Dismissing conservative participants in protests as duped fools or ranting ideologues who have fallen prey to fake news is a dangerous reaction that fails to recognize the essential and grassroots role they play in profoundly effective conservative messaging that continues to outfox progressive information campaigns. This article uses the collective action against Covid-19 stay-at-home orders and mask

Ethics in data science and artificial intelligence have gained broader prominence in both scholarly and public discourse. Much of the scholarly engagements have often been based on perspectives of transparency, politics of representation, moral ethical norms, and refusal. In this article, while the authors agree that there is a problem with the universal model of technology, they argue that what these

The 10 essays in this special forum were based on presentations at two recent conferences. The essays by Min Jiang and Francis Lee were their keynote speeches delivered at the preconference on “Social Media, Algorithms, News, and Public Engagements in the Asia-Pacific and Beyond” of the 2020 annual conference of International Communication Association. The other essays were presented at the “Symposium

As Elodie and 35,000 other Congolese children negotiate dangerous working conditions that impair their health, some Western consumers enjoy the fruits of their debilitating labor to fight for their own rights in the ableist infrastructure of the West. Americans and people around the world benefit from the cooling power of an aquifer in South Carolina, water that is in the ground traditionally stewarded

Astroturf lobbying refers to the simulation of grassroots support for or against a public policy. The objective of this tactic is for private interests to pretend they have public support for their cause. However, omitting to disclose the real sponsor of a message renders the communication unauthentic and undermines democratic and pluralist values. This article seeks to develop a method to detect astroturf

The term “cancel culture” has significant implications for defining discourses of digital and social media activism. In this essay, I briefly interrogate the evolution of digital accountability praxis as performed by Black Twitter, a meta-network of culturally linked communities online. I trace the practice of the social media callout from its roots in Black vernacular tradition to its misappropriation

This article examines the role of media technology in determining preconstitutive enemies of the political order. To do so, it analyzes how discipline-specific methods of enemy detection, analysis, and neutralization correspond to different media environments. Media have a diagnostic and prescriptive significance: not only do they locate enemies that conform to their own unique standards of measurement

Over the last decade, social media platforms have become the leading communication tools for activists and protesters all over the world. Understanding protesters’ motivations and reasons for using social media is a challenging issue for researchers. In this article, we analyzed the use of Twitter during the anti-governmental protests in Istanbul that was launched in May 2013. We examined 13,794 tweets

Some researchers have warned that advances in artificial intelligence will increasingly allow employers to substitute human workers with software and robotic systems, heralding an impending wave of technological unemployment. By attending to the particular contexts in which new technologies are developed and implemented, others have revealed that there is nothing inevitable about the future of work

Social scientists are increasingly turning to digital interactions as a primary source of qualitative data. Online activities in turn typically take place on algorithmically mediated platforms, which shape what people do and say in crucial ways. Here, I offer a toolkit for what I call algorithmic ethnography, that is, the ethnographic study of how computational systems structure online activities.

While work in the media and cultural industries has long been considered precarious, the processes and logics of platformization have injected new sources of instability into the creative labor economy. Among the sources of such insecurity are platforms’ algorithms, which structure the production, circulation, and consumption of cultural content in capricious, enigmatic, even biased ways. Accordingly

In her contribution to the Quarterly Journal of Speech’s centennial issue, “Pathologia,” Jenny Rice suggests, “pathology does not only or always reveal something broken. Rather, the experience of pathology also reminds us that rhetoric’s sensorium is working—really working” (p. 35). Yes, and in a time of pandemic turbulence, we are reminded that the sensorium of civic life works in ways that shape

While we so commonly frame our public/civic wounds as past (or passed), we are used to talking about healing and mending existing wounds. This language also affects how we conduct deliberative discourse around current crises. However, I am more curious about the wound’s future. Specifically, I want to explore the wound’s future as it emerges in two different types of deliberation: prescriptive deliberation

This essay proposes thinking about civic wounds as assemblages. It draws on the historical case of antebellum Cincinnati, where the physical contagion of cholera entangled with the social contagion of slavery in ways that articulated across both cultural and physical domains of activity at once. Taking this approach reveals the ways rhetoric’s pharmakon mediates the operations of delivery within assemblages;

Consensual attending addresses the ecological and relational conditions in which any act of assent or dissent materializes. I argue that consent is not an act undertaken by individuals, but is a relational endeavor that individuates. Any solitary act of assent—of thinking, perceiving, feeling—is predicated upon prior and ongoing consensual acts. The terms of consensual attending modulate one another:

This article demonstrates the way wounds, and affects generally, are figured by the writing of history. It traces patterns of thinking about the labyrinth primarily in histories, theories, and myths of the past 150 years to demonstrate how the labyrinth has been cut by colonization. From the Mycenaean colonization of Indigenous Cretans (inaccurately named “Minoans”) to the emergence of white feminism

This essay argues that pathology as an analytical form functions as the ethical critique of mutual vulnerability. In the broad sense of assessing what is life-giving and life-taking, a sustained critical engagement with pathological forms circulating through public life positions the study of rhetoric as a kind of immunotherapy for democracy. In that sense, embracing pathology as a critical analytic

Wounds materialize in the wake of the event, when rhetoric inadequately indexes what is present in a situation. Such a position bypasses ethics from the transcendental ought or the purely descriptive is to an ethics grounded in an immanent occurrence. To give an example of this kind of rhetorical ethics, I turn to an example of a recent wound, the shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, where

Today, conversations automated by algorithms and delivered via screens seek to heal wounds such as substance use disorders, wartime traumas, and a global pandemic. This article explores the relationship between painful conversations, automated discourse, and public action. By articulating what is lost when therapeutic conversations are had with artificial intelligence, I illustrate that painful, human

Propaganda is a centuries-old term, and yet scholars and practitioners are still having a hard time defining it and pinpointing what makes propaganda unique. Many existing definitions fail to distinguish between propaganda and marketing, public relations, advertising, or even mass communications, in general. This essay proposes to define propaganda through psychoanalytical research pioneered by Erich

This study examines the role of individuals’ media diets in contributing to the growing support for right-wing populist parties. Drawing on social identity theory and the notion of populism as poli...

Although online political incivility has increasingly become an object of scholarly inquiry, there exists little agreement on the construct’s precise definition. The goal of this work was therefore to explore the relational dynamics among previously identified dimensions of online political incivility. The results of a regularized partial correlation network indicated that a communicator’s desire to

In this essay, I explore Manipur-based women’s group called Meira Paibi as a postcolonial counterpublic. I suggest that when we use the lens offered by counterpublic studies and postcolonial studies, we can trace activism that delivers a sharp critique on the politics of a democracy. The current research on Meira Paibi’s activism has specifically focused on their naked protest of 2004 and their peacebuilding

The United Kingdom political landscape has historically been dominated by the two main political parties: Labour and the Conservatives. However, by the 2010 General Election, their vote share had dropped to 65%. The 2010 election also saw a new development enter the UK political landscape—televised leaders’ debates, which featured the leaders of the three largest political parties. Discussions before

In its efforts to establish order and legitimacy among the people it once controlled, Islamic State in Iraq and Syria followed standardized and systematic nation-state building policies. The terrorist group attempted to establish an imagined jihadist nation-state with the assistance of standardized media productions and practices. These media productions that are examined in this article reflect Islamic

Since its launch in 2005, Google Maps has been at the forefront of redefining how mapping and positionality function in the context of a globalizing digital economy. It has become a key socio-technical ‘artefact’ helping to reconfigure the nexus between technology and spatial experience in the 21st century. In this essay, I will trace Google’s evolving strategy in the mapping space. I will argue that

Geomedia technologies represent an advanced set of digital media devices, hardwares, and softwares. Previous research indicates that these place contingent technologies are currently gaining significant social relevance, and contribute to the shaping of contemporary public lives and spaces. However, research has yet to empirically examine how, and for whom, geomedia technologies are made relevant,

In this article, we explore the social construction of geomedia in relation to mobile photo-taking. The article draws from a study of location-sensitive mobile social networking and search and recommendation service Foursquare in Melbourne and New York City. The study utilized photo elicitation techniques, with each participant asked to provide photographs they associated with their own Foursquare

In their book, Location-Based Social Media: Space, Time and Identity, Leighton Evans and Michael Saker remark on the apparent ‘death’ of location-based social networks, suggesting that location-based social networks can now be understood as ‘a form of “zombie-media” that animates and haunts other media platforms’. In this article, we use this perspective as a point of departure for a social shaping

While the ‘media city’ has gained academic attention for over a decade, the role of the media in urban gentrification processes has been an overlooked issue. Due to the rapid expansion of geomedia technologies, for example, app-based social media and location-based services on mobile platforms, there is a growing need to address this area from a critical perspective. The article develops and tries

Simultaneous localization and mapping technology is commonly used within mobile devices and household appliances—it allows our vacuum robot to navigate the living room and enables us to view augmented reality content on our smartphones. By examining simultaneous localization and mapping–based devices and contrasting them against more traditional forms of cartographic practices, we argue that simultaneous

The media plays a crucial role in contemporary conflicts because an image war is occurring alongside the military confrontation. The Islamic state of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS) sets a prime example for the usage of image as part of its fighting strategy, using various platforms to communicate its narrative. This study evaluates ISIS’s image front by analyzing its messages promoted through various online

This study examines how media use for news can relate to expressive and collective participation through the mediating role of political talk and internal and external political efficacy. Based on two cross-sectional analyses and one autoregressive analyses of the data obtained from a two-wave panel survey during the 2012 presidential campaign in South Korea, this study finds that political talk and

This essay critiques the notion of soundscape and proposes the concept of acoustic milieus as an alternative conceptual tool to facilitate our understanding of the human condition mediated through and with sound. As a kind of ‘charged atmosphere’ to use Kathleen Stewart’s expression, an acoustic milieu, offers a rich understanding of everyday practice which often seems to be banal, ephemeral and resistant

After the earthquakes hit northeastern Japan and caused the catastrophic meltdowns at Fukushima on 11 March 2011, a large number of families chose not to relocate and are still living in contaminated areas. From the summer of 2011, Japan started a hoyo—health recovery camp which has been mainly aimed at helping people, especially children, to relieve the stress of their minds and bodies that have been

Drastic life events like that of a disaster are not easily forgotten. Various narratives emerge to keep alive the memory of a disaster, its precursors and its consequences in the minds of those who experience it. Therefore, disaster memories become an important source of information and learning, not only for the community but also for policy makers who can work towards identifying the precursors and

How have digital technologies affected the market logics and economization that constitute the underlying governing rationality of neoliberalism? This essay unfurls five theses that further develop the concept of technoliberalism, the intensification of neoliberalism through computational technology, in the context of the networked public sphere: (1) technoliberalism names the dominant governing rationality

This essay shows how race and gender are central to the rhetorical production of neoliberal political economy. It examines how the mainstream and feminist-appearing movement for girls’ empowerment is in service of the continued production of neoliberal political economy and in service of cultivating a benevolent public based on a sense of economic exceptionalism—a new form of the bourgeois public sphere

This article argues that during and after Hurricane Harvey, Houstonians used the hashtag #houstonstrong as a way of creating a public. This public functioned much in the ways defined by scholars as a means to forward collective action outside the confines of the state. Although it formed adjacent to state mandates, this public never agitated against state practices. Instead, #houstonstrong became not

In a context of neoliberalism, decisions made for a “public” good are often articulated as what makes the most financial sense, and citizenship is exercised as a matter of consumer choice. Neoliberal theory positions choice as an unmitigated good, and as universally available when markets are deregulated and goods and services are privatized. Examining rhetorics of choice, however, illuminates the

Neoliberalism is an anti-democratic ideology. It takes decisions about the allocation of scarce resources out of the hands of public institutions and places them in the hands of private actors. Despite a distrust of democratic institutions immanent to neoliberalism, its reach within those same institutions reveals potent ideological lessons. Even the courts, ostensibly a bulwark against anti-democratic

This article demonstrates the many seamless ways that multiple and diverse publics align their automatic, instinctual behaviors within the broad agenda of neoliberalism. Rather than surreptitiously crafting discourse to appeal to unconscious public dispositions, as neoliberalism does, it suggests that counterpublics consciously apply this technology to themselves. Specifically, it advocates that they

In contemporary scholarship, the term “neoliberalism” seemingly appears everywhere. Rather than seeking to develop a single definition that unifies these varied appearances, scholars in various disciplines, subdisciplines, and interdisciplinary domains may develop critical conceptualizations that inform particular, active areas of inquiry. This special issue represents such an effort for rhetorical

News reporting on conflict situations mainly manipulates discursive and representational strategies in portraying people, actions and events either negatively or positively based on certain prejudiced ideologies. This article examines salient discursive strategies deployed by Nigerian and Cameroonian newspapers to represent socio-political ideologies in their reports on the Bakassi Peninsula border

I examine in this article how American “do-it-yourself” communities are established socio-spatially both as oppositional and subversive social spaces and scenes and as emerging alternative and autonomous worlds that challenge and transcend the effects and implications of the normative private–public distinction in the United States. I specifically analyze how these do-it-yourself spheres are organized

Municipalities typically seek to control the production and distribution of sound through noise and zoning ordinances. By virtue of sound’s inherent properties, however, such ordinances also regulate public space, though the spaces in question belie clearly demarcated boundaries. This article considers the cultural discourse surrounding contemporary debates about musical performance in public spaces

Over the past 30 years, in the United Kingdom, Canada and the United States, classical music has come to function as a sonic weapon. It is used a means of dispelling and deterring ‘loiterers’ by making particular public and privately owned public spaces – such as shopping malls, bus stations, shop fronts and car parks – undesirable to occupy. In this article, I present weaponized classical music as

“Sound and the public” offers an opportunity to reengage with longstanding questions about music, democracy, and the public sphere in light of new disciplinary configurations, modes of analysis, and political configurations. While there is a robust literature on music and public life, addressing topics from urban public concerts to protest movements, only recently has attention turned to a more general

All the sounds in the city derive from the activity of its residents. Even natural sounds are filtered and modulated through the city as an audio equalizer. At the same time, as a social structure, the city acts as a force on its citizens. Urban public space—here we adopt the usage accepted by common practice—is a site where this force manifests. Using transforming and spreading sound, this force is

In film and media production, ambient sound is a standard term that denotes the site-specific background sound component providing locational atmospheres and spatial information of public places. In this article, the specific role of ambient sound to create the context for the spatial experience in film and media production has been thoroughly examined in the light of Sound Studies. The article investigates

Conspiracy theories flourish in the wide-open media of the digital age, spurring concerns about the role of misinformation in influencing public opinion and election outcomes. This study examines whether news media literacy predicts the likelihood of endorsing conspiracy theories and also considers the impact of literacy on partisanship. A survey of 397 adults found that greater knowledge about the

Debates around climate change are a prominent example of polarized online communication. We examine the German climate hyperlink network and evaluate the degree to which it is shaped by mainstream and skeptical views. By combining the theoretical frameworks of the networked public sphere and counterpublics, we describe the relation between publics and counterpublics and discuss the role of hyperlinks

The article concerns the ways sound can afford the formation and recomposition of affective publics by acting directly on bodies, prior to the discursive framing of acoustic experience. In particular, it focuses on a violent altercation that broke out during a live hip hop concert in Poland in 2009, arguing that the deployment of sound might have affectively primed the audience to participate in the

Kolorob is a participatory platform connecting informal settlement communities with services and informal jobs in Dhaka, Bangladesh. Alongside technological systems, expertise from community, non-government, private-sector, volunteer and academic fields has been integral to the platform’s development. These socio-technical connections and networks, manifest through participatory design, agile software

Expertise presents an enduring political problem. It is, on one hand, essential to a functioning society. On the other hand, it is inextricably entwined with hierarchies and power disparities. A society based solely on the rule of experts would surely be no democracy, yet neither would a society with no experts. It is sensible to promote the spread of expertise through technological literacies and

This article explores the Public Library of Science as a site that produces and disseminates open access scientific information and knowledge for the public good. Through this case study, issues of property ownership, the nature and political economy of biological information, scientific expertise and accessibility of information and scientific knowledge as a public good are considered. Drawing on

Ubiquitous technology depends upon imposing standards. Choices in function and form reflect the homogenization of artifacts, necessitated by the intentions of experts to satisfy a plurality of users. In material publics, users with expert knowledge can develop customized artifacts satisfying desired affordances or aesthetics. This project involves a media archaeology of computer keyboard design to

There is a kind of growing new media practice of capturing and mapping sound and an emergent global community of listeners interested in engaging with sounds of the environment, urban space, habitats and biospheres. Between user-driven Instagramming our everyday audio-visual experiences and professionally curated sound installations, there is an emergent space and a global audience for listening to

Journalists’ privileges and the perceived value of their contributions are being affected by the increasing belief that journalistic work is a product that can be produced by anyone. This perspective should prompt questions related to the conceptualization of journalistic expertise and the functions of educational institutions that assert they teach it. This research contributes to scientific knowledge

The popular rebellions that swept Arab countries starting with Tunisia in December 2010 spawned an active sphere of dissenting cultural production. Although media harnessed by revolutionaries include public space, graffiti, street art, puppet shows, poetry, songs, cartoons, digital art, and music videos, many analyses have focused on social media as digital platforms. Social media and mobile telephones