THE IMAGE OF THE SCHOOL AND THE TEACHER IN THE PUBLIC EDUCATIONAL DISCOURSE
Education is one of the topics widely discussed in the society as different issues are addressed by different groups, in different contexts. Most often such discussions are initiated by a variety of educational issues in the public sphere, some of which become known to the public only through the media, which is one of the most important contributors to the dominant attitude in the society, or social networks. Research shows that both of them have become an integral part of life and sometimes are trusted more than other sources. The article deals with the following issues: what is public educational discourse and what is the image of the school and the teacher in today’s public educational discourse? Taking into account these problematic questions, the subject of the research was the image of the school and the teacher created in the public discourse. The aim of the research is to present the image of the school and the teacher created in the public educational discourse. The article presents the research carried out following the methodological provisions of qualitative research. Method of discourse analysis was used to collect and analyse research data. Only the news portals that received the largest number of readers during the research that was conducted between January and February of 2020 were selected for the analysis, using a targeted sampling approach. The fact that only publicly presented presentations of individual education issues reflecting the context of Lithuanian education were selected limited the research as well as the pandemic that started in 2020 that overshadowed the ongoing debates in the public sphere with discussions focused exclusively on certain areas of social life related to the pandemic. Definite conclusions were drawn following the research: a) public education discourse is a holistic situation modelled on the basis of scientific knowledge and educational experience of human and societal development powers, contextually and consistently presented and discussed in the public sphere; in addition, it is shaped by narratives and their interpretations that dominate the said sphere (on mass media and social networks); b) positive attitudes towards education are formed by public presentations of individual phenomena and pedagogical successes inspired by educators while negative ones are shaped by attempts to search and present only sensational, resonant events in education to increase readability and comment rates for the mass media. Thus, one-sided expert comments and evaluations, criticism without much analysis and suggestions contribute little to the development of the positive attitude. One of the ways to develop objective public education discourse is the proper use of social networks.
- Research Article
- 10.1353/ecs.2006.0008
- Mar 1, 2006
- Eighteenth-Century Studies
Susan Dalton. Engendering the Republic of Letters: Reconnecting Public and Private Spheres in Eighteenth-Century Europe (Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen's University Press, 2003). Pp. 206 + ix. $70.00 cloth. Alessa Johns. Women's Utopias of the Eighteenth Century (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2003). Pp. 212 + xi. $34.95 cloth. Patricia Meyer Spacks. Privacy: Concealing the Eighteenth-Century Self (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 2003). Pp. 242 + vii. $36.00 cloth. A critical rethinking of the ubiquitous terms "public" and "private" in the eighteenth-century context informs the three books under review here. Susan Dalton, Alessa Johns, and Patricia Meyer Spacks explicitly address the influence of Habermas' 1962 Strukturwandel der Öffentlichkeit (translated, in 1989, as The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: An Inquiry into a Category of Bourgeois Society) on the entire field of eighteenth-century studies. In their nuanced readings of eighteenth-century literary and cultural production, Dalton, Johns, and Spacks question the prevalent interpretation of Habermas as establishing a strict binary opposition between the public and the private and, perhaps even more importantly, an equation of the private with the domestic and the public with the political. While Habermas has coined these terms and injected them into the critical discourse about the eighteenth century, the strict demarcation of supposedly separate spheres is more a product of Strukturwandel's subsequent reception than of Habermas' theory itself, prompted by critics' desire to establish some kind of coherent categorization for the complex nature of eighteenth-century life and letters. Habermas himself discusses the intersections of the public and private spheres and explores the arising ambivalences. He argues that the opposition between the "intimate sphere of the conjugal family" (51) and the "public sphere" was, above all, a discursive construct because the intimate/domestic sphere formed part of the private sphere of the gradually developing market economy. Even though the domestic was imagined as unaffected by the workings of the private realm of the market economy due to the accelerating division of labor and family life in the eighteenth century, both were connected not only to each other, but also to what Habermas calls the "public sphere in the world of letters" and "the public sphere in the political realm" (51). While the ideological construction of these separate spheres affected reality to some extent and women became increasingly equated with the domestic in the discourse of the time, an analysis of this reality also shows how porous and connected these areas were. Habermas' discussion of these intersections serves as the starting point for the studies of eighteenth-century literature and culture by Dalton, Johns, and Spacks. They explore the space which Habermas himself highlights but which has often been overlooked: the third space where public and private aspects meet in complex and ambivalent ways. The authors' well-reasoned and compelling analyses of these intersections [End Page 394] in British, French, German, and Italian writings underline the complexity of eighteenth-century textual production by men and women. In Engendering the Republic of Letters: Reconnecting Public and Private Spheres in Eighteenth-Century Europe, Susan Dalton looks with a historian's eye at the correspondence of four French and Italian salon women, Julie de Lespinasse, Marie-Jeanne Roland, Giustina Renier Michiel, and Elisabetta Mosconi Contarini. Dalton explores the communities formed by social networking and polite sociability in the eighteenth-century republic of letters and investigates salon women's engagement with the political and philosophical debates of their time. Her argument perceptively unravels the ambivalence that characterizes these elite women's theoretical writings and their practical applications. Yet, rather than classifying these ambivalent moments as contradictions, Dalton disentangles these women's strategic negotiation of gender discourses. This mediation allowed them to express their political views at the same time that it enabled them to echo discourses of propriety and...
- Research Article
3
- 10.1111/1467-8675.12666
- Mar 1, 2023
- Constellations
“Ideology and simultaneously more than mere ideology”: On Habermas’ reflections and hypotheses on a further structural transformation of the political public sphere
- Research Article
29
- 10.1111/1467-8675.12661
- Mar 1, 2023
- Constellations
Being a master of metaphors
- Research Article
- 10.1353/jsa.2023.0010
- Jan 1, 2023
- Journal of South Asian and Middle Eastern Studies
Egyptian Women Controversial Issues and the Digital Public Sphere:Can Social Media Debates Be Used as Indicators of Social Struggle in Society? Enas Abou Youssef (bio) 1. Introduction Can social media networks be used as indicators of social class conflict in society? This is the core research question of this study. Social media networks have opened a new digital public sphere era. In Egypt, ever since the uprising on January 25, 2011, social media networks are considered one of the focal communicative tools that encouraged civic participation from many socio-ideological classes to the extent that the uprising was called the "Facebook revolution."1 Since 2011, the country has witnessed many waves of polarization. At the beginning, polarization was political where Islamists were facing secular trends. That polarization shed its light in other [End Page 58] aspects of social and economic life in Egypt later on. Many cultural and socioeconomic issues were displayed on social media and reflected diverse attitudes, approaches, and even values specifically regarding women's issues. In Egypt, among other Arab countries, the assumption that digital public sphere has higher freedom ceiling with socio-cultural issues is true to a substantial extent. Based on this assumption, one can examine socio-cultural struggles in Egyptian society from social issues debated and displayed on social media. Facebook, twitter, Tik-Tok, and reels can be considered reflections of different social classes that have access and are digitally empowered to dominate in the digital public sphere.2 According to Pierre Bourdieu, social status can be analyzed by considering three exchangeable capitals: economic, social, and cultural. In general, economic capital consists of money, assets, and property the individual holds. Social capital includes actual or virtual groups to which the individual belongs, their durable networks, and more or less institutionalized relationships.3 Cultural capital refers to the type of education and socialization that allows individuals to demonstrate their knowledge and cultural consumption and that differentiates them from other social groups.4 This article aims to present an analysis of Egyptian women's controversial issues that are displayed on the social media "Facebook" from one side and their indications to types of socio-cultural conflict existing in society from the other side during June 2021-July 2022. The key question is: What are the recent social conflict characteristics concluded from debates addressing Egyptian women's controversial issues displayed and trended on social networks? [End Page 59] 2. Reviewing the Literature and Theoretical Conceptual Framework 2.1 Digital Public Sphere One of the major points Jürgen Habermas highlighted when presenting the concept of "Public Sphere" is that sphere is "open to all." A public sphere refers to a society that can become engaged in "critical public debate."5 Accordingly, the public sphere would be linked to media for information, communication, and access by all citizens. Media plays the role of promoting the open market of ideas in liberal societies. Habermas thereby stresses that the public sphere is not just a sphere of public political communication, but also one that enables social relations using media.6 However, some scholars have argued that the idea of a public sphere, which is free from state censorship and private ownership, does not exist. Niklas Luhmann, for example, assured that all social systems, including communication systems, are related to the power of money and the paid/unpaid in the economy or the power of who is in office/out of office in politics.7 It should be noted that media systems never function in a vacuum. They are part of the political, socioeconomic system in society. Yet, recent technological factors have loosened the public sphere and opened access to more societal participants. Social media networks created new public sphere horizons of political communication. In 2011, there were revolutions in Tunisia, Egypt, Yemen, and beyond. The common aspects of these protests were the use of social media networks as tactics of political, economic, and social protests, creating a new public space that reflected a common crisis of society.8 The digital public sphere is a communicative sphere that is provided or supported by online or social media – from websites to social network sites, weblogs, and micro-blogs. These platforms provide...
- Research Article
20
- 10.1111/1467-8675.12662
- Mar 1, 2023
- Constellations
Deliberative democracy and the digital public sphere: Asymmetrical fragmentation as a political not a technological problem
- Research Article
- 10.21272/obraz.2022.2(39)-15-25
- Jan 1, 2022
- Obraz
Introduction. The importance of the textual component of a media message is based on the possibility of using psychological methods of influencing the audience, adding author’s emotions and the social significance of the message. This became especially important during the war. In the social sphere, media texts have always carried messages designed to reveal the most painful topics for society, but during the war, media messages in the commercial sphere began to associate their texts more often with social issues. Relevance and purpose. The purpose of our study is to determine the socio-psychological characteristics of the texts of media messages. The relevance is due to the need to find out the most important characteristics of modern media messages in social networks and compare media texts in the social and commercial spheres. Methodology. The main method used in the article is content analysis. The descriptive method allowed selecting units of analysis and classifying them for analysis. The systematic approach that allowed us to identify trends concerning the peculiarities of the content texts of media messages. Results. As a result of our study, the features of messages in the social network «Facebook» were clarified based on the content analysis of 157 texts in the social and commercial spheres. This made it possible to find out the most important characteristics of modern media messages, in particular the volume of texts, days of publication and the relationship between messages, the use of the first sentence of the message as a means of attracting the attention of the audience, the use of numbers, hyperlinks, and visual integrations in media texts. It was found that a common way is to use an exclamatory or interrogative sentence as the first phrase, when there is a certain statement with an exclamation point at the end, questions to the target audience, etc. Also, the socio-psychological features of the texts of media messages were clarified the informal style of texts, the use of diminutive words in messages, the use of geographical specification, the use of storytelling technology, saturation of the text with emotions, etc. The study identified the messages that attracted the most attention of the audience and carried out a structural analysis of media texts, which made it possible to identify the components of the AIDMA communication model in the structure of messages in social networks. It should be noted that despite the significant difference in the topics of messages in the commercial and social spheres, the structure of media texts is largely similar. Conclusions. As a result of our study, we have clarified the main socio-psychological features of modern media messages, which made it possible to compare the main characteristics of media texts in the social and commercial fields. Accordingly, the novelty and practical value of the results obtained are important for identifying the factors influencing messages in social networks on the target audience.
- Research Article
3
- 10.1080/02560046.2012.723853
- Sep 1, 2012
- Critical Arts
Gripsrud, J. and H. Moe, eds. 2010. The digital public sphere: challenges for media policy. Goteborg: Nordicom, 167 pp (ISBN 978-91-86523-02-2) The concepts of 'the public', 'public sphere', 'civil society' and media regulation have dominated media studies for some time. Scholars have attempted to explore the nexus between regulation and the audience/public's access to the media/public sphere (Curran 2000; Eribo & Jong-Ebot 1997; McChesney 1999; Venturelli 1998). In most of these writings, regulation is seen as hindering access to the public domain and as stifling freedom of expression. However, these scholars are concerned with traditional media, (1) while the authors in The digital public sphere: challenges for media policy extend the critique to the digital public sphere. They examine the problems of regulation in a digitised environment and conclude that political and commercial interests take precedence in the crafting of media policy, mainly because end users of such digitised media are not perceived as a public (2) but as audiences or consumers. The issues discussed in this collection are relevant across the world, even though the digital public sphere in most Third-World countries is not as developed as it is in Europe, largely because of political, economic and technological challenges. In Chapter 1, Slavko Splichal grapples with the concepts 'public', 'public sphere' and 'civil society'. The author looks at the movement from the angle of one homogenous public sphere to many public spheres. He argues that the public may be 'dispersed physically but mentally/spiritually tied together' (p. 32). The public is distinguished from the crowd in that its members act rationally. The public is distinguished from public opinion, which safeguards against the 'misrule of those in power [and] is also a means of coercion in the hands of the majority against any minority of those who would not share the majority opinion' (p. 26). He adds that the public is only a social category, while the public sphere is the infrastructure which enables public opinion to flourish. Therefore the public's infrastructure is the public sphere. On the other hand, civil society is said to generate the public sphere and to enable citizens to wield power over those in power through 'public discussion and persuasion' (p. 30). He also rightly notes that through this persuasion and discussion 'civil society influences regulative forces of the state and corporate institutions' (p. 31). He aptly sums up the problem by stating: 'There is no public sphere without civil society, but there is also none without the public' (ibid.), then points out that the Internet popularised the concept of the public sphere and helped launch the notion of an international/global public sphere. However, this is debatable as stories broadcast via satellite, radio and digital technology before the advent of the Internet, were able to cut across geographical boundaries and spark debate worldwide. As Thussu (2006: xvii) argues: 'Although the Internet has received greater attention in recent public debates on international communication, television, being much more widely accessible, is perhaps more influential in setting the global communication agenda.' For example, The Beatles were a worldwide phenomenon. Besides the above, Splichal (2010) corrects the misconception that all mass media are public spheres, by pointing out that some are not and that there are other actors (such as the state, political parties, interest groups, media gatekeepers and businesses) who are already in the public sphere to influence it. Finally, Splichal points out that the 'citizens qua citizen--either as publics or as audiences--are not among key actors in the public sphere anymore but rather, as in the old Lippman's theorization, spectators observing the public stage from the balcony'. In Chapter 2 Hannu Nieminem looks at global copyright law by taking a case study of the Finnish TVkaista. …
- Research Article
2
- 10.7220/2335-8769.11.5
- Jan 1, 2015
- Art History & Criticism
The article deals with two interconnected issues: the issue of theatre interacting with the media and digital network, and the problem of theatre functioning as a public sphere. Both questions are addressed by the analysis of three case studies from contemporary Baltic theatre: two productions of Henrik Ibsen’s “An Enemy of the People” staged by Lithuanian director Jonas Vaitkus in 2011 and Latvian director Alvis Hermanis in 2013, and the political project of Estonian theatre NO99, called “Unified Estonia” performed in 2010. The focus of the analyses is not on the dramatic or aesthetic structures of the productions, but on their communication as in all three cases the communication using the media and the network was an important part of the theatrical events. How the theatre producers in the Baltic States approach and deal with mass media and the digital web? What new concepts of the relationship between live physical, placed dialogue and distributed media communication are there in contemporary public sphere? What could be the contribution of the communicative practices of contemporary theatres to the development of democracy and the public sphere? Should theatres offer a radical subversion or rather a critical intervention into the political democracy dominated by electronic, digital or social media? The theoretical background of the analyses is supported by the Habermasian concept of the public sphere, but it also considers the contradictions of this theory as well as its further development in contemporary reflections on the media, social media and the network by Therese F. Tierney, Geert Lovink, Christopher Balme and Luke Goode. The concept of distributed aesthetics is discussed as a proper analytical tool for conceptual analysis of the political projects in contemporary Baltic theatre. The analysis of the three theatre productions in Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania point out how local artistic practices through mass media can reach an indefinite number of recipients and inspire further discussions in the places and communities that were usually ignored by traditional routes of theatre communication. The article stresses the possibility and the need for contemporary theatre to shift, intervene, move beyond live experiences, be in more than one place and time in the age when public and democracy does the same.
- Research Article
6
- 10.1111/1467-8675.12670
- Mar 1, 2023
- Constellations
Democratic responsibility in the digital public sphere
- Research Article
- 10.1111/j.1478-0542.2007.00464.x
- Oct 9, 2007
- History Compass
Author's Introduction The articles in this cluster deal with aspects of an enormously rich and complex historical problem: the role of print and other media in political communication in Britain, from the Tudor period through the nineteenth century. They might be employed together in a course covering this large subject; but equally they lend themselves to separate use in other kinds of courses, dealing with problems ranging from conventional political history to the role of literacy in early modern society, the nature of early modern public culture or the rise of more open and ‘democratic’ forms of politics. Rather than trying to tailor this guide to a single course design I have tried to suggest a range of possibilities. The full cluster is made up of the following articles: 1. Mark Knights , ‘History and Literature in the Age of Defoe and Swift’, History Compass , 3/1 (2005), DOI: 10.1111/j.1478-0542.2005.00131.x . URL http://www.blackwell‐compass.com/subject/history/article_view?article_id=hico_articles_bsl131 . 2. Joad Raymond , ‘Seventeenth‐Century Print Culture’, History Compass , 2/1 (2004), DOI: 10.1111/j.1478-0542.2005.00131.x . URL http://www.blackwell‐compass.com/subject/history/article_view?article_id=hico_articles_bsl123 . 3. Mark Hampton , ‘Newspapers in Victorian Britain’, History Compass , 2/1 (2004), DOI: 10.1111/j.1478-0542.2004.00101.x . URL http://www.blackwellcompass.com/subject/history/article_view?article_id=hico_articles_bsl101 . 4. Jason Peacey , ‘Print and Public Politics in Seventeenth‐Century England’, History Compass , 5/1 (2007), 85–111, DOI: 10.1111/j.1478-0542.2006.00369.x . URL http://www.blackwell‐compass.com/subject/history/article_view?article_id=hico_articles_bpl369 . 5. Alastair Bellany , ‘Railing Rhymes Revisited: Libels, Scandals, and Early Stuart Politics’, History Compass , 5/4 (2007), DOI: 10.1111/j.1478-0542.2007.00439.x . URL http://www.blackwell‐compass.com/subject/history/article_view?article_id=hico_articles_bpl439 . 6. Brian Cowan , ‘Publicity and Privacy in the History of the British Coffeehouse’, History Compass , 5/4 (2007), DOI: 10.1111/j.1478-0542.2007.00440.x . URL http://www.blackwell‐compass.com/subject/history/article_view?article_id=hico_articles_bpl440 . 7. Andrew Walkling , ‘Politics and Theatrical Culture in Restoration England’, History Compass , DOI: 10.1111/j.1478-0542.2007.00453.x . URL http://www.blackwell‐compass.com/subject/history/article_view?article_id=hico_articles_bpl453 . 8. Joseph Black , ‘The Marprelate Tracts (1588–89) and the Public Sphere’, History Compass , (forthcoming). Author Recommends The relevant secondary literature is enormous but the following are suggested as surveys or preliminary guides to particular topics. 1. Jurgen Habermas , The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: An Inquiry into a Category of Bourgeois Society , trans. Lawrence Burger with the assistance of Frederick Lawrence (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1989). A translation of Habermas's deeply controversial but highly influential theoretical study, first published in German in 1965. An extensive literature exists debating Habermas's theories and their usefulness to historical investigations. 2. Alastair Bellany , The Politics of Court Scandal in Early Modern England: News, Culture and the Overbury Affair, 1603–1660 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002). A study of how the involvement of high‐ranking courtiers in a murder became the subject of a famous scandal, through the ways in which it was reported and discussed in print and especially manuscript sources. 3. Brian Cowan , The Social Life of Coffee: The Emergence of the British Coffeehouse (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2005). A wide ranging survey of the development of coffeehouses and their role as centres of social interaction and political discussion. 4. Adam Fox , Oral and Literate Culture in England, 1500–1700 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2000). A ma
- Research Article
- 10.46661/ccselap-11603
- Jun 30, 2025
- Comparative Cultural Studies: European and Latin American Perspectives
Introduction: Public discourse, whether it concerns the dominant political discourse or the media of mass opinion formation, can become the determinants of positive or negative impressions, while it is observed that in recent years their role regarding refugees and migrants has been mainly negative. In February 2020, the flow crisis at the Greek-Turkish border (Evros) began when refugees and migrants attempted to cross the Greek border in their effort to enter Europe. The migratory movement crisis at the Evros border point of entry was followed by a second crisis, the COVID-19 pandemic. The article aims to examine the representation of migrant and refugee populations in public discourse in Greece between 2020-2022 during the two crises, those of the migratory movements at the Greek-Turkish land borders in Evros and the health crisis of the COVID-19 pandemic. Methodolgy: Systematic literature review of the research carried out in studies that have taken place regarding the representation of refugees and immigrants in public discourse during two crises, for the period 2020-2022. This work takes into account all the studies, in English and Greek, that have been carried out with the specific keywords, for the aforementioned period. Results: It emerges from the literature review that in public discourse, both in political discourse and in the mass media and social media, in newspapers and in social networks, that refugees and migrants are mainly portrayed negatively regarding a) the migratory movement crisis at the border entry point of Evros in February-March 2020 and b) during the public health crisis. Discussion: Refugees and migrants are depicted/represented as “invaders”, as “dangerous” and the “harmful elements”, as an asymmetric threat to national security, the socio-political community and public health.
- Single Book
72
- 10.1057/9780230206359
- Jan 1, 2007
Notes on Contributors Introduction: How Are Media Public Spheres? R.Butsch Can the Mass Media Deliberate? Insights from Print Media and Political Talk Shows H.Wessler & T.Schultz Connection or Disconnection? Tracking the Mediated Public Sphere in Everyday Life N.Couldry, S.Livingstone & T.Markham The Local Public Sphere as a Networked Place L.Friedland & C.Long with Y.J.Shin & N.Kim Public Sphere and Publicness: Sport Audiences and Political Discourse C.Sandvoss A Necessary Profession for the Modern Age? Nineteenth Century News, Journalism and the Public Sphere H.OErnebring 'They Just Make Sense': Tabloid Newspapers as an Alternative Public Sphere S.Johansson Rethinking Public Service Broadcasting: The Historical Limits to Publicness M.Bailey Digital Radio and the Diminution of the Public Sphere S.Lax On Becoming the Media: Low Power FM and the Alternative Public Sphere J.Z.Schiller Representing the Public of the Cinema's Public Sphere S.Shimpach The Psychedelic Public and Its Problems: Rock Music Festivals and Civil Society in the Sixties Counterculture M.Kramer Popular Culture and the Public Sphere: Currents of Feeling and Social Control in Talk Shows and Reality TV P.Lunt & M.Pantti The Revolution Will Be Televised: Free Speech TV, Democratic Communication and the Public Sphere T.Fraley Lost in Space: Television's Missing Publics V.Nightingale From Public Sphere to Civic Culture: Young Citizen's Internet Use P.Dahlgren & T.Olsson Blurring Boundaries in a 'Cyber Greater China': Are Internet Bulletin Boards Constructing the Public Sphere in China? Y.Wu References Index
- Research Article
- 10.21900/j.alise.2024.1677
- Oct 16, 2024
- Proceedings of the ALISE Annual Conference
Co-sponsored by the Information Policy and Information Ethics special interest groups (SIGs), this proposal is for a pair of 90-minute speaker panels, facilitated by the respective SIG convenors and supporting interlocutors, which will draw on concepts of Habermas's ideal speech and public discourse. We begin with the premise that there are multiple theoretical lenses through which to critique increasingly hostile proposals of law and/or policies that limit bodily sovereignty and speech/intellectual freedom. Such polices can be understood as attempts to organize historically marginalized bodies in both physical and digital realms (e.g., through restrictions on access to knowledge, or production of dis/mal information, etc.). Thus, challenges that limit access to spaces and knowledge (focusing libraries and education) demonstrate a need to counter the breakdown of "ideal speech" within a pluralistic society that is free of coercion (Habermas, 1985) while acknowledging the role of identity, positionality, and embodiment with a post-critical lens. This back-to-back SIG session will be comprised of two panels: first, a panel focusing on Information Ethics, which will explore the notion of what is allowed and is not allowed in public and quasi-public physical and virtual spaces; and second, a panel focusing on Information Policy, which examines how conflicts in ethics are manifest in policies that determine or exert limitations on discourse in public spaces, focusing on libraries and educational spaces. Together, the panels will demonstrate theoretical and practical departure points that can be applied in a wide range of LIS/IS educational contexts. The first co-sponsored panel explores how identity and embodiment are linked, as embodied knowledge can be understood as identity expressions, whether enacted through affordances or limitations to exercise autonomy and that which a society and community construct for it, e.g., gender affirming and reproductive care, expressions of sexuality, and the racialized body. Professional identity, which is the identity transposed into and developed within a profession, can impact understanding of affiliation with a profession and behaviour within it (e.g., Pierson, 2023). This first co-sponsored panel will focus on the guiding question: How do we prepare students to navigate the complex realities of identity, embodiment, and professional ethical imperatives to maintain the library as a commons for ideal speech and public discourse? The second co-sponsored panel pivots attention to laws and policies that limit public speech and discourse. Limitations on expression can be considered an act of symbolic violence (Bourdieu and Passeron, 1990), designed to subordinate certain bodies, ideas, identities, etc. However, policy-makers are tasked with governing public spaces to balance the rights of individuals with the collective. When (if ever) is it acceptable to create policies that limit speech or peoples’ right to express themselves in public spaces? How might policies be developed, and what do policies look like, that take into account and respect individuals’ rights and create a collective space where all bodies are able to flourish? Both discussions will be supported by co-convenor and interlocutors representing both North American and international voices, prompting organic discussion in the tradition of the commons and public discourse.
- Research Article
- 10.21900/j.alise.2024.1679
- Oct 16, 2024
- Proceedings of the ALISE Annual Conference
Co-sponsored by the Information Policy and Information Ethics special interest groups (SIGs), this proposal is for a pair of 90-minute speaker panels, facilitated by the respective SIG convenors and supporting interlocutors, which will draw on concepts of Habermas's ideal speech and public discourse. We begin with the premise that there are multiple theoretical lenses through which to critique increasingly hostile proposals of law and/or policies that limit bodily sovereignty and speech/intellectual freedom. Such polices can be understood as attempts to organize historically marginalized bodies in both physical and digital realms (e.g., through restrictions on access to knowledge, or production of dis/mal information, etc.). Thus, challenges that limit access to spaces and knowledge (focusing libraries and education) demonstrate a need to counter the breakdown of "ideal speech" within a pluralistic society that is free of coercion (Habermas, 1985) while acknowledging the role of identity, positionality, and embodiment with a post-critical lens. This back-to-back SIG session will be comprised of two panels: first, a panel focusing on Information Ethics, which will explore the notion of what is allowed and is not allowed in public and quasi-public physical and virtual spaces; and second, a panel focusing on Information Policy, which examines how conflicts in ethics are manifest in policies that determine or exert limitations on discourse in public spaces, focusing on libraries and educational spaces. Together, the panels will demonstrate theoretical and practical departure points that can be applied in a wide range of LIS/IS educational contexts. The first co-sponsored panel explores how identity and embodiment are linked, as embodied knowledge can be understood as identity expressions, whether enacted through affordances or limitations to exercise autonomy and that which a society and community construct for it, e.g., gender affirming and reproductive care, expressions of sexuality, and the racialized body. Professional identity, which is the identity transposed into and developed within a profession, can impact understanding of affiliation with a profession and behaviour within it (e.g., Pierson, 2023). This first panel will focus on the guiding question: How do we prepare students to navigate the complex realities of identity, embodiment, and professional ethical imperatives to maintain the library as a commons for ideal speech and public discourse? The second panel pivots attention to laws and policies that limit public speech and discourse. Limitations on expression can be considered an act of symbolic violence (Bourdieu and Passeron, 1990), designed to subordinate certain bodies, ideas, identities, etc. However, policy-makers are tasked with governing public spaces to balance the rights of individuals with the collective. When (if ever) is it acceptable to create policies that limit speech or peoples’ right to express themselves in public spaces? How might policies be developed, and what do policies look like, that take into account and respect individuals’ rights and create a collective space where all bodies are able to flourish? Both discussions will be supported by co-convenor and interlocutors representing both North American and international voices, prompting discussion in the tradition of the commons and public discourse.
- Research Article
3
- 10.5204/mcj.406
- Aug 18, 2011
- M/C Journal
Eat, Swim, Pray