Joel Rasmussen

Enabling selves to conduct themselves safely: Safety committee discourse as governmentality in practice

A developing body of literature argues that workplace safety is increasingly becoming the responsibility of employees who are the potential victims of hazards. Although interaction is an integral part of enacting and justifying these responsibilization processes, previous research has not provided detailed analysis of organizational talk in this regard. Following Brownlie’s (2004) ‘analytic bridging’ of Foucault and close discourse analysis, this study centres on a safety committee meeting, and demonstrates how governmentality is exercised as senior managers seek the consent of other employees for behavioural-safety implementation. Three discursive strategies are analysed in detail, examining the construction and invocation of: 1) an equal partnership through collaborative and vague talk; 2) hierarchy through directives and declaratives; 3) competitiveness by the establishment of a factory-versus-factory contest. In sum, these discursive strategies forcefully combine constructions of reciprocal relations together with disciplinary discourse that mandates compliance with program implementation.

Governing the workplace or the worker? : evolving dilemmas in chemical professionals' discourse on occupational health and safety

This article analyses occupational health and safety discourse, bringing special attention to dilemmas that emerge as employees name and negotiate particular risks and safety measures. The study is based on 46 interviews conducted with employees in three chemical factories, and combines Michel Foucault’s conception of governmentality with a discursive psychology approach. The study demonstrates how dilemmas emerge when 1) respondents make others responsible for health and safety risks; 2) they personally assume responsibility as ‘risky’ workers; and 3) different rationalities – such as environmental and behavioural or hierarchical – appear in the same set of statements. Overall, occupational health and safety management tends to exclude egalitarian beliefs, which creates dilemmas that become visible as speakers find themselves compelled to excuse, ironize or systematically downplay discursive moves that may diminish or exclude themselves or others. Given that previous research suggests that behavioural approaches to health become increasingly widespread in working life, this article contributes by highlighting the presence of dilemmas that implies some flux and openness to change.

“Should each of us take over the role as watcher?” : Attitudes on Twitter toward the 2014 Norwegian terror alert

Research on securitization – the process of politicization aiming to increase security – stresses how important it is for security authorities to gain public support for their representation of threats and security measures. However, there is little research on how people understand and respond to securitization and even less so via social media. Research on security and antiterrorism discourse has rather focused on policy documents and journalism. This article analyses attitudes on Twitter in the wake of the Norwegian terror alert in July 2014. Using discursive psychology it provides novel insights into securitization as an argumentative process that has entered social media. The study analyses all tweets with the hashtag #terrortrussel (Eng. #terrorthreat) from individual users and, in addition, the initial statements by the Norwegian authorities. The results demonstrate that Twitter users are creatively using social media in response to securitization, endorsing attitudes regarding a number of themes: (1) the authorities’ announcement and ways of representing the terror alert; (2) the diffusion of responsibility to lay people for monitoring suspicious events and actors; and (3) the issue of ethnicity and blame. The study contributes to two research streams: studies of securitization and studies of antiterrorism discourse in discourse analytical research.

Making Sense of Violent Events in Public Spaces Citizens' Cognitions and Emotions of Society and Self in Relation to Mediated Violence

Abstract Violence in public spaces gives headlines in the media and is an issue of great concern for the public. It is threatening both on the societal and private level and shakes our belief in the rational and secure social world that was formulated by modernity and the welfare state. The article takes it point of departure in unforeseeable violent events in public spaces that in the media are labelled acts of madness and in which the perpetrators are pointed out as suffering from mental disorders. Results are presented from a study of how citizens attach social and cultural meanings to such events and it is shown how the meanings can be understood in relation to transformations in the emotional-cognitive climate of contemporary society. A culturally conditioned fear and worry, dilemmas and processes of individualization are discussed as crucial dimensions in institutional and public thinking about society and everyday life.

Risk, crisis, and social media : A systematic review of seven years' research

Abstract The literature on social media use in risk and crisis communication is growing fast, and it is time to take stock before looking forward. A review of 200 empirical studies in the area shows how the literature is indeed increasing and focusing on particular social media plat forms, users, and phases from risk to crisis relief. However, although spanning 40 countries, a large proportion of the world’s social media users are under-represented in the research. In addition, little attention is given to the question of who is actually reached through social media, and the effects of the digital divide are rarely discussed. This article suggests that more attention is given to the questions of equal access to information and ICTs, complementary media channels, and cultural diversity.

Recent research on the discursive construction of national identity

Hsu, Chien-Jung. 2014. The construction of national identity in Taiwan’s media, 1896–2012. Leiden: Brill. Khosravinik, Majid. 2015. Discourse, identity and legitimacy: Self and other in representations of Iran’s nuclear programme. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Identity has been one of the focal points of discourse studies for several decades. From the late 1950s to 1960s, varied sources as Goffman and Foucault contradicted the Western notion of the self as separate, bounded, and steady. On the one hand, Goffman (1956) argued that identity is performative rather than a fixed referent that is expressed, and a matter of continuous interactive ‘work’ and adjustment depending on context and audience. Foucault (1970/1966), on the other hand, articulated that the establishment of certain paradigms or epistémes, which shift through history, imply different conditions for discourse and identity. An example from his early career is the emergence of psychiatry and its system of differentiation – normalcy versus various illnesses – and its allocation of seemingly rational rights, obligations, and tasks. In these years, Karl W. Deutsch’s work on nationalism also came to emphasize the constitutive function that social communication plays for the shaping of national identity (e.g. Deutsch 1953). Often building on these foundations, one can see how the study of identity has come to take different approaches, one focusing on the performance of self and identity in the insitu communication between people; the other viewing identity more from a ‘helicopter view’ as the effect of quite muscular regimes of truth and discourse, which always tend to establish systems of differences, and which provide resources for control and selfcontrol. Specializations within discourse studies from the mid-1980s onwards, such as critical discourse analysis (CDA) and discursive psychology, have sought to bridge the micro and macro approaches (Gee 1999), so as to neither underestimate the importance of the global, capital-D discourses nor local discursive practices and their agentive potential for social change. Today, a research database search on identity and discourse renders thousands of hits. Once a concept has become so widely used, it is important to take stock of some of the prior developments and of new research. In this review essay, I will discuss and contrast two recent publications dealing with identity, discourse and media: Chien-Jung Hsu’s

‘Welcome to Twitter, @CIA. Better late than never’ : Communication professionals’ views of social media humour and implications for organizational identity

Public authorities have traditionally used an official language style in public, but currently social media have become an outlet for humour. This article uses positioning analysis to discuss challenges that use of humour poses for the identity of public organizations. Drawing on interviews with communications professionals working in the emergency services sector, the article suggests six evaluative themes that factor into organizational identity construction, such as the frequency and type of humour in social media posts. Indeed, while humour helps fashion more flexible and risk-taking organizational identities, it can also stand contrary to a bureaucratic ethos of public servantship and equal treatment. Dilemmas thus arise for public authorities that seek to adjust to the times and still remain ‘in character’. The article contributes to organizational identity research by considering the hitherto overlooked immersion of social media use, humour and organizational identity formation.