Global Publics Research Articles

Digital dissent: How Indonesian and Filipino journalists converge with virtual communities to face state repression

Online protest movements have facilitated researchers to access real-time data of microblogging, user metadata associated with accounts, message content, and enabled insights into complex links between social media use and protest movements. Employing emerging computational techniques and conventional qualitative approaches, this study examines the effectiveness of online protest movements in Indonesia and the Philippines. Simultaneously deployed, these protests were organized by journalist groups against repressive state actions that muzzled the press in these countries. The study compares the strategies of the two movements to illustrate the success factors in social media usage that bolstered the participation of the national and global publics, and marshalled international support.

The Varieties of Atheism: Connecting Religion and Its Critics ed. by David Newheiser, and; Global Sceptical Publics: From Non-religious Print Media to "Digital Atheism." ed. by Jacob Copeman and Mascha Schulz (review)

The Varieties of Atheism: Connecting Religion and Its Critics ed. by David Newheiser, and; Global Sceptical Publics: From Non-religious Print Media to "Digital Atheism." ed. by Jacob Copeman and Mascha Schulz (review)

How to constitute global citizens' forums: Key selection principles

AbstractOnce imagined as a theoretical possibility, global citizen deliberation is now beginning to appear in the practice of governance. How should global citizens' forums be constituted? A largely unexamined consensus on random selection as the ideal method to locate citizen participants has fractured as its limitations become more apparent. We undertake a systematic comparative examination of random selection and its alternatives, emphasizing, respectively, demographic diversity, discursive diversity, developmental participation, and affectedness. These alternatives are evaluated in terms of how well they promote inclusive and high‐quality deliberation within the forum; how well they facilitate broader functions such as recommending policy decisions, providing information to policy makers on the distribution of informed global opinion, enhancing macro‐level deliberation, and strengthening global discourses and publics; and how well they secure the perceived legitimacy of a forum. We show how different sorts of recruitment and representation might be combined to good effect, in the context of a proposal for a global citizens' assembly on genome editing.

Humanitarian protection activities and the safety of strangers in the DRC, Syria and South Sudan

AbstractMany contemporary humanitarian organisations derive their legitimacy from their claims to protect civilians. Yet, what these organisations do in its name includes a diverse and contested range of activities that are often far from what global publics and affected populations understand as constituting protection. As others have argued, this detracts from honest discussions about when and how humanitarians are well placed to keep civilians safe from violence and threats. To begin to address this gap, we review what three well‐known humanitarian organisations publicly say they have done to protect strangers across three violent protracted crises. We capture how they portray their activities, the logics they attribute to them and what is left unsaid. Our findings suggest that humanitarians must, once again, collaborate over a shared protection framework that better signals what others can expect from them. We also identify an emerging convergence around the notion that peer‐to‐peer denunciations, conflict resolution, supporting self‐protection and community protection strategies and improving state‐society relations can be important forms of protection activity. There is, therefore, a need for a public stocktake over what can, cannot, should and should not be done to protect civilians in such contexts.

Complicating Legacies

In 2020 the Albanian Cinema Project’s restoration of Tomka Dhe Shoket e Tij (Tomka and His Friends, 1977) premiered on Turner Classic Movies in their “Women Make Film” series. This event marked the culmination of my work to bring the films of Albania’s first female film director, Xhanfise Keko, into global distribution. A key aim for these projects was to begin to open up a space for Albanians at home and in the diaspora to address the silences that persisted around their years under an extreme, isolationist dictatorship. This article maps the project of re-education that I embarked on as an archivist, curator, and media historian. Now, with ACP shuttered and the benefit of hindsight, I reflect on the work of restoring and re-releasing Albanian films as a project of re-programming (double entendre intended) Albanian socialist-realist cinema for contemporary, global publics.

In the Eyes of the Beholders: The Legitimacy of Global Governance Institutions under Multipolarity

Abstract Multipolarity has ambiguous implications for the legitimacy of global governance institutions (GGIs). Rising powers’ capacity to contest established powers’ agendas prima facie increases the GGIs’ legitimacy by reducing power asymmetries between the North and South. However, according to some, the rise of new powers has contributed to the GGIs’ poor performance and inadequate representativeness. We investigate how global publics evaluate the legitimacy of two GGIs—the World Trade Organization (WTO) and the Group of Twenty (G20)—and multipolarity’s role in those evaluations. Drawing on an original dataset of 3,584 newspaper articles sampled from rising and established powers, mid-ranking developing, and least developed countries between 2008 and 2019, our qualitative content analysis found an intensification of legitimacy deficits over time. Regularly accredited to a new global power configuration, the inability to find consensus severely harmed both institutions’ legitimacy. We also see the resilience of GGIs’ legitimacy in the face of gridlocks and institutional fragmentation. Replacing inclusive multilateral agreements with bilateral or inter-regional ones was widely seen as an undesired outcome of major power tensions. Finally, our data revealed a deep-seated mistrust of great power politics and nostalgia for meaningful multilateral institutions as a potential antidote.

Talking About Gene Drive in Uganda: The Need for Science Communication to Underpin Engagement.

Uganda may host the world's first field trials of gene drive mosquitoes for malaria control. Global North discourses pre-suppose African publics have access to information about gene drive and are ready to make decisions about its governance. We explore assumptions about the availability of this information in Uganda. We find a paucity of information available combined with a strong desire for information from lay publics. We discuss these findings in the context of Ugandan information infrastructures and political sensitivities to genetic technologies. If Ugandans are to decide about gene drive, they need independent information about the science to underpin engagement.

Public perceptions and support of climate intervention technologies across the Global North and Global South

Novel, potentially radical climate intervention technologies like carbon dioxide removal and solar geoengineering are attracting attention as the adverse impacts of climate change are increasingly felt. The ability of publics, particularly in the Global South, to participate in discussions about research, policy, and deployment is restricted amidst a lack of familiarity and engagement. Drawing on a large-scale, cross-country exercise of nationally representative surveys (N = 30,284) in 30 countries and 19 languages, this article establishes the first global baseline of public perceptions of climate-intervention technologies. Here, we show that Global South publics are significantly more favorable about potential benefits and express greater support for climate-intervention technologies. The younger age and level of climate urgency and vulnerability of these publics emerge as key explanatory variables, particularly for solar geoengineering. Conversely, Global South publics express greater concern that climate-intervention technologies could undermine climate-mitigation efforts, and that solar geoengineering could promote an unequal distribution of risks between poor and rich countries.

Shaping Global Public Spheres Through International Law: An Investigation Into International Climate Change Law

<p>This article makes three arguments to contribute to this thematic issue’s intention of examining the role of public spheres in global politics. To begin with, it attempts to develop the concept of “strong” public spheres to include plenary organs of international institutions. It believes in the potential of this concept as a heuristic fiction. The study then examines the role of international law in shaping global public spheres and their role in global politics. International law’s characteristics have contributed to the current incomplete manifestations of global publics. Not only has international law constructed the institutional frameworks of the “strong” public sphere within international institutions, but it has also integrated civil society actors into the deliberative processes of will formation of these institutions. Finally, this research turns to international climate change law as a case study. The institutional structures created by international climate change law have not only created one “strong” public sphere in the form of the conference of the parties but rely on a second “strong” global public, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which aims to institutionalise the global climate science community without abandoning an intergovernmental structure. What is more, the paradigm shift accompanying the Paris Agreement has made global climate change governance increasingly reliant on an active transnational global public sphere.</p>

Social media regulation, third-person effect, and public views: A comparative study of the United States, the United Kingdom, South Korea, and Mexico

Given the prevalence of misinformation on social media and accompanying negative externalities, platform regulation has become a highly contested public issue globally. This study investigated (a) what global publics think about platform regulation and (b) the psychological mechanisms underlying such opinions through the lens of the third-person effect. Four national surveys, conducted in the United States, the United Kingdom, South Korea, and Mexico in April–September 2021, revealed that both presumed media influence on self and others play important but different roles in predicting support for two distinctive forms of platform regulation (i.e. government regulation of social media platforms versus content moderation by social media platforms). Self-efficacy (self-perceived ability to spot misinformation) and other-efficacy (perception of others’ ability to spot misinformation) were identified as two crucial antecedents of third-person perception. There were also nuanced but noteworthy differences in public attitudes toward platform regulations across the four countries studied.

The political work of food delivery: consumer co-operative systems and women’s labor in “relationless” Japan

ABSTRACT In recent history, the sudden visibility of food delivery services has alerted global publics to the labor asymmetries and the transformative potential of food transport in societies upended by change. Responding to these developments, this essay offers an ethnographic account of the gendered political economy of food distribution at the Green Coop Consumers Cooperative. A forerunner of the Japanese food movement, Green Coop and its delivery routes have become a platform for women workers to witness and respond to the societal effects of the country’s neoliberal restructuring. While similar organizations in other cultural contexts have struggled to move beyond exclusionary practices, women and mothers at this Fukuoka-based co-op foster social connection, accountability, and watchfulness in ways that surpass the capabilities of kin and state. Where scholarship has taken interest in the connective tissues between the spheres of production and consumption, this essay highlights and politicizes the node of distribution. Often cast as purely technical, the work of delivery is a prism through which to understand how demographic reforms bear on the food system, and how it has in turn become a site for citizens’ response.

Performance and the Transnational Public Sphere in Rwanda: An Ethnographic Encounter with Silence

This article considers the relationship between performance and the transnational public sphere, understood as a space in which a range of international actors come together to discuss, debate and advance ideas on topics which are mutually important. It suggests that performance in Rwanda has an important role in terms of reflecting, and facilitating, emerging conversations around the legacies of violence. As evidenced by the Ubumuntu Arts Festival, held annually in Kigali, it is not only at the national level that these conversations are significant. Global publics, including artists, audiences and researchers are all travelling to Rwanda to participate in events which have broader, international, significance.

Post-Humanitarianism: The Lifestyle Solidarity of the 21st Century

Liking the Instagram post of a humanitarian celebrity, e-shopping from a charity shop or signing an online petition on Black Lives Matter have become popular forms of digital activism. While such activism, what I call post-humanitarian solidarity, has helped popularize important causes worldwide, in this paper, I argue for the need of a critical pedagogy that also alerts us to the limitations of this form of activism. It is, in particular, the synergy of corporate humanitarianism with the entertainment industry and platform capitalism that such critical pedagogy should focus on, raising questions about the political and ethical implications of post-humanitarian solidarity and the kinds of global publics it gives rise to.

Russian Foreign Policy and Public Diplomacy: Meeting 21st Century Challenges

Foreign policy is about setting the policy aims and goals of a given country in the competitive environment of international affairs. When analyzing it, one should pay attention to many factors, namely, economic and energy potential, military-technical means, the presence of trade and economic partners, political weight and state image in the international arena, state membership in various international organizations. You can also highlight a number of tools that also play a large role in the foreign policy of states. As a specific instrument of foreign policy, public diplomacy concerns the regulation and management of international relations with various global publics in order to realise those foreign policy aims and goals. Specifically, public diplomacy intends to create a positive reputation and brand of the country, simultaneously increasing the countrys soft power potential, which is based on external and internal sources. This article intends to track and analyse the challenges and the role played by Russian public diplomacy in terms of meeting the challenges of the countrys foreign policy agenda in the 21st century. These challenges have been in a state of transformation as the nature of the environment of international relations changed. As a result, Russian public diplomacy has needed to evolve along with the changes at the global level and consequently the shifting demands enshrined in the foreign policy concepts. There are several identified distinct political policy periods noted: attempts to integrate into the Western-led global order; cooling relations with the United States dominated global order; and preparing for multi-polar and a post-Western global order.

Russian Strategic Narratives on R2P in the ‘Near Abroad’

AbstractThis article assesses Russian strategic narratives towards its interventions in Georgia (2008) and Ukraine (2014–16) based on a new database of 50 statements posted on the websites of the Russian Mission to the United Nations and the President of Russia homepage. By looking more broadly at Russian strategic narratives aimed at persuading other global actors and publics abroad and at home, this article identifies how Russia attempted to develop a story that could win global acceptance. This analysis shows that contrary to traditional Russian emphasis on sovereign responsibility and non-intervention, Russia supported claims for self-determination by separatist groups in Georgia and Ukraine. Russia used deception and disinformation in its strategic narratives as it mis-characterized these conflicts using Responsibility to Protect (R2P) language, yet mostly justified its own interventions through references to other sources of international law. Russian strategic narratives focused on delegitimizing the perceived opponents, making the case for the appropriateness of its own actions, and projecting what it proposed as the proper solution to the conflicts. It largely avoided making any references to its own involvement in the Donbas at all. Additionally, Russia’s focus on the protection of co-ethnics and Russian-speakers is reminiscent of interventions in the pre-R2P era.

Do Global Publics View Human Rights Organizations as Handmaidens of the United States?

Do Global Publics View Human Rights Organizations as Handmaidens of the United States?

MEDIATED DEATH AND DIGITAL MARTYRDOM: ETHICAL CONSIDERATIONS FOR VISUAL SOCIAL MEDIA RESEARCHERS

The digital mediation of visual content depicting death and martyrdom as a trope of resistance and contestation is increasingly employed within social media platforms by transnational activist cultures and popular social movements. I refer to this phenomenon as ‘digital martyrdom’. The emergence of digital martyrdom, and its memetic circulation within visual social media platforms, points to the materialisation of a new, affective and ritualised protest dynamic. Through which posthumous visuals become diffused, reappropriated and politicised within global publics. This raises new ethical implications and moral dilemmas for digital and visual social media researchers, and requires more reflexive and critical thought beyond established ethical considerations. Necessarily, this paper raises ethical questions and provocations for digital and visual social media researchers in relation to the design, collection, presentation and publishing of academic work in the context of death and posthumous imagery online. The questions presented in this paper have emerged out of a systematic study of this phenomenon, with a particular focus on case studies drawn from the Middle East, the United States and Europe. This paper argues that digital and visual social media research in this field merits specific ethical considerations and amplified scholarly deliberation. This is of particular importance for visual social media research that extends beyond a Western context and considers the cross-cultural, transnational dimensions of digital activism.

Conceptualizing a distributed, multi-scalar global public sphere through activist communication practices in the World Social Forum

This article contributes to debate about how to conceptualize the global public sphere. Drawing on media practice theory and ethnographic research on media activism in the World Social Forum, it shows how ‘global publics’ can be constituted through a diverse range of activist communication practices that complicate both conventional hierarchies of scale and contemporary theorizations of publics as personalized networks. It develops an understanding of the global public sphere as an emergent formation made up of multiple, interlinked publics at different scales and emphasizes the significance of collective communication spaces for actors at the margins of the global network society.

Corroding consensus-building: how self-centered public diplomacy is damaging diplomacy and what can be done about it

Public diplomacy (PD) is an activity which has become central to the analysis of modern diplomacy. Yet while there are common definitions of PD widely used internationally, practice between states has come to diverge more and more. There is disagreement in the academic literature about what should be included in PD activities, the actors, and boundaries. But there is little analysis of the effects of PD on mainstream diplomacy. This paper, written by a diplomat and sometime practitioner of PD, argues that PD is losing its connection with wider diplomacy which is based on reciprocity and consensus-building. The digital revolution has enabled PD self-promotion which diminishes the necessity for diplomatic partnering. Global rivalries are played out daily for global publics with little room for quiet reflection and compromise. Such self-centered PD has immersed itself in the confusing and divisive nature of online engagement. While the Internet has brought massive benefits and opportunities to both diplomacy and PD, the consensus-building part of true diplomatic engagement is receding. The activities of ISIS and Russia were just the first major collective challenges to diplomacy through new PD techniques. In the past, diplomacy has responded to crises and conflicts and rebuilt its options. Now PD’s chaotic and troubling evolution needs a new response. This should include partners in the non-state sector and the owners of technology platforms. The article takes a practitioner’s perspective and proposes a forum where state and non-state experts could discuss appropriate collective responses by diplomacy so it can reassert options available for consensus-building.

Towards an International Political Ergonomics

This article introduces International Political Ergonomics. International Political Ergonomics is a novel research programme focused on achieving political change through the ergonomic (re)design of world politics. The approach is grounded on a shift across International Relations which recognizes that its epistemic (i.e. knowledge-producing) core is often inadequate to achieve change. Insights from the practice turn and behaviouralist International Relations, as well as from philosophy, sociology and neuroscience, demonstrate that much international behaviour is driven by the ‘unconscious’ or ‘non-reflexive’ re-articulation of repertoires of actions even where the pathologies of this process are known. This implies that knowledge production and dissemination (i.e. to policymakers, global publics) is often unable to effect influence over social practices. What is thus required is a non-epistemic means of producing world political change. International Political Ergonomics is a research programme that takes up this task. It does so by describing how small material interventions into world politics can radically shift individual behaviours by encouraging greater rationality, reflexivity and deliberation. After laying out the theoretical basis for this claim, the article demonstrates it by detailing the application of International Political Ergonomics to violence-prevention efforts. The article concludes by reflecting on the radical implications that International Political Ergonomics has for the vocation of International Relations.