Discourse &Communication, Ahead of Print.
Self-praise is a very common practice on social media and has attracted researchers’ attention in recent years. In contrast, how interlocutors respond to other netizens’ self-praise on social media has rarely been explored. This study investigates internet users’ responses to online self-praise by examining a dataset of 569 netizens’ self-praise responses to 75 self-praising microblogs collected from the Chinese social media platform Weibo. The study examines the strategies of users’ responses to bloggers’ self-praise and whether bloggers’ self-praise strategies influence netizens’ responses. It was found that Chinese netizens responded to self-praising blogs with various strategies, including compliment, congratulation, inquiry/remark, evasion, and challenging. The findings showed that netizens’ self-praise responses varied with the categories of self-praise strategies. Possible factors motivating the various strategies involved in netizens’ self-praise responses are also discussed. The study contributes to the literature on self-praise interaction and speech act responses.
Coping with gender-critical voices from within: A sociocognitive approach to Sussex’s Twitter (X) crisis responses
Discourse &Communication, Ahead of Print.
Drawing on critical discourse studies (CDS), this article foregrounds how British higher education institutions respond to gender-critical controversies sparked by their staff members. Adopting Teun van Dijk’s sociocognitive approach, we analyse the University of Sussex’s crisis responses on Twitter (known as X today) concerning de-platforming campaigns against Kathleen Stock. The analysis unpacks how Sussex employs various discursive strategies to validate its institutional stance in the Stock incident. Sussex’s communicative actions aim to mitigate reputation damage caused by the incident. However, such discursive practices simultaneously indicate the university’s attempt to evade its institutional responsibility for equality, diversity and inclusion (EDI) advocacy, neither do they address the reputation crisis caused by fellow Twitter users’ counter-narratives. The analysis points towards the need for a sociocognitive analysis of crisis responses to hold higher education institutions accountable for their core mission, amid trans-rights debates unfolding in wider society.
Drawing on critical discourse studies (CDS), this article foregrounds how British higher education institutions respond to gender-critical controversies sparked by their staff members. Adopting Teun van Dijk’s sociocognitive approach, we analyse the University of Sussex’s crisis responses on Twitter (known as X today) concerning de-platforming campaigns against Kathleen Stock. The analysis unpacks how Sussex employs various discursive strategies to validate its institutional stance in the Stock incident. Sussex’s communicative actions aim to mitigate reputation damage caused by the incident. However, such discursive practices simultaneously indicate the university’s attempt to evade its institutional responsibility for equality, diversity and inclusion (EDI) advocacy, neither do they address the reputation crisis caused by fellow Twitter users’ counter-narratives. The analysis points towards the need for a sociocognitive analysis of crisis responses to hold higher education institutions accountable for their core mission, amid trans-rights debates unfolding in wider society.
The potential of creative uses of metonymy for climate protest
Discourse &Society, Ahead of Print.
This paper develops the notion of metonymy scenarios by exploring the social and cognitive dimensions of various creative uses of metonymy in a collection of digital banners created for the Global Climate Strike movement. The paper argues that the banners exploit existing metonymic relationships to activate dominant anthropocentric discourses in society, and to subvert them via processes of recontextualisation and reappropriation, in order to challenge system conventions and normative attitudes regarding climate change. The literature to date has not adequately considered metonymy as a dynamic and scenario-activating cognitive operation, nor has it thoroughly investigated the relationship between metonymy and irony. However, the data analysed here show that several creative uses of metonymy, including twice-true metonymy, metonymy in combination with metaphor, and the juxtaposition of different metonymies are markers of what this paper posits as metonymic mininarratives or scenarios.
This paper develops the notion of metonymy scenarios by exploring the social and cognitive dimensions of various creative uses of metonymy in a collection of digital banners created for the Global Climate Strike movement. The paper argues that the banners exploit existing metonymic relationships to activate dominant anthropocentric discourses in society, and to subvert them via processes of recontextualisation and reappropriation, in order to challenge system conventions and normative attitudes regarding climate change. The literature to date has not adequately considered metonymy as a dynamic and scenario-activating cognitive operation, nor has it thoroughly investigated the relationship between metonymy and irony. However, the data analysed here show that several creative uses of metonymy, including twice-true metonymy, metonymy in combination with metaphor, and the juxtaposition of different metonymies are markers of what this paper posits as metonymic mininarratives or scenarios.
Building Optimism Through Inspirational YouTube Videos During the Pandemic: An Empirical Examination
Journal of Creative Communications, Ahead of Print.
This article presents the results of content categorisation and measurement of the effects of YouTube videos released publicly by commercial entities during the pandemic. The videos in question contain inspirational content concerning prosocial behaviour in response to COVID-19 and are released through the big companies’ official YouTube accounts. In the first study, the authors analysed the content of videos from various companies. While the videos encompassed different presentations of actions taken and messages expressing optimism, those that conveyed empathetic communication and human values were predominantly featured. We categorised the findings into action-oriented, human values–oriented and empathic-oriented content for the selection of videos in the subsequent study. In the subsequent experimental study, aimed at understanding the effects, we asked participants to watch and evaluate the videos selected from the initial study. The results demonstrated that empathic-oriented content had the highest impact on individuals, leading to increases in five measures of inspiration: aspiring to become a better person, engaging in acts of kindness towards others, seeking what truly matters in life, striving to live a more fulfilling life and aligning personal goals.
This article presents the results of content categorisation and measurement of the effects of YouTube videos released publicly by commercial entities during the pandemic. The videos in question contain inspirational content concerning prosocial behaviour in response to COVID-19 and are released through the big companies’ official YouTube accounts. In the first study, the authors analysed the content of videos from various companies. While the videos encompassed different presentations of actions taken and messages expressing optimism, those that conveyed empathetic communication and human values were predominantly featured. We categorised the findings into action-oriented, human values–oriented and empathic-oriented content for the selection of videos in the subsequent study. In the subsequent experimental study, aimed at understanding the effects, we asked participants to watch and evaluate the videos selected from the initial study. The results demonstrated that empathic-oriented content had the highest impact on individuals, leading to increases in five measures of inspiration: aspiring to become a better person, engaging in acts of kindness towards others, seeking what truly matters in life, striving to live a more fulfilling life and aligning personal goals.
The making of critical data center studies
Convergence, Ahead of Print.
In this article, the authors demonstrate how the data center has become a key site, object, and metaphor for interdisciplinary scholarship of the internet. While the data center is a fabrication of engineering, computer science, and cognate fields, it has been the critical gaze of scholars outside of those industries. Together, this scholarship has established the field of Critical Data Center Studies. Critiques of the data center – often thought of more generally as ‘internet infrastructure’, and more evocatively as ‘the cloud’ – have emerged from the social sciences, humanities, journalism, and the arts. The authors do this by answering questions about the current social, cultural, political, and environmental landscapes of the data center. Scrutiny of the foundational imaginaries of the internet, real estate deals by Big Tech, the industry’s enabling policies, their connections to energy and other public infrastructure – among many other factors – serves, at the very least, to situate the data center as a media object, as more than simply a material infrastructure, as more than data warehouse, and as more than ‘the cloud’. Further to this, the authors reflect on how the data center has been and continues to be studied, and why critical interventions have been so fruitful within a vast array of disciplines – from history and anthropology, to media studies, information studies, and science & technology studies – for shifting the focus from questions of infrastructural visibility to questions that weave together concerns of efficiency, policy, popular culture, and planetary devastation.
In this article, the authors demonstrate how the data center has become a key site, object, and metaphor for interdisciplinary scholarship of the internet. While the data center is a fabrication of engineering, computer science, and cognate fields, it has been the critical gaze of scholars outside of those industries. Together, this scholarship has established the field of Critical Data Center Studies. Critiques of the data center – often thought of more generally as ‘internet infrastructure’, and more evocatively as ‘the cloud’ – have emerged from the social sciences, humanities, journalism, and the arts. The authors do this by answering questions about the current social, cultural, political, and environmental landscapes of the data center. Scrutiny of the foundational imaginaries of the internet, real estate deals by Big Tech, the industry’s enabling policies, their connections to energy and other public infrastructure – among many other factors – serves, at the very least, to situate the data center as a media object, as more than simply a material infrastructure, as more than data warehouse, and as more than ‘the cloud’. Further to this, the authors reflect on how the data center has been and continues to be studied, and why critical interventions have been so fruitful within a vast array of disciplines – from history and anthropology, to media studies, information studies, and science & technology studies – for shifting the focus from questions of infrastructural visibility to questions that weave together concerns of efficiency, policy, popular culture, and planetary devastation.
Exploring cultural hybridity, questioning cultural appropriation: Peruvian fans’ responses to Latin tropes in K-pop
International Journal of Cultural Studies, Ahead of Print.
Drawing on qualitative interviews with K-pop fans in Lima, Peru, this study explores how Latin fans think about and negotiate K-pop industries’ citations of Latin pop music tropes. It addresses the ways in which K-pop's practices of citing other cultures are perceived by the audience whose culture is cited. The Peruvian fans in this study suggest that the citations of other cultures observed in K-pop offer versatile entry points for them to easily engage in the cultural genre. For them, K-pop is a novel cultural genre that has become an alternative yet intimate cultural resource, especially compared to hegemonic American pop music. By providing an analysis of Latin K-pop fans’ lived experiences through the lens of cultural hybridity and appropriation, this audience study contributes to the field of transcultural media research.
Drawing on qualitative interviews with K-pop fans in Lima, Peru, this study explores how Latin fans think about and negotiate K-pop industries’ citations of Latin pop music tropes. It addresses the ways in which K-pop's practices of citing other cultures are perceived by the audience whose culture is cited. The Peruvian fans in this study suggest that the citations of other cultures observed in K-pop offer versatile entry points for them to easily engage in the cultural genre. For them, K-pop is a novel cultural genre that has become an alternative yet intimate cultural resource, especially compared to hegemonic American pop music. By providing an analysis of Latin K-pop fans’ lived experiences through the lens of cultural hybridity and appropriation, this audience study contributes to the field of transcultural media research.
Slantwise disengagement: Explaining Facebook users’ acts beyond resistance/internalization of domination binary
Convergence, Ahead of Print.
This theoretical and empirical investigation builds upon the concept of ‘slantwise behavior’ to further complicate notions of the ‘digital disengagement’ of subjects within technological infrastructures such as Facebook. It has been previously suggested that the ubiquity of the data privacy paradox is the most common reason for disengagement practices. Our study contributes to this discussion by examining subjects’ disengagement on Social Network Sites (SNS). While numerous concepts concerning disconnection and disengagement from SNS have been conceptualized by media theorists, largely based on a binary construct of resistance or domination, our work proposes an alternative conceptualization of subjects’ disengagement. By employing a qualitative methodological approach and using 30 semi-structured interviews to capture subjects’ discursive patterns, we illustrate that disengagement on Facebook can be seen as a hybrid reaction and a complex phenomenon in which certain disconnection practices cannot be easily classified as resistance practices or as indications of the internalization of domination but rather are best understood as slantwise behaviors, that is, actions that may unintentionally lead to obfuscation.
This theoretical and empirical investigation builds upon the concept of ‘slantwise behavior’ to further complicate notions of the ‘digital disengagement’ of subjects within technological infrastructures such as Facebook. It has been previously suggested that the ubiquity of the data privacy paradox is the most common reason for disengagement practices. Our study contributes to this discussion by examining subjects’ disengagement on Social Network Sites (SNS). While numerous concepts concerning disconnection and disengagement from SNS have been conceptualized by media theorists, largely based on a binary construct of resistance or domination, our work proposes an alternative conceptualization of subjects’ disengagement. By employing a qualitative methodological approach and using 30 semi-structured interviews to capture subjects’ discursive patterns, we illustrate that disengagement on Facebook can be seen as a hybrid reaction and a complex phenomenon in which certain disconnection practices cannot be easily classified as resistance practices or as indications of the internalization of domination but rather are best understood as slantwise behaviors, that is, actions that may unintentionally lead to obfuscation.
Gender During the Pandemic: Issues at Stake
Indian Journal of Gender Studies, Volume 31, Issue 1, Page 28-42, February 2024.
The COVID pandemic exacerbated existing inequalities as well as those between researchers and the researched. This experiential note discusses the ethical dilemmas and practical difficulties that I as a feminist researcher and activist have encountered between 2020 and 2022. This was while in the process of my research as well as engagement with COVID-19-related advocacy work. I argue that, even as one was displaced from one’s status as a researcher, these skills were required in advocacy with various branches of the government. Formal research investigations involving fieldwork required that I attend to the needs of the ‘researched’ through humanitarian outreach and advocacy. Such a displacement of the identity of the researcher, I argue, points to the issues at stake in doing feminist research, even during ordinary times.
The COVID pandemic exacerbated existing inequalities as well as those between researchers and the researched. This experiential note discusses the ethical dilemmas and practical difficulties that I as a feminist researcher and activist have encountered between 2020 and 2022. This was while in the process of my research as well as engagement with COVID-19-related advocacy work. I argue that, even as one was displaced from one’s status as a researcher, these skills were required in advocacy with various branches of the government. Formal research investigations involving fieldwork required that I attend to the needs of the ‘researched’ through humanitarian outreach and advocacy. Such a displacement of the identity of the researcher, I argue, points to the issues at stake in doing feminist research, even during ordinary times.
Decolonizing bodies and the ethics of care: On the significance of embodied vulnerability as the future of cultural studies
International Journal of Cultural Studies, Ahead of Print.
In the contemporary moment, systemic failures – from climate change to pandemics to political repression – have created embodied vulnerabilities worldwide. I argue here that the increasing precaritization of individual bodies is an index of the political formations that create and condition vulnerabilities among certain populations. Recognizing this, analyses of the conditions of embodied vulnerability are crucial to cultural studies in that they contribute to understanding and challenging neocolonial and patriarchal power and injustice. Feminist materialism and theories of post- and neo-colonialism reveal the processes of embodiment as complex modes of epistemic violence. To reorient cultural studies theoretically and methodologically, I propose the feminist ethics of care as a working framework for mapping, challenging, and changing the processes of materialization at work in unjust and asymmetric embodied vulnerabilities.
In the contemporary moment, systemic failures – from climate change to pandemics to political repression – have created embodied vulnerabilities worldwide. I argue here that the increasing precaritization of individual bodies is an index of the political formations that create and condition vulnerabilities among certain populations. Recognizing this, analyses of the conditions of embodied vulnerability are crucial to cultural studies in that they contribute to understanding and challenging neocolonial and patriarchal power and injustice. Feminist materialism and theories of post- and neo-colonialism reveal the processes of embodiment as complex modes of epistemic violence. To reorient cultural studies theoretically and methodologically, I propose the feminist ethics of care as a working framework for mapping, challenging, and changing the processes of materialization at work in unjust and asymmetric embodied vulnerabilities.
Examining Psychological Moderators on Factors Affecting Consumers’ Impulse Buying in Organised Retail Stores
Journal of Creative Communications, Ahead of Print.
This research study focuses on examining the role of in-store elements for impelling consumers’ impulse buying in organised retail stores with the presence of consumers’ psychological moderators. The conceptual framework is developed by exploring the theoretical foundations for impulse buying behaviour. For testing the proposed hypotheses, confirmatory factor analysis–structural equation modelling is utilised. This study explains that each predicting factor positively influences consumers’ impulse buying in organised retail stores. This study is a valuable step to analyse consumers’ impulse buying behaviour in organised retail stores through in-store dimensions and consumers’ psychological moderators.
This research study focuses on examining the role of in-store elements for impelling consumers’ impulse buying in organised retail stores with the presence of consumers’ psychological moderators. The conceptual framework is developed by exploring the theoretical foundations for impulse buying behaviour. For testing the proposed hypotheses, confirmatory factor analysis–structural equation modelling is utilised. This study explains that each predicting factor positively influences consumers’ impulse buying in organised retail stores. This study is a valuable step to analyse consumers’ impulse buying behaviour in organised retail stores through in-store dimensions and consumers’ psychological moderators.