Communication Arena Research Articles

Instagram as an Arena of Climate Change Communication and Mobilization: A Discourse Network Analysis of COP26

ABSTRACT Conference of the Parties (COP) meetings on climate change are opportunities for social movements and other non-state actors to engage in climate change communication and mobilization. We focus on Instagram as an online arena of climate communication and mobilization during COP26, held in Glasgow. Instagram is a distinct arena for eco-political communication and activism because of its visual focus and generally younger user base. Using a Discourse Network Analysis approach, we analyse 2417 posts to examine relationships and alignments across imagery, discourses, and actors. Instagram serves as a space to articulate critical counter-discourses of climate justice, Indigenous rights, and individual action as a response to perceived failures of COP processes and formal agreements. At the same time, images of celebrities and politicians structure much of the Instagram discourse network. This highlights how Instagram contributes to a celebritization of climate politics, with individual political actors positioned as climate heroes or villains.

Exploring user reactions to luxury brand videos on YouTube: a comparative study of influencers and brand-official channels

This study offers empirical evidence about individual reactions to brand-related videos posted on YouTube in the luxury context. We use methods of text mining and natural language processing to analyze the characteristics of the posts by people commenting on videos provided by influencers vs. brands’ official YouTube channels. We mined emotions and sentiments and evaluated the complexity and richness of the language. Data on 282 videos and more than 160,000 comments suggest that users display an impulsive reaction to a brand’s official video and a thoughtful reaction to an influencer’s video posted. In fact, in the former case, comments are short, simple, and enthusiastic, while in the latter comments are longer, more complex, and more moderate in terms of positive emotions. This study participates to the debate on the efficacy of influencer marketing to engage customers, offers empirical evidence in the online communication arena of luxury brands, and methodologically suggests a new method to accurately capture users’ engagement in the discussion spurred by publishing a brand-related video.

Comparative Study of Environmental Qualities of Urban Spaces in New Shopping Malls and Traditional Bazaars Case Study: <i>Kourosh</i> Mall and <i>Kaffashha</i> Bazaar in Tehran

Throughout history, urban spaces have always been one of the important elements of the city. While having the social and cultural values of the society, they are a place for carrying out various activities that connect the members of the society with each other. They also provide opportunities for recreation. The more these spaces are built in accordance with the local culture and have a higher environmental quality, the more people tend to attend, be active and spend their free time there, and as a result, the vitality in the society improves. On the other hand, the lack of urban space or the lack of attention to the environmental qualities will reduce the sense of attachment and presence of people in these spaces, which will itself lead to the degradation of social relations. In urban settlements before modernism, public spaces such as squares and bazaars were used as arenas for social communication. In the process of modernization, the role of these places as urban space was diminished and new shopping malls have replaced them today. This research seeks to compare the environmental qualities of urban space in new shopping malls and traditional bazaars. The research is applied in terms of purpose and analytical-descriptive and comparative in terms of method. In order to achieve the goal of the research, the theoretical concepts were first studied and environmental quality factors were extracted. Then, with the technique of observation and photography, the extracted factors were checked in Kourosh mall and Kaffashha traditional bazaar. The results show that although shopping malls are derived from western societies and do not fit with Iranian culture, but due to the facilities they provide to the people, they have a more favorable condition in most of the factors examined in this research and have been more welcomed by people as urban space.

Linguistic economy and slang as used by Jordanians on Twitter

In the context of the rapidly expanding technological landscape, social media platforms have become arenas for innovative communication. This study focuses on the linguistic strategies employed by Jordanian Twitter users within the framework of Computer Mediated Communication (CMC), considering the concept of linguistic economy. The data for this study were derived from 300 tweets, employing digital ethnography for virtual fieldwork. There were a number of 15 users randomly selected for interviews to further understand their language use on Twitter. Employing the descriptive qualitative content analysis, the following linguistic strategies were found in this study, they are Romanized Jordanian Arabic, code-switching, linguistic economy (shortening, contractions, clipping, and acronyms), and slang (repetition, onomatopoeia, cacography, and capitalization). The prevalence of Jordanian Romanized Arabic and strategic code-switching demonstrated users’ adaptability in navigating Twitter’s language. The study highlighted the dominant role of linguistic economy within the 160-character limit, with users employing strategies such as shortening, contractions, clipping, and acronyms. Expressive techniques like repetition, onomatopoeia, cacography, and capitalization were identified as creative ways to convey emotions and attitudinal meanings. Overall, this research contributes valuable insights into the developing language dynamics on social media, offering insight into the intricate ways users shape communication in the digital age.

Safety between the lines – the role, meaning and practice of pen-pal writing in the life of a young Finnish evacuee girl (1939–1945)

ABSTRACT This article examines the role, meaning, and practice of letter writing in the lives of two Finnish girls during the Second World War (WWII). We use a particular set of letters (N = 41) from the wartime letter collection kept in the Tampere University Folklife Archives and argue that they give us an interesting perspective on not only the girls’ wartime experiences, but also on the role of communication and pen-pal writing in everyday life. In particular, we focus on one evacuee – Ritva – who during the period 1939–1945 changed class six times, requiring her to constantly adapt to new class environments and peer relationships. However, from 1942 onwards, the correspondence with her pen pal Ella provided Ritva with a sense of continuous friendship free from the pressures of local peers. We suggest that pen-pal writing formed an arena of communication which allowed the two girls to share experiences, nurture mutual feelings, and give each other support – elements which might have sometimes been lacking in relationships they had locally with adults and peers at this time. In theoretical terms, this article is inspired by approaches from the history of experiences and history of emotions. These provide useful concepts for pinpointing the historical and cultural layers involved in the social process of cultivating a pen-pal correspondence.

Overcoming the “blame game” in strategic climate communication: from decoupling accusations toward an arena-spanning agenda

PurposeThe climate crisis presents a global threat. Research shows the necessity of joint communication efforts across different arenas—media, politics, business, academia and protest—to address this threat. However, communication about social change in response to the climate crisis comes with challenges. These challenges manifest, among others, in public accusations of inconsistency in terms of hypocrisy and incapability against self-declared change agents in different arenas. This increasingly turns public climate communication into a “blame game”.Design/methodology/approachStrategic communication scholarship has started to engage in this debate, thereby acknowledging climate communication as an arena-spanning, necessarily contested issue. Still, a systematic overview of specific inconsistency accusations in different public arenas is lacking. This conceptual article provides an overview based on a macro-focused public arena approach and decoupling scholarship.FindingsDrawing on a systematic literature review of climate-related strategic communication scholarship and key debates from climate communication research in neighboring domains, the authors develop a framework mapping how inconsistency accusations of hypocrisy and incapacity, that is, policy–practice and means–ends decoupling, manifest in different climate communication arenas.Originality/valueThis framework creates awareness for the shared challenge of decoupling accusations across different climate communication arenas, underscoring the necessity of an arena-spanning strategic communication agenda. This agenda requires a communicative shift from downplaying to embracing decoupling accusations, from mutual blaming to approval of accountable ways of working through accusations and from confrontation to cooperation of agents across arenas.

Decolonizing Language Resources in The Human-Machine Era

This essay engages with the issue of future developing language technologies. In recent policy publications that attempt to predict and document an increasingly technologized linguistic future, we see a set of assumptions and presuppositions at work that we approach from a decolonial perspective. We use a sociolinguistically inspired lens of critical engagement with colonialist premises underlying these ideologies and beliefs in universal technological progress in the arena of language and communication. Based on decolonial insights, we make a critical reading of, and an allegorical comparison to, these premises, and ask whether a pluralistic, decolonial view of the role of language/language resources in society could aid in counteracting potential automatic reproductions of existing macro- and micro-sociolinguistic inequalities embodied in future language devices as described and forecast in the LITHME (Languages in the Human-Machine Era) report, Microsoft Corporation’s Responsible Artificial Intelligence Principles and the Digital Language Vitality Scale, three examples of recent publications on this topic. We frame critical rejoinders, from the theoretical perspectives of linguistic imperialism, the sociolinguistics of globalization, and languaging theory, with the aim to address future linguistic and sociolinguistic outcomes in the human-machine era in a decoloniality-inspired manner. We conclude that persistent beliefs in the inevitability of technological progress will continue to underpin and drive dominant Western interests in a digital future, and, unless radical reappraisal and reprioritization take place, these will continue to systematically disadvantage speakers in many locales across the globe. We end by encouraging continued critical linguistic reflection in this area in the future.

The regulatory ecosystem of data driven campaigning in the UK

Political campaigns are increasingly described as data-driven, as parties collect and analyse large quantities of voter data to target their campaign messages in ever more granular ways, particularly online. These practices have increasingly been facing calls for greater regulation due to the range of harms they are seen to pose for citizens and democracy more generally. Such harms include the intrusions on voter privacy, reduced transparency in how messages are constructed and targeted at voters and exposure to increasingly divisive and polarizing political content. Given that data-driven campaigning (DDC) encompasses a range of different practices that are likely to fall under the remit of multiple agencies, it is not evident how suitable current regulatory frameworks are for addressing the harms associated with the growth of DDC. This paper takes a first step toward addressing that question by mapping an emergent regulatory “ecosystem” for DDC in the particular case of the UK. Specifically, we collect and analyse interview data from a range of regulators working directly or indirectly in the election campaigns and communication arena. Our analysis shows that while privacy violations associated with DDC are seen by regulators to be largely well covered by current legislation, other potential harms are given lesser to no priority. These gaps appear to be due to regulators lacking either the powers or the incentives to intervene.

Child sexual assault or curious play? Adults negotiating appropriate behaviour in terms of age, gender and sexuality when responding to an incident in Swedish early childhood education

ABSTRACT Using an intersectional analysis, this article critically analyses implied and expressed norms to identify perceptions of appropriate behaviour in children’s play, and to explore how social communicative arenas such as Internet forums construct knowledge and values. Adults’ responses to an incident that occurred amongst a group of children in Swedish early childhood education as part of free play during the preschool day were analysed. The incident was described in a thread posted on the Familjeliv (Family Life) internet forum. The research questions were: what images of children are prominent in discourse on appropriate behaviour as part of free play; what discursive categorisations of children related to age, gender and sexuality can be identified within this discourse; and how do these categorisations intersect? Netnography provided the method used together with thematic content analysis. Findings reveal two contrasting views: first, the view that four-year-olds cannot commit sexual assault on another person; and second, the view that they can. Young children were constructed either as non-sexual, innocent, curious and playful, or as perpetrators who lack consequentialist thinking. Age was the dominant discursive category utilised in relation to sexuality and appropriate behaviour, followed by gender.

Vertical and horizontal listening on internal social media during a time of crisis: a case study of a Danish hospital

PurposeThe study explores internal listening on internal social media (ISM) during a crisis at a large Danish hospital.Design/methodology/approachThe study employs a netnographic qualitative design to analyze 142 posts shared by employees on the hospital's ISM platform “The Word is Free” and how these posts are listened to by employees, support functions and management.FindingsThe study finds seven different types of internal listening. Categories of vertical listening included respectful listening, delegated listening, formal listening and no listening, while horizontal listening included confirmatory listening, responsive listening, challenging listening and no listening.Research limitations/implicationsThe study focuses on listening on ISM between January 2019 and March 2022. Interviews with employees and managers are needed to further investigate how internal listening at the hospital influences organizational life both in general and during a crisis.Practical implicationsEspecially in crisis situations, organizations are encouraged to approach ISM with a holistic understanding of listening and apply three principles: (1) embrace ISM as an employee communication arena where confirmatory, responsive and challenging listening among employees helps them to cope with strenuous situations; (2) monitor the ISM communication arena and (3) conduct respectful listening.Originality/valueThis study focuses on internal listening on ISM during a crisis and suggests a holistic understanding of internal listening that combines vertical and horizontal listening.

PUBLIC OPINION AND POLITICAL CONSEQUENCES OF DIGITALIZATION: SPECIFICS AND VECTORS OF INTERACTION

The article is devoted to the study of the digital public self-presentation of minority groups and individuals in the Internet environment, which questions the ability of the public to function as a balanced community. The purpose of the study is to establish the challenges of digitalization for the structure of modern public opinion. The political dimension of digitization processes is characterized, which requires careful analysis, since the state of public opinion can no longer be fully diagnosed by traditional means of sociological research. It was emphasized that in the conditions of the Russian-Ukrainian war, knowledge about the structure of public opinion can significantly influence the formation of effective strategies for countering enemy manipulations and building campaigns to promote pro-Ukrainian positions. The ability of public opinion to respond to public information is analyzed. The importance of structuring public opinion is revealed not only on the basis of ideological preferences and aggregation of interests, but also on the basis of "secondary" factors, in particular, subjective sympathies. It was found that due to the multifaceted nature of means of disseminating political information, there is a combination of traditional and digital media. It was found that digitalization contributes to the transparency and completeness of the display of information about the activities of the authorities in a democratic society. It has been proven that even in the conditions of a stable democracy there is a practice of a purposeful change in the political positions of citizens in favor of a certain engaged message or thesis. It has been established that in the conditions of modern Ukraine, the resource availability of virtual political subjects makes manipulative practices successful and very common. It is assumed that the consequences of political digitization pose a significant threat to the fundamental values of democratic representation, rights to exercise freedom of speech, etc. It was found that the free press is an object of manipulation by political institutions and actors. It is established that the formation of integrated public opinion, which is aggregated as a set of different positions and expressions, is problematic. The issue of objects of manipulation, which are not only components of society, but also of decentralized state power, is considered. The specificity of strategic thinking in the digital environment is indicated, which involves the emergence of manipulative events and pseudo-events, as well as agenda management. It was concluded that traditional institutions and actors are gradually being eliminated from the political and communication arena. It is substantiated that the media policy of modern states and political actors is characterized by the use of targeted Internet advertising technologies, which makes it possible to attract the audience to the consideration of certain events that seem to have broad social significance.

The social embeddedness of elections: Ghana’s 2016 and 2020 campaigns

ABSTRACT Campaign rallies serve as arenas of political communication where candidates present their campaign messages face-to-face in order to gain votes. This article suggests that rallies are one of several forms of campaign visits along with official business stops, courtesy calls to local notables, and personal interactions with constituents. Drawing on an original dataset of campaign visits in Ghana's 2016 and 2020 elections, we find that a significant political learning process took place between the two races for candidates of the two major parties, as candidates diversified their strategies beyond the rally-intensive campaign. Candidates extended the communicative and representative elements of the traditional rally through socially embedded practices by relying on occupational groups like market associations and fisherfolk to mobilise voters. By explaining the meaning behind different forms of campaign visits, we conclude that campaign rallies and other visits are embedded in social realities that shape political mobilisation.

Barriers to equality, diversity and inclusion in research and academia stubbornly persist. So, what are we doing about it?

Despite an appetite for change, equality, diversity and inclusivity (EDI)-related issues continue to ripple through the world of research and academia, from inequity at the point of entry into education, through to lack of diversity and equality in senior roles. Many academic institutes and governments are taking action to solve these issues, and we welcome the growing number of inclusive practices in the science communication arena. Building from this, we - at the University of Sheffield, UK - have assessed our own situation, responded to pressures applied by research councils, and listened to our staff and student voice. Our new 'One University' initiative puts EDI on a par with research, innovation and education as a core university priority, and our Gender, Disability and Race Action Plans allow us to make measurable and impactful changes. Tackling EDI issues needs a collaborative approach, action at an institutional- or sector-wide level and clear commitment from senior leaders.

Research and cultural metadata exposed using APIs: steps on the interoperability road

The wealth of data available to the researchers and to the curious citizen seems limitless today. For this reason tools able to retrieve and put together pieces of useful data are in growing need. This study is looking into Application Programming Interfaces as means to establish an ecosystem fostering data interoperability for persons and machines. The research and culture landscape is in a continuous need for accessing to data and metadata. For this reason, a set of the most representative service providers were investigated through the filter of data accessibility, and how the data provided fit the needs of possibly machine-assisted tools. The providers are well established actors in the scholarly communication arena with a host of some from the culture heritage field. A supplementary set of trusted repositories which are recipients of CoreTrustSeal (CTS) were investigated in searching for interoperability extensions via APIs.

Communicating health advice on social media: A multimodal case study

Social media represent new arenas for health communication. Platforms such as YouTube, Instagram, Snapchat, and TikTok provide unique opportunities for health workers to build understanding, engagement, and trust among a broad and young audience. At the same time, such platforms demand of health workers a careful balance between social closeness and professional distance. The article is based on a case study in which the award-winning Norwegian psychologist Maria Abrahamsen’s practice of health communication on Instagram is studied through the lens of multimodal discourse analysis. Following a bottom-up method, the study starts with a close reading of a single Instagram post, where video and written verbal text interact closely. The entire account is then studied as a complex case of mediated health communication. Conclusively, after a discussion of genre implications, the article suggests possible solutions to key challenges concerning the followers’ engagement and trust.

Populism and emotions: a comparative study using Machine Learning

AbstractThis study aims to unpack the mobilization of emotions in the political discourse of populist and non-populist parties and above all, across ‘varieties of populism’ (right wing vs. left wing or hybrid). Is there an empirical connection between emotions and populism? Are all types of populisms alike with regards to the emotional appeals within their political discourse? Focusing on Italy as a crucial case for populist communication and using a novel methodological approach based on supervised machine learning, it systematically investigates the intensity and trends of specific emotions in political discourses (institutional and informal, i.e. leaders’ speeches) of all Italian political parties over the last 20 years, for a corpus of more than 13,000 sentences analysed. The findings confirm that (i) populists tend to use more (and a broader repertoire of) emotional appeals than non-populist parties; however (ii) overall, there is an increase in the use of these appeals in the Italian political party discourse over time, especially in terms of negative emotions; and, most importantly, (iii) different types of emotions are mobilized by different types of populisms. Right wing populism mainly uses negative emotions while left wing or hybrid populism employs positive emotional appeals. The communication arena (party manifestoes vs. speeches) nevertheless does matter in the degree and types of emotions mobilized by political actors. This study identifies important implications for research on emotional appeals in politics, populist communication and political campaigning, and populist contagion from an emotion-based perspective.

Arena Komunikasi Politik di Indonesia: Bagaimana Masyarakat Sipil Menggunakan Media Baru sebagai Komunikasi Politik

This research seeks to explain the arena of political communication in Indonesia for civil society groups to use new media from 2010 to 2020. The context of this time shows the increasingly complex development of democracy and new media, including the presence of social media. The research was conducted using the case study method by exploring three cases of civil society groups, namely Remotivi, Combine Resource Institution, and Zero Kilometer Makassar. This study departs from the hypothesis that the use of new media by civil society groups can encourage a more democratic process of political communication. This study found that the presence of new media has not been able to encourage civil society to use the arena of political communication properly. Judging from the aspect of the arena, which consists of existence, regulation, relations, and public space, it turns out that it has not been able to encourage a democratic political communication process even though new media has been used in communication actions by civil society groups.This research seeks to explain the arena of political communication in Indonesia for civil society groups to use new media from 2010 to 2020. The context of this time shows the increasingly complex development of democracy and new media, including the presence of social media. The research was conducted using the case study method by exploring three cases of civil society groups, namely Remotivi, Combine Resource Institution, and Zero Kilometer Makassar. This study departs from the hypothesis that the use of new media by civil society groups can encourage a more democratic process of political communication. This study found that the presence of new media has not been able to encourage civil society to use the arena of political communication properly. Judging from the aspect of the arena, which consists of existence, regulation, relations, and public space, it turns out that it has not been able to encourage a democratic political communication process even though new media has been used in communication actions by civil society groups.

I politici e l’immigrazione su Facebook: come si (de)legittima il discorso migratorio durante l’emergenza sanitaria

In this article we analyse how the immigration issue is narrated during the Covid-19 outbreak by several Italian political actors. We select Facebook as the main digital arena of political communication in the Italian public sphere. Quantitative analysis and Critical Discourse Analysis have been applied to politicians’ posts aiming at identifying the linguistic strategies that contribute to instrumentalizing the emergency and aim to reinforce the politicization of the issue. Findings suggest that the main discursive strategies used by politicians do not only include migrants as a danger for the spread of the virus, but the migratory narration is systematically organized on negative campaigning blaming political opponents. The contribution helps to reveal how the anti-migration discourse is reproduced during the Covid-19 outbreak and how the politicization of the migration serves as a context for the normalization of migrant’s exclusion.

Sparse Vector Coding for Short-Packet Transmission on Industrial Communications: Reference Architecture and Design Challenges

Reliable, fast, and deterministic communications are fundamental for future industrial wireless systems. This goal requires multiple cooperating technologies that pertain to different areas of the communication arena. The weight of the waveform and coding technique choices are critical to match industrial use cases' reliability and latency requirements. Specifically, this article contributes to the field of channel coding in wireless fieldbus links. Classical block coding schemes were designed to maximize information bit rates without stringent latency requirements. Their performance in applications that use short messages degrades significantly. Recently, sparse vector coding (SVC) has been proposed as a coding approach suitable for short-packet communications with moderate complexity and low processing latency. This article presents a comprehensive analysis of SVC and a reference communication framework for its implementation on a wireless system. A set of simulations is also designed to establish the cross correlation between the different parameters involved in the code design. As a result, the coding matrix has been identified as a critical parameter that can improve coding performance. In addition, this article includes two new procedures for determining the matrix that could lead to a gain of up to 2 dB with respect to the current state of the art.

Lexico-stylistic and structural features of Volodymyr Zelensky’s political address to Congress

The defiant russia’s aggression upon Ukraine changed the world order and made countries choose between good and evil, stand aside or act, focus peoples’ attention on human rights and values important for everyone. All these inevitably encourage linguists and researchers of related disciplines to transfer their investigations into the arena of political communication, where of statesmen play a primary role in influencing the minds of the masses. In this regard, the address of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to Congress as a material for analysis is definitely relevant.
 The purpose of the study is to consider the structure of the political speech itself and the linguistic means of the speaker’s communicative intent realization which lies in providing comprehensive assistance to Ukraine, defending the basic human values. The use of structural-semantic analysis made it possible to distinguish three blocks in Volodymyr Zelensky’s address: introductory, informative, and conclusion, as well as to reveal their characteristic features. An appeal to the mass addressee, taking into account such factors as position, gender and nationality as official forms of address and nonofficial Friends!, contribute to setting up a warm atmosphere. The informative block is presented by five subtopics, each of which serves as an independent element of the political address. An expression of gratitude to Joe Biden and American people for their strong support for Ukraine, reinforced by the demonstration of a video with episodes of the war, is found in the conclusion, which is an effective method of influencing the audience.
 The elements of discourse analysis made it possible to highlight positive images of America as a defender, Ukraine as a fighter, and negative russia as an aggressor and analyze the linguistic means that form them. An effective means of influencing is reference to important historical events for the USA and the words of Martin Luther King, which mark the common aspirations of American and Ukrainian people. Russia’s trampling upon basic human rights and values, such as democracy, independence, freedom, peace are key points in Volodymyr Zelensky’s speech. Joe Biden is considered the leader of the nation, the leader of the world and the leader of peace, that mark President of high reputation.
 The successful implementation of the communicative intent by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky is evidenced not only by the greeting of his speech with loud applause, but also the USA’s strong support and real assistance to Ukraine in the war against russia.