Christian Christensen

Twitter Revolutions? Addressing Social Media and Dissent

Recent events in Iran, Egypt, Tunisia, Libya, and Yemen—and in other locations such as Moldova, Georgia, Palestine, and China—have stimulated a great deal of discussion on the use(s) of social medi...

Discourses of Technology and Liberation: State Aid to Net Activists in an Era of “Twitter Revolutions”

Although the use of social media for the purposes of protest organization and dissent in Iran, Tunisia, Egypt, and Libya was widely reported by bloggers, journalists, and academics, these reports were rarely rooted in detailed research. In fact, the terms “Twitter Revolution” and “Facebook Revolution” have now been called into question as overly techno-utopian, and as ignoring the use of social media by authoritarian regimes for the purposes of repression. Despite this lack of concrete evidence, representatives of the Swedish state were quick to declare social media as key tools in the battles over freedom of speech rights and democratic change. On January 21, 2011, the Swedish Minister for International Development Cooperation published an opinion piece in the Expressen newspaper, titled, “Net Activists Are the New Democracy Fighters.” The response of the Swedish administration—primarily how the administration made clear links between technological innovation and democratic/social change, and translated those links into concrete action in the form of aid—raises a number of questions regarding the ways in which a powerful stakeholder appears to assume a causal relation among technology use, the expansion of access to information, and democratic change. The purpose of this article is to examine how the technology discourse forwarded by the current Swedish government—in policy documents and public statements—reflects a liberation technology perspective on the relation between technology and sociopolitical change in developing countries, particularly in relation to possible foreign aid to net activists.

WAVE-RIDING AND HASHTAG-JUMPING : Twitter, minority ‘third parties’ and the 2012 US elections

With the description of the 2012 election as the ‘most tweeted’ political event in US history in mind, considering the relative media invisibility of the so-called ‘third-party’ presidential candidates in the US election process, and utilizing the understanding of retweeting as conversational practice, the purpose of this paper is to examine the use of Twitter by the four main ‘third-party’ US presidential candidates in the run-up to the 2012 presidential election in order to better understand (1) the volume of tweets produced by the candidates; (2) the level of interaction by followers in the form of retweeting candidate/party tweets; and, (3), the subject and content of the tweets most retweeted by followers of the respective parties. The ultimate goal of the paper is to generate a broader picture of how Twitter was utilized by minority party candidates, as well as identifying the issues which led followers (and their respective followers) to engage in the ‘conversational’ act of retweeting.

@Sweden: Curating a Nation on Twitter

On December 10, 2011, the first tweet was sent out from the @Sweden Twitter account, a nation-branding project financed by the Swedish government through the Swedish Institute and VisitSweden. Trumpeted by the media both in Sweden and internationally as an exercise in “transparent” and “democratic” nation-branding via the use of Twitter, the @Sweden account is “given” to a new Swede every week, and, supposedly, these curators are given free rein to tweet what they like, when they like. The use of a popular communication channel by the Swedish government—in this case, Twitter—provides an illuminating example of the carefully planned and managed promotion and nation-branding of Sweden, presented under the guise of a “transparent” and “democratic” selection and editorial processes. The @Sweden project will be addressed in light of “liberation technology” (Diamond, 2010) and “technology discourse” (Fisher, 2010) perspectives, within which a correlation between access to, and use of, technology and proactive change is postulated. These theoretical perspectives are particularly valuable when heeding Kanevas (2011) call for a more critical, communications-based understanding of nation-branding.

The Afterlife of Eurovision 2003: Turkish and European Social Imaginaries and Ephemeral Communicative Space

Save for Israel, no other nation participating in the Eurovision Song Contest (ESC) challenges popular notions of what it means to be “European” (geographically and/or culturally) to the extent than does Turkey. As the nation begins a long process toward membership of the European Union (EU), debates have flared (often in the print and broadcast media) over the “European-ness” of Turkey. It is interesting to note that, along with the third place achieved by the Turkish soccer team in the 2002 World Cup, the ESC victory in 2003 put the nation on the international “popular culture map” as never before. In this paper, the authors will analyze and discuss coverage in the international and Turkish press of Turkeys victory in the 2003 ESC and the extent to which a discursive space was opened in which the idea of Turkish “European-ness” (or “non-Europeanness”) was addressed and debated.

The Arab Spring As Meta-Event and Communicative Spaces

The uprisings in the Middle East and North Africa, immediately labeled “the Arab Spring,” are best described as processes rather than outcomes. Despite being a common area of media focus due to decades-long geopolitics, the Arab Spring, as a mediatized meta-event, has led to the reemergence of the region as a discursive territory. The communicative spaces that opened up during and in the aftermath of the uprisings allowed for a multiplicity of topics to reenter public discourse across local, national, and transnational scales. In the process, seasoned debates such as religious sectarianism and democratic institutionalization gained magnitude. More specific debates such as Turkey’s role as a model/antimodel added new discursive aspects to the multitopic ensemble. The purpose of this article is to reflect on the communicative and scalar dimensions in the mediation of the Arab Spring by way of taking the debates on Turkey as a case in point.

Assemblage, adaptation and apps: Smartphones and mobile gaming

As scholars such as Goggin (2009a) have noted, the rapid uptake of ‘smartphones’ has reshaped the ways in which software developers, users, and academics consider the interrelationship between mobility, culture, technology hardware, and the Internet. In addition, this uptake has added a significant new layer of encrustations around what we might define as ‘standard’ uses of mobile technologies. Once limited to the playing of pre-loaded (offline) games on mobile handsets, smartphones have allowed for not only mobile interactivity and enhanced visuals, but also the possibility of downloading apps that allow the user to add multiple new dimensions to the gaming experience. These developments are but one more factor in ‘thinking about games as assemblage, wherein many varying actors and unfolding processes make up the site and action’ (Taylor 2009, 332). Taking the theoretical perspectives of adaptation (Goggin 2009a; Farnsworth and Austrin 2010) and assemblage (Taylor 2009; Goggin 2009b) we will discuss three apps linked to the enormously popular World of Warcraft game, and the ways in which these applications both reshape how we might think about and use technology, and how smartphones and mobile applications also reconfigure social, technological, and generic relations.

Political Documentary, Online Organization and Activist Synergies

Abstract In this article, and combining information obtained via interviews and analysis of data from company websites, I will examine the work of documentary film-maker Robert Greenwalds Brave New Films (BNF) within the context of two theoretical frameworks: (1) the ‘coalition model’ of documentary film/video forwarded by Whiteman (2004); and (2) the ‘horizontal networking logic facilitated by new digital technologies’ (Juris 2005) in relation to grassroots political action. The primary purpose of the article is to explore the degree to which BNF and BNT (Brave New Theaters) employ a ‘coalition model’ approach (in which film-makers, film subjects, film screeners, audiences and political organizers cooperate in order to increase the efficacy of grassroots political action) to documentary/activist film, and the extent to which digital technology (particularly the Internet) facilitates such an approach. This study will create a greater understanding of how certain forms of political communication (e.g. documentary films) can bypass traditional media gatekeepers (such as film distributors and film theatre owners) while still reaching large numbers of viewers, and contributing to grassroots political action.

Elite Interaction: Public service broadcasters’ use of Twitter during national elections in Norway and Sweden

While a good deal of research has examined the uses of Twitter in journalism, comparably few research projects employ comparative research designs in order to provide new insights. The present study details Twitter use by public service broadcasters (PSBs) during recent national elections in Norway and Sweden. Utilizing quantitative analysis of social media content in tandem with qualitative interviews with key PSB journalists, the main results indicate that while the PSB organizations—the Norwegian NRK and the Swedish SVT—are both frequently contacted by “regular” citizens on Twitter, they seem to prefer to retweet and interact with journalists, politicians or other “elite” users. Compared with the interviews performed, the study uncovers an interesting tension as journalists often talk about the need to engage with “regular” users—a practice that is arguably in line with PSB regulations, but that is seldom adhered to in the contexts studied here.

From showroom to chat room: SVT on social media during the 2014 Swedish elections

Whilst social media like Twitter and Facebook carry with them the potential for the practice of journalism, novelties like these are also associated with adaptation difficulties – perhaps especially when it comes to the interactive capabilities that services like these afford. This study employs a multi-method approach to study the different uses of Twitter and Facebook by one media company – the Swedish public service broadcaster (PSB) Sveriges Television – during the 2014 election year. Utilizing both quantitative and qualitative data, we find that Twitter was used more extensively and in a comparably more interactive fashion than Facebook. Hence we suggest Twitter, used more for interaction, functions as a ‘chat room’; whilst Facebook, used more for broadcasting messages, can be viewed as functioning like a ‘showroom’. As Twitter is often associated with societal elites in the Swedish context, it raises a question about the suitability for a PSB to engage to such a degree on this particular platform.