Contested Publics: Racist rants, bystander action and social media acts of citizenship

While social media tools enable new kinds of creativity, cultural expression and forms of public, civic and political participation, we often hear more about the harms that arise from instances of trolling and 'aberrant' online participation, including racist provocation. In media and communications research, these issues have been framed in a number of ways, usually focusing on new tools for civic engagement, political participation and digital inclusion. Government policy has been shifting steadily towards potential regulation of social media 'misuse' in relation to appropriate forms of 'digital citizenship'. It is in this evolving context that we consider several instances of cultural or nationalistic provocation and conflict in which social media platforms (YouTube and Facebook in particular) have been central to the social dynamic that has unfolded. We examine the recording and uploading of racist rants and associated bystander actions on public transport in Australia and elsewhere around the world. In this article, we contend that while racism remains an issue in uses of social media platforms such as YouTube, this focus often overshadows these platforms' productive potential, including their capacity to support agonistic publics from which productive expressions of cultural citizenship and solidarity might emerge.

The publics of celebrity: introduction

Companion to Celebrity presents a multi-disciplinary collection of original essays that explore myriad issues relating to the origins, evolution, and current trends in the field of celebrity studies.

Spectacle and publics: Ava Gardner in Australia 1959

Ava Gardner’s famous line about Melbourne being the right place to film a story about the end of the world was part of the spectacle created by the print media to capitalise on her presence here to film, On the Beach in 1959. Gardner’s refusal to appear in public created different responses from the Australian print media the most interesting of which was Melbourne’s The Truth. With the help of a fledgling paparazzi, Truth used Gardner’s non-appearance to create a fictitious image of her which was mediated to create extremes of public opinion in order to generate sales. This paper examines The Truth ’s response to Gardner in the context of the creation and manipulation of public spectacle.

Spring 1998: Serving Our Publics

http://digitalcommons.winthrop.edu/deanscorner/1003/thumbnail.jpg

Entre gestos e práticas: leituras de mães, professoras e meninas de um centro de referência down

Pós-graduação em Educação - FFC

La gestion des espaces agricoles à la périphérie des centres urbains ouest-africains /// Arbeitspapiere / Institut für Ethnologie und Afrikastudien ; 21

agriculture périurbaine, droit foncier, conflits fonciers, developpement urbain