Publications

This article focuses on New Democracy (ND), Greece’s main

conservative party, and its return to power in 2019. The study

enquires into ND’s hegemonic strategy and governing practice.

ND’s hegemonic strategy is grounded in both neoliberal and Far-

Right premises. This enabled ND to create a hegemonic block that

ranges from centrist liberals to far-rightists, while advancing an

anti-leftist ideological project, connected to progressing upper-

class interests. The ND administration unfolds an autocratic form

of executive governance that is based on legislating class-related

reforms, propaganda and effective control of the mainstream

media, and coercive force. These features reflect the development

of neoliberal authoritarianism in Greece. They represent “the new

form of bourgeois republic in the current phase of capitalism,”

bearing the traits of autocracy, illiberalism, and Far-Right

mainstreaming. The study deploys examples from ND’s political

discourse and from policies that the ND administration has

launched.

This chapter explores the practice of crowdsourcing in global governance as a tool of multilateral diplomacy to interrogate its exact role and place in decision-making processes. It focuses on media discourse analysis of the public debates concerning the new definition, focusing mostly on the international Anglophone media and on the blog posts written by museum professionals. Conducive to cultural diplomacy stewardship and the cooperative engagement of the professional museum community, International Commission of Museums (ICOM) strives to tackle cultural engagement challenges and promotes “creativity, innovation, and systematization in this field of inquiry and practice”. The museum definition has traditionally been a part of the ICOM statutes and its revision “is a formally regulated process. The crowdsourcing exercise proved that online participants were highly motivated, interested, and engaged museum professionals who took the challenge with great enthusiasm and commitment.

Examining the “digital” as a challenge to one of the most traditional spheres of private and public life of Russians, the chapter is focused on institutional aspects of the religion digitalization in the theoretical frame of mediatization. Normatively, digitalization as such does not contradict the dogmatic teaching of any traditional for Russia religion, in Christianity, Judaism, Islam and Buddhism theologically it is being considered as a neutral process with good or bad consequences depending on human will. Therefore, functionally digital technologies are seen by religious institutions as a shaping force, one more facility (channel, tool, space, network) for effective preaching while the core of religious practices still remains based on non-mediated interpersonal communication.

25 years after the first publication of Media Events: The Live Broadcasting of History (Dayan and Katz 1992), not only has the concept of media events firmly taken root in media theory, but it has also been developed considerably as a result of multiple critical interpretations. Going beyond a neo-Durkheimian ritual perspective, which emphasized the integrative role of ceremonial media events, has allowed a number of authors to identify such genres as ‘disruptive’, ‘traumatic’ or ‘conflictual’ media events, including, first and foremost, terror, disaster and war (Cottle 2006; Dayan 2008; Hepp and Couldry 2010; Katz and Liebes 2007; Mitu and Poulakidakos 2016). However, there is another type of events targeting social and cultural change, which do not exactly fit the ‘integrative/disruptive’ opposition, even if these events take the form of protest, for ‘protests and strikes are agreed forms of sanctioned disruption’ (Katz and Liebes 2007: 159). Until protest grows into a revolution and civil war, it is an instance of ‘ritual’ chaos, constituting a part of the order. Events of this type show some features of social drama and cultural performance (Turner 1974, 1982; Alexander 2006, 2011). Nevertheless, not every ‘transformative media event’ (Mihelj 2008) has such radical goals and sweeping scale.

‘Transformative media events’ are initiated in public spaces by citizens, whose disagreement with certain social conditions and/or a call for change they express. The transformative power can be an inherent element of the event (for instance, in the case of a protest action), or can emerge as a result of public response to a published opinion or document (such as a YouTube video recording police abuse). The latter case includes practices of ‘sousveillance’ (Mann et al. 2003) or ‘citizen witnessing’ (Allan 2013) directed at the democratization of social relations. A key feature of ‘transformative media events’ is their tight connection to the ‘citizen media’, by means of which they become visible and powerful. In this context it seems useful to consider media events as ‘user-generated media events’ (Mitu 2016), ‘new media events’ (Neverson and Adeyanju 2017), ‘transmedia events’ (Bacallao-Pino 2016), etc.

This paper suggests that Soviet communicative control was based on a particular balance between the manipulation of mass communication (propaganda) and restriction of interpersonal communication and particular elements of social mobility control (e.g. transport, postal communication and population localization). This particular balance formed a quite stable social structure in which social communications reinforced the state order and hierarchy. We argue that, to a great extent, some elements of this Soviet system of control are reproduced in the current Russian media and social system that has formed a passive attitude towards digital activism and to political life in general among the population. This phenomenon has significantly influenced the contemporary post-Crimean social consensus and caused the failure of the protest movement at the first half of 2010s, which was largely dependent on social media.

Employing Ernesto Laclau’s theory of populism, this paper analyses the populist discourse of the Euromaidan, a Ukrainian movement for European integration. Articulating their democratic demands equivalentially, Euromaidan leaders and activists brought to the field of Ukraine’s discursivity the impossible totality of “the Ukrainian people” fighting against the “anti-popular regime”. The purpose of this study is to trace the formation of this populist discourse by answering the following research question: how did the Euromaidan come to articulate itself as a totality representing the whole of the Ukrainian people? This paper discusses thirteen speeches delivered by Euromaidan leaders onsite in Kyiv’s main square from December 1, 2013, to February 22, 2014.

This paper investigates how digital surveillance tools used by East Asian governments against COVID-19 affect privacy and personal data protection. It applies doctrinal legal analysis and case study to compare national regulations of these tools as well as their implementation in China, Hong Kong, Macau, Taiwan, Japan, and South Korea. The approaches range considerably from total (China) to selective surveillance, which, however, seems overly excessive towards privacy of certain social groups, exacerbating social stratification and business disruptions in East Asia. The paper argues that selective surveillance models vary across the region from voluntary selective (Japan) to compulsory selective surveillance (Hong Kong, Macau, Taiwan, South Korea) and differ in terms of privacy and related rights. Yet, the increased risks of data misuse and leakages in all the East Asian states and territories need effective legal mechanisms for privacy and data protection that pay sufficient attention to public scrutiny and independent regulators.

This article draws attention to one of the neglected aspects of trolling in current literature: its potential to stand as a form of cultural politics that may inform counter-hegemonic challenges to prevalent ideologies. Rather than merely perceiving trolling as a threat to normality or a proof of the internet’s dystopic character, we look at the ways that certain trolls employ the method of ‘subversive affirmation’ for effectively addressing current events, and to mock hegemonic ideological currents, lifestyles and contexts in Greece today. We argue that the trolls we study are positioned against the hegemonic neoliberal framework and its attempts to achieve consensus on the supposed necessity of austerity reforms and the maintenance of the euro currency, as well as against a prevailing conservativism and nationalism that blend with the broader neoliberal assemblage of discourses, policies and practices in Greek society. By developing a thematic analysis on selected Facebook trolls’ posts, we discuss the ways that trolls function politically, transgressing the limits of the hegemonic discourses and identities, as well as the norms of mediated dialogue, deliberation and critique. The key mechanisms deployed by the trolls are the overlapping practices of over-identification and humour. This article suggests seeing trolling as a form of cultural production that not only damages, but redirects desires, produces identifications and instils passionate investments in political ideologies.

The article attempts to investigate the links between the general civilization processes of globalization, informatization and digitalization with the processes occurring in communication systems mediated by media technologies. As a categorical apparatus that will allow identifying and analyzing these connections, it is proposed to use such concepts as “life world”, “personal world”, “information and communication universum”, “communication matrices”, etc.

The formation of the blogging institution is similar to the model of the journalism institute and the fields in which it operates. Modern blogging (especially video blogging) is based on television technologies (this can be considered the primary trend in the design of modern media space). Like television journalists, bloggers have learned how to work with information and create original products that are relevant to the interests of the audience. Syntactic of audiovisual solutions associated with the adaptation of television technology, in varying degrees, is characteristic of all blogging projects (at the level of shooting, editing, graphic forms, and studio organization, developing a media image and choosing discursive strategies). It can be typologized, highlighting several enlarged groups: informational and analytical; interview; lifestyle (travel blogs; beauty and fashion blogs; health and sports blogs; humorous blogs; life hack blogs; challenge; culinary blogs; fishing and hunting blogs; auto blogs; game blogs; blog reviews). The revival of the legendary “The Other Day” program in the Internet field can be considered as evidence of the syncretism of blogging and journalism, which are transforming in modern communication realities. Besides, in the course of analyzing television and blogging content, a reciprocal process was discovered – the adaptation of blogging technologies in the television industry. The primary evidence is the strengthening of niche broadcasting when the main federal TV channels focus on personalizing content.

The second trend in the design of the modern media space is related to the use of audiovisual blogging solutions in the creation of informational and analytical television content when television journalists (in particular, D. Kiselyov and K. Kleimyonov) borrow screen models of bloggers behavior (such as N. Sobolev, Y. Khovansky, etc.) in their discursive strategies.

The third trend is the use of audiovisual blogging solutions in the creation of cognitive and educational television content. These processes will have a further impact on each other, increasingly integrating the fields of television and the Internet, which ultimately will lead to the conditional blurring of boundaries between bloggers and journalists (and this will undoubtedly require a rethinking of the educational strategy aimed at training representatives of the media industry).

The article is devoted to the analysis of the problems that arise in the system of social networks in connection with the intensification of the struggle of law enforcement bodies of the Russian Federation with phenomena that are referred to in the legal field as “extremism”, “incitement to hatred” and “insulting the feelings of believers”. The goal of the project is to analyze the problems of regulating social networks and author’s content in the context of world and domestic experience in the struggle for “network neutrality”. An interdisciplinary analysis was used in the work. In the modern Russian media space, the role of an expert and expertise on which the assessment of the content of social networks depends. The analysis performed in the article indicates that the traditional methods of examining web texts need substantial updating. The question was also raised about the need to clearly describe the qualifications of an expert and to regulate the selection of experts and the boundaries of their functional activities. Keyword: Network Сontent; Net Neutrality; Psycholinguistic Expertise.

Internet studies seem to be an essential part of the current research agenda in social studies. The specific nature of Internet components (online-media, online-communities, etc.) are studied unceasingly and closely. This book focuses precisely on the national Internet segment of Russia (Runet) as a separate phenomenon and, hence, as an integral research object. Such a complex study has not been presented before in academic literature.

This chapter presents the case of Russell Brand in order to look at how the most fundamental antinomies of the type of celebrity activism put in tension some prevalent theoretical frameworks around the field. In November 2013, Brand gave an interview to the journalist Jeremy Paxman for the BBC show Newsnight where he advocated, among other things, a ‘revolution’ and a ‘massive redistribution of wealth’. The chapter explores how the devotion to the revolutionary cause was embodied in the ethos of anarchist and Marxist revolutionaries of the past. Brand’s identity both as a superstar of creative Britain and a revolutionary agent of anti-austerity movements displays the in-built conflicts, tensions, and discrepancies that the figure of the activist celebrity embodies. The tensions that the activist celebrity enables may renegotiate dominant regimes of understanding by offering visibility to new vocabularies around social concerns without necessarily being perceived as a reaction against available electoral politics.

This chapter  analyses the evolution of the relationship between centralized control over local media media systems and local interests at the regional level in Russia. It demonstrates that during the post-soviet period the soviet hierarchical control was reproduced as a result of the dominance of the so called “central media” over the regional media. As the political balance between federal and regional powers evolved,  so did the model of media control. From this point of view the local policy during Yeltsin’s period was shaped by the shift of power from the centre, allowing the regions to develop high levels of autonomy.  This  transformed local media into powerful agents of local politics and contributed to the high pressure on local media from different political and elite groups. Such pressures paradoxically formed more pluralist model of the press. After 2000 the power of local media was weakened, which dissociated retired local media from elite group political processes and contributed to the monopolization of local media by local authorities especially on the basis of commercial contracts between such authorities and the press. Such contracts shape considerably the control of local media by the local authorities paying media for loyal coverage of their policies.  

The paper addresses the questions of data science education of current importance. It aims to introduce and justify the framework that allows flexibly evaluate the processes of a data expedition and a digital media created during it. For these purposes, the authors explore features of digital media artefacts which are specific to data expeditions and are essential to accurate evaluation. The rubrics as a power but hardly formalizable evaluation method in application to digital media artefacts are also discussed. Moreover, the paper documents the experience of rubrics creation according to the suggested framework. The rubrics were successfully adopted to two data-driven journalism courses. The authors also formulate recommendations on data expedition evaluation which should take into consideration structural features of a data expedition, distinctive features of digital media, etc.

This special issue brings together ethnographic scholarship to explore the interlinking of diverse personal, social and larger institutional forms in and through which artistic value emerges. Rather than being inherent in the formal features of art objects or merely a discursive construct, value as craft signifies an arena in which beliefs, ideologies, and histories interweave with art practices, events, and materialities. The articles included in this issue, then, highlight both the constructed and performative aspects of artistic values through a common focus on ethnography and a shared emphasis on temporality, practice, and institutional forms. Accordingly, art is a process both crafted – composed of judgements and social interaction – and crafting – able to individually or collectively mobilise and enable desiring investments in its capacity as art. The interdisciplinary effort at hand retains the sociological ethos and political implications of social constructionism, while looking at how acts of valuation enable affective, agential and aesthetic responses.