Journal of Communication Inquiry

This paper explores the shifting dynamics of what constitutes a contemporary social movement and the pros and cons that emerge after movements have gone online. This paper is premised on in-depth interviews with twenty-nine interviewees regarding how social media has brought changes to the contemporary LGBTQ + movement in New Zealand among both Māori and Pākehā (white New Zealanders) communities. The interviewees testified to the shifting nature of the contemporary LGBTQ + movement after the emergence and inclusion of the Internet and social media platforms on movement messaging and participant engagement. This research found that social networking sites have led to greater awareness and better coordination among movement actors to organise LGBTQ + movements in New Zealand (NZ). The paper concludes that the Internet and social media have led to more visibility and acceptability of information within contemporary movements. The Internet was a facilitator of movement organisation even before the emergence of social media platforms; however, online activism has amplified and has taken a new meaning with the advent of several social media platforms.

What makes alternative digital media ‘alternative’ is critical content and being a ‘prosumer’ platform that champions social justice and change. An Indian digital zine, and our present case study for critical alternative media, is Feminism in India (FII) and its news coverage of the #MeTooIndia movement from 2017 to 2021. In this article, we adopt the critical theory of alternative media and transnational intersectionality frameworks to perform a critical-cultural review of the theoretical, sociopolitical, and change-making implications of FII. We aim to explore its role as alternative media that presents intersectional perspectives and advocacy opportunities in relation to India and its transnational #MeToo mobilizations against sexual harassment. As ‘critical content’ is what defines alternative media, we argue that FII is a critical news site that democratizes gender-diverse narratives and introduces a rupture within India's politically-pandered and patriarchally-primed mainstream media.

Social movements respond and adapt to the social and historical environment, and global connections have allowed activists to envision an array of alternatives. This has led present-day movements toward autonomous practices, such as non-hierarchical leadership, prefigurative politics, and decentralizing Western perspectives. Autonomous movements’ communication and media projects are formed by these political ideals and epistemologies, dependent upon their contextual situation. Such movements see change as inevitable and rigidity and dogmatism as stifling to the political imagination. Despite criticisms leveled against autonomous practices from other leftist political paradigms, these prefigured alternatives create change in the small and ephemeral ways available to them. This research outlines the political parameters of many current social movements, offering a framework by which to study grassroots media endeavors.

Young girls have historically been symbols to be conjured by social movements to garner sympathy for social causes, but are frequently silenced as political agents. This study addresses the celebrification of non-celebrity girls such as Emma González, Greta Thunberg, and Marley Dias and analyzes how backlash politics promote their fame. Some ordinary girls become celebrity activists in part because the trolling and negative media coverage helps propel their visibility, while others enjoy relatively positive experiences with fame. Both of these types of representations of celebrity girl activists - whether fueled by backlash or not -can serve as cautionary tales or as inspiration for girls who wish to engage in activism. Through an intersectional feminist lens, I address the complex social media narratives that emerge about girl empowerment and negotiation of risk - emphasis on self-care and struggle - when girls are famous activists.

Conspiracy theories and their effects have greatly proliferated during the COVID-19 pandemic crisis. As in various countries, so in Cyprus, a mobilization of anti-vaxxers organized mainly through Facebook, violently attacked the largest media group of the island, “Sigma”. Taking into consideration local peculiarities and historical contexts, a qualitative research was conducted on comments posted on Sigma Live's Facebook page, spanning between August 2020 and June 2021.The article illustrates how cultural, political, and historical peculiarities are instrumental in the formation of anti-vax movements, and how conspiracy theorizing in general is inextricably bound to such peculiarities. We demonstrate how new publics in social media platforms may dispute media outlets’ representations through using the official channels of these outlets, highlighting an understudied facet of participatory media. The paper advocates for more context-bound theoretical analyses of conspiracy theorizing, which delve deeper into the meaning-making, interpretative, and discursive practices of conspiracists against media outlets.

As legislators and platforms tackle the challenge of suppressing hate speech online, questions about its definition remain unresolved. In this review we discuss three issues: What are the main challenges encountered when defining hate speech? What alternatives are there for the definition of hate speech? What is the relationship between the nature and scope of the definition and its operationability? By tracing both efforts to regulate and to define hate speech in legal, paralegal, and tech platform contexts, we arrive at four possible modes of definition: teleological, pure consequentialist, formal, and consensus or relativist definitions. We suggest the need for a definition where hate speech encompasses those speech acts that tend towards certain ethically proscribed ends, which are destructive in terms of their consequences, and express certain ideas that are transgressions of specific ethical norms.

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After the January 6th, 2021, riots at the U.S. Capitol, it seemed clear that the public sphere in the U.S. was being challenged by political extremists. Yet, existing public sphere normative theories provide unsatisfying tools for explaining why the riots occurred. Participants in the contemporary U.S. public sphere do not seem to recognize the legitimacy of their political opponents, and there is an increasing turn toward raw assertion instead of rational deliberation. In this essay, we discuss these shortcomings, focusing on how internet-mediated communication makes basic assumptions about legitimacy and rationality untenable. We settle on the concept of an “assertive turn” in the public sphere and analyze how anti-rationalism is becoming dominant in political discourse. We then argue for a scholarly reckoning with the social reality of 21st century U.S. politics—mainly that there are significant gaps in normative theory when it comes to addressing the assertive turn in the U.S. public sphere.

This study examines advertising of top-selling voice-activated smart speakers in the United States to understand how advertisers are promoting these devices to consumers. The study identifies four representations of technology in smart speaker advertising. This includes technology as human, technology as self-expression and happiness, technology as progress, and technology as productivity. Engaging in semiotic analysis of select advertising, the study reveals deeper meaning, ideology, and myths in smart speaker advertising. Implications for culture and consumption are discussed.