Construction Of Collective Identity Research Articles

Identity Construction in Fan Community: An Analysis of Online Discourse among (G)I-DLE Fans in Mainland China on Sina Weibo

Fandom has become a social and cultural phenomenon reflecting practical activities in the fan community. The prevalence of social media and online fan communities has facilitated the transnational industries of Korean popular culture (K-pop) in mainland China. Fans are enthusiastic about creating posts dedicated to their idol(s) or music bands to broaden the influence of the celebrities and establish personal connections with them. The unique interaction patterns in the K-pop fan community reflect the process of fans’ identity identification and construction. This article explores how mainland fans employ discursive strategies to construct their identity and legitimize their behaviors on social media. A total of 80 posts in (G)I-DLE Super Topic made by mainland China netizens have been collected from Sina Weibo. The findings illustrate the construction of both individual and collective identities among fans, which are shaped by various contexts and different communicative purposes. Further analysis explores the potential impact of fans' identities within online communities on the K-pop market in mainland China.

Identity Construction in Fan Community: An Analysis of Online Discourse among (G)I-DLE Fans in Mainland China on Sina Weibo

Fandom has become a social and cultural phenomenon reflecting practical activities in the fan community. The prevalence of social media and online fan communities has facilitated the transnational industries of Korean popular culture (K-pop) in mainland China. Fans are enthusiastic about creating posts dedicated to their idol(s) or music bands to broaden the influence of the celebrities and establish personal connections with them. The unique interaction patterns in the K-pop fan community reflect the process of fans’ identity identification and construction. This article explores how mainland fans employ discursive strategies to construct their identity and legitimize their behaviors on social media. A total of 80 posts in (G)I-DLE Super Topic made by mainland China netizens have been collected from Sina Weibo. The findings illustrate the construction of both individual and collective identities among fans, which are shaped by various contexts and different communicative purposes. Further analysis explores the potential impact of fans' identities within online communities on the K-pop market in mainland China.

Who are we? Discursive construction of collective identity in youth organisations in Poland: a citizenship orientation perspective

ABSTRACT Collective identity (CI) is one of the levels of the social construction of citizenship. It was assumed that since citizenship as a state-centred notion is difficult to maintain today, an analysis of CI should exceed national, ethnic, language and cultural identifications. What does it look like in the case of CI constructed discursively by youth organisations? The aim of the research presented in the paper is to reconstruct collective identities (CIs) based on a discourse analysis of selected youth organisations operating in Poland and an assessment of their community-individual orientation. The research material constituted 696 documents produced in 2018 by six youth organisations on their official websites and Facebook profiles. The approach by Ruth Wodak and Martin Reisigl was adopted. We analysed the application of discursive strategies in the texts referring to the ‘we’ and ‘they’ categories. The conclusions indicate, among others, that in the analysed discourses the CI is differentiated by the manner of distinguishing from ‘others’ and the constellation of predicates relating to the category ‘we’.

Visibilità e vitalità delle lingue. Un’analisi linguistica del greko di Calabria attraverso la lente del Linguistic Landscape

This paper analyzes the Linguistic Landscape of Bova Superiore, a small village in southern Calabria where Italo-Greek (Greko) is still spoken. Place-naming practices are considered communicative acts, and the linguistic signs inserted in the public space highlight the richness of the linguistic heritage of communities and contribute to the symbolic construction of collective identities. Through a mapping of the contact between the languages that characterize the Linguistic Landscape of Bova Superiore, the present study aims to fill a knowledge gap by stimulating a reflection on the degree of visibility and vitality of Greko.

Unveiling South American collective identities in Brazil: insights into regional integration and identity formation

ABSTRACT This study investigates the construction of South American collective identities in Brazil, emphasizing regional integration and identity formation. Using a seven-scale model adapted from European identity research, it evaluates the psychological existence and identification with South America as a transnational imagined community among Brazilians. The findings highlight the complex interplay between national and regional identities, influenced by historical, cultural, and socio-political factors. The study contributes to the field of Comparative Regionalism by providing a nuanced understanding of identity dynamics in South America, underscoring the importance of elite-led integration efforts and their impact on citizens’ perceptions.

Racialising Refugees: The Global Colour Line in US Resettlement

Abstract Following the 2021 Taliban takeover of Afghanistan and the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, there were notable differences in access to resettlement and other pathways of humanitarian migration. Drawing on an analysis of statements by US policymakers, this article considers the global context and implications of the disparate language and approaches used in responses to Afghan and Ukrainian displacement. It shows how racialised and gendered narratives contributed to and were constituted within a broader international hierarchy and global colour line. The positioning of Ukrainians as possessing higher civilisational attributes deserving of solidarity and support, and their portrayal through prisms of strong agency, sovereignty, and kindred Western values, echoed across transnational constructions of collective white identity. In contrast, Afghan resettlement was rendered conditional on extensive security vetting and proof of loyal service to US and NATO missions in Afghanistan. Portrayals of Afghans as less assimilable, as potential terrorist infiltrators, as incapable of self-governance and unable to generate their own progress perpetuated features of the global colour line. Attending to the different logics used to construct refugee and parolee groups and policies broadens our understanding on how multilayered processes of Orientalism and racialisation shape resettlement and disparities in access to protection.

The “I” as Implicated Subject: Performative Confession in Rian Malan’s My Traitor’s Heart

Confessional forms of autobiographical writing have predominated in post-apartheid South African literary studies. This paper discusses Rian Malan’s My Traitor’s Heart, published in 1990 during drastic social and political changes in South Africa’s transition to democracy. It was one of the first and most prominent examples of this genre. Focusing on Malan’s perspective as a white Afrikaner and an “implicated subject”, this study explored how his confessional account grappled with the existential dilemma of post-apartheid Afrikaner identity. Malan simultaneously affirmed his Afrikaner identity to confront his implication in apartheid and sought to establish a legitimate place for this identity within the new multicultural society. Through a close reading of Malan’s strategic performance, this paper argues that his work offers a means of reimagining the collective self in a new community and understanding historical injustices from a multidimensional perspective. Ultimately, My Traitor’s Heart contributes to the post-apartheid project of envisioning a more inclusive psychological and topographical construction of individual and collective identity, with the implicated subject as its centre.

Eternal Politics: Life and Death in the Evangelical Community

This study explores how evangelical communities in Latin America understand and structure the concepts of life and death, based on their interpretation of time and its impact on the construction of collective identities and communal memory. Through the analysis of funerary practices and rituals, the dual system of life and death under the evangelical prism is examined, highlighting the crucial role of death not only as a bio-logical event but as an act loaded with political and social meaning. The importance of rituals and ceremonies in shaping collective memory, as well as in defining community identity in contrast to other Christian denominations and in the broader public sphere, is emphasized. The paper reveals how these communities use their understanding of life and death to establish a "grand narrative" that strengthens their internal cohesion and outlines their symbolic boundaries, while addressing their insertion and participation in the broader society.

Unveiling the War and Constructing Identities: Exploring Memes in Ukrainian and Russian Social Media during the Russian Invasion of Ukraine

The article examines the generation and deployment of visual narratives in Ukrainian and Russian digital participatory cultures, with a specific focus on internet memes in the context of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. It analyzes the form, content, and functions of these memes and highlights their similarity in mobilizing and conveying political messages despite variations in their visual components. The study indicates that Ukrainian memes are used not only to promote political agendas but also serve as trauma coping and collective identity construction mechanisms in times of crisis, helping to promote new war narratives that are engaged in the construction of the self and the other.

‘Currying Identities’: A Literary Re-Crafting of South-Asian Identities through Diasporic Women’s Cookbooks

Food has been an enduring presence in the construction of collective identities of migrant communities. From honing cooking techniques and selecting ingredients and tools to developing cultures of consumption and appreciation, diasporic communities seem to hold food as one of the primary markers of identity. Women writers from the diaspora not only emblematized their identities by writing about food but also opened feminist methodological opportunities for writing resistance. These ‘culinary fictions’ have since been mined to delve into the gendering of migrant identities. The genre of cookbooks shares a significant overlap with ‘culinary fiction’ in terms of its scope by stabilizing ‘authentic’ identities. However, it surgically punctures the romantic appeal of food imagination, shifting its focus instead to the labor that produces the sensory stimulation of culinary memory. This article uses this overlap and this gap as incentives to read select cookbooks published in the heydays of culinary fiction. Reading cookbooks against the metrics of labor provides a certain intimacy of engagement that offers entry into complex negotiations of uncertain migrant identities. Affective labor and its postcolonial entanglements have been used as catalysts in the article to read into the multilayered understanding of the politics of women writing about food in the diaspora. To this extent, it will challenge the stabilized ways of reading culinary identities and open food writing to more robust negotiations of gendered writings of food.

The aesthetic values of the semiotic choices in Arab protests

Abstract This paper examines protest language from the late Arab Spring uprisings, more specifically in Tunisia, Egypt and Iraq – identified as the “Facebook Upheavals”. It explores the discursive aspects of these processes through which social protest and dissent are constructed and different forms of communication and expression are mobilized. It also examines how the various modes of representation and dissemination contribute to shaping and influencing social movements and resistance within the Arab political context, individually and collectively. On the collective level, the paper explores the discursive construction of collective identities, the formation of alliances, and the negotiation of power relations within and between different protest movements. This is done by reporting how discourses are used to challenge dominant narratives, contest oppressive structures, and then to shape the political landscape in the Arab region.

Memorials of Dragotin Kette from the poet’s death to the 100th anniversary of his birth

The contribution presents the building of memorials dedicated to the poet Dragotin Kette and the development of rituals to honour his memory from his death on 26 April 1899 to the 100th anniversary of his birth on 19 January 1976. In the span of eighty years, it is possible to observe how the attitude towards Kette changed in time and place as well as how the memorials and associated rituals served the authorities in the construction of collective identity under the given social, political, and ideological circumstances.

THEORETICAL CONCEPTUALISATIONS OF IDENTITY: ON THE FALSE PROBLEM OF NON-COMPLEMENTARITY OF COLLECTIVE

The research subject refers to the theoretical perspectives of the identity of several authors – N. Sekulic, Z. Golubovic, B. Anderson, N. Djukic, E. Goffman, M. Castells, R. Watson, G. Small, Z. Bauman, S. Hall, V. Jerotic, R. Jenkins and A. Benoist. The search is for an answer to the question: Could priority be given to personal or social identity, according to importance? A noticeable research problem is the pluralism of conceptions that attach more importance to either individual or collective identity. The main hypothesis is that there is a false problem of non-complementarity of collective and personal identity, as well as an experiential connection (scientific law) between the political construction of collective identity and totalitarianism. The scientific goals are: 1) to describe the identity and the process of its creation; 2) to classify and explain the difference between personal and collective identity, with an emphasis on the integrative point of view of Golubovic and Jenkins on the complementarity between them; 3) to anticipate the experiential connection between the political construction of collective identity and totalitarianism due to the exclusion of Others from the constructed identity pattern, in order to establish complete state-political (party) control over all dimensions of everyday life beyond States. The methods of (descriptive and comparative) analysis, deduction, synthesis, induction, case studies and content analysis of identity conceptions based on a simple classification (significant - less significant type of identity) (Kukic & Markic, 2006: 217) and desk research will be used. The results of qualitative research are knowledge about identity, its types, its construction and the consequences of identity engineering, which were obtained through secondary, qualitative data (Kothari, 2004; Dale, Wathan & Higgins, 2008) during 'research in the library' (Kuba & Koking, 2004: 90) on bibliographic units from an abstracted sample.

What Does It Meme? English–Spanish Codeswitching and Enregisterment in Virtual Social Space

This project investigates English–Spanish codeswitching in internet memes posted to the Facebook page, We are mitú (mitú), and analyzes how lexical insertions and quotatives contribute to the enregisterment of linguistic patterns and the construction of collective identity among U.S. Latinx millennials in virtual social spaces. Data include instances of lexical insertion (n = 280) and quotative mixed codes (n = 114) drawn from a collected corpus of 765 image–text memes. The most frequent lexical insertions included food items (e.g., elote and pozole), kinship terms (e.g., abuelita and tía), and culturally specific artifacts or practices (e.g., quinceañera and lotería), which reflect biculturalism and rely on a shared set of references for the construction of a group identity. Additionally, the quotatives in the data construct Spanish-speaking characterological figures that enregister a particular brand of U.S. Latinx millennial identity that includes being bilingual, having Spanish-speaking parents, and having strong ties to Latinx culture. Overall, this work highlights not only internet memes as a vehicle for enregisterment, but also, and more importantly, how the language resources employed within them work to enregister linguistic and cultural norms of U.S. Latinx millennials, and thereby, play a role in identity construction in virtual social spaces.

“All sisters must experience the endorphin rush!” A virtual discourse-ethnographic study on neoliberalism female fitness community on Bilibili

ABSTRACT Taking Bilibili as the analyzing platform, this study explores the linguistic and cultural features of neoliberalism female fitness communities on social media in China. By combining Discourse-Ethnographic Analysis (DEA), Corpus-assisted Discourse Analysis (CADA), and sentimental analysis, this study explores the construction of individual identities, societal values, and collective identities within these communities, as well as the ways in which members establish relationships and engage in fan-idol dynamics. The study reveals the presence of postfeminist biopedagogies, peer surveillance, and the formation of a fandom-centered discourse influenced by neoliberal and postfeminist values. Meanwhile, the use of terms like “sister” fosters pseudo-kin relationships, conveying both closeness and fellowship while challenging male-dominated societal norms. The findings contribute to understanding female fitness communities on social media, highlighting the construction of identity, relationships, and social values in digital spaces.

Irish English and Irish Studies: exploring language use and identity through fictional constructions of laddism

ABSTRACT The construction of a linguistic collective identity uses a pool of conscious and unconscious elements that deal with age, gender, or ethnic belonging. In the Irish communicative system, one present-day type of collective masculine identity is that of “the lads.” Previous studies on “laddish” behaviour and performance from literary or social perspectives explored conduct in contexts such as sports, violence, sex, or alcohol. To encourage interdisciplinary research in the field of Irish Studies, this paper analyses the language of “the lads” in literary discourse through corpus linguistics as a contribution to the field of digital humanities. Fourteen novels make up the specialised corpus on which the analysis is based paying attention to verbs of speech and adverbs. The verbs show utterances by “the lads” illustrating and providing aggressiveness and adverbs provide a second layer of meaning. Finally, a number of power struggles these characters experience in interaction are studied to differentiate the status quo of “the lads.”

Ministries of Culture from Andean Community of Nations: Digital Engagement in Facebook

Culture is essential for individual and collective identity construction, just as it contributes to economic development. Consequently, States present institutions responsible for its promotion, appreciation and preservation. In addition, recognizing the accelerated digitization of services and products, strengthened by the health crisis of COVID-19; States have enhanced the use of digital platforms for communication with their citizens. In response, it seeks to understand the involvement and participation of the digital society in the contents of Colombia, Bolivia, Peru and Ecuador ministries of culture Facebook accounts, to identify which types of posts develop greater engagement, of which there is a cultural apprehension. The method used was nethnographic, non-experimental and phenomenological; content analysis was used, approaching it descriptively and inferentially to derive truthful inferences. onvergences and divergences were identified between theory and digital engagement; the number of posts does not represent a relationship with the number of reactions, comments, or shares, so the quality of the content and other factors are influential. Furthermore, of the four countries, the highest content production is in Colombia, followed by Peru, Bolivia and Ecuador.However, Peru has the greatest digital involvement.

We Need to be as a Group: Using and Evaluating the Listening Guide in Feminist Collaborative Autoethnography With an Affective ‘Fifth Listen’ as a Tool to (re)construct Identities

As a UK-based group of female postgraduate researchers, the authors explored their experiences during COVID-19 pandemic through multivocal inquiry via a feminist collaborative autoethnographic project. In this paper, we use the Listening Guide as a tool to revisit and (re)analyse data from the aforementioned project, displaying findings in the form of voice poems. In utilising the Listening Guide, we discovered that listening is less of an exercise and more an art form. While the structured approach of the LG helped to enhance our understandings of wider individual experiences of disability and womanhood, identities that all authors inhabit, we were surprised to find that despite our established mutual trust and superficially similar experiences, we were unable to find emotional resonance through data that wasn’t our own voice. We also found that the traditional stepped process of the LG that incorporates four listens to the data left our interpretations feeling flat. Through reflexivity and the novel collaborative approach we undertook in this analysis, we identified and implemented an augmentation of the Listening Guide process. In this paper, we propose an additional fifth listen, focusing on emotion, to facilitate a more holistic analysis of voice data. We explore how the fifth listen assisted the (re)construction of individual and collective identities, helping us to reshape our understandings. Finally, we elucidate the positives and pitfalls we experienced in the Listening Guide as a data analysis tool, recommending to other researchers the adoption of an iterative, flexible and reflexive approach in using it during collaborative research.

Bibliometric Structure of Collective Identities: Progress of Publication on Collective Identity in the Scopus Database

The formation of collective identity, at its core, is the product of people navigating through social relations. Collective identity has become one of the most prominent sub theories in social identity theory. This study examines the progress of publication on collective identity and mapping the structure of its bibliometric information on journals published in the Scopus database. The online retrieval process was done on 28 July 2020 and obtained 689 documents. The data were analysed using a standard bibliometric approach using Microsoft Excel, VOSviewer, and Harzing’s Publish and Perish. The result shows an increased growth rate of literature in the year 1997. The growth particularly linked to the publication of “Who Is This “We”? Levels of Collective Identity and Self Representations” by M.B. Brewer and W. Gardner’ in 1996 and “The Construction of Collective Identity.”S.N. Eisenstadt, B. Giesen in 1995. This study reveals research on collective identity subject are predominantly related to constructive analysis, identity analysis, discourse analysis, and collective action analysis. There is increased attention in linking social media with collective identity research, while the social movement domain will continue to be an important domain within the corpus. This study offers an insight to researchers on current trends and the future trajectory of collective identity research.

Conceptualizing Community-based Environmental Peacebuilding in Cesar, Colombia

In conflict studies, environmental peacebuilding (EPB) has become an established concept to explain how environmental cooperation among opposing parties provides a platform for peacebuilding. EPB literature has been shaped predominantly by political science perspectives, initially with a focus on interstate conflicts, and ecological dynamics have received little attention to date. Building on the Social-Ecological Systems Framework (SESF), we develop a framework for community-based EPB and test it in post-conflict settings in the department of Cesar, Colombia. We use a qualitative mixed-methods approach, with 26 semi-structured interviews, six focus group discussions, and a World Café session with 30 participants. Our findings show that in six cases communities self-organize to access, conserve, and defend water and land resources while striving to achieve recognition of their civic rights by state actors. A central outcome of cooperation within and among communities is the (re)construction of collective and territorial identities and increased social cohesion. However, community-based EPB does not contribute to improving relations between communities and the private sector or the state, thus failing to strengthen actor relationships that are essential for Colombian peacebuilding. Despite limitations of this exploratory analysis, our approach proves fruitful for integrating ecological aspects in the understanding of EPB. To further develop the EPB concept, future research should look to other disciplines to diversify the understanding of key terms like resource value, cooperation, and peace.