Mainstream Media Narratives Research Articles

Citizen journalism revisited: A case study of Kenya’s kibera news network

In an evolving media landscape, the prominence and influence of citizen journalism has grown markedly, challenging historical norms and providing alternative narratives. While traditional journalism has been guided by objectivity, autonomy, and ethics, its representation has been questioned, especially in marginalised communities like Kibera, a neighbourhood in Nairobi, Kenya. Scholars have shed light on the transformational role of journalism and the ensuing need for democratisation in its practice, acknowledging the challenge it faces in representing diverse sections of the population. Using Kibera News Network (KNN) as a case study, this mixed methods study looks at the extent to which citizen journalists, despite lacking formal training, uphold and perhaps even redefine traditional journalistic principles. Utilising a qualitative content analysis of KNN videos and in-depth interviews with citizen journalists in Kibera, findings suggest that these citizen journalists exhibit a solid commitment to ethical reporting, emphasising accuracy and fairness, perhaps due to these journalists being citizens in their community—a community that has been marginalised and misrepresented—and thus experience a heightened sense of belonging. KNN citizen journalists also demonstrate high levels of autonomy and journalism ethics and are unburdened by the political and financial pressures that shape some mainstream media narratives. Taken together, findings suggest that the citizen journalist work of KNN contributes to multiple civic outcomes, including neighbourhood belonging and collective efficacy, which leads to civic participation.

The Mating Psychology of Incels (Involuntary Celibates): Misfortunes, Misperceptions, and Misrepresentations

ABSTRACT Mating represents a suite of fundamental adaptive problems for humans. Yet a community of men, called incels (involuntary celibates), forge their identity around their perceived inability to solve these problems. Many incels engage in misogynistic online hostility, and there are concerns about violence stemming from the community. Despite significant media speculation about the potential mating psychology of incels, this has yet to be formally investigated in the scientific literature. In the first formal investigation of incel mating psychology, we compared a sample (n = 151) of self-identified male incels with non-incel single males (n = 149). Findings revealed that incels have a lower sense of self-perceived mate-value and a greater external locus of control regarding their singlehood. Contrary to mainstream media narratives, incels also reported lower minimum standards for mate preferences than non-incels. Incels (and non-incel single men) significantly overestimated the importance of physical attractiveness and financial prospects to women, and underestimated the importance of intelligence, kindness, and humor. Furthermore, incels underestimated women’s overall minimum mate preference standards. Our findings suggest that incels should be targeted for interventions to challenge cognitive distortions around female mate preferences. Implications for incels’ mental health and misogynistic attitudes are discussed, as well as directions for future research.

Beyond western Afro-pessimism: The African narrative in African and non-western countries

Although some studies have previously indicated that the stereotypical western mainstream media narratives about Africa may be shifting, this Special Issue highlights the stickiness of the stereotypes, and some of the platforms on which they continue to be repeated. Some of these studies further show how African media are also responsible for ongoing circulation of the stereotypes. While the data are discouraging, there are pockets of hope on digital media (including social media), where women and youth are taking back the proverbial pen using storytelling and humour to show that Africa is neither monolithic, nor all doom and gloom. Even through the COVID-19 pandemic, Africans entertained the world with music, dancing and comedy, proving resilience and optimism, against Afro-pessimistic narratives.

State nationalism or popular nationalism? Analysing media coverage of TikTok ban on mainstream Indian TV news channels

It has been argued that BJP - the current ruling party of India - comprises unapologetic hyper nationalists known as Hindu nationalists. It has also been claimed that the BJP government under Prime Minister Narendra Modi has a tight grip over the mainstream TV media and non-conformists are finding it increasingly challenging to express their opinion in the world’s largest democracy. If such concerns are true, then support for the nationalist politics of the ruling dispensation must reflect in the mainstream media narratives. To explore, this study conducted a thematic discourse analysis on the media coverage of the TikTok ban in India post Indo-China border conflict. Results revealed a prevalence of media support for state nationalism as interests of the state were conflated with public interest – in contrast with the normative assumptions of objective journalism. However, the study did not find any evidence of popular nationalism on this occasion.

Post-Colonial Disasters and Narratives of Erasure: Reimagining Testimonies of Toxic Encounter

Mainstream media narratives and the official historiography of the 1984 Bhopal Gas Tragedy have overlooked the testimonies of disaster survivors, culturally discounting the authority of witnessing in both scholarly discourse and public arenas. This has left a space for novelists, as writer-activists, to trace the socio-political, economic and ecological injustices of post-colonial disasters like the Bhopal gas leak. Indra Sinha’s Animal’s People bears witness to such accounts and recreates the night of December 2–3, 1984, through the testimonies of the people surviving the gas disaster. This article identifies Sinha’s narrative technique as ‘eco-testimony’, which strategically revives hitherto undocumented survivor testimonies and their experiences of eco-social exploitation in the post-disaster environment and forges a voice of dissent against the uneven, attritional and necropolitical violence of multinational companies and their chief ally, the neocolonial nation-state.

“I wish people knew that there are other flavors” Reflections on the representation of poly-kink in mainstream media by polyamorous kinksters in the Netherlands

Although studies have remarked upon the increase in representation of kinksters and BDSM practices in mainstream media narratives, community voices indicate that these narratives do not provide an authentic portrayal of their community. This misrepresentation of kinksters results in stigmatization and forces the community to manage its minority stress. This article reflects upon the results from a series of interviews with Dutch poly-kink-identified participants about mainstream representations of their community. The participants agree on several main objections to this representation: mainstream media narratives ignore community norms, while they actively sensationalize and pathologize kink, and insist on stereotypical gender relations. Together, this representation undermines the transgressive potential of poly-kink relations and increases the stigmatization of this community.

Ladange, Adange, Jeetange: The Farmers' Movement and Its Virtual Spaces

The farmers' movement began in November 2020, when more than 300,000 protesters marched towards New Delhi in India in opposition to new agrarian acts introduced by the Indian central government. Organised by over 400 farmers' unions along with other organisations, for the next year, farmers and allied protesters set up bases around New Delhi and sustained the movement leading to its eventual success. We conducted 20 semi-structured interviews with participants from the movement and explored the social organisation, the underlying technical infrastructures, and how collective action was organised. We outline how the social media ecosystem enabled hybrid forms of organisational structures and facilitated coalition-building between diverse groups. Further, the movement created and disseminated alternative media that opposed mainstream media narratives and facilitated community-building. We discuss how designed technologies and spaces can support social movements in the face of powerful antagonistic actors.

The making of Ophir - Bougainville stories and silences: An exploration of the documentary

This article focuses on the making of the award-winning film Ophir in the context of issues relevant to journalism and documentary production. It explores how a partnership of filmmakers, scholars and Bougainvillean community leaders worked to create a documentary that goes beyond bare facts to create deeper meaning. Based on an interview with one of the filmmakers, Olivier Pollet, it discusses issues of archival research, gender, distribution and language. It raises ethical questions about how mining company Rio Tinto used an anthropologist to produce covert corporate intelligence in the 1960s. Through a discussion of the work of independent investigative journalist Antony Loewenstein, it considers how recent Australian aid policy was used to shape public debate about options for Bougainville. It highlights the importance of supporting grassroots storytelling that penetrates distorted mainstream media narratives, especially at a time of shifting geopolitical interests.

Understanding factors and barriers to alternative media development in emerging economies: Learning from the Check Global project

Check Global is a journalism and digital literacy development project (2019–2021) supporting countries and regions affected by conflict or state controls. In such contexts, expectations are set high for alternative journalism to accurately counter mainstream media narratives, controlled as they often are by the state; this article presents factors to be taken into consideration as a starting point for better understanding the challenges involved in developing journalism, e.g., through funded training initiatives. The article draws on interviews with prominent alternative and independent media outlets (some of them Check Global partners) from India, Latin America, Egypt and Lebanon, who therefore have operational experience of these issues. By viewing digital and social media through an anti-determinist lens, we challenge assumptions — especially prevalent following the 2011 Arab uprisings — that ‘open access’ and social media platforms can easily provide solutions to media plurality concerns. We explore factors such as the role of technology in alternative media, but also the main barriers faced by alternative media projects and outlets. This article therefore opens up a more honest discussion about the nature of alternative media projects in such contexts, and the ways in which digital literacy projects such as Check Global could support them.

Why All the Outrage? Viral Media as Corrupt Play Shaping Mainstream Media Narratives

The way we use social media can be viewed through the notion of ‘play’. According to Dutch cultural historian and play theorist Johan Huizinga (1950), play is characterised by fun, freedom, spontaneity, and creativity; while not overtly serious, it can have serious outcomes. Huizinga (1950, 8–10) believed that it was in ‘playing’ that we reveal our true selves and thus form genuine, strong, and binding relationships with others who are also playing. However, if play becomes too serious, no longer fun and takes on notions of overt seriousness then it is, in fact, corrupted. When this occurs play no longer stimulates genuine relationships; rather ‘corrupted play’ becomes divisive (1950, 75). Importantly, for Huizinga, play creates order, but if corrupted, it can stimulate chaos. This paper will analyse how negative viral sports-related commentary, as an example of ‘corrupted play’, has led to an age of chaotic anger and outrage. Crucially, it will illuminate how the rapid fire social media response to ssports-related controversies has impacted the type of news created by mainstream media outlets, the tone of social and traditional media narratives and, ultimately, the decisions made by sporting organisations in times of controversy and crisis. In particular, this paper will focus on the ball tampering scandal that rocked the Australian Test cricket team during their tour of South Africa in 2018. By examining the fallout from the cricketing controversy on social media, it will become evident that the viral response to that controversy fuelled emotive and sensationalist mainstream media narratives and news and even significantly influenced the decisions made by Cricket Australia relating to the penalties handed to the guilty players. Ultimately, the aim of this paper is to highlight how viral media, as an example of corrupted play, has led to an age of sensationalism, anger and outrage which impacts the quality of important discussions, narratives and news.

Imagining a “post-carbon” future? Climate change as represented by media and film industries

This study explores current trends in representing and communicating climate change by media industries. It reviews the current literature on mainstream media narratives of climate change focusing on their naturalization of progress and their techno-optimism (e.g., as regards geoengineering). It provides insight on how the media industry’s commercial agenda is linked to the types of disseminated messages and dominant imaginaries. It compares respective codes inherent in news media and film/fictional representations of climate change on representative examples. It traces the evolution of disaster/dystopian genres that involve climate issues. It discusses the implications from such a comparative analysis in terms of the potential failure to mobilize the public – to first imagine the alternatives and then to act collectively for the sake of the “post-carbon” future.

Tribal radio stations as key community informants and sites of resistance to mainstream media narratives

Abstract Rural US Indigenous communities are disproportionately affected by digital divides, insufficient infrastructures, and health disparities, so that community radio still represents a key medium in the lean mediascapes of these communities. The first US radio stations licensed to American Indian/Alaska Native tribes began broadcasting in 1971, about 50 years after the rise of rural radio in the US, which until then had almost entirely ignored Indigenous news, concerns, and voices. This paper draws on interview data from 2016 fieldwork conducted in Alaska and Arizona with two community radio stations serving the local, mostly Indigenous audience, to highlight how its historical ties to social activism continue to play a role in how tribal radio functions as a medium today. Tribal radio stations value not only traditional journalistic standards, but also advocacy for the community, combating stereotypes, and view themselves as distinct from mainstream and other community media.

Public discourse beyond the mainstream media: Intercultural conflict in socio-political discussion fora

Web 2.0 applications such as virtual online discussion fora have created a new form of public discourse beyond the mainstream media with new formats of public intercultural encounters, where the negotiation of intercultural conflicts is closely intertwined with the highly individualised and affective mutual- and self-construction of complex virtual cultural identities. In these fora, users often position themselves and their opinions in open opposition to broader cultural and social norms and contest mainstream media narratives, thereby also establishing an indirect link between public online and mainstream media discourse. Our study addresses two questions: Firstly, which linguistic strategies do participants use in order to construct themselves and others as members of a minority/majority culture and how do these constructed identities relate to mainstream media content? Secondly, how do participants position themselves vis-à-vis the mainstream media and what stances do they take towards mainstream media news coverage of long-term intercultural ethnic conflicts. To do so, we examine two threads from the public online discussion board UKDebate and one thread by the BBC-run Have your say, which deal with intercultural problems in the UK unfolding between UK-citizens and migrants and refugees from various cultural backgrounds. Our semantic analysis of users’ techniques of (self-)referencing and predication related to discourse topoi shows that participants use similar techniques when criticising mainstream media news-coverage and reception, but develop distinct group-specific patterns in shaping their respective cultural in- and out-groups. Furthermore, the discussions show similarities in the construction of minority groups between postings taking a majority perspective and tabloid news-coverage.

Has the UK Brexit decision increased stress, anxiety and depression in UK Black, Asaian and minority ethnic communities and how would we know?

While there is a longstanding body of research on severe mental health issues such as psychosis and suicide amongst Black, Asian and minority ethnic (BAME) communities, less attention is paid to the wider range of mental health issues for these communities such as depression, anxiety and stress. Often people may try to manage these issues through self-medicating (smoking, alcohol abuse or other substance abuse) or access to non-statutory services (including religious ministry) rather than visiting a GP. In the aftermath of the UK referendum to leave the European Union some have argued that mainstream media narratives have increasingly shifted towards ‘normalizing’ negative rhetoric about immigration. Although there is some evidence that across the UK racist physical assaults and harassment have increased there has been limited exploration of the mental health impact of this rhetoric

The Stories They Tell: Mainstream Media, Pedagogies of Healing, and Critical Media Literacy

Pedagogies of healing and critical media literacy are important, especially in the wake of racial violence when mainstream media work to stigmatize, characterize, and marginalize Black youth by projecting them as dangerous Others. In this article, we offer an overview of how mainstream media reinscribe and reinforce white supremacy, which leads to anti-blackness. Next, we discuss the impact that uncritical consumption of mainstream media narratives of Black people has on media consumers and how Black youth use social media as counter spaces. We then theorize about pedagogies of healing and critical media literacy as tools to encourage Black youth to investigate, dismantle, and rewrite the damaging narratives. We conclude with sample lesson plans and a discussion of how English educators have a responsibility to use our discipline to transform our world and raise awareness of the crisis of racial injustice.

UNVEILING SECRETS: RETHINKING HISTORY THROUGH DOCUMENTARY FILMS

The dominating ideology determines the historiography, as well as the media narrative, created in line with dominating ideology plays an important role in consolidating the historical information. So, also cinema has a function to legitimize the dominating institutions and traditional values and to instill ideology. In this context, documentary, which, rely heavily on the truth as a genre and has the most credibility among its viewers, become an important arena for the execution of these functions. Today as the alternative narratives, that can be produced and distributed extensively with digital technology besides mainstream media narratives, small, personal narratives can be located against the grand, official and historical narratives. Film and video become an effective carrier of memory and acquire historical value as audio and video recording gaine prevalence. Thus, documentaries using these records to contribute to the social memory and make reminding against the official history, have come to an important point about historical issues. Documentaries, with the stories of individuals, so with a narrative from the private to the general, may, bring out important notes about the history, reveal secrets, raise questions about the accepted truths. Besides, the others in confrontation would have chance to hear each other’s voices; testimonies strengthens the hearing; intercultural dialogue increases even it is mediated. Bearing in mind the re-presentation of the reality in the documentary narrative and subjectivity of individual expressions, new comments and information emerged within the framework of testimonies find their places in time in social memory and so may contribute to the different interpretations of the history. Turkish - Armenian relations, with the common history, provides an efficient field of work to analyze the formation and re-formation of historical events in the social memory, the official history and the ‘other’ official history. Therefore, in this paper, documentaries, realized as a result of the works of institutions such as the Armenia Turkey Cinema Platform, which tell the untold stories of decades through individual stories and show way to sides to recognize each other, will be analyzed with their narrative structures and discourses to better understand the potential of documentaries to contribute to the social memory and history, as historical testimonies. Keywords : Memory, testimony, history, documentary film, Turkey, Armenia

Reinscribing the City: Art, Occupation and Citizen Journalism in Hong Kong

As neoliberal restructuring destroys historic precincts in Hong Kong, these spaces' social and living histories take on new meanings for the city's disenfranchised citizenry. In 2006 the impending demolition of Hong Kong's iconic Star Ferry Pier and Queen's Pier inspired a new form of spatial and cultural politics, which spawned unanticipated civic participation in the struggle to own the city. A lengthy cycle of oppositional actions interwove imaginative interventions, occupations, and investigative reportage, creating ‘temporary affective spaces’ around the piers. Contributors to the online citizen journalism site Hong Kong In-Media reframed sentimental mainstream media narratives by connecting urban development to political agency. The grassroots piers movement is significant because it seeded a new social movement in Hong Kong, one which shares resonances with Chinese protest culture and the global Occupy movement. Moreover, the organically constituted social formation of protesters perhaps materialises the philosophical concept of the ‘multitude’. Mientras que la reestructuración neoliberal destruye los precintos históricos en Hong Kong, estos espacios de historias vivas y sociales adquieren un nuevo significado para la ciudadanía privada de derechos. En 2006, la inminente demolición de los muelles icónicos de Hong Kong de Star Ferry Pier y Queen's Pier, inspiró una nueva forma de política espacial y cultural, que dio pie a una participación cívica no anticipada en la lucha de poseer la ciudad. Un largo ciclo de acciones opositoras entretejieron intervenciones y ocupaciones imaginarias y reportajes de investigación, creando ‘espacios afectivos temporales’ alrededor de los muelles. Los contribuyentes al periodismo ciudadano en línea Hong Kong In-Media reformaron las narrativas de los principales medios sentimentales, conectando el desarrollo urbano con la agencia política. El movimiento popular de los muelles es importante, porque sembró un nuevo movimiento social en Hong Kong, que comparte resonancias con la cultura de protesta china y con el movimiento global Occupy. Además, la formación social constituida orgánicamente por manifestantes, tal vez materialice el concepto filosófico de la ‘multitud’. 在香港，新自由主义的重组摧毁了具有历史意义的地区，对于城市的那些被剥夺了选举权的居民，这些空间的社会的和活的历史具有新的意义。2006年，香港的标志性的天星渡轮码头（Star Ferry Pier）和女皇码头（Queen's Pier）即将拆除，引起了一种新形式的空间和文化政治，此种政治产生了没有料到的公民保护他们的城市的斗争。漫长的反对行动让富于想象力的介入、占领、调查报告等结合在一起，围绕码头，创造出“临时性的有影响的空间”（temporary affective spaces）。在线杂志⟪香港在媒体上⟫（Hong Kong In-Media）的供稿人通过把城市开发商与政治代理人的联系起来而重新定位了伤感的主流媒体的叙事。草根的港口运动是十分有意义的，因为它在香港种下了新社会运动的种子，以中华抗议文化的方式，回应全球占领运动。而且，抗议者的生气勃勃的宪政社会的构成也许具体化了“大众”（multitude）的哲学概念。 신자유주의적 재구조화가 홍콩의 역사적 지구를 파괴하면서, 이러한 공간들의 사회적 그리고 살아있는 역사들이 도시의 박탈된 시민들에게 새로운 의미를 지닌다. 2006년 홍콩의 아이콘인 스타 페리 부두와 퀸스 부두의 해체가 새로운 공간정치와 문화정치를 불러 일으켰고, 시를 소유하기 위한 투장에서 기대하지 않은 시민 참여를 촉발시켰다. 오랜 반대 행동은 부두 주변에 ‘일시적인 감정적 공간들’을 만들어 내면서 창의적인 개입, 점거, 탐사 기사를 서로 엮었다. 온라인 시민 저널리즘 사이트인 Hong Kong In-Media에 기고를 한 사람들은 도시 개발과 정치 주체를 연결시켜 감상적인 주류 미디어 내러티브를 재조직했다. 풀뿌리 부두 운동은 홍콩에 새로운 사회운동의 씨를 뿌렸기 때문에 중요하다. 그리고 새로운 사회운동은 중국의 저항 문화와 지구적 차원의 오큐파이 운동과 뜻을 같이 하고 있다. 더우기, 유기적으로 구성된 시위자들의 사회적 구성은 아마도 ‘다중’의 철학적 개념을 현실화한다. Поскольку неолиберальное реструктурирование разрушает исторические окрестности Гонконга, социально - бытовые истории этих мест преобретают новый смысл для лишенного гражданских прав населения города. В 2006 году нависшее над культовым Звездным паромным причалом Гонконга и Пирсом Королевы разрушение, вдохновило новую форму пространственной и культурной политики, которая породила непредвиденное гражданское участие в борьбе за власть над городом. Длительным циклом оппозиционных действий переплетались творческие мероприятия, занятия, и следственные репортажи, создавая «временные аффективные пространства» вокруг причалов. Авторы сайта гражданской журналистики Гонконг-в-СМИ повторно создали мэйнстримные сентиментальные рассказы, соединяя городское развитие с политическими агентствами. Массовое движение в защиту пирсов является существенным, потому, что оно отбирало в Гонконге новые социальные движения, разделявшие резонансы с китайской культурой протеста и глобальным Occupy. Кроме того, органично образованная общественная формация протестующих, возможно, материализует философское понятие "множества".

Editors' Introduction

Editors' Introduction Arthur Versluis and Ann Larabee This issue of JSR introduces a new theme that informs not only these articles, but also many future articles: oppositional cultures. By "oppositional cultures," we refer to radical political and social movements that oppose aspects of mainstream society, to be sure, but that also begin to envision new forms of culture. The groups in this and in our next issue do not, at least on the surface, seem to have much in common, yet a closer look suggests underlying commonalities. Underlying many of these groups, across the political spectrum, is the expectation that if the right conditions were fulfilled, one might then see the more or less spontaneous awakening of a radically new form of culture. We begin this issue with Joanna Taylor's and Martha Lee's article on the Christian Exodus movement and its exponents' millenarian ideas regarding a proposed evangelical Christian transformation of South Carolina, Idaho, and eventually, the United States as a whole. The underlying engine of this envisioned radical transformation of state and federal government is Christian millenarianism and, in particular, the idea that it is possible to imagine an antisecular future for the United States in which particular evangelical social values—anti-abortion, anti–gay rights, and so forth—can be imposed on the rest of society. Various kinds of Christian millenarianism also underlie the subjects of our second article, Steven Woodbridge's study of the British National Party, and of our third article, Julius Bailey's study of media coverage of the Christian [End Page vii] Identity movement. Woodbridge discusses the complex relationships of the British National Party (BNP) with Christianity, since some members identify with a "purer" form of Christianity, while others have historically been quite critical of mainstream forms of Christianity in England. Part of the oppositional culture of the BNP turns on anti-Islamification themes and, therefore, also on questions of personal and national identity. Similar themes are inherent in the Christian Identity movement analyzed by Julius Bailey, but whereas Woodbridge generally accepts prevailing media narratives about the BNP, Bailey calls into question mainstream media narratives about Christian Identity and raises some interesting issues about what a label like "hate group" really means. All three of these articles—though they approach their topics from rather different angles—turn on questions of how white subgroups constitute themselves as oppositional movements, and on how they seek to enact an oppositional culture to replace what they see as a decadent mainstream social narrative. In these cases, the millenarian narrative underpins the hopes of social reconstruction, as adherents imagine a future in which their social vision is enacted so that it not only arrests but also transforms the existing society into one that imposes their perspective on the whole. Not surprisingly, of course, a somewhat similar engine underlies the emergence of the Weather Underground movement out of SDS and the New Left, and informs a particularly quixotic episode in American leftist radical history: the plot (or "plot") to kidnap Henry Kissinger proposed by a Pakistani scholar, Eqbal Ahmad, in 1970 over dinner at a Connecticut farmhouse. Th is episode resulted in the trial of the Harrisburg Eight, and in "Kissinger's Kidnapper," Justin Jackson not only outlines and analyzes the original episode, but also provides a larger sociopolitical and intellectual context for it. In effect, the plot or "plot" to kidnap Kissinger reflects revolutionary aspirations that one also sees in the Weather Underground movement. For Ahmad, with personal experience of Th ird World revolutionary movements, an important revolutionary strategy was to set up popular organizations and institutions that countered and delegitimized the state. The formation of these parallel social and political practices was much more important than any acts of political violence. Our final article in this issue, by Greg Seltzer, focuses on the Situationist International and the phenomenon of Situationism during the late 1960s [End Page viii] and early 1970s, a very different kind of oppositional culture. Whereas the Weather Underground and related revolutionary movements sought to bring down the existing social and political order, the Situationists sought to transform it artistically: for them, art and politics were combined. Effectively, Situationism proposed that, through radical art...

Beyond victimization: the empowerment of ‘foreign brides’ in resisting capitalist globalization

Drawing on the author's direct participation in the empowerment of ‘foreign brides,’ this paper charts the gradual transformation of these highly stigmatized marriage immigrants from isolated and suppressed individuals to active participants in a growing immigrant movement in Taiwan. The ‘double‐bind structure’ prevalent in mainstream media narratives has constructed ‘foreign brides’ as either ‘passive victims’ or ‘materialist blood suckers,’ two logically contrasted stereotypes that jointly construct ‘foreign brides’ as an inferior other. While sympathetic with ‘foreign brides,’ most feminist discourse also portrays them as passive victims. This paper highlights the agency of ‘foreign brides,’ who strive for better lives via transnational marriages and, more importantly, have transformed themselves first from personal subject to communal subject and then to historical subject. This process of subjectivation is the result of active grassroots empowerment, which has provided the impetus for the building of a social movement. 摘要:：从作者多年涉入培力「外籍新娘」的经验出发， 本文分析在台湾被高度污名化的婚姻移民逐步突破孤立处境， 进而积极投入新移民运动的过程。 普遍存在于主流媒体叙事的「进退维谷结构」将外籍新娘建构为「无可奈何的受害者」和「唯利是图的吸血鬼」—两者看似矛盾， 实为统一地， 将外籍新娘建构为「低劣他者」。 许多女性主义者虽然同情外籍新娘， 但仍视其为无助的受害者。 本文强调外籍新娘的能动性， 指出她们不仅透过跨国婚姻追寻更好的未来， 更重要的是， 已从个人主体转化为社群主体， 甚至成为历史主体; ；而这主体化的过程是多年草根培力， 从而打造社会运动的结果。

The Transmission of Political Critique after 9/11: “A New Form of Desperation”?

The Transmission of Political Critique after 9/11: “A New Form of Desperation”?