangeably to explain current developments in contemporary politics, yet the demarcation line between them remains blurry. Building on definitions of populism that describe it as a style of political communication, 'post-truth populism' can be regarded as a specific type of populist communication which shares the characteristics of post-truth politics. How the two phenomena intertwine, and how the aesthetic transformation of the public sphere and the rise of social media had a role in their appearance will be discussed. The theoretical framework is illustrated by two cases during the COVID-19 pandemic.
ABSTRACT
The commentary examines coronavirus memes circulating around forms of generational conflict that have risen from experiences of self-isolation. Employing participant-observation methods within online spaces of meme circulation, the commentary analyzes the political, social, and affective aspects of the memes considered. The commentary offers insight into how we operationalize our social media spaces in times of deep uncertainty in order collectively bring differing experiences and perspectives into a contingent, shifting, and affectively constituted public sphere. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved)
ABSTRACT
In this article we analyse how the immigration issue is narrated during the Covid-19 outbreak by several Italian political actors. We select Facebook as the main digital arena of political communication in the Italian public sphere. Quantitative analysis and Critical Discourse Analysis have been applied to politicians' posts aiming at identifying the linguistic strategies that contribute to instrumentalizing the emergency and aim to reinforce the politicization of the issue. Findings suggest that the main discursive strategies used by politicians do not only include migrants as a danger for the spread of the virus, but the migratory narration is systematically organized on negative campaigning blaming political opponents. The contribution helps to reveal how the anti-migration discourse is reproduced during the Covid-19 outbreak and how the politicization of the migration serves as a context for the normalization of migrant's exclusion.
ABSTRACT
The objective of this paper is to investigate the hybridization dynamics of the Third sector at the time of the Covid-19 pandemic. The progressive contamination between the State, market, family and Third sector spheres has long been subject of interest of the scholars. This paper aim at analysing these dynamics through the case study of Fondazione Banco Alimentare (Italian Food Bank Foundation). The case helps in investigating the impact of the pandemic on the role, logics and actors that make up the Third sector (both organizations and people) and its relation with the other subsystems. The empirical analysis shows that the pandemic and its consequences has enhanced the role of Fondazione Banco Alimentare, thanks to its relevance during the food emergency that also increased its visibility in the media. There are more institutional and non-institutional donors, more beneficiaries and help requests that resulted also in an accelerated professionalization and training of volunteers and employers. In conclusion, the Italian Food Bank and its network dealt with processes of digitalization, institutionalization and professionalization. These transformations resulted in a new positioning of the organization in the public sphere and redefined its relationship between local, national and European institutions.
ABSTRACT
The article examines the news media debate on nurses' wages in Finland during the COVID-19 crisis. By looking at the COVID-19 pandemic in the Nordic context, the study presents the pandemic as a societal context in which the care work burden has increased and the value of care is highlighted. The analysis of the COVID-19 public media debate sheds light on how the struggle over nurses' wages features in this societal context. The study contributes to the research on the gender wage gap related to the economic misrecognition of care work, and the analysis draws from the feminist democratic theoretical concept of the public sphere perceiving the COVID-19 public media as a site for political change-making. My analysis of Finnish news media articles identified three important discourses on the objective of pay rises in the care sector: conveying frontline care professionals' experiences during the pandemic and framing them as an economic-political issue;relying on the ideal of common good in the corporatist debate on care professionals' collective economic interests;and presenting expert analyses of the structural causes behind the gendered segregation of the labour market and the economic undervaluation of care work. © 2023 The Nordic Association for Feminist and Gender Research.
ABSTRACT
After Chilean social outbreak and restriction by Covid19, San Borja park would be unused. Given this, a community reproduced the park in Minecraft creating its own version: BorjaCraft. So two parks coexist in one environment, separate but forming part of a place. When entering or leaving the space, turning the digital on or off, the public experience happens between online and offline. If the characteristics of online and offline space were linked, how would the public sphere of a place be expanded? This puts in check the understanding of the public depending on space or format where it is inhabited. © 2022 Authors. All rights reserved.
ABSTRACT
Cet article porte sur le rôle des plateformes de médias sociaux (Twitter en particulier) dans la fabrique et la diffusion du discours opposé aux mesures sanitaires dans la province du Québec, durant les premiers jours de la pandémie de COVID-19, en 2020. Fondé sur une approche matérialiste et issue de la théorie de l'acteur-réseau, il analyse les récits opposés aux mesures sanitaires qui ont circulé dans la twittosphère québécoise durant les deux premières semaines d'application des mesures restrictives imposées par les autorités fédérale et provinciale. En particulier, nous montrons que la fabrique et la diffusion d'un discours opposé à ces mesures aboutissent à un syncrétisme idéologique aux contours flous qui contribue à banaliser les idées traditionnellement associées au conspirationnisme et qui visent les élites scientifiques et politiques canadiennes. L'étude, tant du discours que du dispositif qui le promeut, montre par ailleurs qu'il permet à des individus situés à la marge de la sphère publique de se transformer en influenceurs populaires, techno-entrepreneurs moraux, qui deviennent les figures de proue d'une mouvance opposée aux mesures sanitaires.Alternate :This article examines the role played by social media platforms (Twitter in particular) in the fabrication and dissemination of a discourse opposing health measures in the province of Quebec during the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020. Based on a materialist and actor-network theory approach, it analyzes the narratives opposing the measures that circulated in the Quebec Twittersphere during the first two weeks of the implementation of the restrictive measures imposed by the federal and provincial authorities. In particular, we show that the fabrication and dissemination of a discourse opposed to these measures leads to an ideological syncretism with blurred contours that contributes to the trivialization of ideas traditionally associated with conspiracism that target Canadian scientific and political elites. The study, both of the discourse and of the device that promotes it, shows how this device allows individuals on the fringe of the public sphere to transform themselves into popular influencers and moral techno-entrepreneurs who become the figureheads of a movement opposed to the sanitary measures.Alternate :Este artículo examina el papel de las plataformas de medios sociales (Twitter en particular) en la fabricación y difusión del discurso de oposición a las medidas sanitarias en la provincia de Quebec durante los primeros días de la pandemia de COVID-19 en 2020. Basándose en un enfoque materialista y derivado de la teoría del actor-red, se analizan las narrativas opuestas a las medidas que circularon en la twittosfera quebequense durante las dos primeras semanas de aplicación de las medidas restrictivas impuestas por las autoridades federales y provinciales. En particular, mostramos que la fabricación y difusión de un discurso opuesto a estas medidas da lugar a un sincretismo ideológico de contornos borrosos que contribuye a la banalización de las ideas tradicionalmente asociadas al conspiracionismo y que apuntan a las élites científicas y políticas canadienses. El estudio, tanto del discurso como del dispositivo que lo promueve, muestra que se permite que individuos situados en los márgenes de la esfera pública se transformen en influenciadores populares y tecnoempresarios morales que se convierten en los mascarones de proa de un movimiento opuesto a las medidas sanitarias.
ABSTRACT
The article deals with the questions of digital communication and theatre during the lock-down in 2020–2021. With the example of the National Kaunas Drama Theatre, Lithuania, it is reve-aled that COVID-19 pandemic forced the cultural sector to experiment and use digital products in new conceptual ways. National Kaunas Drama Theatre proposed their audience an online platform Theatre Onl1ne TV (originally in Lithuanian: Teatras Onl1ne TV), and developed performances which were adapted to the digital environment of the lockdown period: some of the performances were transmitted on Zoom Video Communications platform, especially those for children and ado-lescents, some of them, such as The Flickering, tested new ways of integrating audiences digitally into theatrical action. The latter performance was created for Facebook users, lasted for four evenings and invited them to become co-creators of the story. The analysis reveals that digital theatre communication attracted audiences of younger generations and can be a useful creative tool in developing a relationship with the new generation of theatre-goers. © 2023 The Author(s). Published by Vilnius Gediminas Technical Univers.
ABSTRACT
Uganda, like most countries on the African continent, has in the recent past grappled with existential pandemics such as AIDS, Marburg disease, cholera, Ebola, and currently the Covid-19 pandemic. All the above-mentioned disease outbreaks have often unleashed unimaginable suffering on Uganda’s population. This is perhaps why Ugandan scholars and public intellectuals— especially its writers such as Mary Karooro Okurut, Moses Isegawa, Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi, and Austin Ejeit—have used fiction to offer insights into the various contours of these contagions. For example, in their interrogation of one of the worst pandemics to hit the Ugandan society—AIDS—a host of writers have centred a cautionary tale motif and verisimilitude to show how behavioural change can effectively combat disease outbreaks. This article builds on this substantial Ugandan archive of plague writing by focusing on one genre of Ugandan writing—science fiction—that has not received much critical attention for its exploration of pandemics. I explore how Dilman Dila’s “A Leafy Man,” “Where Rivers Go to Die” and “The Taking of Oleng” use science fiction tropes to proffer insights in contemporary Ugandan plagues. I argue that Dila uses science fiction to effectively delineate the causes of, how to cope with and the myths that circulate about these catastrophic occurrences in the Ugandan public sphere. © The Author(s) 2022.
ABSTRACT
The Covid-19 pandemic meant challenges in crisis management for democratic institutions such as the European Union (EU). To achieve an economic and social recovery to the crisis, the EU institutions have promoted the NextGenerationEU (NGEU) program, a massive recovery package for this purpose. This action takes place at a time of strong visibility of Euroscepticism within a global phenomenon of distrust in political authorities. The present work aims to know the shaping of the European Public Sphere when NGEU is launched. First, the evolution of EU support during the pandemic is described, analyzing the possible factors that influence on this variable. On this matter, a secondary analysis of data is applied on different waves of the Eurobarometer (EB 92, 93, 94 and 95). The statistical method is also used to give items that determine the image of the EU. Moreover, the communicative dissemination of this plan is drawing upon semi-structured interviews with some of the professionals who deal with the task. The objective is to provide an overview of how the public sphere made up of citizens and institutions is defined before a moment of symbolic relevance. The results reveal a trend towards greater positivity with the EU after the pandemic. However, among other possible factors, the degree of support depends on the ideological position and, to a lesser extent, on the type of community where the citizens live. EU officials assess this rise of Europeanism as an opportunity, targeting the NGEU communication campaign especially at young people.
ABSTRACT
After Chilean social outbreak and restriction by Covid19, San Borja park would be unused. Given this, a community reproduced the park in Minecraft creating its own version: BorjaCraft. So two parks coexist in one environment, separate but forming part of a place. When entering or leaving the space, turning the digital on or off, the public experience happens between online and offline. If the characteristics of online and offline space were linked, how would the public sphere of a place be expanded? This puts in check the understanding of the public depending on space or format where it is inhabited.
ABSTRACT
The Covid-19 pandemic has had a significant impact on the research and higher education sectors globally. The consequence of closure policies and other pandemic responses meant that primary, secondary, and tertiary education providers were forced to adapt their teaching and learning practices, many shifting to online platforms. Within the global Academy, Covid-19-related research was thrust into the public sphere while other research was deprioritised, delayed or cancelled. These various changes have implications for every corner of the teaching, learning and research triangle, and are one of the central foci of this special issue. With research and data from 16 countries and 5 continents, these articles explore the far-reaching impact of Covid-19 on higher education globally;accompanied also by a particular thread around lived experience, especially centring the voices of minoritised or marginalised members of the staff and student community. This is especially valuable given that understanding other countries’ successful strategies in handling the pandemic can forge global solidarity and collective growth. Together these stories, woven into 18 research articles, provide a rich and expansive landscape from which to promote equity and better understand the needs of the people the Academy serves.