Protestant Discourse Research Articles

The discourse of anti-Fascism and food protest in underground women’s publications

The discourse of anti-Fascism and food protest in underground women’s publications

Sacraments, Veils, and the Altar of Democracy: Calvinist Rhetoric in W.E.B. Du Bois’s The Souls of Black Folk and Nathaniel Hawthorne’s “The Minister’s Black Veil”

Abstract: W.E.B. Du Bois’s The Souls of Black Folk (1903) often speaks in terminology that resonates distinctively with New English Protestant discourse. Souls does so partly because of a growing indifference among formerly animated Northeastern white abolitionists, which imperiled Black voting rights at the turn of the twentieth century. This article argues that Souls articulates a Black literary identity through metaphors reminiscent of Nathaniel Hawthorne’s “The Minister’s Black Veil,” a text that takes on new meanings in light of the hermeneutics practiced within Souls . Du Bois reminds white Protestants that all America’s souls, regardless of race, remain bound by a sacramental force in New English visions of American democracy, while simultaneously drawing on Calvinist rhetoric to insist on the importance of liberal education to the personal and social transformation of African Americans.

Global discourses of protest and support of offshore wind energy

As offshore wind energy (OWE) grows popular, stakeholder support and opposition are critical for ongoing development. Platforms like Twitter (X) allow stakeholders to engage and discuss energy sources, often catalyzing future energy movements and actions. The global nature of wind energy development and the diminished geographical boundaries of social media intersect while studying OWE development. This study explores how social media users discursively construct the global nature of OWE through Twitter. Through a discourse analysis of 4,922 tweets, this project reveals that users readily adopt a “globalization lens” when communicating about OWE. When users adopt the globalization lens, they connect local examples to global goals, generalize activist groups, analyze the value of OWE, call for international support of local or national groups, and position regions and countries against each other as leaders in OWE.

Politics of phygital protests: Palestinian #GreatMarchofReturn discourse on Twitter

Twitter aids public discourse, hashtag activism and sociopolitical advocacy. In terms of Palestinian resistance discourse against Israel, the hashtag #GreatMarchofReturn represents a peaceful digital protest by the Palestinian refugees based in Gaza. We identified 13,000 tweets related to #GreatMarchofReturn, which we analysed using content analysis and descriptive analysis, followed by a visualization of the findings. We argue that hashtag activism facilitates the collective Palestinian protest discourse on Twitter about Israel’s oppressive diplomacies in Palestine. The activism endorses Palestinian nationalism and the mobilization of civilian rights. Moreover, the micro-blogging site becomes a significant platform for politicizing Israel’s punitive populism and subsequent subjugation of Palestinian refugees, especially in Gaza. The psycho-politics of phygital protests affects the socio-emotional mobilization of the Great March of Return in both virtual and physical public spheres.

The #PantamiMustGo political activism: A textual analysis of narrative agency in protest discourse

This study analyses the narrative structure of the #PantamiMustGo hashtag activism in Nigeria. Applying qualitative textual analysis, the study examines the issues that were made salient in the protests and how they were constructed. Through the analysis of narrative agency, the study finds that activists constructed Ali Pantami as a threat to national security and called for his resignation. Two discourse structures were salient in the discursive construction of Ali Pantami and the Buhari government, namely the use of comparison to link the past with the present and the use of labelling as means of constructing social and political insecurity in Nigeria. This study contributes to stressing the role of social media in political activism through narrative agency analysis in the process of negotiating change by people who feel threatened by the apparatus of the state.

The social construction of anti-tourism protest in tourist cities: a case study of Barcelona

PurposeFocusing on critical discourse analysis, this paper aims to propose a framework for analysing the way activist anti-tourism groups construct their social action of protest. The authors argue that activist groups use different narrative strategies to construct and legitimise their discourse of protest to convey social meanings for social action practices. This study represents an attempt to explain how anti-tourism activist groups have the agency to build different paradigms of protest rooted in particular views of tourism.Design/methodology/approachAs a result of the lack of research in this area, this study used a comparative case study methodology drawn on four case studies in the field of anti-tourism protest. Case study is deemed adequate to explore a complex social phenomenon, how activist groups differ from each other, in a specific socio-economic context. A critical discourse analysis method is used to study primary (interviews) and secondary sources (reports, websites and online campaigns documents) of information, which express the activist group motivations and objectives to protest against tourism.FindingsThis study’s findings provide evidence in how discourse differs among the protest groups. Three narrative paradigms of protest are identified, which guide their agency: scepticism, based on a global and ecological approach; non-interventionist transformation, rooted in local community issues; and direct transformation, based on a sectoral problem-solving approach. These differences are interpreted as the consequences of the emergence and the development of different paths of protest according to specific social contexts and power relations in which anti-tourism groups are embedded.Originality/valueThis paper provides a contemporary approach to anti-tourism activism within the context of social movements. This case study may be of interest to practitioners and international destination managers interested in gaining a better understanding of anti-tourism protest strategies, new anti-tourism narratives following COVID-19 and the opportunities and challenges for opening a dialogue with those involved in activism and social urban movements as part of sustainable tourism governance. Our results can also help activists to rethink how they integrate differences and particular strategic positions to avoid hindering collective action. This knowledge is especially useful for managers and authorities seeking to develop more accurate collaborative governance practices with local activists, and especially those interested in fostering participative action without marginalising the diverse range of local community perspectives.

TikTok как средство политизации молодежи: кейс современной России

The article analyzes how TikTok has become a platform for political content due to ongoing sociopolitical processes in Russia. The study uses behavioral and conflictological methods to understand the influence of TikTok on youth behavior and protest potential. The research aims to evaluate TikTok's role in politicizing youth in modern Russia. The study highlights TikTok's potential as a platform for young people to express their political views, participate in political life, and form their political identity. The author concludes that TikTok's algorithms adapt to the characteristics of contemporary youth, leading to the spread of protest discourse. The authorities are aware of these processes and aim to prevent the development of protest sentiments.

Empire, Mission, and Messianism: Franz Rosenzweig’s Understanding of the Relation between Judaism and Christianity

Abstract This study contributes to contemporary discussions about the entanglement, cross-fertilization, and co-implicatedness of religion and empire by adding a voice from the still underexamined field of Jewish thought. It claims that the European imperial project is inherent to the vision of Judaism, Jewish-Christian relations, and global redemption offered in Franz Rosenzweig’s The Star of Redemption, and that its proper conceptual background is the fin de siècle Protestant discourse offering justifications for empire by wedding territorial expansion, mission, and messianism. By examining the appropriate passages from The Star in light of his early wartime geopolitical writings, it demonstrates that Christian proselytization is essential to Rosenzweig’s vision of redemption and that his contribution to the religious discourse justifying empire resides in his conceptualization of the Jews, subtracted from history and politics, as not targets of mission but as prefiguring the empire-like, borderless, and redeemed existence toward which the Christians, always on “the way,” strive. It concludes by calling for an 'imperial turn' in the study of modern Jewish thought.

Art in protest discourses – on the example of the Belarusian anti-government protest movement

In protest discourses the problem of using aesthetic and artistic elements lies in the centre of attention. The authors draw empirical material from the Belarusian protest movement, especially the anti-government protests of 2020. In the current study the problem of the use of aesthetic elements in protest discourses is considered in two aspects: 1) in the aspect of artistic activism, i.e. the involvement of artists in resistance activities; 2) in terms of the use of aesthetic speech acts in various forms of protest activity, i.e. as a special rhetorical tool with emphatic and persuasive function, but also as a means of expression with the satisfying function. As a result of this dichotomy, the article is divided into two parts. The authors point out that even though public art is not developed in Belarus (e.g. in the field of visual arts), aesthetic creativity is a very characteristic feature of both street poster discourses and forms of protest in the Internet.

#EndSARS Protests and the Search for Social Justice in Nigeria: Examining Activist Discourses on Police Brutality, Politics and Human Security

Abstract On October 3, 2020, members of the Special Anti-Robbery Squad (sars) of the Nigerian Police Force arrested a young man at Wetland Hotel, Ughelli in Delta State, and later shot and killed him, and threw him out of a moving police van. In addition to eye witnesses of what happened, the video of this incident was also trending on social media. Again, on October 5, another video went viral of sars officers’ killing a young musician popularly known as “Sleek,” in unjustifiable circumstances. This was the last straw that broke the camel’s back. What initially began as spontaneous peaceful protests soon turned bloody and by October 8, the protests had spread to almost all Nigerian cities demanding the disbandment of sars. This empirical study examines the operational structure of sars, the formation of the EndSARS movement and its first main protests in 2020 in the search for social justice. Methods in qualitative discourse analysis and multimodality, are used to analyze representational strategies in the protest discourse of the #EndSARS protesters. Other issues bordering on police brutality, injustice, corruption and state failure, which form the main narratives of the protests are analyzed.

Capital's absorption of anti-capitalist discourse in a consumer society

The article is devoted to the ability of capital to neutralize the anti-capitalist and anti-consumer discourse. The following kind of paradox is observed: advertising manipulates, at the same time seeks to appeal to spiritual intentions, standardizes and at the same time offers to emphasize individuality. What was once recognized as standing in opposition to the values of consumption is turning not just into a weak ideological barrier to the spread of consumer culture, but, on the contrary, into a rich material for commerce and advertising discourse. The article analyzes the absorption that touched the image of Che Guevara and anti-capitalist youth subcultures. Commercialization covers clothing paraphernalia of protest communities. Even anti-advertising discourse is captured by consumer networks and commodified. There is a phenomenon of capitalization of protest against capitalism, consumerization of rebellion against consumerism. Scientific rationality, being integrated by capital, rises to the service of commerce and finds new methods of irrational manipulation of consciousness and absorption of protest discourse.

Protest in the Digital Era: A Critical Analysis of Facebook Posts of the Fourth Circle Protests in Jordan

This study critically investigates the discourse of Facebook posts on Jordan’s Fourth Circle protests. The Facebook posts are considered to be protest discourse, with ideological imprints of positive “we” in-group representations and negative “they” out-group descriptions. Utilizing a critical-discourse analysis method, this study reveals that Facebook posts were efficiently used to define the ethnonational identity of the participants and to describe their goals and activities, as well as to provide continual updates on the protests. The activists used linguistic strategies (e.g., rural terms, pronouns, and humorous posts). The activists purposefully used the indigenous dialect (i.e., the rural Jordanian East-Bank dialect) to express solidarity and address indigenous ethnic aspirations. Consequently, the success of the Fourth Circle protests can be summarized in three great achievements, which are: (1) Prime Minister Hani Mulki’s resignation; (2) cancellation of the income-tax law; and (3) solutions that reduced the cost of living to a more acceptable rate.

Public discourse and debate about vaccines in the midst of the covid-19 pandemic: A qualitative content analysis of Twitter.

Characterize the public debate and discourse about vaccines during the covid-19 vaccination programmes. We performed a manual content analysis of a sample of English-written Twitter posts that included the word vaccine and its derivatives. We categorized 7 variables pertaining to the content of the posts, and classified the type of user that published the post and the number of retweets. Then, the patterns of association between these variables were further explored. Among the tweets with negative tone towards vaccines, 33% display negationist discourses, 29% protest or defiance discourses, 13% discuss the pandemic management measures and yet another 13% of these tweets display a scientific discourse. Research results, vaccination data and practical information are more associated to positive tone towards vaccines, while news relate to neutral tone. The users that received more retweets were media accounts and journalists, followed by government accounts and scientific organizations related to the government. Tweets displaying preventive messages received more retweets in average. The discourses most associated with objective information are the preventive, institutional, medical-scientific, and those about the different measures to manage the pandemic. On the other hand, the most subjective tweets are those with negationist, antinegationist and protest discourses. Although there is a non-negligible proportion of tweets that are directly opposed to vaccines, also an important part of vaccine-negative content takes the form of protest discourses, criticisms towards government actions as well as towards the measures to tackle the pandemic. Therefore, negative discourses during the pandemic included serious vaccine hesitancy cases. Moreover, they were not only fuelled by distrust in science, but also and very importantly they were connected to dissatisfaction towards the public management of the pandemic.

Конструктивные и деструктивные стратегии и тактики протестантского дискурса

The purpose of the research paper is to find out the linguistic means of expressing communicative strategies and tactics of protestant discourse. The communicative strategy is defined as speech behavior focus to achieve speaker's goals and the communicative tactic is determined as a specific way of realizing the chosen strategy. The main strategies of protestant communication such as self-presentation, alienation, manipulation and convention are described. The typical tactics of constructive communication are advice, cooperation and integration and the representative tactics of destructive communication are the tactics of threat, guilt denial, offense, accusation and distancing. The characteristic of communicative strategies and tactics realized in multi-genre nonritual texts of protestant discourse on the material of the Russian language constitutes the scientific novelty of this work. The other types of institutional discourse were the object of previous researches. As a result, the typical range of means for expressing constructive and destructive tactics of communicative impact in protestant discourse are revealed.

Pragmatic aspects of street protests discourse (on the example of protests in Belarus in 2020)

The author analyzes the pragmatic properties of protest discourse, taking into account poster slogans used during mass anti-government protests in Belarus in 2020. The theoretical basis of the research is the concept of discourse, based on four categories: intention, representation, performance and context. The author distinguishes among three types of contexts: cognitive, social and event-related (functional). In accordance with the global function of the protest discourse, three types of constitutive language activities are distinguished: modal-evaluative, modal-disapproving and speech acts of ultimatum. The author analyzes these types of speech acts in detail and provides numerous linguistic examples.

‘Beirut you will rise again’

Abstract This study examines the Linguistic Landscape (LL) of two streets in Beirut (Foch and Weygand) following a series of protests in October 2019 against the Lebanese government. We analyzed signs of protest on those two streets collected in 2020 and compared them to archival data collected back in 2015 prior to the commencement of the protests. We drew upon an expanding LL literature of contestation and resistance and theoretically framed our study in concepts of reclaiming public spaces through protest signs (Martín Rojo, 2014a). Photographic data was collected and analyzed based on a critical discourse historiographical approach (Flowerdew, 2017). Implications with regard to Beirut’s changing identity and conflicting discourses of protest, hope, and censorship competing for space on its streets are presented. The study also presents asynchronous narrative layering as an approach that addresses historical and cultural dimensions and power structures that underlie the narratives that shape protest movements.

“Nothing More Divisive than Politics”: Colorblindness and Antiblackness in NFL Protest Discourse

ABSTRACT In 2016, Colin Kaepernick began demonstrating during the national anthem to protest racial injustice, kicking off the NFL protests. This paper examines a turning point in protest discourse: statements by President Donald Trump in September 2017 that NFL owners should say to (primarily Black) protesting players, “Get that son of a bitch off the field.” In the wake of these remarks, team owner responses that came to their players’ defense emphasized the need for “unity” over “divisiveness,” using tropes of liberal colorblindness to privilege the status quo over directly addressing anti-Black racism in the league and in American life. These responses represent a rhetorical strategy of containment, more effective at suppressing the radical potential of the protests than previous “All lives matter” counterarguments. By framing all political discourse in the NFL as anti-unity, team statements contributed to the containment of Black activism and the perpetuation of racism inside and outside of the league.

Advocacy and civic engagement in protest discourse on Twitter: an examination of Ghana’s #OccupyFlagstaffHouse and #RedFriday campaigns

ABSTRACT This article examines tweets produced by Occupy Ghana during its #OccupyFlagstaffHouse and #RedFriday campaigns. It sheds light on how activist discourses are most persuasively narrativized when they capitalize on local sentiment and language features characteristic of local communities and audiences. The findings reveal three mechanisms employed in the tweets: constructing the Ghanaian government as insensitive, representing Ghanaians as the suffering masses, and exploiting stance for sociopolitical objectives. The article highlights the synergy between social movement theory and social media critical discourse studies.

Ideological Discourse Analysis of Oduduwa Secessionist Twitter Narratives

The Oduduwa secessionist agitators are a group of social actors with the resolution of seceding Nigeria. Meanwhile, in spite of their reminder that Nigeria’s nationhood is still highly contested, there appears to be very little or no linguistic research on discourses produced by this emerging group of activists. Therefore, this study analyses the Oduduwa agitators’ tweets to uncover their prevailing ideologies and highlight their strategies for representing themselves and those they oppose. An analytical and qualitative research design is used to interpret the data selected. From the corpus of 10,000 tweets on Oduduwa secessionist agitators, a few tweets are purposively selected and analysed in this study. With insights from van Dijk’s model of Critical Discourse Analysis, findings reveal that Oduduwa secessionists’ Twitter posts (tweets) are protest discourses, with positive ‘we’ in-group representations and negative ‘they’ out-group constructions imprinted on them. The agitators apply linguistic strategies such as code-switching, foregrounding and hashtags to express their solidarity as well as establish social interaction. The study concludes that Oduduwa secessionist agitators’ tweets are effectively used to describe the identities of the actors, express their arguments and demands, enunciate their activities and goals, and offer information updates to the agitators and supporters.

Activism and Patient Vulnerability: Resistance to Medical Authority and Regulation in Russia

The paper analyzes the opposition and adaptation of Russian patients, independent perinatal specialists, and professional human rights activists to normative regulation of obstetric care, medical authorities, and the practices of the Russian maternity hospital. During my ethnographic research, I have collected personal stories about the clashes of women in labor and their assistants (primarily doulas) with the medical system, stories of collective and individual appeals to authorities, and protest flash mobs. The article presents the history of the transformation of the Russian system of obstetrics and the development of grassroots movements by midwives and doulas. It outlines the features of human rights and perinatal protest discourses and identifies the tactics of legal and vernacular resistance and non-resistance to medical authorities encountered during fieldwork.