Public Persona Research Articles

Social media politics: Analysis of political elite image construction in multiple country elections

This article examines how political leaders use social media to shape their image during elections. Social media and digital platforms have changed political communication, allowing politicians to craft their image carefully. Social media has changed politics, yet misinformation and public opinion manipulation are concerns. Politicians' online avatars may misrepresent their goals and policies, overshadowing public policy discussions. This study uses a comprehensive analysis of the literature from the Scopus database to analyze how political elites shape their social media image during elections in different nations. This research examines how political leaders use social media to shape their public persona during election campaigns in several countries. The results will reveal political elites' social media image-building strategies during elections, including personalized methods, visual cues' impact on engagement, and preferred platforms for visual communication. This extensive study of the long-term consequences of visual communication tactics shows that politicians’ use of social media to convey stories has a lasting impact on public perception and engagement in politics.

A cognitive stylistic of Taylor Swift’s song 'I can do it with a broken heart'

This study analyzes the lyrics of Taylor Swift's song 'I Can Do It With A Broken Heart' to explore how she conveys themes of resilience and emotional turmoil. The research addresses the gap in understanding the specific mechanisms through which contemporary music reflects complex emotional states. Utilizing qualitative text analysis, the study examines the song's interpersonal dynamics, framing, and metaphors. Findings reveal a tension between the protagonist's public persona and private pain, highlighted through vivid metaphors and imagery that depict resilience despite adversity. This analysis contributes to the broader discourse on music as a form of emotional expression, emphasizing its societal implications.

Fighting till his Final Breath: Richard Demarco as a Public Intellectual

Richard Demarco has long been a prominent figure in the Scottish cultural sphere. He has been a significant cultural progenitor, raising the profile of the visual arts within Scotland. In his long cultural life he has often come into conflict with Scotland’s cultural ‘officialdom’ and is a strident critic of the present-day Edinburgh Festival and Fringe. This article examines Demarco the public intellectual, often overshadowed by Demarco the provocative, hyperbolic showman. It identifies and contextualises Demarco’s abiding themes, locating them in a belief that art has a unique ability to heal personal and societal wounds. It goes on to examine whether his ‘declinist’ dismissal of much contemporary culture stems from an elitist disdain and whether his cultural vision is nostalgic and narrow. The article also examines Demarco’s critiques of both commercialism and state-supported cultural institutions. It argues that underneath the public persona there lies a unique and challenging cultural vision; one which will survive after his rich cultural life ends.

Black roses: The womanist partnership of Frances Reynolds Keyser and Mary McLeod Bethune

Through recovered biographies and unpublished archival papers, I examine the connection of two Black clubwomen, Frances Reynolds Keyser and Mary McLeod Bethune, who shared a modest ceremony that bonded them for life. I argue that their private relationship was deeper than they could credibly portray through their public image at the time, bound as they were by the strictures of respectability politics. Their cultivation of respectability was an irreplaceable asset in, and indeed a necessity of their work, but it also demanded the presentation of normative heterosexuality. In addition, I conducted a creative investigation of the archives to draw attention to their everyday lives and experiences in Daytona. Many Black women activists’ experiences do not conform to the white male-centric narrative ethos present and the assumption of heterosexuality is a dominant yet wholly inaccurate narrative on Black club women’s legacies and activism. Biographical recoveries can change, complicate, and enhance our understanding of these women’s relationships regarding their well-curated public personas as clubwomen. This study aims to provide an intellectual history of Black women through the club movement by putting biographical data front and center, especially by examining their own words.

Surviving Parish Ministry: A Rural Vicar’s Reflections on Creative Ways to Cope with the Pressure of the Role

ABSTRACT This article describes how somewhat unusual extra-parochial activities – running a therapeutic programme for survivors of child abuse and performing stand-up comedy – have enhanced the ministry and wellness of a rural priest. Two factors are suggested: these provide an outlet for stress, and they sharpen some key skills and qualities essential to parish ministry. The author focusses on two research themes – marginality and persona – and explores how they play out in his therapeutic work and the comedy world. The life-changing results that occur through the therapeutic programme mitigate ministry marginality, as does meaningful engagement through stand-up comedy with people who would never come to church. Further, he contends that his life-long involvement with therapeutic practice means that there is less distance between his public persona and his true personality and thus less existential tension, a factor that can significantly contribute to break-down.

Кореспонденція між князем Василем-Костянтином Острозьким та Криштофом Радзивіллом як джерело

The article analyzes the correspondence of Kyiv voivode V.- K. Ostrozkyi to his son-in-law, an influential Lithuanian politician Kryštof Radziwill. This is almost the only relatively complete complex of the prince's correspondence in Ostroh, which, given the trusting relationship between both participants of the correspondence, allows us to reconstruct his inner world. As one might suspect, he significantly contradicted Ostroh's public persona. For the prince, the correct ("old") "world" remained in the past, in the times before the Union of Lublin from the year 1569. Innovations were perceived by Vasyl-Kostiantyn as a challenge to this world, which violated its traditional foundations and consisted of an attack on regionalism, a reduction in the political role of princes, and attempts to change the confessional picture of the newly created state. The prince believed that the policy of the Rzeczpospolita's leadership toward the Moscow state was ill-conceived. Ostrozkyi argued that constant wars with the eastern neighbor reduced the overall potential of Christian civilization in its confrontation with Islamic civilization, especially with the country which at that time embodied its offensive in Europe, the Ottoman Empire. Ostrozkyi appealed to Radziwill with the expectation of finding support in the confrontation with Jan Zajmoyskyi, an extremely influential crown chancellor and hetman in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. It is no coincidence that the Kyiv voivode focused on issues that might have been of interest to the Lithuanian magnate. In particular, these interests included: the attempts of the crown elite, led by J. Zamoyskyi to ignore the interests of the Lithuanian and Ruthenian nobility, unwillingness to pay due attention to defense issues, insufficient allocation of funds for the repair and construction of castle fortifications. Gradually, the correspondence reflects the problem of interfaith confrontation, which was the result of the growth of counter-reformation processes from the beginning of Sigismund III's rule in the Polish-Lithuanian state. Their main emphasis in Europe was on Protestantism (K. Radziwill represented Calvinism), but in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, as a result of the Union of Brest in 1596, the Counter-Reformation also acquired anti-Orthodox content. In general, the correspondence of Prince V.-K. Ostrozkyi is a unique source that allows us to reconstruct the main features of the identity of an influential princely stratum, which was significantly influenced by the transformation processes in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth in the second half of the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries.

Unimaginable imagination and political commitment. A survey of the introduction and presence of the literature of the Latin American boom in Sweden in 1960–1990

This study investigates the publication and reception of the Latin American boom literature in Sweden from 1960 to 1990, focusing on Julio Cortázar, Carlos Fuentes, Gabriel García Márquez and Mario Vargas Llosa. It analyses the extent of Swedish translations of their works and the type and amount of attention they received in the Swedish press. Using a bibliometric approach for the translations, and analysing press material on the authors from the evening papers Aftonbladet and Expressen, the study found that 258 of the 532 works translated from Spanish to Swedish during the investigated period were Latin American, with 52 (20%) by the feautured authors. The press material reveals that García Márquez was the most covered, especially around his 1982 Nobel Prize, and the assessment of his literature and public persona was generally positive. Fuentes received significant attention in the 1980s and was also favourably regarded. Vargas Llosa was introduced early on to the Swedish readership, but his literary work and political engagement elicited mixed reactions. Cortázar received the least press coverage, correlating with fewer translations and less public attention.

The Rise of Poor Richard: Franklinian Fictionality, Republican Circumspection

This essay reconsiders Benjamin Franklin’s pre-Revolutionary writings and his later Autobiography (1771–90) within the historical frame of the rise of fictionality, as charted by Catherine Gallagher and others. Before the novel took off in America, fictionality developed in shorter, nominally non-fictional forms. In this article, Franklin’s essays, letters, and almanacs are read for their peculiar proto-fictional elements. More than simply being examples of a new brand of American humour or an emergent individualist ethos, Franklin’s wit and its absorption into a metafictional style of writing and publishing depended on readers’ assuming positions of “ironic assent,” or what this essay calls, in the context of eighteenth-century American politics and law, “republican circumspection.” This phrase names an epistemic attunement whereby subjects suspend the ontological security of the self for an empty screen or void onto which they can project character representations that straddle the line between private and public personae.

Navigating the Audience: Trump’s Persona Management Processes Across Political Contexts

Speakers can project different personae when engaging in stylistic practices, which can be characterised by a consistent or variable use of linguistic features. This becomes relevant when addressing how politicians attempt to position themselves in communicative interactions through their use of language. The present study takes a third wave approach to the analysis of Donald Trump’s sociolinguistic behaviour across various speech events by focusing on the indexical mutability of PRICE/PRIZE and R-Dropping. The results evidence intra-speaker variation in Trump’s populist speech style used for interactional and political purposes in that he alters his use of + mainstream and non-mainstream forms as he operates across speech events. Thus, Trump exhibits a different sociolinguistic performance across different contexts, where he also takes a different approach towards the management and projection of his public persona, and therefore, transmits different social meanings through his language use. The results further suggest that the context, format and audience of the political event and the social meanings indexed by the selected linguistic features are what condition Trump’s sociolinguistic behaviour. We conclude that Trump’s speech style is characterised by the meaningful choices he makes about the linguistic resource to be used in a specific context and its corresponding social meaning.

Ludic Piety and the Limits of Modesty

Abstract Islamic modesty as a cluster of gendered virtues is typically synonymous with ‘modest’ modes of body-concealing attire and comportment. This article argues, however, that the meaning of ‘modesty’ as currently conceptualised to illuminate the contours of corporeal and sartorial piety is wholly inadequate in its inability to evaluate the more ambivalent expressions of modesty beyond dress as a signal of inner virtue. Although the attention on modest or pious fashion as embraced by women the world over has been as a site for redefining the boundaries of moral and public participation, it does not go far enough in reconfiguring the debates on aesthetics and ethics of ambivalence, ambiguity, and contradiction in Muslim society. Based on a textual reading of the public persona of the Malaysian celebrity entrepreneur Dato Vida and interviews with other Malay-Muslim female entrepreneurs of her contemporary, I posit that the elasticity of modesty relates to a similarly flexible, expansive, and explorative conceptualisation of Islam. Related to this conceptualisation, Dato Vida embodies what I call ludic piety in her presentation and performance of gendered pious excesses within the elastic bounds of modesty.

The Tarot’s Tower in Agnès Varda’s Cléo de 5 à 7

ABSTRACT Agnès Varda’s Cléo de 5 à 7/Cléo from 5 to 7 begins with a divination session that launches a process by which the protagonist will shed her public persona in favour of an inner form of self-awareness. Cards uncover past influences, present situations and a surprising encounter, until the dramatic reveal of the Tower card implicates the emotional and physical transformation of Cléo, a fearful young woman seeking reassurance in a time of health crisis. Thus far, critical study has focused on the Tarot session as Varda’s exposition of background, plot and tropes; however, scholars have yet to analyse the divination session as a prompt for Cléo’s emerging will and effort in the world. This article proposes the Tarot de Marseille’s maison dieu/Tower card as a key instigator to ‘self-discovery and self-exploration’. What follows first analyses the beginning scene in which the Tower card is pulled, then exposes the card’s impact throughout the film.

From the womb to the world: a study of pregnancy narratives by celebrity moms in India

This article examines how celebrity moms in India are self-constructing their public persona through their pregnancy narratives. As a form of personal narrative, pregnancy narratives provide important insights into the...

Why Professional Branding: What difference will it make for me (as Gen Z)?

This article discusses professional branding that is rooted in marketing aimed at helping professionals differentiate themselves from others through personal branding to project their uniqueness and related values. It streamlines the process behind creating a robust profile that enhances simple elements of a resume by providing distinctive information to corporations or target markets. Furthermore, the article highlights the two broad theoretical underpinnings of personal branding: marketing-based and self-presentation behaviors. Marketing-based definitions frame the individual as a product to be marketed, while self-presentation-based definitions emphasize the formation of a person's public persona through strategic relationship management. Additionally, the article portrays personal branding as a defined set of individual characteristics, attributes, values, and beliefs crafted into a narrative and imagery that establishes a competitive advantage by influencing the perceptions of a targeted audience. It concludes that professional branding is an effective personal tool for individual differentiation and advancement in a highly globalized employment environment, particularly for Gen Z individuals with Arab cultural backgrounds in STEAM professional fields.

Alchemical rhetoric: the presences and absences of the Jackling-Gemmell Report (1899) in the archives of the Anthropocene

ABSTRACT This article rhetorically investigates a missing mining report known as the Jackling-Gemmell Report. Supposedly published in September 1899, this report was the first to scientifically rationalize porphyry, or open-pit, mining methods. Based on my analysis of thousands of archival records at Stanford University’s Daniel Jackling Collection, I argue that this textual absence is sutured by the rhetorical presence of mythopoeia wherein Daniel Jackling has become mythologized as the alchemist that transformed useless rock (i.e., mountains) into pure copper for modern technology. In my analysis of relevant books, letters, and reports, I complicate the textual agency of this alleged report and show how Jackling himself created a powerful public persona as a prophetic hero that predicted the commercial success of porphyry mining. I offer the concept alchemical rhetoric to emphasize how rhetors and rhetoricians create different meanings, identities, and realities from rhetorical resources within an extractive worldview.

The problem of toleration: Tacitus, Foucault and governmentality

ABSTRACT This article proposes a novel interpretation of Montaigne’s and Bayle’s comments on Tacitus. My contention is that their Tacitism is a Foucauldian discourse on toleration. Toleration is an example of governmentality, a strategy to govern a population, not a genuine call for religious diversity. This novel reading applies to Michel de Montaigne’s Essays and Pierre Bayle’s Various Thoughts on the Occasion of a Comet and his Historical and Critical Dictionary. Montaigne’s essay On the Useful and the Honourable, he shows that there is a difference between his public and private persona. The author discusses ideas of toleration in a Tacitist style. This happens in his essay Something Lacking in Our Civil Administrations, where the author laments the death of Sebastian Castalio and, indirectly, he supports his commitment to religious pluralism. As I will show, Montaigne embraces a Gallican belief system, which is more conciliatory Bayle a century later, discusses the same issues. In his Various Thoughts, he makes a case for toleration as a tool to manage a population. Ultimately, it will be clear how this plea for toleration is not a product of the Enlightenment, but it is rather a discourse to achieve societal compliance.

Unveiling Public Perception and Interpretation of China’s National Self-Image: Analyzing Chinese Online Commentary Data

This research study aims to address the oversight in previous studies that focused on constructing China’s image through the media without investigating how audiences perceive and interpret that depiction. This study aims to investigate how Chinese internet users perceive China’s self-image to understand Chinese citizens’ attitudes and reactions to political propaganda circulated by Chinese authorities online more effectively. To achieve this, we have chosen “This is China,” an online political program that presents China’s self-image. A total of 60,648 comments were collected and analyzed. For the analysis, T-LDA, Sentiment Analysis, and Semantic Network Analysis were employed. The study reveals six significant factors: Real-Life Stress, Patriotic Sentiment, Rational Emotion, Program Style, Presenter’s Public Persona, and Ironic Remarks, all of which shape the public’s perception of China’s image. Specifically, the study finds that Patriotism and Program Style have a positive influence on the audience’s perception, while the other factors hinder a favorable interpretation of the nation’s image.

Jung Personality Complexes: Evidence from Mahabharata Characters

Purpose: The research paper is an interesting blend of social science and mythology. The researchers explain how Jung personality complexes to Professional & Psychology students with the help of characters from Mahabharata. As the personality grows person develops some complex in their personality and which guides person’s behavior and aspirations in life. Each individual has different personalities and different type of complexes in them with different level of intensity. Thus, the outcome of the research helps individual personalities to discover them as well as to understand basic individual personality complexes. Objectives: The researchers have set the following primary objective and the current study investigates 1 broad research question: To interpret characters from Mahabharata to explain Jung personality complexes. Design/Methodology/Approach: The study is based on both secondary & primary evidence. Hypotheses are stated for the various variables selected and analyzed to prove or disprove the same without any errors. Findings/Result: There were correlations between Jung personality complexes & from Mahabharata characters to individuals with the ancient Indian texts. As much as individuals behave differently in different situations, our behavioural reactions can be clubbed into personality complexes as similar reactions across ages and cultures. To conclude, we can say that each one of us is uniquely different yet distinctively similar as well. Research Limitations/Implications: In the present research an attempt is made by the researchers to understand the research gap in the area hence a conceptual idea is proposed and the research goes further to advance significance to discover the degree of relationship to interpret characters from Mahabharata to explain Jung personality complexes. Originality/Value: Many of the earlier studies have proved the soul of Indian mythology is beyond simple good and evil. If one cares to dig deep, there’s an interesting story at each and every step. Psychologists explain this by segregating personality into a private and public persona. Private is the ‘real’ inner person, while public is the way that the individual presents themselves to the outside world. We may be confident and outgoing in some situations and less sure of ourselves and more retiring in other situations. A case where a shy reserved person joins an organization but eventually becomes an arrogant and stubborn boss. This fits the explanation of how our personalities differ situationally. Paper Type: The study is based on both secondary & primary evidence. There are many characters in the Mahabharata, with each one having good and bad qualities. Many characters are similar in personality complexes but differ in their ethical characteristics. Hence researchers have tried to identify and give the major characters in the research. However, this is not a definitive list.

Understanding Self Theory: “I” Or “Me” to Self & the Relationships of “I” & “Me” to Others from Character Sketch of Mahabharata

Purpose: Roger self theory is an important section in every organization in handling individual’s personality. Personality is a combination of behaviour, attitude emotion, perception and thought pattern that define an individual. On approach to personality emphasizes the self and it is characteristic. The research paper is an interesting blend of “I” or “Me” to self and relationships of “I” and “Me” to others to management, science and mythology. The researcher explains how self-theory to professional & psychology students with the help of characters from Mahabharata. The outcome of the research helps individual personalities to discover them as well as to understand basic individual differences. Objectives: The researchers have set the following primary objectives and the current study investigates 2 broad research questions: (1) To examine self theory from character sketch of Mahabharata (OCEAN). (2) To identify whether self-theory applies to actualizing tendency (Real Self). Design/Methodology/Approach: The study is based on both secondary & primary evidence. Hypotheses are stated for the various variables selected and analyzed to prove or disprove the same without any errors. Findings/Result: After analysis researchers conclude there is a fairly high degree of positive correlation between theory aspects and renewal trend. Therefore, the study concludes there is a correlation between the elements of theory and the renewal trend from Mahabharata characters to individuals with the ancient Indian texts. Research Limitations/Implications: In the present research an attempt is made by the researchers to understand the research gap in the area hence a conceptual idea is proposed and the research goes further to advance significance to discover the degree of relationship to interpret characters from Mahabharata to explain self-theory. Originality/New Knowledge/Interpretation/Value: Roger’s theory is very essential to safeguard the individual’s personality and committed himself to understanding the how attitude, behavior and perception change can come about. Thus, the researchers work aims at finding the self-theory & its impact on individual’s personality. Psychologists explain this by segregating personality into a private and public persona. Private is the ‘real’ inner person, while public is the way that the individual presents themselves to the outside world. We may be confident. Paper Type: The study is based on both secondary & primary evidence. There are many characters in the Mahabharata, with each one having self-theory. Many characters are similar but differ in their personality. However, this is not a definitive list.

Digital Identities and Aesthetic Expression: Uncovering Young Indonesians Argumentation in Filter Usage on Social Media

This study delves into the diverse motivations and impacts of Instagram filter usage among young Indonesians, focusing on how these digital tools influence selfrepresentation and social interaction within the digital sphere. While Instagram filters are traditionally viewed as aesthetic enhancements, this research highlights their broader roles, including entertainment, education, and personal branding. Utilizing a qualitative approach, this paper collects data through interviews and netnography, employing snowball sampling to gather in-depth insights from eight young Instagram users. Findings indicate that young people use filters not only for visual enhancement but also for fun, educational engagement, and the expression of personal traits like humor and intelligence. This usage underscores young people's agency as active consumers, manipulating digital tools to craft their public personas and navigate social media spaces. This study underscores the need for further quantitative research to explore the widespread patterns of filter consumption among youth, aiming to enrich the understanding of digital identity formation in a globalized context.

Speaking Bitterly, Desirably and Queerly: The Jinxing Show as Queer Chinese TV

ABSTRACT This article examines one of the most sensational (and controversial) Chinese talk shows of the post-2010 years, The Jinxing Show (TJS; 2015–2017), known for its host, Jin Xing, China’s first transgender woman celebrity. I explore how the transculturally situated aesthetics, talk themes and presentation styles of TJS contributed to Jin’s on-screen presence as a form of ‘uneventful queer’ (McCarthy 2001) TV culture in a supposedly LGBTQ-censoring China. My televisual-discourse analyses of TJS reveal a ‘post-trans’, cosmopolitan-neoliberal rhetoric through which Jin promoted ‘proper’ Chinese womanhood and ‘desirable’ Chinese cultural citizenship in her unique ‘bitter-speaking’ style on the show. Meanwhile, I demonstrate that TJS crystalised certain queer-promising transcultural flows and encounters which were often endorsed by (or in fact dovetailed with) the government’s nationalistic-patriotic self-imaginary in an age of globalisation. Diverging from the scholarly criticism of Jin’s public persona as epitomic of Chinese-specific neoliberal tenets, this study emphasises the dual ‘post-trans’ and queer subjectivities generated through TJS and sheds light on the ‘Chinese-specific’ queer presences, desires, lives and possibilities that have been paradoxically enlarged and publicised through Jin’s on-TV advocacy for the state’s ideological-political projects.