What is Flint? Place,storytelling, and social media narrative reclamation during the Flint water crisis

ABSTRACT

The Flint Water Crisis became a national news story in January of 2016, when major publishers such as The New York Times began covering the story. In the same month, an influx of social media activism occurred in response to the crisis, with citizens developing hashtag campaigns such as #FlintFwd in order to disseminate news and stories from a citizen’s perspective; these campaigns often positioned Flint positively ? as a recovering community ? rather than a city in the middle of a public health crisis, and often addressed not a national public but a local audience. This paper considers Flint-based social media activity to investigate the emergence of place-based activism within the ostensibly global network of social media. In doing so, it identifies three key themes; 1) leveraging social media to forward a critique of deficient journalistic storytelling; 2) using the affective process of storytelling via social media to claim authority over their own material offline existence, and 3) using place-based storytelling to implicate others as witnesses via the global network of social media. These themes coalesce around a distinctly critical logic of connectivity. This logic extends the notion of connectivity articulated by Van Dijck and Poell [2013. Understanding social media logic. Media and Communication, 1(1), 2–14.] and the strategies of platform activism explored by Tufekci [2017. Twitter and tear gas: The power and fragility of networked protest. New Haven: Yale University Press.] to explain how social media works to expose discrepancies between the public story of the water crisis and material, lived conditions of Flint, rendering visible a discursive identity of Flint thus far unrecognized.     

Who killed change management?

A story is told here of an investigation into change management's apparent death, provoked by the dubious business novel Who Killed Change [Blanchard, K., J. Britt, P. Zigarmi, and J. Hoekstra. 2009. Who Killed Change? Solving the Mystery of Leading People Through Change. London: Harper Collins Publishers]. The story is told over eight chapters inviting you to investigate competing explanations for the death of change management using the structure of the story arc: stasis, trigger, quest, surprise, critical choice, climax, reversal and resolution. An annoying voice (sometimes interior monologue and at other times dialogue) of another reader keen to inform and frame your understanding of the status of change management remains ever present. The case is solved with the story's resolution providing insights into advantages of investigating over literature reviewing, the problematic/masculine nature of murder metaphors, the academic potential of story arcs and the mystery which characterises organizational change.     

The embodied becoming of autism and childhood: a storytelling methodology

In this article I explore a methodology of storytelling as a means of bringing together research around autism and childhood in a new way, as a site of the embodied becoming of autism and childhood. Through reflection on an ethnographic story of embodiment, the body is explored as a site of knowledge production that contests its dominantly storied subjectivation as a ‘disordered’ child. Storytelling is used to experiment with a line of flight from the autistic-child-research assemblage into new spaces of potential and possibility where the becomings of bodies within the collision of autism and childhood can be celebrated.     

Colonized Silence: Confronting the Colonial Link in Rural Alaska Native Survivors’ Non-Disclosure of Child Sexual Abuse

Though there is evidence linking the history of colonialism and oppression of Indigenous people to the high rates of rape and child sexual abuse experienced by this population today, it is less understood how colonial processes, past and present, condition the decision to disclose or report victimization. Drawing on a survivorship storytelling study of rural Alaska Native survivors of child sexual abuse, this paper underscores the importance of centering colonialism in understanding the culture of silence surrounding sexual victimization among Indigenous people. Results show that reasons for non-disclosure are quite embedded within larger social, historical and political themes of colonialism, oppression, and marginalization. Implications for policy and praxes are discussed, as well as a broader mandate of social change to remove barriers to disclosure.     

#IAmNotAfraidToSayIt: stories of sexual violence as everyday political speech on Facebook

ABSTRACT

The debate about the power and influence of networked publics often focuses on large-scale political events, activist campaigns and protest activity – the more visible forms of political engagement. On the other hand, digitally mediated activism is often questioned and sometimes derided as a lesser form of dissent, as it is easier to engage in, highly affective, and offers few assurances of sustainability of the change it calls for. But what about everyday political speech online, where social media platforms can contribute to a personalisation of politics? Can social media users express their views online and make a difference? This paper analyses around 3500 Facebook posts stemming from the #ЯНеБоюсьСказати (Ukrainian for #IAmNotAfraidToSayIt) online campaign that was started in the Ukrainian segment of Facebook in July 2016 by a local activist to raise awareness of how widespread sexual violence and sexual harassment are in the Ukrainian society. The paper argues that networked conversations about everyday rights and affective stories about shared experiences of injustice, underpinned by the affordances of social media platforms for sharing and discussing information and participating in everyday politics, can emerge as viable forms of networked feminist activism and can have real impact on the discursive status quo of an issue, both in the digital sphere and beyond it.     

论敦煌宗教话本《庐山远公话》和《叶净能诗》

敦煌文献中的《庐山远公话》和《叶净能诗》,是两篇宗教文学话本.它们都是佛教徒或道教徒利用民间说话艺术形式进行宗教宣传、神话宗教人物的宣传作品.《庐山远公话》叙东晋名僧惠远的故事,但除了惠远家住雁门、庐山出家的基本框架外,其他绝大部分情节、特别是其主干情节如白庄劫寺、远公为奴、远公与道安论议等都是作者虚构的.这种虚构在正统僧人看来是"诳",但对于文学作品来说,却是非常必要的,是文学的自觉.《叶净能诗》则把初唐至盛唐百余年间的明崇俨、申天师、叶法善、罗公远等著名道士的奇闻轶事都"捏合"在道士叶净能的身上,集中表现他的奇术异能.该话本有些情节写得饶有风趣,宣传教化及娱心两相兼顾.     

Vulnerable relational knowing that matters

This paper explores vulnerable relational knowing, and in it we open up our own embodied habits and experiences as feminist academics. We discuss how displaying our academic bodies as naked, both symbolically and physically, enhances and appreciates—instead of hiding—vulnerability. We also discuss how our academic bodies entangle with a range of more-than-human creatures and material surroundings to highlight the multispecies and material nature of vulnerable relational knowing. Two detailed stories, “Intimate sharing of academic knowledge: A recumbent study circle” and “Keropirtti: A place and space to work differently” provide unique examples of the enactment of alternative ways of working in academia, and their analysis demonstrates the potential of vulnerability for embodied relational knowing in academia, which has, to date, been commonly analyzed in the context of writing.     

蒙古贞地区胡尔沁说书保护研究

具有800多年历史的蒙古贞胡尔沁说书艺术,经历了产生、发展、繁荣的历史阶段。蒙古贞地区也曾一度成为胡尔沁说书艺术的传播中心,随着历史的发展,社会文化的变迁,胡尔沁说书文化现在面临着严重的传承危机。蒙古贞胡尔沁说书艺术保护形势严峻。针对其所面临的困境提出保护对策,从而更好地促进蒙古贞胡尔沁说书艺术的传承与发展。     

The Significance of the Wealth of Nations for Economic Education

Students' understanding of history may be shaped less by their social studies teachers than by the powerfully ubiquitous, historically themed media images they passively consume outside of school. In this article, the author describes two strategies conducted during a classroom-based action research study designed to explore how historically themed film can be used to scaffold activities that encourage middle school students to conduct inquiries of the past and critically evaluate feature films and documentaries. Data collected from student surveys, focus group discussions, assignments, and classroom observations suggested that students benefit from well-structured activities that encourage them to compare historical accounts with cinematic portrayals of the past. In particular, the Know-Wonder-Learn and anticipation guide strategies can encourage critical critical viewing and thinking about how film accounts are created.     

In search of popular management: Sensemaking,sensegiving and storytelling in the excellence project

Critical accounts of popular management have tended to caricature the authors of this literary genre and have, furthermore, made broad claims as to the nature and potential of the organizational storytelling which features in these texts. This paper re-examines such claims and proclivities. It argues that any attempt to explore the nature of popular management or to account for the organizing potential of its storytelling must be located within an account of storytelling practice. To this end, the paper offers a critical analysis of the excellence project that is situated within a review of Tom Peters’ storyworld. Acknowledging the extent to which popular management deploys organizational storytelling in its endeavours, we offer – uniquely – a longitudinal analysis of Tom Peters' storytelling practices. Noting a tension between organizational sensegiving and organizational sensemaking processes, we argue that the storyworld of the excellence project acts to obscure the frictions, stresses and dislocations associated with the pursuit of business excellence. Highlighting the persistence of local sensemaking processes within and between those forms of public speech fostered by popular management, however, we argue that the tales which constitute the excellence project are, when viewed in context, more diverse and yet less productive than previously imagined.