Television and Postfeminist Housekeeping: No Time for Mother

This feminist, qualitative study sheds light on how young Arab women used cyberactivism to participate in the wave of political and social transformations widely known as the Arab Spring. It argues that these activists leveraged social media to enact new forms of leadership, agency, and empowerment, since these online platforms enabled them to express themselves freely and their voices to be heard by the rest of the world, particularly the global media. This resulted in a multidimensional personal, social, political, and communicative revolution. This study is based on in-depth, personal interviews with more than twenty young Arab women citizen journalists, bloggers, and activists from Arab countries that witnessed political upheaval.     

#Boycottautismspeaks: communicating a counternarrative through cyberactivism and connective action

A growing body of research is examining the role of cyberactivism in facilitating social movements. Yet, few have considered the interplay between cyberactivism and disability advocacy. Through a case study of the #boycottautismspeaks movement, this study finds that cyberactivism may provide platforms for self-advocates to connect through bridging and bonding in unique ways that draw together and give voice to individuals who otherwise may not have means for such dynamic engagement. Drawing on a sample of approximately 10,000 tweets that circulated with the #boycottautismspeaks hashtag, this research applies thematic analysis and the Social Identity Model of Deindividuation Effects to reveal how counternarratives of disability are developed and circulated via cyberactivism. Findings reveal that #boycottautismspeaks contributors communicated to enhance bonding through (a) (dis)identification, (b) collaboration, and (c) creative resistance. In addition, they communicated to facilitate bridging by (a) demonstrating morality, (b) appealing to humanity, and (c) aligning with other causes. The #boycottautismspeaks movement melded the logic of collective and connective action, provided opportunities for both coordinated and self-directed activity, developing a network of networks through various stitching mechanisms, and cultivating an affective public. Implications for cyberactivism research and practice as well as disability advocacy are discussed.     

Toward a Free Information Movement

The past decade witnessed the emergence of numerous Internet‐based social justice groups, some of which have readily apparent social roles and follow traditional organizational paths, while others occupy more ambiguous spaces, and blur any clearly demarcated lines of classification. Groups such as Anonymous and WikiLeaks present researchers with difficulty in strict categorization and as such are often labeled in ways that obscure their classification and understanding. Situating these two groups within network society and social movement literatures, this study offers a sociological explanation for the rise of these groups and attempts to knit their disparately understood practices of “hacktivism” and “journalism” together in a coherent framework. Frame analysis is employed to examine how each group attends to core framing tasks, finding that both groups do so in substantially similar ways, employing complementary frames concerning the asymmetrical distribution of information. Moreover, their embeddedness in digital information networks, and their particular opposition to information asymmetry, acts as a unifying thread that enables these apparently disparate actors to be studied within a single analytical framework as part of an emerging digital, peer‐produced movement concerned with the asymmetrical distribution of information.     

Reel Western Fantasies: Portrait of a Tourist Imagination in The Beach (2000)

Drawing on a number of sources, including social and cultural accounts of mobility, such as those of Sheller and Urry and by Zygmunt Bauman, car advertising, and focus group discussions with young drivers, the violence of the car and its shaping influence in contemporary life are considered through an application of the idea of articulation from Grossberg. Highlighting articulations of the car, particularly the dominant articulations of racing and rally driving evident in particular types of advertising, allows an examination of the destructive potential of particular driving cultures and also illustrates the meanings inscribed into the car, thus challenging its apparent neutrality. The racing articulations are connected to aggressive, competitive styles of driving, extending into competitive social relations and implicating an emphasis on aggressive individualism. There has been some dialogue in the road safety community about what counts as aggressive behaviour but these discussions often do not take into account the innate violence of the car itself and tend to consider only extreme behaviours as aggressive. The forms of self‐control that arise in relation to the dominant articulations and the desires appealed to in advertising are sketched. Focus group responses to two car advertisements emphasising social competition and extreme thrill‐seeking are discussed.