The global upsurge in protest, which has accompanied the current international financial crisis, has highlighted the extensive use of online social media in activism, leaving aside the extent to which citizenship is enacted, empowered and potentially transformed by social media use within these movements. Drawing on citizenship and communication theories, this study employs a cross-country analysis of the relationship between citizenship, civic practices and social media within the Indignados movement in Greece and France. By the use of semi-structured interviews, we attempt to discern the degree of involvement of actors with the political community in question and explore the complex layers of their motivations and goals around participation. Content analysis employed in the movement's Facebook groups allows us to critically evaluate the potential of social media in (re)defining the meaning and practice of civic participation. Findings indicate that the failure of traditional forms of civic participation to attain and resolve everyday political issues becomes its potential to transfer the political activity in other sites of struggle. The role of Facebook is double: it can reinforce civic talk and debate through activists' digital story telling (around shared feelings and personal stories) significant for meaningful activist participation online and offline. Second, it can support new forms of alternative politics inspired by more participatory modes of engagement.
At the dawn of the 21st century we witness an upsurge in mobilization and collective action by a wide range of activists and groups engaging in social and political protest, all over the world. What these movements have in common is not only their association with the global financial crisis but also their extensive use of online social media like Facebook and Twitter for mobilization, participation and coordination. Thus, the Indignados movement which sprung in Southern Europe in 2008, constitute a new phenomenon that deserves to be studied in its own right, not only as a form of social movements per se, but also with regard to the role of digital technologies in collective action. Scholars from a wide range of disciplines have tended to focus on questions about the role of the internet in protest, without attending to the changing meaning of what it means to be a citizen within such movements and through their practices and discourses (see Bennett & Segerberg, 2012). Two questions in need of empirical study and which remain unanswered in the literature are: 1. How is civic and collective identity constructed within current constellations of social movements such as the Indignados? 2. How is this construction process mediated by the use of Facebook? This dissertation responds to this need through an empirical study of the discourses and online content of Indignados activists in France and Greece. Drawing an analytical framework from the components of civic and collective identity, it brings together elements that are necessary for a two-level analysis: a) the tangible aspects such as the practices of movements and their participants and b) the ideational aspects such as the feelings of activists within the movement and in relation to the nation. More specifically, this thesis aimed, first, at mapping different forms and processes attached with the construction of civic and collective identity through the discourses of actors. By the use of semi-structured interviews and online content, we attempted to discern and analyse the actors' belonging, practices, identification and values and principles within the political community in question (the nation-state) and the collectivity (the Indignados), exploring the multiple and complex layers of their feelings. The second objective was to explore the role of Facebook in this process, which allowed us to critically evaluate the potential of social media in the negotiation of civic and collective identity in both meaning and practice. This dissertation provides some insights regarding the figure, shape and nature of citizens in the Indignados movements, arguing for a redefinition of civic identity as a dynamic and unfixed entity based on the everyday struggles and practices of individuals. Along with this, collective ! vii! identity among the Indignados could be qualified as hybrid, multi-layered and open-ended, by pointing out the different elements which coexist within the movement such as politically diverse individuals, different political flows and discourses and new forms of belonging. The role of Facebook seems to be more complex. Several elements found online (e.g. civic talk, creation of collective frames of reference around actions) certainly contribute to the reproduction of civic and collective identities and seem to create a fertile ground for empowerment and the construction of active citizenship in the Indignados movement. However, further research is needed in order to demonstrate the long-term efficacy of such communicative practices in movement outcomes and trajectories. ; Co-Supervisor: Fabien Granjon, Professor, University Paris 8 Vincennes Saint-Denis, France, President of the committee: Peter Dahlgren, Professor Emeritus, Lund University, Sweden, Member of the committee: Josiane Jouët, Professor, University of Pantheon-Assas Paris 2, France, Member of the committee: Pantelis Vatikiotis, Associate Professor, Izmir University of Economics. Turkey ; Completed
This exploratory study examines the socio-technical dynamics of Artificial Intelligence Companions (AICs), focusing on user interactions with AI platforms like Replika 9.35.1. Through qualitative analysis, including user interviews and digital ethnography, we explored the nuanced roles played by these AIs in social interactions. Findings revealed that users often form emotional attachments to their AICs, viewing them as empathetic and supportive, thus enhancing emotional well-being. This study highlights how AI companions provide a safe space for self-expression and identity exploration, often without fear of judgment, offering a backstage setting in Goffmanian terms. This research contributes to the discourse on AI's societal integration, emphasizing how, in interactions with AICs, users often craft and experiment with their identities by acting in ways they would avoid in face-to-face or human-human online interactions due to fear of judgment. This reflects front-stage behavior, in which users manage audience perceptions. Conversely, the backstage, typically hidden, is somewhat disclosed to AICs, revealing deeper aspects of the self.
This paper investigates the content of collective identities as constructed in Facebook groups created in protest against the haircut in 2013 in Cyprus. Given its supplementary role to offline social action, we use Facebook as a research domain and data gathering tool. Drawing on the concept of politicised collective identity we undertake a qualitative content analysis of the posts in three Facebook groups. The analysis reveals two main forms of collective identification. The first presents a rather common form of collective identity that is informed ideologically by nationalism. The second is built upon a strong anti-president rhetoric, echoing the arguments of the opposition parties. The 'banal' nature of such identities probably go a long way in accounting for the limited potential for collective action-unlike some of the other European crisis countries.
The latter half of the twentieth century witnessed an upsurge in mobilization and collective action by a wide range of activists and groups engaging in social and political protest, all over the world, which continues to this day. New media are not only greatly facilitating the ways in which activists communicate and protest, but are also altering the relation of the movements to territorial boundaries and localities. Scholars from a wide range of disciplines have tended to focus on questions about the internet's role in protest, without attempting to answer the changing meaning of what it means to be a citizen within such movements and through their practices. This article responds to this need by developing an analytical framework for studying the connection between citizenship and ICT-mediated social movements, drawing on existing scholarship on social movements, citizenship and ICTs. Specifically, using citizenship studies as a starting point, it brings together elements that are necessary for a two-level analysis: a) the tangible aspects that are seen as the concrete practices of movements and their participants and b) the ideational aspects that are seen as the abstract practices of movements and their participants. This provides a theoretical structure that facilitates connections between different disciplines that might otherwise be difficult to discern, so that the construction of citizenship can be studied on an interdisciplinary basis.
This experiment was designed to explore people's critical, differentiating capacity between actual news and content that looks like news. Four groups of post-millennials read four versions of a news story. While the first condition included a real news story derived from a mainstream medium, the other three conditions tested three attributes of fakeness, namely an exaggerated, satirical, and popularised frame of disinformation. Although readers differentiated between satire and the actual news story, no significant differences were observed between exaggerated and simplified versions of news and the actual news story. Additional intervening variables were scrutinized, showing a connection between the salience of a story and its perceptions of fakeness.