Handbook of Research on Recent Developments in Internet Activism and Political Participation 1799847969, 9781799847960

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Handbook of Research on Recent Developments in Internet Activism and Political Participation Yasmin Ibrahim Queen Mary University of London, UK

A volume in the Advances in Public Policy and Administration (APPA) Book Series

Published in the United States of America by IGI Global Information Science Reference (an imprint of IGI Global) 701 E. Chocolate Avenue Hershey PA, USA 17033 Tel: 717-533-8845 Fax: 717-533-8661 E-mail: [email protected] Web site: http://www.igi-global.com Copyright © 2020 by IGI Global. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored or distributed in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, without written permission from the publisher. Product or company names used in this set are for identification purposes only. Inclusion of the names of the products or companies does not indicate a claim of ownership by IGI Global of the trademark or registered trademark. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Ibrahim, Yasmin, editor. Title: Handbook of research on recent developments in internet activism and political participation / Yasmin Ibrahim, editor. Description: Hershey, PA : Information Science Reference, 2020. | Includes bibliographical references and index. | Summary: “This book explores the modern role that digital media plays within community engagement and political development. This book discusses real-world case studies in various regions of the world on how the internet is affecting government agendas and promoting the voice of the community”-- Provided by publisher. Identifiers: LCCN 2019059554 (print) | LCCN 2019059555 (ebook) | ISBN 9781799847960 (hardcover) | ISBN 9781799847977 (ebook) Subjects: LCSH: Political participation--Technological innovations--Case studies. | Communication in politics--Technological innovations--Case studies. | Internet--Political aspects--Case studies. Classification: LCC JF799.5 .R43 2020 (print) | LCC JF799.5 (ebook) | DDC 322.40285/4678--dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019059554 LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019059555 This book is published in the IGI Global book series Advances in Public Policy and Administration (APPA) (ISSN: 24756644; eISSN: 2475-6652) British Cataloguing in Publication Data A Cataloguing in Publication record for this book is available from the British Library. All work contributed to this book is new, previously-unpublished material. The views expressed in this book are those of the authors, but not necessarily of the publisher. For electronic access to this publication, please contact: [email protected].

Advances in Public Policy and Administration (APPA) Book Series ISSN:2475-6644 EISSN:2475-6652 Mission

Proper management of the public sphere is necessary in order to maintain order in modern society. Research developments in the field of public policy and administration can assist in uncovering the latest tools, practices, and methodologies for governing societies around the world. The Advances in Public Policy and Administration (APPA) Book Series aims to publish scholarly publications focused on topics pertaining to the governance of the public domain. APPA’s focus on timely topics relating to government, public funding, politics, public safety, policy, and law enforcement is particularly relevant to academicians, government officials, and upper-level students seeking the most up-to-date research in their field.

Coverage • Government • Law Enforcement • Political Economy • Politics • Public Administration • Public Funding • Public Policy • Resource Allocation • Urban Planning

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The Advances in Public Policy and Administration (APPA) Book Series (ISSN 2475-6644) is published by IGI Global, 701 E. Chocolate Avenue, Hershey, PA 17033-1240, USA, www.igi-global.com. This series is composed of titles available for purchase individually; each title is edited to be contextually exclusive from any other title within the series. For pricing and ordering information please visit http://www.igiglobal.com/book-series/advances-public-policy-administration/97862. Postmaster: Send all address changes to above address. Copyright © 2020 IGI Global. All rights, including translation in other languages reserved by the publisher. No part of this series may be reproduced or used in any form or by any means – graphics, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping, or information and retrieval systems – without written permission from the publisher, except for non commercial, educational use, including classroom teaching purposes. The views expressed in this series are those of the authors, but not necessarily of IGI Global.

Titles in this Series

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Reshaping Social Policy to Combat Poverty and nequality Augustine Nduka Eneanya (University of Lagos, Nigeria) Information Science Reference • © 2020 • 200pp • H/C (ISBN: 9781799809692) • US $185.00 Africa’s Platforms and the Evolving Sharing Economy Emerging Research and Opportunities Immanuel Ovemeso Umukoro (Pan-Atlantic University, Nigeria) and Raymond Okwudiri Onuoha (Pan-Atlantic University, Nigeria) Information Science Reference • © 2020 • 220pp • H/C (ISBN: 9781799832348) • US $195.00 Citizen-Responsive Urban E-Planning Recent Developments and Critical Perspectives Carlos Nunes Silva (University of Lisbon, Portugal) Information Science Reference • © 2020 • 409pp • H/C (ISBN: 9781799840183) • US $195.00 Applying Internet Laws and Regulations to Educational Technology Bruce L. Mann (Memorial University, Canada) Information Science Reference • © 2020 • 232pp • H/C (ISBN: 9781799845553) • US $185.00 Multidisciplinary Perspectives on Applying Global Practices to the African Political System Godwin Ehiarekhian Oboh (Benson Idahosa University, Nigeria) Information Science Reference • © 2020 • 280pp • H/C (ISBN: 9781799826255) • US $195.00 Analyzing Political Tensions Between Ukraine, Russia, and the EU Carsten Sander Christensen (Billund Kommunes Museer (Billund Municipal Museums), Denmark) Information Science Reference • © 2020 • 361pp • H/C (ISBN: 9781799829065) • US $195.00 Examining Ethics and Intercultural Interactions in International Relations F. Sigmund Topor (Keio University, Japan) Information Science Reference • © 2020 • 333pp • H/C (ISBN: 9781799823773) • US $195.00 Using New Media for Citizen Engagement and Participation Marco Adria (University of Alberta, Canada) Information Science Reference • © 2020 • 347pp • H/C (ISBN: 9781799818281) • US $210.00

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List of Contributors

Aram I., Arul / Anna University, Chennai, India.............................................................................. 189 Aram, I. Arul / Anna University, Chennai, India............................................................................... 241 Beech, Mark / Independent Researcher, UK..................................................................................... 258 Belda-Miquel, Sergio / Departament de Comercialització i Investigació de Mercats, Universitat de València, Spain......................................................................................................................... 175 Bishop, Jonathan / Congress of Researchers and Organisations for Cybercommunity, E-Learning and Socialnomics, UK................................................................................................ 258 Boni, Alejandra / INGENIO (CSIC-UPV), Universitat Politècnica de València, Spain................... 175 Chen, Julie Yuwen / University of Helsinki, Finland......................................................................... 275 Collins, Neil / University College Cork, Ireland................................................................................ 275 Dahdal, Sohail / American University of Sharjah, UAE...................................................................... 86 Dar, Sadhvi / Queen Mary University of London, UK....................................................................... 139 De La Fuente, Teresa / Universitat Politècnica de València, Spain................................................. 175 Gerow, Jennifer E. / Virginia Military Institute, USA....................................................................... 290 Hammad, Rawad / University of East London, UK.......................................................................... 103 Howarth, Anita / Brunel University, UK................................................................................... 122, 224 Ibrahim, Yasmin / Queen Mary University of London, UK.................................................................. 1 Kuppuswamy, Sunitha / Anna University, Chennai, India............................................................... 207 Leivas, Monique / INGENIO (CSIC-UPV), Universitat Politècnica de València, Spain.................. 175 Majumdar, Monica / Queen Mary University of London, UK.......................................................... 154 Maniou, Theodora A. / University of Cyprus, Cyprus......................................................................... 16 O’Brien, Daniel Paul / University of Essex, UK.................................................................................. 69 Panagiotidis, Kosmas / Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece................................................. 16 Russmann, Uta / FHWien der WKW University of Applied Sciences for Management and Communication, Austria.................................................................................................................. 33 Safieddine, Fadi / University of East London, UK............................................................................. 103 Sakthivel Murugan G. / Independent Researcher, India................................................................... 241 Stiegler, Christian / University of the West of England, Bristol, UK.................................................. 53 Svensson, Jakob / School of Art & Communication, Malmö University, Sweden............................... 33 Thirumalaiah, Nirmala / Hindustan Institute of Technology and Science, India............................. 189 Veglis, Andreas / Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece........................................................... 16



Table of Contents

Preface.................................................................................................................................................. xvi Section 1 Selfies and Instagram Chapter 1 Resistance and Protests Through the “Selfie”: Recasting the Self Through the Politics of Protest......... 1 Yasmin Ibrahim, Queen Mary University of London, UK Chapter 2 Selfie Journalism and Politics: An Empirical Approach........................................................................ 16 Kosmas Panagiotidis, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece Theodora A. Maniou, University of Cyprus, Cyprus Andreas Veglis, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece Chapter 3 No Interaction on Instagram: Political Party Use of Instagram in the 2014 Swedish Election Campaign............................................................................................................................................... 33 Uta Russmann, FHWien der WKW University of Applied Sciences for Management and Communication, Austria Jakob Svensson, School of Art & Communication, Malmö University, Sweden Section 2 Immersive Environment and Gaming Chapter 4 ‘No Line on the Horizon’: Virtual Reality in Digital Ecosystems and the Politics of Immersive Storytelling............................................................................................................................................. 53 Christian Stiegler, University of the West of England, Bristol, UK Chapter 5 The Pervasive and the Digital: Immersive Worlds in Four Interactive Artworks.................................. 69 Daniel Paul O’Brien, University of Essex, UK Chapter 6 Gaming Digital Content Creation to Engage Youth in Participatory Politics....................................... 86  Sohail Dahdal, American University of Sharjah, UAE 



Section 3 Fake News and Images Chapter 7 Fake News: Origins and Political Impact............................................................................................. 103 Fadi Safieddine, University of East London, UK Rawad Hammad, University of East London, UK Chapter 8 Fake Photos in the European Refugee Crisis: The “Invasion” Narrative of the Radical Right........... 122 Anita Howarth, Brunel University, UK Section 4 Race and the Digital Imaginary Chapter 9 Facebook Aesthetics: White World-Making, Digital Imaginary, and “The War on Terror”............... 139 Sadhvi Dar, Queen Mary University of London, UK Chapter 10 The Twisted Fairy Tale Behind How Light-Skinned Girls Are ‘Trending’......................................... 154 Monica Majumdar, Queen Mary University of London, UK Section 5 Food and Environmental Campaigns Chapter 11 Innovation for Human Development: Exploring the Potential of Participatory Video for Two Grassroots Initiatives............................................................................................................................ 175 Alejandra Boni, INGENIO (CSIC-UPV), Universitat Politècnica de València, Spain Monique Leivas, INGENIO (CSIC-UPV), Universitat Politècnica de València, Spain Teresa De La Fuente, Universitat Politècnica de València, Spain Sergio Belda-Miquel, Departament de Comercialització i Investigació de Mercats, Universitat de València, Spain Chapter 12 Climate Change and Sustainability Issues in Indian Newspapers....................................................... 189 Nirmala Thirumalaiah, Hindustan Institute of Technology and Science, India Arul Aram I., Anna University, Chennai, India Chapter 13 Environmental Campaigns in Traditional and Social Media............................................................... 207 Sunitha Kuppuswamy, Anna University, Chennai, India Chapter 14 Digital Activism: Challenging Food Poverty in the UK...................................................................... 224 Anita Howarth, Brunel University, UK



Chapter 15 Use of Mobiles for Promoting Agriculture in Puducherry, India........................................................ 241 I. Arul Aram, Anna University, Chennai, India Sakthivel Murugan G., Independent Researcher, India Section 6 Corporations, Elections, and Politics Chapter 16 The Role of ‘Delegated Transferable Vote’ for Supporting Tactical Voting in First-Past-the-Post Elections: An Anthropological Study of Local, Regional, and National Elections in the United Kingdom.............................................................................................................................................. 258 Jonathan Bishop, Congress of Researchers and Organisations for Cybercommunity, E-Learning and Socialnomics, UK Mark Beech, Independent Researcher, UK Chapter 17 Website-Feature Analysis of Irish Parliamentarians’ Performance in Web 2.0 Technologies............ 275 Julie Yuwen Chen, University of Helsinki, Finland Neil Collins, University College Cork, Ireland Chapter 18 CIO Power Influences the Social Alignment and IT-Business Strategic Alignment Relationship...... 290 Jennifer E. Gerow, Virginia Military Institute, USA Compilation of References................................................................................................................ 316 About the Contributors..................................................................................................................... 363 Index.................................................................................................................................................... 366

Detailed Table of Contents

Preface.................................................................................................................................................. xvi Section 1 Selfies and Instagram Chapter 1 Resistance and Protests Through the “Selfie”: Recasting the Self Through the Politics of Protest......... 1 Yasmin Ibrahim, Queen Mary University of London, UK Conjoining images of digital self-portraits (i.e., ‘selfies’) with protests and resistance recasts the self through new paradigms of enquiry in the social media landscape. The appropriation of digital self-imagery to express protest and partake in social movements and resistance personalises and individuates collective resistance, and, in the process, the ‘self-image’ becomes a tool of embodied self-expression as well as solidarity imbuing the ‘self’ through new modalities of social relations where the material body is coopted into a politics of protest without de-centring the self. This chapter examines the phenomenon of selfie-activism within the social media era where the ‘visual’ turn of instant imagery lends new forms of the attention economy to protests and campaigns, pulling physically bound protests into virtual and voyeuristic forms online where they perform both to the politics of protest and the demands of semiotic capitalism. Chapter 2 Selfie Journalism and Politics: An Empirical Approach........................................................................ 16 Kosmas Panagiotidis, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece Theodora A. Maniou, University of Cyprus, Cyprus Andreas Veglis, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece A theoretical idea of convergence between journalism and selfie photographs in a single framework led academic researchers to identify and examine a new tendency in journalism, which they termed selfie journalism. This chapter investigates the relationship between selfie journalism and politics. Based on quantitative analysis, the authors seek to examine the uses and benefits of selfie journalism during elections. The aim of the study is twofold: first, to examine the use of selfie journalism in political campaigning and, second, to examine the impact of this phenomenon on the media.





Chapter 3 No Interaction on Instagram: Political Party Use of Instagram in the 2014 Swedish Election Campaign............................................................................................................................................... 33 Uta Russmann, FHWien der WKW University of Applied Sciences for Management and Communication, Austria Jakob Svensson, School of Art & Communication, Malmö University, Sweden This chapter addresses a neglected issue within the field of social media and political communication. It focuses on interaction processes on Instagram asking how political parties used Instagram—a platform that is centered around images—when engaging in interaction with their followers on the platform. The focus is on political parties’ use of Instagram in the 2014 Swedish national election campaign. This gives an impression of the first attempts of political parties’ use of this communication platform. The quantitative content analysis focuses on Instagram images including their captions and comments (posts) that Swedish parties published four weeks prior to Election Day. The results suggest that not much changes on Instagram compared to other social media platforms: Swedish political parties hardly used Instagram to interact with their followers, and the very few interactions taking place did not contribute to the exchange of relevant and substantive information about politics. Interaction and deliberation are also not enhanced by the images. Section 2 Immersive Environment and Gaming Chapter 4 ‘No Line on the Horizon’: Virtual Reality in Digital Ecosystems and the Politics of Immersive Storytelling............................................................................................................................................. 53 Christian Stiegler, University of the West of England, Bristol, UK This chapter applies and extends the concept of social media logic to assess the politics of immersive storytelling on digital platforms. These politics are considered in the light of what has been identified as mass media logic, which argues that mass media in the 20th century gained power by developing a commanding discourse that guides the organization of the public sphere. The shift to social media logic in the 21st century, with its grounding principles of programmability, popularity, connectivity, and datafication, influenced a new discourse on the logics of digital ecosystems. Digital platforms such as Facebook are offering all-surrounding mediated environments to communicate in virtual reality (‘Horizon’) as well as immersive narratives such as Mr. Robot VR. This chapter provides an overview of the changing dynamics within Facebook’s VR strategy as well as an understanding of the politics of immersive storytelling and its underlying principles of programmability, user experience, popularity, and platform sociality, which define immersive technologies in the 21st century. Chapter 5 The Pervasive and the Digital: Immersive Worlds in Four Interactive Artworks.................................. 69 Daniel Paul O’Brien, University of Essex, UK This chapter discusses the trajectory of immersive story worlds by considering four distinct interactive artworks. Blast Theory’s, A Machine to See With (2010), is a pervasive fictional experience that enables users, through the technology of their mobile phone, to become immersed within a fictional crime scenario across a real geographical setting. Their latter artwork app, Karen (2015), enables a different type of pervasive immersion through interstitial storytelling that incorporates the medium of the user’s smartphone



into the virtual narrative space. Dennis Del Favero’s art project, Scenario (2011), and Extant’s Flatland, by contrast, are interactive and immersive stories that take place in digital spaces that interface with the body in unique ways. This chapter will explore each of these artworks through original interviews the author has conducted with each of the artists. Chapter 6 Gaming Digital Content Creation to Engage Youth in Participatory Politics....................................... 86 Sohail Dahdal, American University of Sharjah, UAE Social media platforms are increasingly used to disseminate political messages resulting in significant increase of political content exposure among youth. However, research has shown that this increase in consumption does not correlate positively with an increased interest in politics. This high exposure versus low interest indicates a certain level of apathy towards political participation. This chapter proposes that in order for youth to experience a stronger engagement in participatory politics, they need to feel challenged and skilled enough to be able to participate effectively in participatory politics by creating political content on digital media platforms. This chapter draws on Csikszentmihalyi’s flow theory premise that a state of total absorption, or “flow,” can be attained in a game-like environment in which the actors are highly skilled and the challenges match their skills. The author proposes a framework that relies on a multi-phased ‘skill and challenge’ youth training program in a game-like collaborative environment to improve youth participation in politics. Section 3 Fake News and Images Chapter 7 Fake News: Origins and Political Impact............................................................................................. 103 Fadi Safieddine, University of East London, UK Rawad Hammad, University of East London, UK This chapter examines the buzzword “Fake News.” In recent years, politicians, media, and members of the public have used and misused the term, fake news, in a variety of contexts. This chapter focuses on the impact of fake news as it is linked to political participation through internet activism. An essential part of understanding what constitutes fake news is to appreciate the different characteristics and labels— Alternative Truth, Post Truth, Propaganda, Satire, and more—which leads readers vulnerable to the impact of fake news on a platform that requires little accountability for the facts or the harm it inflicts. The barriers to presenting a journalistic outlet as nothing less than a reputable news agency are only a few clicks away. In an era dominated by social media platforms, there is evidence that these networks inadvertently facilitated the propagation of fake news and their clickbait-driven profits. Chapter 8 Fake Photos in the European Refugee Crisis: The “Invasion” Narrative of the Radical Right........... 122 Anita Howarth, Brunel University, UK The escalation of fake news and images during times of crisis and uncertainty is not a new phenomenon, but something quantitatively and qualitatively different is happening now. This chapter adopts an aesthetic approach to locate fake images in the gap between a form of representation and the representation itself. Anxiety with fake images deployed by the radical right during the refugee crisis is about a politics of manipulation within that gap, which enables an image to be re-appropriated or altered fundamentally



in ways that reorder the range of possible interpretations to fit a pre-determined narrative. While fake images are not their exclusive preserve, the radical right is widely associated with them, and this chapter explores an aesthetic conceptualisation of fake images through an analysis of the La Vlora fake image, which was used to buttress their invasion narrative. The chapter argues that the affective power of reimaging was derived from a nativist ideology and a storyline that echoed a dystopic, anti-immigration novel that has assumed cult status in extremist circles. Section 4 Race and the Digital Imaginary Chapter 9 Facebook Aesthetics: White World-Making, Digital Imaginary, and “The War on Terror”............... 139 Sadhvi Dar, Queen Mary University of London, UK What is the relationship between digital imaginaries and whiteness? Following recent calls to investigate the juncture between whiteness and the internet, this chapter seeks to provide a critique of imagery posted on Facebook in the aftermath of ‘terror attacks’ in Paris 2015. The author renders these images as structured by deep forms of white world-making, ways of thinking and feeling that reproduce whiteness as ethically superior, innocent, and in need of preserving at the cost of non-white knowledges and peoples. In this chapter, the author argues that the internet provides yet another site for whiteness to engage in white world-making by extending the white gaze to digital platforms in the service of transforming the violence of Paris into a racialised attack on white innocence. As such, the Paris images are understood as responding to and perpetuating a digital imaginary in which the political capacities of images relate to an ethics of violence to the non-white Muslim body. Chapter 10 The Twisted Fairy Tale Behind How Light-Skinned Girls Are ‘Trending’......................................... 154 Monica Majumdar, Queen Mary University of London, UK This research study is an exploration of the ways in which a beauty ideal is constructed from the promotion of skin lightening products across social media platforms Instagram and Facebook. In addition, it investigates consumers of skin-lightening products, the social media ‘influence’ behind the adverts and their response to these advertisements, in a particular ethnic community: British Bangladeshi. The study through the examination of respondent’s skincare regime using photo-elicitation and semi-structured interviews sought to deconstruct their aesthetics through skin colouring products. Combining visual discourse analysis from social media advertisements, the study presents the voices and experiences of the seven women to show how they construct their identities through the ‘fantasy’ of whiter skin. Section 5 Food and Environmental Campaigns Chapter 11 Innovation for Human Development: Exploring the Potential of Participatory Video for Two Grassroots Initiatives............................................................................................................................ 175 Alejandra Boni, INGENIO (CSIC-UPV), Universitat Politècnica de València, Spain Monique Leivas, INGENIO (CSIC-UPV), Universitat Politècnica de València, Spain Teresa De La Fuente, Universitat Politècnica de València, Spain Sergio Belda-Miquel, Departament de Comercialització i Investigació de Mercats, Universitat de València, Spain



In this chapter, the authors examine to what extent a participatory video process promoted by a group of university researchers and conducted in collaboration with two grassroots innovations in the city of Valencia (Spain) has been a tool of human development innovation. They explore both the process and the product using different categories belonging to the participatory action research and human development and capabilities approach literature. They conclude that the process has expanded the capabilities of the participants, particularly those relating to rethinking and re-signifying their own innovative practices, and the more instrumental capabilities developed in connection with the use of video and teamwork. Furthermore, videos contribute, firstly, towards spreading a certain vision of the grassroots innovations aligned with the values of human development and, secondly, to creating communicative spaces where such innovation can be shown and discussed. Chapter 12 Climate Change and Sustainability Issues in Indian Newspapers....................................................... 189 Nirmala Thirumalaiah, Hindustan Institute of Technology and Science, India Arul Aram I., Anna University, Chennai, India Climate change conferences had wide media coverage – be it on newspaper, radio, television or the internet. The terms such as ‘climate change’, ‘global warming’, and ‘El Nino’ are gaining popularity among the public. This study examines the news coverage of climate change issues in the major daily newspapers—The Times of India, The Hindu in English, and the Dina Thanthi, Dinamalar, and Dinamani in regional language (Tamil)—for the calendar years 2014 and 2015. This chapter describes how climate change influences nature and human life, and it is the basis for social and economic development. The news coverage of climate change and sustainability issues helps the reader better understand the concepts and perspectives of environment. Climate change communication in regional newspapers and local news stories may increase the public’s interest and knowledge level regarding climate change and sustainability issues. Chapter 13 Environmental Campaigns in Traditional and Social Media............................................................... 207 Sunitha Kuppuswamy, Anna University, Chennai, India This chapter describes how the environment is a significant part of today’s world. The media has the responsibility of educating the audience about the prevailing environmental issues such as pollution, global warming, and climate change as they threaten humankind and sustainable development. Environmental campaigns play a major role in creating awareness about environmental issues and its adverse effects on people. This chapter examines the content of environmental campaigns in traditional and social media and its impact on the environmental awareness of different cross-cultural sections of people using a survey. The chapter is designed based on the theory of planned behaviour according to which human action is guided by a number of factors. The findings revealed that the campaigns had many positive benefits and a number of factors were influencing the promotion of environmental awareness. The study tested a few factors based on communication theories and discussions were drawn.



Chapter 14 Digital Activism: Challenging Food Poverty in the UK...................................................................... 224 Anita Howarth, Brunel University, UK Austerity blogs emerged in the context of radical reform of welfare benefits and constrained household budgets. The blogs, written by those forced to live hand-to-mouth, are a hybrid form of digital culture that merge narratives of lived experience, food practices, and political commentary in ways that challenge the dominant views on poverty and hunger. A Girl Called Jack disrupted existing hegemonies by breaking the silence that the stigma of poverty imposes on the impoverished, drew attention to the corporeal vulnerability of hunger, and invited the pity of the reader. In the process, Jack refuted individual-failure accounts of the causes of and challenged notions of welfare dependency by detailing practices to survive and eat healthily on a £10-a-week food budget. This combination of narrative and survival practices resonated powerfully, yet also polarized opinion, drawing attention to social uneasiness over growing levels of poverty and deep divisions over who is responsible for addressing these, and more fundamentally, who the modern poor are and what modern poverty is. Chapter 15 Use of Mobiles for Promoting Agriculture in Puducherry, India........................................................ 241 I. Arul Aram, Anna University, Chennai, India Sakthivel Murugan G., Independent Researcher, India This research work is based on an empirical investigation into mobile advisory services co-created by the National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development (NABARD), M.S. Swaminathan Research Foundation (MSSRF), and the agriculture farmers’ community of the Union Territory of Puducherry, India. This research work investigates the effectiveness of the agricultural extension tool of mobile phone audio messages among farmers in areas of rural in Puducherry, during the years 2010-2013. The research work analysed farmers’ benefits, gaps in mobile advisory services (MAS), perception of mobile messages, socio-demographic, and socio-economic data. As a result, farmers were able to acquire knowledge and skills relating to their livelihoods and make timely decisions to cope with emerging issues and trends in agriculture to an extent of diversifying their cropping patterns. These messages enhanced their knowledge in crop management, latest farming technologies, and agriculture-related government schemes and entitlements, and post-harvest techniques along with care and management of livestock. Section 6 Corporations, Elections, and Politics Chapter 16 The Role of ‘Delegated Transferable Vote’ for Supporting Tactical Voting in First-Past-the-Post Elections: An Anthropological Study of Local, Regional, and National Elections in the United Kingdom.............................................................................................................................................. 258 Jonathan Bishop, Congress of Researchers and Organisations for Cybercommunity, E-Learning and Socialnomics, UK Mark Beech, Independent Researcher, UK This chapter investigates a method of counting votes called ‘Delegated Transferable Vote’ (DTV) as a means to ensure that every vote counts by enabling voters to be able to vote for the candidate they want in the knowledge that their vote will be tactically allocated by the candidate they vote for if they get



less than 50% of the vote. The theory is that if a voter trusts someone enough to vote for them then they should trust them to allocate their vote to a candidate with similar policies or political philosophies to them. The chapter finds that in elections where the candidates want to keep out a particular candidate or party, such as because they have a hegemony, then DTV can be effective in changing the outcome. However, in election where tactical voting has already taken place, such as where people vote on issues instead of party lines, then the outcome of counting votes using DTV is on the whole not different from the one presently used in the United Kingdom, which is First-Past-the-Post (FPTP). Chapter 17 Website-Feature Analysis of Irish Parliamentarians’ Performance in Web 2.0 Technologies............ 275 Julie Yuwen Chen, University of Helsinki, Finland Neil Collins, University College Cork, Ireland This chapter explores the engagement of Teachta Dála (TDs), members of the Irish lower parliamentary chamber, with Web 2.0 technologies. While conducting the website-feature analysis, the authors looked at three dimensions of each TD’s website: information content, interaction tools, and politicians’ activities on the web. They found that Irish parliamentarians’ usage of the internet is still primarily based on the paradigm of Web 1.0. Perhaps more accurately, Irish politicians’ internet usage is in the mode of Web 1.5, in which some interactive and participatory space is generated with the idea that the cyberspace should encourage citizen participation. As conventional variables such as party affiliation and geographic variation still influence TD’s website performance, one can conclude that information and communication technologies do not really change the way Irish politics are played. The Irish experience is in line with various other studies, such as in Italy and Finland. Chapter 18 CIO Power Influences the Social Alignment and IT-Business Strategic Alignment Relationship...... 290 Jennifer E. Gerow, Virginia Military Institute, USA To give information technology (IT) a more central role in an organization and avoid disrupting the existing executive team power balance, chief information officers (CIOs) should only leverage their power in certain situations. The authors propose CIOs can leverage their expert, prestige, and structural power attributes to influence the social-intellectual alignment relationship versus the social-operational alignment relationship in unique ways. Analyzing data collected from 140 CIOs, the results suggest IT knowledge strengthens the social-strategic alignment relationship, business knowledge, and structural power weaken the social-intellectual alignment relationship, and prestige power has no impact on the social-strategic alignment relationship. Compilation of References................................................................................................................ 316 About the Contributors..................................................................................................................... 363 Index.................................................................................................................................................... 366

xvi

Preface

The Handbook of Research on Recent Developments in Internet Activism and Political Participation addresses pertinent topics from selfie activism to grassroots participation through videos in a fast-moving digital economy. In addressing global trends, indigenous communities and diverse cultural contexts, it yields a multitude of perspectives on digital activism, political articulations, engagement and participation. The digital arena as a spectre of dialogical articulations and activism as well as sustained human agency enacts it as a space which is constantly evolving through time and space, within the political and public spheres. Innovation, exchange of knowledge through mobile platforms and the increasing encroachment of the political realm into our everyday lives through digital technologies, makes the political an intimate encounter remediated through the agenda of platform capitalism. The construction of the political through screen cultures and its remediation through individual and collective engagements recasts the political through digital modes of immersion and representation, fusing a technical architecture with our cognitive reality. Through the substrata of the digital, this collection interrogates power, agency and processes within different settings from the individual, communal, corporate to elite formations. The commodification of the self through the selfie also reveals potential for its use in activism and equally the cynicism that has accrued in the use of the self as a promotional commodity to drive political activism. This dialectical bind is explored in Resistance and Protests Through the Selfie to discern how digital self-portraits perform as political objects and a medium for political messaging online through the landscape of protest and resistance cultures. It argues that the genre of selfies personalizes and individuates collective resistance and, in the process, the ‘self-image’ becomes a tool of embodied self-expression as well as solidarity. The incorporation of the selfie into protest cultures is also about the transcendence of physically bound protests into virtual and voyeuristic forms online where they perform to the politics of protest, voyeurism and the demands of semiotic capitalism. In resonance with this strand, Kosmas Panagiotidis, Theodora Maniou and Andreas Veglis in Selfie Journalism and Politics review the theoretical convergence between journalism and the selfie, to locate new trends in journalism under the banner of ‘selfie journalism’. In interrogating the relationship between selfie journalism and politics through a quantitative study, they seek to cognate the uses and benefits of selfie journalism during elections and political campaigns. They conclude that political selfies, in reproducing and promoting infotainment trends in political campaigning, distract citizens’ attention from the political debates, diverting these into trivia or ‘lighter’ issues. This particular genre also becomes a site for revealing a snapshot into the private lives of politicians, creating an illusion of participation and perhaps a false sense of intimacy. Uta Russmann and Jakob Svensson in No Interaction on Instagram study the use of Instagram by political parties in the 2014 Swedish general election campaign. They specifically focus on the interaction processes on Instagram mooting an enquiry into whether a platform centered on images can engender  

Preface

interaction with followers. Their paper’s findings include a sober reconciliation that image-based platforms may not contribute to substantive information or interactions about political issues and debates. They contend that the potential of visuals to change political communication was not actualized in the campaigns of Swedish political parties on Instagram. In the section on Immersive Environments and Gaming, three different papers provide an insight into the potential of immersive and gaming environments as an immanent part of the digital economy where sense-making may be seduced through simulated environments, hence lending an important consideration to their use as political tools. Christian Stiegler in No Line on the Horizon delves into the concept of ‘social media logic’ to initiate an understanding into the politics of immersive storytelling on digital platforms. Contrasting this notion against mass media logic, Stiegler’s point is that this shift towards social media logic in the 21st century foregrounds certain elements such as programmability, popularity, connectivity, and datafication intimately into the operational logic of digital ecosystems. He does this by reviewing the changing dynamics of Facebook’s Virtual Reality strategy. That paper argues that these become an ingrained part of an existing ecosystem in which content can spread and leap across different platforms to reach audiences through various channels and platforms. Through this agile programmability, digital ecosystems are able to position their formats not only in a story universe but to a wider multinational conglomerate. In tandem, Daniel O’Brien in The Pervasive and the Digital, encounters the trajectory of immersive story worlds by considering four distinct interactive artworks. He posits that immersive worlds become animated through a slippage between technology and the human body where a user has control and simultaneously is controlled. This dialectic underpins the subjectivity of the posthuman in the digital age in which the modes of co-creation of an immersive environment is also about the convergence of the human body with technological hardware, blurring the boundaries between the cognitive, technology and embodiment. In utilizing Csikszentmihalyi’s flow theory, premising a state of total absorption or ‘flow’, Sohail Dahdal in Gaming Digital Content Creation to Engage Youth in Participatory Politics lobbies for more strategic use of gaming environments to engage young adults into politics. Dahdal advocates a framework that builds skills and participation in youth cultures through game-like collaborative environments to enhance civic engagement. Fake news as a buzzword of our contemporary imagination is explored by Fadi Safieddine and Rawad Hammad in Fake News: Origins and Political Impact who draw attention to the ways in which the terminology has acquired a certain latitude to refer to a number of phenomena. They argue that an essential aspect of understanding of what constitutes fake news is to appreciate the different characteristics and labels which reside under this banner. In an era dominated by social media platforms, the propagation of fake news to achieve clickbait-driven profits is facilitated through a complicit architecture of production and consumption. The power and rewards associated with controlling fake news suggest that those behind it will likely explore every loophole technology has to offer in exploiting it. From the vulnerability induced by fake news, we move on to the abuse of images by the alt-right with Anita Howarth’s Fake Photos in the European Refugee crisis. In reviewing the proliferation of fake news and images during times of crisis, she locates fake images as operating within an aesthetic economy which can misconstrue the real through the politics of manipulation, particularly in migration debates and as an ideological tool by the radical right. Howarth argues that this excess of imagery has produced a narrative ecology in which the radical right is able to circulate its ideology beyond its own platforms. As such, fake digital images have become a critical tool for the radical right within this ‘visual turn’. Following on from the alt-right and fake images, Sadhvi Dar, in her paper Facebook Aesthetics: White World-Making, Digital Imaginary, and ‘The War on Terror’, critiques the imagery posted on Facebook in xvii

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the aftermath of the ‘terror attacks’ in Paris 2015. Rendering these as deep forms of White world-making or ways of thinking and feeling that reproduce Whiteness as ethically superior, Dar invoke the digital sphere as elongating the ‘White gaze’ and as transmuting a form of racialized violence which preserves White innocence while obfuscating its colonial history and the historicity of violence. The images as such not only conceive political power but also induce new forms of desire within niche consuming communities. For Dar, the entrance of Paris 2015 imagery online is therefore not a new way of doing politics but is part of an emergent political discourse that informs ways of being White. In a similar vein, in connecting the digital realm with issues of race, Monica Majumdar-Choudhary in The Twisted Fairy-Tale Behind How Light-Skinned Girls Are ‘Trending’ informs how a beauty ideal is constructed from the promotion of skin-lightening products across social media platforms such as Instagram and Facebook. Majumdar-Choudhary deconstructs the aesthetics of social media advertisements to reveal how identities can be constructed through the ‘fantasy’ of whiter skin and how the notion of the ‘ideal woman’ can emerge through these seductive regimes of skin-lightening adverts. In contrast, an inclusive grassroots methodology is offered in Innovation for a Human Development by Alejandra Boni, Monique Leivas, Teresa De La Fuente and Sergio Belda-Miquel. They sought review to what extent a participatory video process in collaboration with two grassroots innovations in the city of Valencia, Spain, has been a tool of human development innovation. They conclude that the process has expanded the capabilities of the participants, particularly in spreading a certain vision of the grassroots innovations aligned with the values of human development, in creating communicative spaces where such innovation can be shown and discussed, and to generate knowledge aligned with human development values. In elongating the theme of community and environment, Nirmala Thirumalaiah and Arul Aram assess the news coverage of climate change issues in the major daily newspapers in India with their contribution Climate Change and Sustainability Issues in Indian Newspapers. Their passionate stance seeks to convince how climate change influences nature and human life and is the basis for social and economic development. They posit that climate change communication in regional newspapers and local news stories may increase the public’s interest and knowledge regarding climate change and sustainability issues. They also show that while newspapers are keen on stimulating the emotional feelings of the readers, their lack of understanding of local environmental challenges may result in the under-reporting of local environmental challenges. They maintain that climate change and sustainability issues must be at the forefront of journalism to face the many societal challenges ahead. This advocacy is sustained with Sunitha Kuppuswamy’s chapter on Environmental Campaigns in Traditional and Social Media where she reiterates the media’s responsibility in educating the audience about the prevailing environmental issues such as pollution, global warming, and climate change as threats to humankind and sustainable development. In analyzing environmental campaigns in traditional and social media and their impact on the environmental awareness of different cross-cultural sections of people, she underscores the role of environmental campaigns in augmenting social awareness. Beyond the use of television to disseminate campaigns, she highlights how use of platforms such as Facebook is increasing in India. Poverty as a potent and present social issue becomes the focus of enquiry in Digital Activism: Challenging Food Poverty in the UK. Anita Howarth in assessing austerity blogs as emerging through the context of radical reform of welfare benefits and constrained household budgets, showcases how these challenge the dominant views on poverty and hunger in the first world. Blogs as a hybrid digital artefact which fuse lived reality with political commentary are a form of political activism which disrupt existing hegemonies by breaking the silence and stigma of poverty. Blogs as communal digital artefacts provide an insight into the subjectivities of Britain’s poor and the immorality of austerity as an ideology which refutes the xviii

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lived experiences of the deprived. Extending the use of new media technologies as a communal tool, Arul Aram and Sakthivel Murugan investigate the Use of Mobiles for Promoting Agriculture in Puducherry, India. Analyzing farmers’ benefits, gaps in mobile advisory services (MAS), perception of mobile messages, and socio-demographic and socio-economic data, they show that farmers are able to acquire knowledge and skills relating to their livelihoods and make timely decisions to cope with emerging issues and trends in agriculture to an extent of diversifying their cropping patterns. Mobile messaging often facilitates the enhancement of knowledge in crop management, farming technologies, and agriculturerelated government schemes as well as care and management of livestock. Accordingly, they argue that these rapid changes in new spectrum allocation and an increase in the digital divide indicate a paradigm shift in mobile phone use which will require further research. From mobile phone use, Jonathan Bishop and Mark Beech cast their attention to election campaigns with The Role of ‘Delegated Transferable Vote’ for Supporting Tactical Voting in First-Past-the-Post Elections. They interrogate a method of counting votes called Delegated Transferable Vote (DTV) as a means to ensure that ‘every vote counts’. The authors find that in elections where the candidates want to ‘keep out’ a particular candidate or party, DTV can be effective in changing the outcome. However, in elections where tactical voting has already taken place, such as where people vote on issues instead of party lines, then the outcome of counting votes using DTV is on the whole not different from the one presently used in the United Kingdom, which is First Past The Post (FPTP). Residing within this broader theme, Julie Yu-Wen Chen and Neil Collins in Website-Feature Analysis of Irish Parliamentarians’ Performance in Web 2.0 Technologies evaluate members of the Irish lower parliamentary chamber’s engagement with Web 2.0, specifically reviewing elements such as information content, interaction tools and politicians’ activities. The study in terms of their broader analysis concludes that information and communication technologies do not really change the way Irish politics are played and as such the primary realm of Irish politicians’ interaction with the public is still outside of cyberspace. Jennifer E. Gerow completes this collection with her paper CIO Power Influences the Social Alignment and ITBusiness Strategic Alignment Relationship where the role of technology is assessed against the power dynamics of Chief Information Officers (CIOs) and their executive teams. Investigating the nuances in the relationship between social and strategic alignment with a focus on the moderating impact of CIOs’ expert, prestige, and structural power, the paper recommends that CIOs should pursue social alignment to enhance their organization’s strategic alignment. Within such a configuration IT knowledge can enhance relationships through the social-strategic alignment. Yasmin Ibrahim Queen Mary University of London, UK

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Section 1

Selfies and Instagram

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Chapter 1

Resistance and Protests Through the “Selfie”: Recasting the Self Through the Politics of Protest Yasmin Ibrahim https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2510-6683 Queen Mary University of London, UK

ABSTRACT Conjoining images of digital self-portraits (i.e., ‘selfies’) with protests and resistance recasts the self through new paradigms of enquiry in the social media landscape. The appropriation of digital selfimagery to express protest and partake in social movements and resistance personalises and individuates collective resistance, and, in the process, the ‘self-image’ becomes a tool of embodied self-expression as well as solidarity imbuing the ‘self’ through new modalities of social relations where the material body is co-opted into a politics of protest without de-centring the self. This chapter examines the phenomenon of selfie-activism within the social media era where the ‘visual’ turn of instant imagery lends new forms of the attention economy to protests and campaigns, pulling physically bound protests into virtual and voyeuristic forms online where they perform both to the politics of protest and the demands of semiotic capitalism.

INTRODUCTION There has been increasing interest in the area of selfies as a research enquiry in its own right. From the aesthetics of selfies to their commodification online, this is an area of robust scholarship seeking to delve beyond narcissistic frameworks to understand the curation and the projection of the self onto social media and public digital platforms where it may be re-assembled and consumed differentially (See Nikunen 2019; Vega 2017; Losh 2014). The selfie has emerged as a resonant cultural form not only as a self-curated self-portraiture but as a tool to convey presence, invite validation, and as a mode DOI: 10.4018/978-1-7998-4796-0.ch001

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of communication and reciprocation with family and peers. Its utility is not confined solely to diarizing the self and its quotidian or extraordinary journeys through life. It can be observed as a common resource of digitalized civilizations embedded intimately in their patterns and rhythms of articulation and selforganization with the increasing use of smartphones in our everyday lives. This imbues it with cultural readings and interpretations, where both universalities and particularities might apply with reference to different contexts in consuming these as commodity forms or making them available as transactable digital artefacts online. The selfie as a cultural form is undeniably complex, as we witness its proliferation through convergent technologies and its concurrence in the everyday. The selfie as a form of everyday experience is then synonymous with culture and the forms of signification which circulate within society (Williams 2011) bound with the intimate spheres of social relations and beyond. Culture, for Raymond Williams, gives a common resource for meanings where the ordinary culture of the everyday can collide with national and global cultures. Hence, through the concept of ‘structures of feeling’, Williams sought to convey the amalgamation of representations with lived experience, fusing the everyday with a wider world of signification. This then implicates the selfie as an everyday artefact implicated through the intimacies of everyday life and beyond. Everyday life is also a site rich with subversions, transgressions and nuanced articulations of resistance and as such it is important to go beyond the cursory to examine the common cultural resources we take for granted (Brown 1996: 729) where the perfunctory may be reassembled as a site of resistance. The material and immaterial modes of life signification become reassembled through the digital architecture of the internet where the selfie can both acquire meaning and value as a political tool or a symbol of solidarity, yet is diminished through multitudinous agendas online. The incorporation of recording and imaging devices on smartphones and the improved resolution of imaging and recording technologies on mobile gadgets has meant that self-portraiture, instances of which are dubbed ‘selfies’, has produced enormous interest and uptake as a form of expressing the self, as a mode of communication, diarization, exchange and a commodity form producing value and social capital in its own right (See Ibrahim 2018a; 2017a; 2015a; 2010a). The saturation of selfies on social media platforms has meant the convening of new forms of gaze, including self-fetishization, accumulation of value, and aestheticization; and the utilization of the selfie can be seen through varied economies from consumerism to resistance as well as the expression of solidarity with a cause. Invariably these have raised difficult ethical questions about the popularity of the selfie in different contexts and the human endeavour to leave traces of ourselves online, even in spaces of unfolding trauma or tragic scenarios of loss (Ibrahim 2015b). In the United States, the Occupy Wall Street (OWS) movement birthed a virile form of activism saturated with smartphones on a large scale (DeLuca et al. 2012). The smartphone has been appropriated in a number of ways to question and challenge power hegemonies and social relations, leading mobile technologies into a sphere of digital activism which can unleash collective solidarities without foreclosing the potential for re-imagining the ‘virtuous’ self (Ibrahim 2017b; 2018b) within a complex digital architecture that thrives on digital co-presence, virality, and networked assemblages which are also bound with mainstream media organizations which may mine the internet for breaking stories and divert mass attention to social media platforms and trending hashtags. This conjoining between mainstream media and user-generated content (UGC), and news outed through the internet and social media platforms have been a major factor in social movements seeking to utilize digital platforms more strategically beyond using its communication platforms to organize street protests, campaigns and lobbying. As such, the idea of the ‘media event’ (Dayan & Katz 1992; Ibrahim 2007a) as a mediated and multimedia phenomenon has been enlarged through social media platforms which can pull the story beyond the timeline of its 2

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physical occurrence. This temporal and spatial disruption is an intrinsic element of social media being part of protest and resistance today. Veering beyond discussions of narcissism or obsessions with the self, the selfie as a performative device invokes material practices of resistance and solidarity through relationships and engagements with a wider world (Ibrahim 2016; 2018a). This chapter examines the use of the ‘selfie’ as a political tool in protest landscapes where media technologies are often intimately implicated as tools of communication, dissemination, amplification and lobbying in our modern history. Collective protests, in eliciting human actors to protest or resist, assemble vast numbers of humans as agents of protest. In mass protests the individuated human form is diluted through this collectivity where mass protest is the conveying of the voluminous assemblage of humanity in solidarity, and its intensity is illuminated in the strength of the collective. In exploring the use of the ‘selfie’ as a political tool of protest, this chapter aims to provide a means to understand the role of individuation and self-imagery within the protest landscape, particularly with new media technologies with their affordances in enabling the personalization of messages, low costs and ease of upload through convergent technologies with the facilities for real-time broadcast. The resonance of the selfie as a popular genre in the digital age means that the selfie is not delimited as a category, performing to different modes of signification iterating it as a complex commodity form online. As a personal tool to inscribe messages or to join protests through the virtual dimensions of the internet, it also ushers in an age where protest and resistance inhabit online and offline manifestations simultaneously and where these can be conjoined with a ‘virality’ in catering to diverse consuming communities online. The virtual platform then becomes a space for enacting, organizing and embodying resistance, political activism and solidarity. The selfie as a political tool straddles multiple economies from spectatorship and self-immersion to communion with active political communities, showcasing the assemblage of social relations online. This chapter, in examining ‘selfie activism’ as part of protest cultures, deconstructs the utility, complexities and the limitations of this form of activism. The chapter argues that the intimatization of technologies enables the selfie to be performed and re-appropriated as a tool of activism, positioning protests within the modalities of the ‘virtual’ as a fluid category as well as an intrinsic aspect of semiotic capitalism where selfie activism can extend the theatre of protest online while being abstracted and re-calibrated through capital’s logic. Selfie activism is a rich site of enquiry, showcasing both the tendencies in the human condition for solidarity and communion as well as its limitations as a political tool valorising the spectacular subsumed through the ‘visual turn’ in protest politics in the digital age.

DIGITAL ACTIVISM AND THE ‘SELFIE’ Digital activism today is a space of fluidity, enmeshing different agendas and audiences but within this sphere of enquiry is the acknowledgement of the intimatization of the smartphone into the realm of the everyday where its resting site of the corporeal body repositions the smartphone as a device which cocreates and archives the experiences and biorhythms of the human, her interactions and engagements (Ibrahim 2015a; 2019). The domestication of technologies and their intimate corporealization extends every human’s cognitive and sensorial notions of time and space. The interaction of the body and the biotechnology of the smart phone produces movement and space, birthing a politics of corporeal subjectivity through digital connectivity, conjoining intimate spheres with wider spaces of conversation and communal gaze online. Beyond the perfunctory and familiar, the body connected through the 3

 Resistance and Protests Through the “Selfie”

smartphone is empowered to relay the truth and to narrate ‘constructed realities’ to global audiences. The act of publishing images of conflict in war zones not readily amenable to journalists encodes the smartphone as an ‘outing’ device where ‘truth’ can be revealed through images captured on the ground to communicate the state of conflict and to find emergency help and relief (See Moughrabieh & Weinert 2006; Hodson 2013; Kuntsman & Stein 2015). Yet truth outed through image technologies inhabits a conflicted zone of artification, aestheticization and fiction (Ibrahim 2018c). The transcendence of protest and resistance through digital platforms confronts these very problematics through this extreme visual turn in the communication of politics and protests. Despite the problematics of using images as forms of truth testimonies, the use of smartphones by lay people in conflict zones during turmoil has created a certain outreach in the public domain where it can conjoin with online news media and ‘new publics’ or even ‘micro-publics’ to disseminate images through networks and networked economies online, binding mainstream news organisations with the lay person as the news source and conveyer of content. As such, the notion of the ‘media event’ becomes open-ended and enlarged as opposed to be being crafted through news organizations alone (See Ibrahim 2007a), acquiring both a fluid quality and the potential to be refracted or re-appropriated through other agendas online. The widening of participation through people’s ability to conjoin or immerse themselves in protest through convergent technologies thwarts the idea of the media event as controlled or staged, propelling into it into disrupting modes defined through this uncertainty of related and unrelated content and agendas colliding online. This ability of the individual to partake in media events and insert oneself through imagery such as the selfie is about instant gratification and possibilities for creating new rituals of solidarity, political agency or to enact citizenship in visual and manifest terms. It equally imposes a degree of cynicism in terms of the ease with which the lay public can partake in movements through imagery even when there may be no strong belief in the cause to motivate one to participate offline. Hence the critique of selfie activism is its tendency to coalesce into the performative, voyeuristic or fetishistic without an attendant rootedness to a cause or belief system. In premising the visual, it may ignite new aestheticization of the self, curating it through a protest politics of the wider world rather than a commitment to a cause. The hashtags as a new vernacular of connecting and disconnecting to conversations and assemblages captures both the opportunities for mass dissemination through virality and its dispossession through the attention-seeking economy of social media platforms. Smartphones, in their ability to capture events and re-post content, invariably re-negotiate the cartography of protest sites, both temporally and spatially. The seamlessness with which we can capture and publish online multiplies sites of protest, creating new spaces for communicating resistance through the interactions of the body, technologies and virtuality without relinquishing the connectivity to physical sites of protests. If the political economy of social space offline is produced through the idea of scarcity (Elden 2007: 106), virtual space is connoted through its abundance and magnitude where it can inscribe both a sense of space and ‘placelessness’, where corporeal identities can be morphed, effaced or reiterated through user profiles and engagements. Virtuality online imagined through its infinite vastness is a space demarcated through the flows of capital and its visible and invisible operations interfaced through the technology of the screen. Virtuality’s bind with capital is enacted in its ordering of content, extraction and production of data and its ability to fuse sites and spaces online. This casual commingling of the grave, the trivial, and the ludic is a defined aspect of capital online. The virtual as a space of intense experimentation by capital, particularly in social media and social networking sites, also means that the

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virtual becomes a realm for interplay with the ‘social’ and ‘sociality’ where humans can enact new rituals of communication, memory making, negotiate social norms and remake the self(ie). If Raymond Williams’ (2003) ‘mobile privatization’ of the television teleported us to faraway locales without leaving the living room, the selfie without the materiality of flesh embarks on journeys of attachment online calibrated through social relations as well as the spectacular. As Lefebvre (1991: 40) propounds, ‘social space is a social product and as such every mode of production produces its own space’. Here technology plays a role in mediating the production of spaces where spaces are produced through the interface between technology and social relations. Lefebvre’s concept of the “cultural revolution,” interrogates the transformation of everyday life in which ordinary people would produce new, autonomous social space, lending to the emergence of a ‘new urbanism’. The online as a space for producing autonomous social spaces yet bound through the ‘illogic’ of capital and new attention economies reframes selfie activism within these unstable machineries of data assemblage and extractions where it can be ensconced through protest, political yet refracted through the spectacular online. If physical protests and resistance happen in online spaces, the virtual, through the circulation and reposting of content, temporally re-mediates the event with a renewed sense of content, not being static but amenable to replication, reposting and dissemination beyond its immediate platforms of uploading. More importantly, offline protests though limited through time and space in terms of their duration, are remediated temporally and spatially online. The convergence of technologies and the intimatization of the smartphone as part of our postmodern ubiquity, reconfigures our biorhythms, sense of space and time as well as connectivities through the biotechnology of the smartphone. The smartphone creates both a duality of experience where life is lived physically but also experientially online in the ways we migrate content and activities by pledging these to new social spaces and structures of relations online. This includes the archiving of experiences through a mnemonic memory, such as cloud storage, expanding the possibilities for inserting the self both as a material and symbolic entity within the configurations of the political or the everyday. Online and social media platforms create new vernaculars to express dissent and to transact these through networked economies. The popular and political enmesh without the hermeneutics of a binary, competing for human attention economy and virality within the vast virtual terrains of the internet. Social media platforms made for UGC, as such, lend to social movements from the ground without the barriers to cost and entry associated with mass media. Images of selfie activism swim within this mix, amenable to extraction and abstraction, disembedded from political signification without foreclosing the possibilities to tap into political alliances or solidarity or being in the moment as protest movements unfold. As such, the selfie coalesces many modalities including the richness and resistance in everyday life as well as the common cultural resources which require scrutiny beyond the cursory surface of material cultures. According to Hannah Arendt (1958: 190), ‘the smallest act in the most limited circumstances contains the seed of boundlessness and unpredictability: an act, a gesture, a word are enough to change any constellation.” From this vantage point, the selfie has both symbolic and material relevance as part of our contemporary culture and as a cultural resource. Within protest cultures it can function in visible and manifest ways as part of collective activism and humanity’s quest for social change and resistance. In turning away from a deep obsession with resistance in anthropological enquiries, Sherry Ortner (1995) champions a more holistic co-location of the broader political, cultural and economic contexts in studying resistance and cultures of resistance that can emerge. How these can mediate the subjectivities of actors involved in producing, marketing and consuming dissent become an important area of scrutiny, she argues. We may overlook areas of co-operation and reciprocation in everyday life when we predomi5

 Resistance and Protests Through the “Selfie”

nantly focus on domination and conflict. Drawing on Foucault’s (1978) notion of power being diffused in society and permeating lived experiences, the political can equally reside in the personal through subtle forms of resistance, as Brown (1996: 729) points out. From the perspective of the cultural materialism of Raymond Williams, selfies can be studied as a community’s or society’s means to utilize their immediate resources (in this case the smartphone as a biotechnology which captures images on the move and makes these available to public platforms online) to respond to the social and the political context or to communicate how people construct or curate a notion of a ‘moral’ self within a digital culture which requires us to post and generate content ubiquitously. The notion of being ‘woke’ is implicated within the performative and visually manifest online even if one’s commitment to the cause is weak. The conjoining of the self-image with popularised activism or mass protest has acquired various terminologies such as ‘Hashtag Activism’, ‘Feel Good Activism’, ‘Clicktivism’, ‘Slacktivism’ or ‘Microactivism’, casting a sceptical lens on the limits of such activism where the self remains a subject of signification while addressing the issue of protest at hand. During the Occupy Wall Street movement, hashtag activism gained prominence and has been increasingly utilized in other campaigns, In a recent campaign, Russian women posted selfies on social media showing their faces covered in cuts and bruises to protest against Russia’s lenient domestic violence law, under which abusers face just a $500 fine or two weeks in jail (Radnofsky and Holodny 2019). Some 8,000 women posted photos of themselves on Instagram and these included fake injuries simulated for their selfies as well as their accounts of abuse. The ease of imaging the self and our ability to post online means that the self occupies both the position of the subject and object online without foreclosing its ability to partake in wider media events or protest cultures through this dual subjugation. In its semiotic articulation, the selfie protest image operates through a code of centralising the embodied self and is often accompanied with a message co-relating to a particular campaign (usually through a hashtag or caption). As a genre it can be situated through the aesthetic conventions of the selfie whilst incorporating the relevant hashtag combined with the feasibility to post a more personalized message within this composition. While it centralises the self and its corporeality, selfie activism taps into a wider solidarity, re-making the selfie as part of political advocacy, invoking new ways in which the selfie can be interlocked and be intertextualized with the wider politics of the world. While selfie activism communicates to a wider social message or campaign of resistance it does not absolve the ability to individualise the cause through the projection of the self within this imagery. The personal and the corporeal embodiment intersect with collective agency yet the ubiquity of the selfie in many ways invokes it through the paradigms of the popular, casting selfie activism as a contested entity straddling the political and popular. It is within this paradigm and through centring the corporeal materiality of the ‘self’ that scepticism emerges on the limits of selfie activism where altruistic pursuits may be proscribed by the self’s quest for prominence or in seeking to attach the self through virtue seeking or one’s notions of constructed morality (Ibrahim 2017b). On other hand, one may argue that humans as political actors will utilise resources from their immediate environment to express themselves. In this sense, new media technologies and the ability to publish content online produces an immediacy, accessibility and proximity, encoding it through a degree of instant gratification lending to a perception that social change can emerge through armchair activism or through the click of the smartphone, removed from physical sites of protest.

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Selfie Communion and Activism In the contemporary political landscape, there are many instances of selfie protests gaining popularity. When opposition politician Mohamad Chatah, anticipated by some to be a possible future prime minister, was killed in a car bomb attack in Beirut four others were killed in the blast, including 16-yearold Mohammad Chaar who happened to be in the area with some friends (BBC News 2014). This car bomb attack in Lebanon prompted a “selfie protest” under the hashtag #notamartyr (BBC News 2014). Moments before the tragic incident the teenager and his friends had taken a group selfie on the street and this was widely shared on social media. This prompted a reaction on social media to the teenager’s death even though mainstream media was focussing on the politician’s death. It led to the setting up of the Facebook page, ‘Not a Martyr’ and a Twitter account with the hashtag #notamartyr trending. The online campaign encouraged people to post selfies of themselves along with an accompanying message under the hashtag. With thousands of posts being tweeted, the selfie became a means to mark solidarity and communion in a tragic event where social media architecture facilitated the convening of this affective community to mourn an unknown teenager through selfie solidarity. The selfie emerged as an artefact of communion, grief and memorialising in this event made resonant through the fact the teenager had marked his imminent death with a selfie. The image of his last selfie produced a resonance while marking out his life journey as ‘before and after’ the selfie. In the process, it ignited a community of strangers who could relate to the young man and his tragic circumstances and equally to communicate grief through digital self-portraiture. The projection of the selfie as an act of protest in online spaces marks out new rituals which can emerge through the ubiquitous imaging of the self in the digital era. Its transcendence from a personal artefact to the communal as tool for mourning and political participation marks out the selfie as a site of new machinations emerging through social structures and relations, and equally mediated through the architecture of the digital. With this particular case in Lebanon, selfie- activism must also be contextualised within a wider paradigm of human connectivity and the human need to connect during tragic events in terms of coming to terms with trauma. The emergence of new rituals with and through the use of social media in terms of death and communion whilst reconciling the human need to leave traces of themselves through death events and public or media events (Ibrahim 2015c; 2015d) is entwined with the resistance which the selfie embodies. In recognising these interlocking relationships between the formation of new rituals online with public platforms on social media, selfie activism premises the visual, leveraging on instantaneity, re-mediation of physical distance through the virtual, in enabling communion through attention economies such as trending hashtags and the virality of the internet. As such, they can divert attention away from an event or reiterate what ignites and resonates within an affective consuming community where the political may be displaced. There have been other instances where selfies have been used to protest against the governance structures of social media giants such as Facebook. When Facebook sought to censure and ban images of women breastfeeding by categorising the nipple as an offensive body part and, as such, pornographic, Facebook users protested by posting breastfeeding images as their profile image (Ibrahim 2010b) . Selfies are subsumed under a wider architecture of visuality where protest and resistance cultures are not precluded from it, yet they can be recalibrated through platform capitalism and its governance of imagery and what is acceptable in its spaces of engagement and sociality (Ibrahim 2017c). As argued, this ‘visual turn’ being a vital part of political and social imagination today means social media platforms

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are not only saturated with newsfeeds but also imagery which can be both embedded with the political and disembedded from context or origin. Selfie activism with the emphasis on embodied resistance lends equally to a celebrity culture, coalescing the political with the popular and fan cultures. When hundreds of school girls were kidnapped in Nigeria by Islamic fundamentalists Boko Haram, many celebrities including Michelle Obama posted photos of themselves popularising the campaign under the banner of #BringBackOurGirls, Selfie activism enables laypeople to partake in campaigns alongside celebrities in promoting a cause through self-portraiture. Hashtag activism and trending hashtags through celebrity engagement and endorsement prompts a criticism that the political may be impoverished or depleted through its colocation with the popular or the proximity and association it creates with celebrity profiles online, where the belief system or values may be less primary than appearing alongside celebrities in protest mode.

Architecture of the ‘Social’ Social media platforms as a means to convene the ‘social’ offer immense possibilities in terms of their usage and exploitation for human cultures and civilization. The access to new media technologies and our abilities to produce and consume as well as partake and participate in wider social conversations or to express solidarity through imagery (or its attendant aesthetics) and words has meant that social media platforms emerge as a space for multitudinous activities including the facilitation of social movements and the ability to organize protest through networked platforms and public messaging. Unlike the centrality of traditional media, digital and social media are diffused and fragmented and often it needs the attention of mainstream media or ‘virality’ of the internet to draw attention to a cause or story. With hashtag activism, the hashtag symbol # retrieves information about a topic enabling users to utilize the hashtag in contributing to conversations or in signposting relevant news and information on the topic on Twitter. Twitter as a social media platform that assembles coverage and conversation on particular issues and topics through a participatory environment. The emergence of news and protests through these platforms builds the event through a collective gaze, epistolary tweets, and proximity giving a sense of intimacy through personal comments, emoticons, memes and imagery. This mediation of temporality, space as well as a sense of an affective consuming community subsumes social media sites such as Twitter or Instagram as part of event creation giving a sense of collective witnessing to events even if a physical event is unfolding somewhere else in the world. Hashtag campaigns work to a spectacular networked economy and in the process they amplify protest and resistance through the virulent circulation of images and conversations. The aesthetics of platform architecture draws on immediacy by facilitating live reporting of events and lends to the idea of an engaged and imagined public online. Today, contemporary activism is intimately entwined both online and offline demonstrating the close bind between aesthetics and politics, and equally the re-imagination of the self through mediated events of protest cultures and social movements. The conjoining of the self and its visualization through a political landscape is also about the production of the self as a political and politicized entity through the embodied resistance of the selfie. The selfie as a digital artefact speaks to a multiplicity of functions online but as a commodity form it is open to endless iterations which can both centre as well as decentre or scramble the political to be abstracted for the campaign and from the campaign of protest and remain an object or subject of voyeurism and aesthetics in its own right. Social media platforms as interactive spaces allow for the theatre of protest to be conjoined with a platform economy where vast volumes of data and content can flow through to include fragmented and disparate audiences from dif8

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ferent locales and time zones. Online performances expand the ways in which performance is redefined as an embodied, live, and in-situ event commenting on and intervening in current transnational digital capitalism. (Fuentas 2015). As such the virtual not only enables a doubling of spaces as television also facilitates in covering protests but the multiplication of sites online where protest can be consumed and experienced, equally where people can partake and contribute to the event in a number of ways, where selfies can signify individual and collective resistance. The architecture online affords a fluidity where capitalism can leverage on this flexibility in constructing and reconstructing the relations of space or in constituting the world market (Lefebvre 1976: 21).

HISTORY OF EMBODIED PROTESTS The corporeal body, politics and the performative have an affective bind through time in terms of staging and communicating protest and resistance. The entwining of offline and online protest movements and social messaging through selfies illuminates the conjoining of the virtual and physical worlds in complex ways and also that the aesthetic can be political and has symbolic value. From civil disobedience movements to present day protests, these leverage on the body as a means to communicate and to court spectatorship whether it is the media, authorities or the wider public. Social movements and protest cultures are often designed to elicit media attention and coverage and this is particularly the case where social movements design protest in venues and spaces to anticipate media coverage as in the case of Occupy or anti-capitalist movements protesting against the hegemony of powerful entities such as the World Bank in organizing and governing the flow of capital globally (Ibrahim 2007b). Today social media platforms and virtual protests are part of protest and resistance movement utilizing the agility, mobility and virility of social media platforms. Symbolic and material enactments of resistance as an intrinsic element of protest and social movements seek to transcend boundaries, cultures and languages. In the history of social movements, the body is both physis (nature) and nomos (law and order, and rationalism) as ‘material and symbolic’ (Cox and Foust 2009: 616). Embodied protests such as the use of selfies online remediate the materiality of the corporeal body while transposing it as a vehicle for the symbolic. The protesting or resisting body interacts with a whole host of forces from the ideological to technical infrastructures online including the machinations of platform capitalism where connectivity and content are converted to data and user profiles and content is fodder for capital accumulation. Platforms such as Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter leverage on the sociality of connections and conversations, utilizing the affecting labour of masses to distribute content that will engage their peers, endorse them, call attention to the wider politics of the world while being subsumed through the economy of these platforms where hashtags produce data on engagements and traffic, invoking ways in which these interweave into newsfeeds through algorithms. Hashtag activism coexists with voluminous content that occurs online while directing people to content that can convene and converge around hashtags. The volume of data and content online means that social activism and protest culture have to vie for attention and social currency with other events and conversations that happen in platforms. When sociality and connectivity coalesce with platform economics which seek to maximise traffic and accumulate data, social movements such as anti-globalization campaigns equally conjoin with the capitalist frames and data empires which they may, ironically, be resisting as part of the struggle against neoliberal globalization. This enmeshing of the social and political alongside the aesthetics of the selfie online speaks to the new 9

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arenas in which capitalism maximises the sensuous labour of humans and this includes protest cultures reliant on humans to relay content to their networks. For Felix Guattari the ‘semiotic turn’ of capital and its accumulation of surplus values is not purely from monetary profits accrued through labour but also through the continuous development of mechanisms controlling the production and reproduction of subjectivity (see Zepke 2011) where technology coalesces with human senses and affectivity. This semiotic turn of capital means that visual content is recombined as data, while it is ripped out of context as a mode of capitalist deterritorialization (Steyerl 2012: 42).

Politics and Visual Aesthetics The use of media technologies to communicate and disseminate resistance by social movements has meant organizations have had to be strategic in maximising their visibility in the public domain. Social movements have co-opted and exploited the theatricality of media technologies through time. For Alexander Baumgartern, the notion of aesthetics is not bound between art and life but betwixt the material and the immaterial: ‘between things and thoughts, sensations and ideas’ where these allude to the perceptive realm rather than just the cognitive alone (cf. Eagleton 1988: 327). Veering between reason and the sensory, aesthetics illuminates the friction between the rational and the irrational imbuing it with an autonomous quality to defy categorisation and domestication. Similarly, Walter Benjamin (2008) views reproductive technologies in reproducing art as enmeshing the political and the aesthetic, particularly within the enquiry of how aura is affected with artistic creations. The mediation of our senses through technology is then an interplay with the sensory and the rational. With the concept of the ‘Carnivalesque’, Bakhtin (1965) releases subversive agency from the aesthetic imagery of protests coding these as theatrical productions in communicating the symbolic through the artistic platform of the carnival. The aesthetic of the carnivalesque is about enacting and playing out the confrontations with power and hegemonic social relations. New aesthetic conventions can be part of a wider creation of artistic endeavours. As Rancière (2004: 2005) points out, art and politics co-mingle but art can break away from the political while being inscribed through the political. Such a dialectic propounds that aesthetic practices like the selfie can be inscribed through the political yet acquire autonomy in crafting the political. For Raymond Williams (2011) the aesthetic is implicated in spatial and textual manifestations of power and its dynamic iterations. As such, political resistance can emerge through mundane everyday acts and common cultural resources to challenge power hegemonies. Deleuze and Guattari (1988) perceive aesthetics as a sense event which can be disruptive and non-representational, fostering alliances between aesthetics and dissidence. The selfie as a popular and resonant genre taps into a shared vernacular in projecting itself as an image for consumption. Yet the selfie is not confined within these conventions alone where it can be abstracted and interpreted or consumed out of context. This then imbues the selfie with a degree of autonomy, subversive capabilities and emancipatory potential as a commodity form. Of significance in this discussion is Bourriand’s (1997) notion of ‘relational aesthetics’ emerging in the artistic movements of the 1990s where art and ethics are bound up with social relations and political context as opposed to being devoid of it. Rather than breaking from its context, relational aesthetics alludes to an immersion back into the contingencies of its environment and audiences where the latter is envisaged as a community rather than premising a singular relationship between the art and the viewer, regardless of its ephemerality or idealism (Bishop 2004: 54). Relational aesthetics for Bourriand is not just about the potential of the interactive art per se but the means to locate contemporary practices 10

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within the wider culture, signalling a shift from a material to a service-based economy encompassing virtual relationships, global connectivity wherein new resources and modalities may re-fashion artistic practices. Bourriand contends cultural practice and art as not bound with the search for utopia as such but a struggle for social change manifested through the creation of ‘microtopias’ in the present. Relational aesthetics, with its emphasis on creating relations with others and in pushing for social change and dialogue, situates aesthetics within a communal paradigm. Here the criteria we should use to evaluate open-ended, participatory art works are not just aesthetic qualities. We should use a political and even an ethical lens through which we must judge the ‘relations’ that are produced by relational art works (Bishop 2004: 64). Selfie activism as aesthetic practice can be examined through such a premise where the body as object and canvass for protest is understood through its relationality to others and through the context of its political manifestation. The self is constructed and consumed as part of the aesthetic intervention yet produced through this dynamics of relationality to others as well as the political. Relational aesthetics resonate with the sporadic emergence of anti-capitalist movements since the 1990s due to the perspective of viewing art as a direct form of non-reified life and community (Martin 2007: 371). While there is no linear suggestion to elevate the selfie to the artistic per se, as aesthetic practice the selfie is bound through an economy of social exchange and relationality determined through the sociality of social media platforms. In assessing selfie activism as a form of aesthetic protest, its relationship to platform capitalism as well as the economy of social exchanges within these sites makes it a much more conflicted commodity form where it can accrue symbolic and material value through exchange and consumption online, and its possibilities to both extend and diminish the political. The selfie as a digital commodity online and its relationality to the digital architecture of production as well as its co-optation within the protest landscape opens up an assemblage of relationality which further compounds its readings as an aesthetic practice. The ease and proliferation of hashtag activism manifested through digital self-portraiture may lead to suggestions that it is a diluted form of activism compared to activism on the ground and with links to the organizations of protest. Harry Cleaver (1999) describes the virtual environment as a ‘hydrosphere’ or space of fluidity given to constant dissolution and reassembling but at times capable of solidified moments of organization encapsulating the ephemerality of the internet. Equally, social movements have a tendency to dissipate after the ‘event’ where the moment of jouissance and solidarity may melt away. The virality and ephemerality of social media can be seen as fleeting with little lasting impact (Wasik 2009). Nevertheless, the coalescing of activism online may have a certain resonance where online activism may be thwarted by police enforcement or officials. This was evident with the Ferguson riots of 2014, and their ensuing police brutality, and in the Black Lives Matter campaigns (Bonilla and Rosa 2015: 5). From a perspective of cynicism, selfie activism can also be seen as proliferating a type of ‘protest porn’ where there is a rapid devaluation of a protest and its appropriation as a mode of a spectacular form for exchange, voyeurism or aesthetic consumption without a deep-seated or sustained commitment to the cause lending integrally to the hydrospheric qualities of virtuality. Here is instant proliferation and virulence is seen as diminishing the political significance of protest where the image prevails over substance, and the self(ie) predominates over existential qualities of resistance.

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CONCLUSION Selfie activism as a form of popular protest conjoins the selfie as a popular image genre and aesthetic practice with the enactment, performance and communication of political resistance and protest in the digital era. To read it primarily through scepticism or populism would dilute its complexity and its relationality to the embodiment of the political through self-portraiture, its relationality to protest landscapes and its value as a form of social exchange and collective expression. More critical examination is needed of selfie activism both in terms of resistance studies for the ways in which selfie activism may enhance the political through social exchange and reciprocity while being assembled through the digital architecture and convergent mobile technologies. Lending both to the ‘visual turn’ in protest movements and coalescing into the UGC economy of the internet, it speaks to a multitude of phenomena online including voyeurism and consumption of the spectacular online, without negating its potential and agency for activism online. Selfie activism extends the media event on the ground and in so doing conveys the ways in which we negotiate distance and proximity to the political through the embodied self and its curation in online spaces as a form of enacting the political and in projecting the self as a ‘virtuous’ entity.

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DeLuca, K. M., Lawson, S., & Sun, Y. (2012). Occupy Wall Street on the public screens of social media: The many framings of the birth of a protest movement. Communication, Culture & Critique, 5(4), 483–509. doi:10.1111/j.1753-9137.2012.01141.x Eagleton, T. (1988). The ideology of the aesthetic. Poetics Today, 9(2), 327–338. doi:10.2307/1772692 Elden, S. (2007). There is a politics of space because space is political: Henri Lefebvre and the production of space. Radical Philosophy Review, 10(2), 101–116. doi:10.5840/radphilrev20071022 Foucault, M. (1978). The History of Sexuality. Pantheon Books. Fuentes, M. A. (2015). Performance, politics and protest. What is performance studies? https://www. researchgate.net/profile/Marcela_Fuentes2/publication/316973745_Performance_Politics_and_Protest/ links/591b0d47a6fdccd9311f8801/Performance-Politics-and-Protest.pdf Hodson, H. (2013). Smartphones catch the action from all angles. New Scientist, 218(2912), 19. doi:10.1016/S0262-4079(13)60925-2 Ibrahim, Y. (2007a). The technological gaze: Event construction and the mobile body. M/C Journal, 10(1). Ibrahim, Y. (2007b). The IMF in Singapore: The staging of a city. Fast Capitalism, 2(2). Ibrahim, Y. (2010a). Social Networking Sites (SNS) and the ‘Narcissistic Turn’: The Politics of SelfExposure. In Social Computing: Concepts, Methodologies, Tools, and Applications (pp. 1855-1868). IGI Global. Ibrahim, Y. (2010b). The breastfeeding controversy and Facebook: Politicization of image, privacy and protest. International Journal of E-Politics, 1(2), 16–28. doi:10.4018/jep.2010040102 Ibrahim, Y. (2015a). Instagramming life: Banal imaging and the poetics of the everyday. Journal of Media Practice, 16(1), 42–54. doi:10.1080/14682753.2015.1015800 Ibrahim, Y. (2015b). Self-representation and the disaster event: Self-imaging, morality and immortality. Journal of Media Practice, 16(3), 211–227. doi:10.1080/14682753.2015.1116755 Ibrahim, Y. (2015c). Neda, martyrdom and the media event: Death imagery as an iconic memory. The Poster, 3(1-2), 31–48. doi:10.1386/post.3.1-2.31_1 Ibrahim, Y. (2015d). Self-representation and the disaster event: Self-imaging, morality and immortality. Journal of Media Practice, 16(3), 211–227. doi:10.1080/14682753.2015.1116755 Ibrahim, Y. (2016). Self-Production through the Banal and the Fictive: Self and the Relationship with the Screen. International Journal of E-Politics, 7(2), 51–61. doi:10.4018/IJEP.2016040104 Ibrahim, Y. (2017a). Coalescing the mirror and the screen: Consuming the ‘self’ online. Continuum, 31(1), 104–113. doi:10.1080/10304312.2016.1239066 Ibrahim, Y. (2017b). Revisiting Rousseau’s amour propre: Self-love and digital living. Empedocles: European Journal for the Philosophy of Communication, 8(1), 115–128. doi:10.1386/ejpc.8.1.115_1 Ibrahim, Y. (2017c). Facebook and the Napalm Girl: reframing the iconic as pornographic. Social Media + Society, 3(4).

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Ibrahim, Y. (2018a). Production of the ‘Self’ in the Digital Age. Springer. doi:10.1007/978-3-319-74436-0 Ibrahim, Y. (2018b). Self-Love and Self-Curation Online. In Production of the ‘Self’ in the Digital Age (pp. 37–56). Palgrave Macmillan. doi:10.1007/978-3-319-74436-0_3 Ibrahim, Y. (2018c). The Unsacred and the Spectacularized: Alan Kurdi and the Migrant Body. Social Media + Society, 4(4). Ibrahim, Y. (2019). Politics of Gaze: The Image Economy Online. Routledge. doi:10.4324/9780429402142 Jameson, F. (1990). Late Marxism: Adorno, or, the Persistence of the Dialectic. Verso. Kuntsman, A., & Stein, R. L. (2015). Digital militarism: Israel’s occupation in the social media age. Stanford University Press. Lefebvre, H. (1968). The Explosion: Marxism and the French Upheaval (A. Ehrenfeld, Trans.). New York: Monthly Review Press. Lefebvre, H. (1976). The Survival of Capitalism (F. Bryant, Trans.). Allison & Busby. Lefebvre, H. (1991). The Production of Space (D. Nicolson-Smith, Trans.). Blackwell. Losh, E. (2014). Hashtag feminism and Twitter activism in India. Social Epistemology Review and Reply Collective, 3(3), 11–22. Mar tin, S. (2007). Critique of relational aesthetics. Third Text, 21(4), 369–386. doi:10.1080/09528820701433323 Mouffe, C. (2013). Artistic Strategies in Politics and Political Strategies in Art. Dissidence, 10(2). http:// hemi.ps.tsoa.nyu.edu/hemi/ en/hidvl/1676-isvael-native-american-fetishes Moughrabieh, A., & Weinert, C. (2016). Rapid deployment of international tele–intensive care unit services in war-torn Syria. Annals of the American Thoracic Society, 13(2), 165–172. doi:10.1513/ AnnalsATS.201509-589OT PMID:26788827 Nikunen, K. (2019). Once a refugee: Selfie activism, visualized citizenship and the space of appearance. Popular Communication, 17(2), 154–170. doi:10.1080/15405702.2018.1527336 Ortner, S. B. (1995). Resistance and the problem of ethnographic refusal. Comparative Studies in Society and History, 37(1), 173–193. doi:10.1017/S0010417500019587 Radnofsky, C., & Holodny, E. (2019). In Russia, the punishment for a first-time assault on a family member is a fine of less than 30,000 rubles ($500) or a 15-day arrest. NBC News. https://www.nbcnews. com/news/world/russian-women-posts-selfies-fake-injuries-protest-lax-domestic-violence-n1034361 Rancière, J. (2004). The Politics of Aesthetics (G. Rockhill, Trans.). Continuum. Rancière, J. (2005). Artists and Cultural Producers as Political Subjects. Opposition, Intervention, Participation, Emancipation in Times of Neo-liberal Globalisation. Klartext! http://klartext.uqbar-ev.de/ dokupdfs/RanciereStatementEN.pdf

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Steyerl, H. (2012). The Wretched of the Screen. Sternberg Press. Tripp, C. (2013). The Power and the People: Paths of Resistance in the Middle East. Cambridge University Press. Vega, S. R. (2017). Selfless Selfie Citizenship: Chupacabras Selfie Project. In Selfie Citizenship (pp. 137–147). Palgrave Macmillan. doi:10.1007/978-3-319-45270-8_15 Wasik, B. (2009). And Then There’s This: How Stories Live and Die in Viral Culture. Penguin. Williams, R. (2003). Television: Technology and Cultural Form. Routledge. doi:10.4324/9780203450277 Williams, R. (2011). Culture is ordinary (1958). Cultural theory: An anthology, 53-59. Zepke, S. (2011). From aesthetic autonomy to autonomist aesthetics: Art and life in Guattari. The Guattari Effect, 205-19.

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Chapter 2

Selfie Journalism and Politics: An Empirical Approach Kosmas Panagiotidis https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3107-7126 Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece Theodora A. Maniou https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4299-5221 University of Cyprus, Cyprus Andreas Veglis https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0286-2304 Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece

ABSTRACT A theoretical idea of convergence between journalism and selfie photographs in a single framework led academic researchers to identify and examine a new tendency in journalism, which they termed selfie journalism. This chapter investigates the relationship between selfie journalism and politics. Based on quantitative analysis, the authors seek to examine the uses and benefits of selfie journalism during elections. The aim of the study is twofold: first, to examine the use of selfie journalism in political campaigning and, second, to examine the impact of this phenomenon on the media.

INTRODUCTION In 2016, Anil Sabharwal, Vice President of Google Photos, shared a blog post of Google’s statistics on selfies, showing that within a year 24 billion had been uploaded to the application by more than 200 million users (Sabharwal, 2016). Undoubtedly the popularity of selfies has increased rapidly since 2002, when an Australian citizen posted a picture of his face and called it a ‘selfie’, with millions of people now posting and sharing selfies using various applications on a daily basis (Littleton, 2019). DOI: 10.4018/978-1-7998-4796-0.ch002

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 Selfie Journalism and Politics

However, the cause of this popularity increase is perceived in different ways by society and academia. While society characterises selfies as narcissist, attention-seeking and self-promoting, academia focuses on more meaningful approaches and detailed analysis (Zook & Poorthuis, 2019). For example, a number of scholars have extensively analysed the phenomenon of selfies through documentation of the various contexts in which selfies are used (Kedzior & Allen, 2016): as tools for self-presentation and communication (Bellinger, 2015; Katz & Crocker, 2015; Frosh, 2015), a form of journalistic evidence (Koliska & Roberts, 2015), political messaging (Baishya, 2015), resistance (Nemer & Freeman, 2015), a visual commodity (Iqani & Schroeder, 2015), conspicuous consumption (Marwick, 2015), and an expression of feminist values and art (Murray, 2015). Selfies were recently documented in the context of journalism (see Omar, 2015; Maniou & Veglis, 2016). A theoretical idea of convergence between journalism and selfies in a single framework led academic researchers to identify a new tendency in journalism, which they termed selfie journalism. Having studied the phenomenon of selfies, not only in the field of cultural studies but also in that of visual studies and the media, selfie journalism was viewed and introduced as a form of participatory (Bowman & Willis, 2003; Gillmor, 2004) and citizen journalism (Noor, 2017). As such, it constitutes one of the most notable phenomena within the current digital media environment, with its dissemination linked to the advent of the internet and Web 2.0. The digital revolution, including the use of smart, personal digital devices (smartphones, tablets, etc.) and the power of social media tools, has converted citizens into potential creators of images of newsworthy events (Maniou & Veglis, 2016), affecting various norms in the news production process. Although this new technologically-driven phenomenon was incorporated quickly into contemporary journalistic workflows, it raised a number of issues regarding the emergence of elements of infotainment and impartial reporting on crucial and complex matters. More and more public figures such as politicians began to exploit the capabilities of social media platforms for consumption and distribution of personal content (Ellison et al., 2011, p. 19), experimenting with a range of self-presentation tools to empower their political base (Farci & Orefice, 2015) and to widen political participation (Zook & Poorthuis, 2019). Other frequently discussed factors contributing to an increase in political participation are microblogging (Kaplan & Haenlein, 2011) and social networking (Amichai-Hamburger & Hayat, 2017), which similarly raise issues of reliability and trustworthiness. This chapter investigates the relationship between selfie journalism and politics, examining its use during elections, based on quantitative analysis techniques. The wider scope of the research is to investigate the extent to which selfie journalism has penetrated the media, aiming to attract larger audiences in ‘difficult’ sectors of reporting, such as politics. The aim of the study is twofold: first, to examine the extensive use of selfie journalism in political campaigning and, second, to examine the impact of this phenomenon on the media.

THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK Assessing Meanings and Definitions of Selfie Journalism Historically, the selfie has been linked to snapshot photography, identified with leisure or games and meant to represent authentic, spontaneous and unposed situations (Iqani and Schroeder, 2015). Today, selfies serve numerous purposes, depending on the context in which they operate. With their origin in art 17

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and photography, selfies are perceived as ‘gestural images’ (Frosh, 2015) and, as such, their aesthetics cannot be purely understood and interpreted through visual studies alone. There is a need to engage in the analysis of communication and media theories in order to fully understand their performativity in journalistic practices (Maniou, Panagiotidis & Veglis, 2017) and political campaigning. Pham (2015) argues that the self or subjectivity is the primary representational object in selfies as a visual medium. Hall (2014) adds that the self-portrait has regularly been at the forefront of cultural development, exerting influence on how identity and selfhood are conceived within a culture (see also Zhao and Zappavigna, 2017). Ranging from ‘life-streaming’ (Freeman, 1997; Marwick, 2013) to selfies, the art of ‘streaming’ visuals, photographs, audio and/or video, to curate a self-identity has become a common everyday practice (Wargo, 2015) and living one’s life in an online environment has become the new normal. For most people, today’s online reality is characterised by certain activities such as communication of personal experiences in visual form on Instagram, establishment of social connections through Facebook, and monitoring information on Twitter (Highfield, 2018). Koliska and Roberts (2015) argue that selfies are communal experiences of modern life, which create a constant flow of visual artefacts of personally witnessed events. In such a mediascape, the selfie as a photographic object and as a practice (Senft & Baym 2015) accompanied by social media users’ potential for steering agendas (Highfield, 2018) is of particular significance not only in journalism but also in politics. A selfie is a way of speaking and today selfies are ubiquitous due to the social media networks people use to communicate and deliver their messages. Journalists quickly realised the value of the selfie and its potential as a journalistic tool. People sharing and thus distributing to a wide audience highly personalised ‘stories’ in a formal or informal way, together with the fast growing tendency to broadcast themselves, each for different reasons, gave reporting power to professional journalists. In addition, selfies are analogous to ‘the communication situation of broadcasting, which displays reporters in various locations and where experiences are mediated to an audience which has no first-hand acquaintance with them’ (Peters, 2001, p.717). As Banita (2012) argues, this phenomenon can be described as ‘media witnessing’ (see also Koliska & Roberts, 2015, p.1674). Reading (2009, p.72) goes deeper, describing images taken with mobile devices as ‘mobile witnessing’, a data exchange via global networks. The emergence of these networks in the environment of Web 2.0 and the ability to share digital content through them (John, 2012) signalled a major technology development in which both the processes of distribution and communication were reshaped. In particular, smart technology deployed through portable devices (phones, tablets, etc.) has eliminated issues of time in the process of capturing and distributing eye witness accounts across the world. The incorporation of HD cameras in the news-making process allowed up-to-the-minute disclosure of such accounts. These are only a few indications of the technological advancement which took place and formed the new digital reality for journalists. In the same way, Maniou, Panagiotidis and Veglis (2017) observed that it is not the selfie itself that changes current journalistic practices, but the technology which has evolved around and beyond it. Due to this evolution, a news item does not derive from a related photograph but rather is itself the photograph, with the journalistic narrative and interpretation following. Additionally, once a video or a photograph is shared, there is no need for instant description, since a hashtag serving as a title is enough (Maniou & Veglis, 2016). The digital revolution gave reporting power not only to journalists but also to citizens, enabling them to create potential newsworthy images. Aiming to exploit this situation and enrich their streams of content, media organisations invited citizens to participate by sharing and sending in photographs and/or videos (Guerrero-Garcia & Palomo, 2015). From the selfie journalism perspective, the practice 18

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of sharing selfies can be viewed as a form of participatory journalism and understood as ‘the combination of citizen journalism with multiple personal points of view (selfies provided by different people)’ (Koliska & Roberts, 2015, p.1677). In addition, the new digital reality created alternative modes of story-telling. This newly formed digital public sphere was able to interfere in the agenda-setting process of the media, by focusing attention on issues, events and/or individual people previously highlighted in social media (Maniou & Bantimaroudis, 2018). The growing popularity of Instagram and Snapchat is solid proof for this argument. Many public figures such as politicians, actors and singers maintain their celebrity status almost solely through selfieoriented activity in the digital world (Maniou, Panagiotidis & Veglis, 2017). They operate according to a kind of ‘attention economy’ (Goldhaber, 1997; Lanham, 1994; Lankshear and Knobel, 2002), in which users attempt to attract the attention of other users and then display that attention as part of their own displays (Jones, 2009, p.118). The semiotics of these pictures are complex. Multifunctional (Jones, 2010) and multidimensional, the practices of selfie making and sharing exist in diverse social contexts (Zhao & Zappavigna, 2017) and can fulfil more than one goal. Besides attention, engagement with the users can be considered as yet another goal. Numerous examples show that the more diverse the context of a selfie is, the more engagement can be generated. Selfies are taken by public figures in social contexts as diverse as war and military settings (Brager, 2015), education (Charteris et al., 2014), pregnancy and breastfeeding (Boon and Pentney, 2015), or funerals (Meese et al., 2015; Zhao and Zappavigna, 2017). Engagement is the key factor and since selfie journalism is engagement-oriented, it contributes to the renewal of mobile journalism. Counting how many Facebook or Instagram likes a story receives, how many retweets a tweet gets or tallying YouTube views for a video are now obsolete social media strategies. Contemporary ones are focusing on how people are commenting, starting conversations, and sharing journalistic content (Omar, 2015). In particular, communication professionals analyse what kind of hashtags are accompanying the selfies or whether these hashtags are preserved or changed when the selfie is reposted by different users in the digital media (Maniou, Panagiotidis & Veglis, 2017). Beyond hashtags, users tend to utilise other aids in order to increase the engagement levels of their selfie activity. Such digital aids are downloadable apps (Watkins, Hjorth & Koskinen, 2012) and visual editing tools like image filters, selfie sticks and Photoshop, which help in the user’s process of lighting or framing a selfie, before being posted on the web. Although selfies’ main value tends to be more emotional than aesthetic, since they are based on amateur rather than professional techniques (Tifentale & Manovich, 2015), nowadays people edit and re-shape them in more professional ways. Individuals can thus re-create their own identity by broadcasting themselves as they would like to be and not as they actually are. For this reason, journalists tend to be more cautious and selective concerning the material they collect from web sources to feed it into their news stories. With the growing importance of usergenerated content, it can seem as if an event does not exist as such, but instead is being co-created as it is reported through the media (Hammelburg, 2015, p.93). In the case of selfies, when they are used to reproduce journalistic content, they do not depict isolated objects. Instead, they are proven records of events which include background information and/or items/activities/other people/gestures, framing the ‘author’ of the photograph. It is this ‘framing’ that becomes today’s news, putting the author into the story. For example, by pinpointing an object or premises in the background scenery, the author automatically draws attention to it, placing this object at the centre of the viewers’ interest and, thus, brings the frame forward as the main issue of the news story. As such, selfie journalism seems to be affecting the way history is now documented (Maniou, Panagiotidis & Veglis, 2017). 19

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However, this development raises questions about whether or not the events documented via selfie journalism are happening as they are or as we (or others) want to see and interpret them. If the latter is the case, to what extent can selfie journalism be trustworthy? Digital platforms offer a variety of categorised or uncategorised personal data that can be analysed algorithmically, creating in this way a digital profile for each individual. Most scholars are concerned with privacy issues around media use of personal data (Goggin, Martin & Dwyer, 2015). However, in the case of parliamentary candidates during the pre-election period, as the following analysis will show, it is the politicians themselves and not the media that seem to be embedding elements of direct infotainment characteristics in matters of political and social life. As Gomez-Cruz and Thornham (2015) argue, the issue here is how the combination of visual, material and digital elements of selfies create new forms of surveillance and ‘sousveillance’, reshaping what privacy, public and intimacy are and how they can thus generate softer and more effective forms of power. Based on the above analysis, selfie journalism could be described as a new tendency in participatory and citizens’ journalism, exercised via mobile devices and based on the practice of posting selfie photographs (and/or videos) on social media and thus reproducing content not based on isolated objects/ people/images, etc., but on artefacts framing the ‘author’ of the photograph. These artefacts (either objects/ premises or other people) mostly constitute elements of the author’s private life, which, thus, becomes intentionally public, aiming to attract other people’s attention and provoke (positive) reactions in public (Maniou, Panagiotidis & Veglis, 2017). For the purposes of this study, a clear distinction should be made between selfie journalism exercised by citizens, and similar practices used within political campaigns by political candidates, with the latter being the focus of this research.

Politics and Selfie Journalism As selfies have become a central part of popular culture, media discourses and marketing strategies, inevitably they have also become part of political campaigning (Iqani & Schroeder, 2015). In recent years, politicians have dramatically changed the way they communicate with the public (Sparkes-Vian, 2013). In the late 2000s, Obama’s presidential campaign made extensive use of visual aids (e.g., his ‘Hope’ poster) on digital communication platforms, setting an example to dozens of others at both national and local political levels. As Schill (2012) argues, political actors appreciate the significant role that visuals play in constructing political images. They have a strong impact on a viewer’s attention and can create persuasive arguments (see also Filimonov, Russmann, & Svensson, 2016). Locating political selfies within a broader trend of postmodern political campaigning, Karadimitriou & Veneti (2016) argue that this new form of partly unmediated communication presents opportunities for new forms of interaction between citizens and politicians, new forms of political image making and new ways to attract media attention. Terblanche (2011) adds “we have witnessed a fundamental shift in political communication standards, upgrading the speed and scale of exposure in the public arena” (as cited in Karadimitriou & Veneti, 2016). Additionally, selfies demonstrate the discursive connection between creative practice and individual subjectivity (Wargo, 2015). As such, their engagement in the process of political campaigning was only a matter of time, since they allow voters’ perspectives to be put forward and negotiated in public discourse in a way other visual media (e.g. press photos) cannot. The act of selfie taking thus can be seen as an act of political engagement (Zhao and Zappavigna, 2017). It is not the primary purpose of this study to analyse political campaigning tools. The uses and benefits of social media in such practices have been extensively analysed in the last decade by several 20

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scholars, mainly political communication specialists. There is one point upon which all these analyses agree: microblogging and social networking contribute considerably to increased political participation in favour of a candidate and/or acting politician and/or political group, by using infotainment tactics of presenting political issues in order to approach ‘difficult’ groups of the society, such as young citizens, and engage them in the voting process (Chen et al., 2009; Wattal et al., 2010; Bond et al., 2012; Hobbs, 2015; Baker, 2009; Larsson & Moe, 2012). Even decades before the development of social networks, tabloid media exercising infotainment tactics were more likely to connect with this category of voters; for example, in the UK, almost every candidate since 1979 supported by The Sun newspaper has been elected (Worrall, 2015). Although tabloid journalism can undoubtedly attract large audiences, it has never been associated with impartial reporting. The issue is whether selfie journalism can be acknowledged as a form of tabloid journalism or if it only includes some forms of tabloid, and whether or not it can be trustworthy. In the case of politicians, it is well established that they tend to use selfies as a strategic self-promotion tool and take advantage of their wide dissemination through social media, which proves how the practice of self-portraits facilitates new forms of ‘performative politics’ (Farci & Orefice, 2015). Performativity theories focus on debating relationships between theory and practice and encourage practical interventions in every aspect of life (Cabantous, Gond, Harding & Learmonth, 2016). Performative politics foregrounds the politician as an actor, whose performance on the public stage is continuously judged in terms of authenticity, honesty and ‘character’ (Corner and Pels, 2003) and, in this way, proves the growing convergence between popular culture and the political system (van Zoonen, 2005), opening the way for a paradigmatic shift from deliberative democracy rooted in civil society to ‘audience democracy’ (Manin, 2010) based on the conversion of politicians in media narratives (Maniou, Panagiotidis & Veglis, 2017).

RESEARCH QUESTIONS The scope of this study is twofold: first, to examine the extensive use of selfie journalism in political campaigning and, second, to examine its impact on the media. Three primary questions guided our research: RQ1: Which basic characteristics of selfie journalism are most evident in political reporting? RQ2: To what extent has selfie journalism penetrated political campaigns? RQ3: Which criteria do the media use to select and promote specific selfies?

Method and Research Sample The research was conducted in the Republic of Cyprus during the pre-election period of April and May 2016, and the post-election period, a week after the elections on 22 May 2016. Quantitative content analysis was conducted on the number of selfies posted on the social media profiles of all parliamentary candidates. The unit of analysis was the selfie photograph. Classification systems were devised to identify different features of the photographs. All photographs that were located and extracted through the candidates’ profiles were examined and categorised via a code book that included variables based on the specific characteristics of selfie journalism (as analysed above). Specific criteria on the form and visual presentation of each photograph were not set a priori, as the intention was to include as many units of analysis as possible in the research. In the course of the study, three researchers were trained in 21

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the implementation process of the code book, while a pre-test and a post-test were conducted to ensure that the researchers assessed the additional variables in a similar manner (Mellado & Lagos, 2014, pp. 2095-2096). The tests yielded overall inter-coder reliability of 0.71 (pre-test) and 0.69 (post-test), employing Krippendorff’s Alpha test. In total, the social media profiles (Instagram, Facebook and Twitter) of 494 parliamentary candidates from eight political parties were investigated: the left wing-communist AKEL, the right wing-conservative governing party DISI [Democratic Rally], the centre-right DIKO [Democratic Party] (Katsourides, 2003), the right wing newly created Solidarity, the extreme right wing ultranationalist ELAM [National People’s Front], the social-democratic EDEK [Movement of Social Democrats], Ecologists [the Green Party] and the populist Citizens Alliance. 56 of these candidates were elected. The final sample consists of 85 selfies, deriving from the profiles of both female and male parliamentary candidates and all political parties, as presented in Figure 1 and Figure 2. Figure 1. Research sample – male and female candidates’ selfies

Figure 2. Research sample – selfies publicised through the media.

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FINDINGS The Characteristics of Selfie Journalism From the total number of selfies examined on the parliamentary candidates’ social media profiles, only 38.8% included a title or a hashtag, while 98.8% of them reflected a positive mode (style), in terms of depicting happy, informal moments/events/initiatives. As Figure 3 shows, 98.8% of them included other people, while 51.8% of them included objects (signs, premises, etc.) that evidenced the location, time or event in which the selfie was taken. Figure 3. Depiction of other people and objects

Concerning the identity of other people depicted in the politicians’ selfies, 67.1% of them are family and friends and another 18.8% were voters or citizens. As Figure 4 also shows, 62.4% of them depicted family or personal moments, while only 28.2% depicted social or political events. Figure 4. Identity of others and content of the selfies

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Figure 5. Activity of selfies

The majority of the selfies examined received up to 100 ‘likes’/reactions (64.7%) and no reports/ retweets (88.2%), while only 34.1% of them received more than 101 ‘likes’/reactions and 1.2% of them were reposted/retweeted more than ten times. All the characteristics mentioned above were examined in relation to the politicians’ age, electoral district, electoral order1 and gender. As the Pearson chi square tests show in Table 1, significant dependence was found between the politicians’ gender and the depiction of objects in the selfies, the politicians’ electoral district and the content of the selfies, the number of likes and re-posts, and finally, the politicians’ age and the content, number of likes and reposts. Table 1. Crosstabs of all variables with age, electoral district, electoral order and gender Age

Electoral District

Electoral Order

Gender

Depiction of others

p=0.575 x2=2.898, df=4

p=0.462 x2=2.572, df=3

p=0.193 x2=4.722, df=3

p=0.366 x2=0.818, df=1

Depiction of objects

p=0.575 x2=2.898, df=4

p=0.594 x2=1.896, df=3

p=0.084 x2=6.647, df=3

p=0.004 x2=8.841, df=1

Identity of others

p=0.705 x2=12.549, df=16

p=0.007 x2=27.095, df=12

p=0.156 x2=16.835, df=12

p=0.160 x2=6.578, df=4

Content

p=0.054 x2=20.737, df=12

p=0.000 x2=52.445, df=9

p=0.006 x2=23.178 df=9

p=0.161 x2=5.145, df=3

Number of ‘likes’

p=050 x2=31.385, df=20

p=0.000 x2=120.128, df=15

p=0.060 x2=24.318, df=15

p=0.148 x2=8.159, df=5

Number of reposts

p=0.067 x2=10.602, df=8

p=0.040 x2=13.174, df=6

p=0.228 x2=8.142, df=6

p=0.226 x2=2.978, df=2

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A number of variables were examined concerning the politicians’ characteristics when posting a selfie on social media. Specifically, these variables describe the way(s) in which politicians manage their social media profile, as far as selfie posts are concerned. 89.4% of all selfies examined were posted before the elections, while 96.5% of them were posted via a mobile phone. 82.4% of all selfies were initially posted on Facebook, 11.8% were initially posted on Instagram and 5.9% on Twitter. 71.8% of all politicians maintain more than one account on the same social medium while only 61.2% of them have active accounts on all three social media. As the Pearson chi square tests have shown, there is a statistically significant relationship between the age of the politician and his/her active presence on social media. Other important factors concerning the way they manage their social media profile, as far as selfie posts are concerned, are the politician’s electoral order and electoral district, since candidates in the capital district, who were elected with higher numbers of votes, tended to post more selfies than those from smaller electoral districts and who either were not elected or were elected with a lower number of votes. These findings suggest that selfie journalism exercised within political campaigns tends to follow traditional patterns of performativity regarding the use of social media (Usher, 2016). Finally, as Table 2 shows, the politician’s gender is important, with female candidates tending to be more active than their male colleagues. Table 2. Pearson x2 tests concerning age, electoral district, electoral order and gender Age

Electoral District

Electoral Order

Gender

Initial social medium of post

p=0.087 x2=13.805, df=8

p=0 x2=38.866, df=6

p=0.001 x2=24.004, df=6

p=0.020 x2=7.792, df=2

Number of politicians’ accounts on the same medium

p=0.001 x2=19.540, df=4

p=0 x2=49.230, df=3

p=0 x2=30.099, df=3

p=0.186 x2=1.750, df=1

Active presence on all three social media

p=0 x2=79.644, df=8

p=0 x2=37.594, df=6

p=0.001 x2=22.868, df=6

p=0 x2=21.208, df=2

Promotion of selfies in the media

p=0.617 x2=2.657, df=4

p=0.357 x2=3.231, df=3

p=0.014 x2=10.564, df=3

p=0.054 x2=3.705, df=1

Device used for post

p=0.500 x2=3.359, df=4

p=0.484 x2=2.453, df=3

p=0.039 x2=8.383, df=3

p=0.113 x2=2.514, df=1

DISCUSSION The main device via which politicians administer their personal profile is the mobile phone and the prevailing social network, when it comes to selfies, is Instagram (Filimonov, Russmann, & Svensson, 2016) followed by Facebook and Twitter. At the time of writing, searches for the hashtag #selfie on Instagram brought up 408,940,049 results. Amongst others, the success of Instagram is based on the fact that most feeds are public; anyone can log into the site and look at photos someone else has posted. This feature allows users not only to send out a feed of images but also to receive a stream of images from other individuals, including celebrities (Iqani & Schroeder, 2015). As the research has shown, the vast majority of selfies posted on the political candidates’ social media profiles included other people, mainly those with personal/family ties to the candidate, pleasantly engaging and having fun with friends and/or family members. Half of these photographs included objects or

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premises that offered to the public a hint of the candidate’s private space, creating the illusion of sharing personal experiences. In the same vein, another category of selfies included people and objects/premises that represented significant personal moments for the candidate, i.e., the birth of his/her child, the celebration party of a family member, etc. This category of selfies was the most likely to be published by the media, since they received a higher number of positive reactions and re-posts by the candidates ‘followers’ or ‘friends’. Additionally, all these show that politicians can use selfies in order to create the sense of ‘the person beyond the role’ (Goffman, 1974; see also, Farci & Orefice, 2015). Another category of selfies included the depiction of the candidate with celebrity personalities, well known to the local society, such as athletes. This is another popular category of selfies that receive a high number of positive reactions and are published in the traditional media, with the politician using ‘celebrification’ (West and Orman 2003; Dakhlia 2010) or ‘entertainmentization’ (Karvonen 2009) to reach specific target groups. As such, selfie journalism practices emphasise phatic communicative functions performed by politicians framed with celebrities in the media in order to keep fans (potential voters, in this case) updated (Jerslev & Mortensen, 2016) and connect the politicians to the notion of celebrity. There are two important factors that affect the way politicians administer their personal profile on social networks. First, the politician’s gender, since women tend to be more active in self-promotion than men. Second, the politician’s electoral district plays a significant role, especially when it comes to the content of the selfies posted and the amount of reactions these selfies receive. It has to be taken into consideration, as this study has showed, that there is a significant correlation between electoral success and the number of selfies a candidate posts. Additionally, there is a significant correlation between the candidate’s electoral success and the number of reactions, either positive or neutral/negative, these selfies receive. This finding is supported by previous studies on social media metrics (number of comments/ reactions), which show that users tend to be affected by these metrics in shaping an opinion (Antonopoulos et al., 2016) about the person posting the message, either in the form of text, photo or video. Selfies resonate with wider socio-cultural and political practices and the way we approach them has political and ideological significance (Gomez-Cruz & Thornham, 2015). Their use in selfie journalism adheres to the candidates’ main target: to achieve high penetration in various groups of voters, interact with them and increase their level of political participation.

CONCLUSION This study has showed that political selfies reproduce and promote infotainment trends in political campaigning, distracting citizens’ attention from the political debate to ‘lighter’ issues. By engaging in such tactics, the politicians ‘allow’ voters/citizens to view a snapshot of their private life, creating in this way the illusion of participation in it. Electoral success seems to be directly connected to the candidate’s activity in the digital sphere and the way he/she administers their personal profile via social media; for example, candidates with higher numbers of votes were those that posted more selfies. Additionally, the more ‘active’ the candidate is in more than one social network, the more popular they seem to become and the more likely they are to penetrate large groups of voters, thus engaging in selfie journalism practices. As expected, selfies that receive a higher number of reactions find their way into traditional media, since they can attract a larger audience. In fact, the more private the selfie is, the most likely it is to be published by traditional media, although these media tend to be rather selective in terms of publicising politicians’ selfies. Although 26

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dozens of politicians’ selfies are posted on social media, only a limited number of these become ‘news’ via traditional media, generally the more personal ones and/or those depicting celebrities. This analysis has showed a direct correlation between selfie journalism tactics and electoral success. However, only indices of audience’s reactions are presented here. Further research could be based on an audience survey, to investigate users’ perceptions of such practices in electoral campaigns.

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ENDNOTE 1



32

We use the term ‘electoral order’ in our study to state the ranking position in which every politician was elected in his/her district (first, second, third, etc.).

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Chapter 3

No Interaction on Instagram: Political Party Use of Instagram in the 2014 Swedish Election Campaign

Uta Russmann https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8684-6976 FHWien der WKW University of Applied Sciences for Management and Communication, Austria Jakob Svensson School of Art & Communication, Malmö University, Sweden

ABSTRACT This chapter addresses a neglected issue within the field of social media and political communication. It focuses on interaction processes on Instagram asking how political parties used Instagram—a platform that is centered around images—when engaging in interaction with their followers on the platform. The focus is on political parties’ use of Instagram in the 2014 Swedish national election campaign. This gives an impression of the first attempts of political parties’ use of this communication platform. The quantitative content analysis focuses on Instagram images including their captions and comments (posts) that Swedish parties published four weeks prior to Election Day. The results suggest that not much changes on Instagram compared to other social media platforms: Swedish political parties hardly used Instagram to interact with their followers, and the very few interactions taking place did not contribute to the exchange of relevant and substantive information about politics. Interaction and deliberation are also not enhanced by the images.

INTRODUCTION1 This article is one of the first articles directing its attention to Instagram. Instagram is an image-centered social media platform that allows users to like, share and comment on user-generated postings. The platform was launched on 6 October 2010. Since its launch, the platform has become increasingly popular. In December 2014, around the time of data collection of the presented empirical study, over 300 million DOI: 10.4018/978-1-7998-4796-0.ch003

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 No Interaction on Instagram

users worldwide (Fiegerman, 2014) used Instagram to like, share and comment on photos and videos. Since then, the number of users has increased to over 1 billion users in 2018 (Instagram, 2018). Still, there is very little research on Instagram within the social sciences in general and political communication in particular. When the presented study was conducted, a literature review on Instagram, within the largest social science databases from 2010 to 2016, only resulted in 12 articles in which Instagram appears in the abstract or among the keywords. Only two of these articles discuss the use of Instagram by political actors. One article discusses the Instagram account of the Syrian president Bashar-Al-Assad and how the platform is used to frame the presidency (Holiday et al., 2015) and one article is on the use of Instagram in the elections in Bahrain (Eldin, 2016). Since then Instagram has grasp scholars interest as shown by the slowly increasing number of studies. For instance, Lalancette and Raynauld (2017) investigated pictures on the Instagram account of Justin Trudeau, after he was elected Canadian prime minister, and found that he uses it primarily for mass broadcasting purposes and to reinforce a positive image of himself and his government. Liebhart and Bernhardt (2017) show that candidates in election campaigns use Instagram to present themselves as legitimate office holders. In a previous study on the use of Instagram by Swedish political parties (using the same sample and data basis as in this study), the authors have analyzed images including their captions (published by the parties) by focusing on content-related characteristics in order to investigate the strategic use of Instagram (see Filimonov et al., 2016). The findings show that Swedish parties mainly used their Instagram images (including captions) to disseminate information (broadcasting) rather than for mobilizing their supporters. Most often images were personalized, i.e., they focused on one (or more) single candidates. These images show a strong presence of top candidates, who were primarily displayed in a political/professional context (Filimonov et al., 2016). However, so far, no other study in the field of political communication has examined Instagram’s potential for interaction. When studying online visual communication the so-called social aspect of social media platforms has to be considered. The social in social media often refers to possibilities for interaction, participation and networking. Possibilities, which are underlined by techno-euphoric proclamations of a more democratic media making a truly public sphere come to life. The present study aims to explore how political parties use Instagram for interaction when election campaigning and what kind of interaction takes place on political parties’ Instagram accounts? One of the main attractions of social media platforms is their affordance of interactivity. It is therefore pivotal to study what kind of interaction takes place on official parties’ Instagram accounts and whether contentrelated characteristics of the images have an influence on interaction or not. Xenos and colleagues (2015) have highlighted that research on online campaigning can benefit from study designs that focus more on how social media is used rather than simply on how much, the question most studies in the field focus on. To study this, the focus of this article is on the use of Instagram by Swedish parties during the 2014 national election. Using a quantitative content analysis of all parties’ postings on their Instagram accounts during the “hot phase” of the election campaign (four weeks before Election Day), the study particularly examines follower comments and the parties’ reactions to follower comments as well as the deliberative nature of these interactions in order to understand whether content-related characteristics of the images (and their captions) have any influence on interaction or not.

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BACKGROUND Instagram and Visual Communication Instagram is a platform that is centered on uploading and sharing images and videos that may or may not be textually tagged with a caption and that followers may or may not comment on. In this study, postings are delineated from posts: a posting is only the information provided by the poster (i.e., image/video with or without caption) and a post may also include comments and likes from followers. The user’s role on Instagram is divided into poster and follower. Posters upload image/videos and followers may comment on, or like (by pressing the digital heart-shaped button next to the image) the image/video uploaded; likes and comments that then become visible to all followers. Recently users also have the possibility to repost another user’s posting in their own feed; but this was not a possibility when the empirical material was collected (in 2014). A user account refers to the user (nickname and picture) with all the user’s posts. Given today’s popularity of Instagram, this research is important to communication sciences in general. Instagram is different from Twitter and to some extent from Facebook (currently owning Instagram), the two most often researched social media platforms, as it is centered around visuals. Among platforms focusing on visuals, for example, YouTube, Vine, and Snapchat, Instagram is on the forefront; and today, even older platforms increasingly focus on visuals. With the increasing amount of content it becomes increasingly difficult to gain and increase user’s attention and images are more effective than text in this matter (Bucher and Schumacher, 2006; Fahmy et al., 2014). Recipients remember visual information much better than verbal or textual information (Paivio, 1971). Furthermore, it is argued that images that also use text such as Instagram captions may even be more effective in communicating messages (Schill, 2012). According to Barthes (1977), images aid to convey intended meaning and thus facilitate interaction.

The Role of Images in (Political) Communication Images have been part of political communication for a long time. Political TV-advertising (Griffin & Kagan, 1996), campaign posters (Hayek, 2011; Vliegenhart, 2012), cartoons (Connors, 2005) and even hand gestures (Straeck, 2008) have been studied (even though, mostly in an American setting). For instance, in their study on US presidential candidates’ televised nonverbal communication Banning and Coleman (2009) found that visual cues have been shown to be important in affecting responses in viewers. “Images can have rhetorical impact and make persuasive arguments to viewers” (Schill, 2012, p 122). Images may serve as an agenda-setting function, dramatize policy, appeal emotionally and also help to build the candidate’s image and create identification; thus, clearly playing “a foundational role in the political communication process” (Schill, 2012, p. 133). In particular, images influence affective and emotional reactions of (potential) voters (cf. Arpan et al., 2006; Fahmy et al., 2014). For instance, Kaid, Leland and Whitney (1992) – when comparing viewer perceptions of the political ads of Bush and Dukakis in the US presidential elections in 1988 – conclude that “for both candidates, image improvement seems directly related to the generation of specific emotions through the campaign ads” (p. 285). Visuals indeed contain information, often subtler and more covert than pure text (Banning & Coleman, 2009). For how a message is perceived, the nonverbal component of communication is as important as the verbal one (if not more, see Banning & Coleman, 2009). It thus seems that images change (the effects of) political communication. 35

 No Interaction on Instagram

INTERACTION, DELIBERATION, AND POLITICAL COMMUNICATION The rise of digital media raises expectations of a changing relationship between representative institutions and those the representatives are expected to represent. Being dissatisfied about the disconnection between representatives and those who are represented, Coleman (2005; Coleman & Blumler, 2009, ch. 3) has discussed the possibilities of direct representation (in contrast to direct democracy, see 2005, p. 1). At the core of the argument is a special kind of connection that Coleman relates to representation. This is centred on rich interactive and conversational communication between representatives and constituents. Coleman builds upon data in which constituents’ contacts with MPs (Members of Parliament) are positively correlated to feelings of connectedness, which in turn is correlated to representation. The idea is that digital technologies today allow for a more direct representation and that “older” broadcasting techniques do not “provide the richness of interactive communication in the age of the internet” (2005, p. 9). It has therefore been seen as increasingly important for political actors to interact with the public about political matters; and here, social media platforms are appealing. Indeed, one of the main attractions of social media within the field of political communication is interactivity and discussion. Social media have been hailed for empowering citizens, providing more and better government information, for enabling online public debate, and bringing more participation to decision-making processes (e.g., Coleman & Moss, 2012; Dahlberg, 2001; Shirky, 2009). One of the most influential researchers in this regard has been Jürgen Habermas and his normative concept of the public sphere (Habermas, 1987). The Internet in general and social media platforms in particular have reinvigorated his idea about a space in-between state and markets populated by individuals engaged in rational conversations (i.e., deliberation) with each other (e.g., Coleman & Blumler, 2009; Dahlgren, 2009). Influenced by Habermas, so-called deliberative democrats envision communication platforms online as potential virtual agoras full of ideas and rational discussion (e.g., Loveland & Popescu, 2011; Muhlberger, 2006). Deliberation is defined as thoughtful discussion that is weighing of policy and political alternatives in a context that facilitates access to correct/good information in the pursuit of the most convincing argument (Fishkin, 2009). Habermas (1984) bases this communicative rationality on an assumed human strive for enlightenment through listening to each other and being willing to change one’s opinions according to the better argument. In this way mutual understanding is supposed to be reached and more informed decisions are supposed to be made. Coleman (2005) similarly connects interaction to direct representation in his differentiation between direct democracy – concerned with voting systems – and direct representation, which is concerned with ongoing interaction. Interaction is about ”the degree to which two or more communication parties can act on each other, on the communication medium, and on the messages” (Coleman, 2005, p. 13). This is considered to have a democratizing effect because participants are supposed to become more attuned to the common good of all rather than to negotiate between predetermined personal interests.

Interaction and Deliberation on Social Media Platforms Previous research on interaction and interaction of deliberative nature by political actors on Facebook and Twitter has shown that political actors mainly use social media to inform citizens about their activities, stances and ideas (e.g., Oblak, 2003; Rußmann, 2012). For instance, a study of US congressmen observed that most of their twittering revolved around information on their positions on issues, opinions and facts (Golbeck et al., 2010). Most studies have demonstrated that political actors do not respond to messages 36

 No Interaction on Instagram

posted to them on social media platforms (e.g., Rußmann, 2012; Sweetser & Weaver Lariscy, 2008). In general, Facebook and Twitter have been used as virtual pamphlets in order to broadcast information directly to the citizens/voters. In other words, social media platforms have rather been used in a broadcasting fashion than for interaction, let alone deliberation. Another rationale behind political actor’s use of social media platforms has been to mobilize supporters (e.g., Vaccari, 2013). Indeed, social media can be effective for political actors in mobilizing supporters (e.g., Williams & Gulati, 2007). It also seems that political actors use social media platforms for image-management. A study from the US and the UK showed how digital media were used as front regions for political actors presenting themselves to the electorate (Stanyer, 2008). Simply by being online, politicians are conveying the message that they are up-to-date (Jackson & Lilleker, 2011). Even though, these previous studies have shown that social media platforms are not prone to deliberation, a few studies of online discussion list and blogs have shown that citizens engage in ongoing interaction and interaction of deliberative character online (e.g., Dahlberg, 2001; Ruiz et al., 2011). Larsson’s (2017) study on political parties’ social media profiles during the 2014 Swedish election campaign has shown that political parties did receive comments, shares, retweets and @replies on Facebook and Twitter. This was especially the case for the Social Democrats and the Sweden Democrats. The Feminist Initiative was better in gathering followers than getting them to interact. Svensson and Larsson’s (2016) study of Twitter from the 2014 Swedish election found that parliamentarians rather interacted with each other as well as mass media professionals than with so-called ordinary voters. Therefore, it is important to continue discussing interaction on a social media platform that is image-centered like Instagram. Regarding deliberation, it is also important to recognize that deliberation is a normative concept and should be treated as such. All too often have studies of deliberation online (and they are many, see Karppinen, 2013) treated the concept as something expected to be found in interactions rather than as a normative concept to measure interactions against. Being aware of the criticisms raised against Habermas (notably from Mouffe, 2005), the concept is still important as a normative concept to evaluate interactions against. In a time when communication online is claimed to be characterized by hate speeches (Carpentier, 2014) or in-group polarization (so-called filter bubbles, see Pariser, 2011), the concept of deliberation provides an important measuring stick when discussing interaction by representative democratic institutions. The research on visual communication also gives reason to believe that visuals might promote interaction (see Schill, 2012). Especially on a social media platform that at least in theory should foster interaction to a greater extent than traditional mass media and their online presences. Is this the case though? If so, is this interaction of deliberative nature? The authors are fully aware of the fact that deliberation is a complex concept and that a too persistent focus on consensus as a preferred outcome of deliberation may disfavor minorities and hide important conflicts that constitute the political (cf. Mouffe, 2005). This article therefore focuses on whether interaction on Instagram contributes to participants giving relevant and substantive information about political issues, which is required for deliberative discussion or participants are only referring to trivia, nonsense or giving plain encouragement for the political actor. However, before turning to the research design some short notes on the setting.

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 No Interaction on Instagram

SETTING The 2014 Swedish election campaign provides a good setting to study whether political parties use Instagram for interaction when campaigning for several reasons: Internet and social media penetration in Sweden is very high (Internetworldstats, 2015; Nordicom, 2014). In 2014, about 50 percent of Swedes use social media daily (Nordicom, 2014). About 28 percent of the population aged 12 and older uses Instagram regularly and 17 percent of them even on a daily basis (compared to 23 percent of the population aged 12 and older using Twitter regularly and only 6 percent on a daily basis; see Findahl, 2014). Hence, the 2014 election took place in a social media-savvy context: Instagram practices had been established among at least some parts of the electorate and (thus) parties were adopting this platform to their social media campaigning toolbox (a kind of jump-on-the-bandwagon mentality, see Jackson & Lilleker, 2011). Instagram was launched after the elections in 2010; thus, political parties in the 2014 election used it for the first time. This provides an unprecedented opportunity to study the first attempts of political parties’ use of this communication platform. As the Swedish democratic system is party-centered, not candidate-centered (Arter, 1999), the focus of this study is on political parties’ use of Instagram. Some scholars have argued though that even in party-based systems, the importance of politicians (and specifically of party leaders) has increased. There is a trend towards personalization of politics (McAllister, 2007, p. 584). Nonetheless, Sweden is still party-oriented in terms of making or breaking a political career (Svensson, 2014). At the time of data collection, Sweden was governed by a conservative alliance of the Moderates, the Christian Democrats, the Liberals and the Centre Party. They faced an opposition of mainly Social Democrats and the Green Party. Both parties had expressed their interest of ruling together and this attempt was supported by the Left Party. These three parties formed the so-called red-green alliance. The polls up to Election Day predicted a majority for the red-green alliance and a possible parliamentary entry of the left-leaning Feminist Initiative. On Election Day, the Feminist Initiative did not reach the threshold level of four percent to get into parliament. The red-green alliance while receiving more votes than the conservatives was not able to secure the majority in the Chamber. Besides, the nationalistic party, the Sweden Democrats, more than doubled their support.

RESEARCH DESIGN AND DATA Given that visual communication arguably changes political communication (see introduction), the question arises whether interaction and deliberation on Instagram take place. The first step was to find out whether the postings that parties upload on their Instagram accounts attract any interaction. Second, whether this interaction is of deliberative nature or not. Finally, it is of interest whether there are any relations between the content-related characteristics of the images including their captions and the interaction these attract. Using a quantitative content analysis, the study examines 220 images including their captions and comments on the Instagram accounts of Swedish political parties. Hashtags have not been included in the study. Hashtags do provide additional information to the follower, which may be used to achieve particular purposes as well as generating interaction. However, this study focuses on interaction and its deliberative nature in the explicit communication on the official parties’ Instagram accounts and not

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 No Interaction on Instagram

on other accounts; therefore, hashtags have not been taken into account. Furthermore, in the sample, hashtags were rare. All 220 images including their captions and comments were downloaded (and archived) during the last four weeks prior to the 2014 Swedish national election (Election Day: 14 September 2014). The unit of analysis is the posting (i.e., the single image with or without its caption) and the first three comments of it. Due to limited resources for coding, the number of comments was reduced to up to the first three comments. These were chosen, because they are generally visible at first sight when looking at a posting without having to scroll down. They draw the viewer’s attention to the exchange taking place between user accounts (or not). Hence, the first three comments are considered as the most important ones. The sample includes 22.2 percent of the published comments during the time of analysis (414 of 1864 comments). The sample consists of the following parties: Vänsterpartiet (Left Party), Socialdemokraterna (Social Democrats), Miljöpartiet (Green Party), Moderaterna (Moderates), Kristdemokraterna (Christian Democrats), Folkpartiet (Liberals) and Feministiskt initiativ (Feminist Initiative). The Centre Party did not publish any images four weeks prior to Election Day and the Sweden Democrats did not provide public access to their (private) Instagram account. Thus, these two accounts have not been included in the sample. Table 1 gives an overview of the sample. A full sample is given for all analyzed parties with the exception of Feminist Initiative as their posting activities were considerably higher than those of the other parties. The party published 213 images in the month before Election Day. In order for the results to speak of the Swedish political parties in general, and not only the Feminist Initiative, only one third of their posts is included in the sample. The sample only includes posts that have not been deleted by the parties. This also applies to single comments. It may be that discriminating or insulting content, for example sexist or abusive comments, had been deleted prior to downloading them. However, in the process of downloading and archiving the material, the observation of the party’s accounts during the last four weeks of the elections on a daily basis did not reveal such a case. Therefore, it can be presumed that the parties only seldom deleted content. Moreover, the content that was analyzed does not indicate that it relates to previous posted discriminating or insulting information. Thus, the authors believe that even in the case content has been deleted it does not affect this study’s outcome. Table 1. Sample of postings by political parties Political Party

Number of Postings

Number of Postings With Captions

Social Democrats

13

13

Moderates

24

24

Green Party

22

21

Left Party

24

24

Liberals

59

59

Christian Democrats

8

6

Feminist Initiative

70*

69

Total

220

216

* The sample consists of one third of the published postings during the period of analysis. Every third posting has been coded.

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The first research question addresses to what extent did Swedish political parties use Instagram to interact with their followers. To find answers to this question, it was first analyzed whether the postings that parties uploaded on their Instagram accounts attracted any follower comments. If so, it was analyzed whether the parties responded to these comments. Second, the question arises whether this interaction contributes to the exchange of relevant and substantive information about politics? To study the deliberative nature of this interaction, the study analyzed whether the captions of the images as well as the comments by the users and the parties consisted of a) emoticons only, b) were of intrinsic value, i.e., giving relevant and substantial information about political issues or the campaign, an opinion statement, and/or an idea or latest news on/about the campaign/elections such as an invitation or information to an up-coming event, or c) were without intrinsic value, i.e., displaying trivia and nonsense or only a plain encouragement for the political party and its politicians (such as “go for it”, “you are the best”). Following the results of the first two research questions, the focus was on the content-related/visual characteristics of the image: Did certain characteristics in the image a) enhance interaction and b) if so, did they also enhance a deliberative style of interaction (intrinsic value)? Here it is of interest whether some characteristics of the images of parties’ postings foster interaction to a greater extent than others and, if so, of what nature were these? For the third research question, the following characteristics in the image were coded: broadcasting, mobilization, personalization and perspective. Table 2 contains a detailed description of the four image categories. When coding, the coders took the follower’s perspective in order to code how the viewer/follower perceives a party’s Instagram communication. The coder is assuming the role of a follower when coding. Coding was conducted by three coders. Holsti’s coefficient was used to test the inter-coder reliability. Overall, inter-coder percentage agreement for each of these items falls within the acceptable range, with the vast majority at or above 83 percent, leading to the conclusion that the quantitative content analysis in this study is reliable. Specific reliability statistics are available from the authors.

RESULTS The first research question asked to what extent Swedish political parties used Instagram to interact with their followers (i.e., potential voters). As Table 1 (above) shows, parties were not very active on Instagram, with the exception of the Feminist Initiative (and perhaps the Liberals). When they posted, as indicated in column six and seven in Table 3, parties hardly engaged in two-way interaction with their followers. Again, the exception is the Feminist Initiative. The Feminists posted 41 comments of which 29 were related to a follower comment; thus, indicating reciprocity. Following the Feminists, the Greens commented six times during the last four weeks of the election campaign. Not a lot of interaction, but at least, all six comments were responding to followers. Hence, the answer to the first question is: In the 2014 Swedish national election political parties hardly used Instagram to interact with their followers. The second research question addresses whether the interaction taking place on Instagram contributes to the exchange of relevant and substantive information about politics (i.e. the deliberative nature of the exchange). The analysis of the captions shows that political parties generally added a caption to their uploaded image. But were parties’ captions of relevant and substantive value to a political discussion? The second column in Table 3 displays that the majority of the captions of the few postings of the Social Democrats (76.9 percent) were of intrinsic value for the political discussion (giving relevant and substantial information about political issues). Noteworthy here is also the result of the Green Party (52.4 40

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Table 2. Categories reflecting how parties and politics were presented in the Instagram images Categories

Description of Categories

Broadcasting

The category broadcasting refers to postings that are used to spread a political party’s stances on current issues, statements, opinions, and information on performances to the supporters. It is about providing information when a response is not expected. Typically, parties published images that showed election posters or ads. Broadcasting is a potentially important characteristic of an image, because previous studies have found that images help articulating ideological messages and to set the agenda (e.g., Fahmy et al., 2014). Postings are coded as broadcasting instruments if the distribution of information is central. Here it is differentiated whether a posting is (rather) broadcasting or (rather) not broadcasting. If it is not evident, the posting is coded as balanced/ambivalent.

Mobilization

The category mobilization measures whether a posting calls for action or not. Postings are mobilizing if they convey an activating, dynamizing and involving character to politics in general or to the campaign and the election in particular. An invitation to citizens (i.e., potential voters) to interact, to take part in a rally, to follow a politician, or to go to the ballot is considered as mobilizing. For example, parties posted an image displaying a ballot box or an airplane together with text aimed at mobilizing supporters to the ballots. Visuals may help to persuade followers (Schill, 2012) and to mobilize them, which is one of the main campaign functions of social media (see Vaccari, 2013; Williams & Gulati, 2007). Postings are coded as (rather) mobilizing when more than 50% of the elements in the posting have a mobilizing character and as (rather) not mobilizing when less than 50% of the elements have a mobilizing character. If this is not clearly evident, the posting is coded as balanced/ambivalent.

Perspective

Postings can be made to look professional or casual, selfie-like. The category perspective takes a look at the perspective from which the image is taken. Is it an official image (clearly staged) of political actors (e.g., the top candidate) or a snapshot (that looks spontaneous), i.e., the user can take the perspective of the person that took the picture or it is a selfie. Although snapshots generally have no thought through intended connotation with them, it can be assumed that in campaign communication and political communication in general, which is strategic in nature, snapshots are posted to convey a specific message to the viewer. Political actors keep control of the symbolic message. Visuals help to create identification (Schill, 2012); hence, the kind of identification parties want to create and its impact on interaction is interesting to find out. Postings are coded as reflecting a (rather) official context or a (rather) snapshot/selfie context and, if neither applies, coded as being not applicable; for example, when a newspaper article or a campaign poster is displayed.

Personalization

The category personalization measures whether a posting is used to manage the political party’s professional or personal image. Postings can be personalized displaying only (or more) single person(s). Schill (2012) notes that personalization is one of the main functions of visuals to build a political actor’s image. Postings are coded as personalized if they are primarily carried by one (or more) single individual(s) and as not personalized if they are primarily carried by many people or do not show any people. If this is not clearly distinguishable, the coding will be reflected as balanced/ambivalent. Visibility: In a personalized picture it is also possible to code whether the party leader or the top candidate of a political party is visible or not visible in the posting. (The most common example of a non-personalized posting is a campaign poster published on the party’s account.)

See also Russmann & Svensson, 2016.

percent) and the Christian Democrats (50 percent). However, the captions of the Liberals, the Moderates, the Left and for most of it the captions of the Feminists were not of intrinsic value (displaying trivia and nonsense or only a plain encouragement). Table 3 also shows that it did not matter whether parties’ captions were of intrinsic value or not in order to get the followers’ attention. For instance, only about a third of the captions of the Moderates and the Left were of intrinsic value, but taking the number of followers’ comments into account, these parties’ followers were more active than followers of the Social Democrats or the Green Party. Both parties focused to a great extent on political issues or the campaign/election in their postings. The question arises whether differences in these images can be observed – the answer to this question will be given by the third research question.

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Table 3. Interactive and deliberative potential of parties’ postings Party Comments** Captions With Intrinsic Value*

Captions Without Intrinsic Value*

Followers Comments**

Total

Related to Followers Comments

N

%

N

%

N

N

N

Social Democrats

10

76.9

3

23.1

107

1

1

Moderates

8

33.3

16

66.7

185

0

0

Green Party

11

52.4

10

47.6

166

6

6

Left Party

9

37.5

15

62.5

200

0

0

Liberals

14

23.7

45

76.3

35

0

0

Christian Democrats

3

50

3

50

11

3

2

Feminist Initiative

33

47.8

36

52.2

1160

41

29

Total

88

40.7

128

59.3

1864

51

38

*p = .007 (216 postings); **220 postings

With regard to the nature of the followers’ comments, Table 4 shows that a majority of these comments, 66.7 percent, did not contribute to the political discussion (i.e., were of intrinsic value). Another 20.3 percent of the comments only consisted of emoticons by which followers mainly expressed a plain encouragement as well. Just 13 percent of the analyzed comments contributed to an exchange of essential information. The authors would like to remind the reader here that only up to the first three comments of a post were analyzed (22.2 percent of the published comments during the time of analysis). However, the analyzed quarter of the total sample gives a clear indication since there are no reasons to believe that the nature of the comments changed in posts with more comments. Hence, the answer to the second research question – whether the interaction contributes to the exchange of relevant and substantive information about politics – is no. Table 4. Potential of followers’ comments (N=414) Comments With Emoticons Only

Comments With Intrinsic Value to Politics

Comments Without Intrinsic Value to Politics

N

%

N

%

N

%

84

20.3

54

13.0

276

66.7

The third research question addresses the visual aspect and whether certain content-related characteristics of images, such as broadcasting, mobilization, personalization, and perspective, enhance interaction or not, and if so, also deliberation. This question has been examined from three angles: the extent to which these characteristics of images influence whether 1) the party published a caption with intrinsic value to politics or not, 2) the amount of user comments an image attracted, and 3) whether us-

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ers published comments with intrinsic value to politics or not. To find answers to these questions, first, postings were analyzed concerning its visual perception and then, these results were correlated with the results of the first research questions. Table 5 presents the results. Table 5. Types of visual images and deliberation (in %) Broadcasting Type of Image

Rather Broadcasting

Balanced/ Ambivalent

Mobilization Rather Not BroadCasting

Rather Mobilizing

Personalization

Perspective

Balanced/ Rather Not Rather Balanced/ Rather Not Not Ambivalent Mobilizing Personalized Ambivalent Personalized Applicable

Rather Official Context

Rather Snapshot

Party Captions with intrinsic value (N=88)

92.0

3.4

4.5

19.3

26.1

54.5

56.8

3.4

39.8

31.8

21.6

46.6

without intrinsic value (N=128)

82.8

4.7

12.5

8.6

20.3

71.1

75.0

7.0

18.0

18.0

14.8

67.2

p = .118

p = .022*

p = .001**

p = .009**

Number of Follower Comments per Posting 0 (N=56)

98.2

0

1.8

0

19.6

80.4

76.8

10.7

12.5

8.9

15.9

78.6

1-10 (N=117)

82.9

6.0

11.1

15.4

21.4

63.2

69.2

3.4

27.4

28.2

18.8

53.0

11-50 (N=41)

78.0

4.9

17.1

17.1

31.7

51.2

56.1

4.9

39.0

26.8

22.0

51.2

100.0

0

0

50.0

0

50.0

0

0

100

83.3

0

16.7

51-130 (N=6)

p = .667

p = .104

p = .005**

p = .067

Follower Comments with intrinsic value (N=54)

85.2

5.5

9.3

14.8

18.5

66.7

64.8

7.4

27.8

22.2

22.2

55.6

without intrinsic value (N=360)

80.3

5.6

14.2

19.7

24.4

55.8

62.2

2.2

35.6

32.2

17.2

50.6

The first row of results of Table 5 reveals the influence of the different characteristics of images on the deliberative nature of parties’ captions; i.e., on the text of the image. The results do not give a clear picture, even though some significance was found for images that contribute to captions without intrinsic value (rather than with intrinsic value). Chances are (slightly) higher that captions are without intrinsic value when the image is rather not mobilizing, rather personalized, and/or a snap shot. The study shows that 71.1 percent of the captions are displaying trivia and non-sense or only a plain encouragement for the party and its politicians when the image is rather not mobilizing. 75 percent of the captions are without intrinsic value when the image is rather personalized. Parties also rather published a caption without intrinsic value to politics (67.2 percent) with a snapshot like image. Concerning the amount of follower comments a posting attracted, the data in Table 5 (second row) reveals that postings that were rather not mobilizing attracted fewer follower comments than postings that were rather mobilizing. About 80 percent of the postings with no follower comments were coded as rather not mobilizing as well as about 63 percent of postings with up to ten follower comments. In addition, the number of follower comments to a posting was greater when it was rather not personalized. All postings that attracted more than 50 follower comments were identified as rather not personalized. It

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thus seems that followers did not like to comment on images that focus on one (or more) single person(s): Of all postings with no follower comments 76.8 percent were rather personalized and only 12.5 percent were rather not personalized. Of all postings with up to ten follower comments 69.2 percent were rather personalized and 27.4 percent were rather not personalized. Also a snapshot/selfie like posting is more likely to get no reactions by followers than an official picture of political actors: 78.6 percent of the postings with no follower comments were a snapshot/selfie and 15.9 percent had an official picture (8.9 percent were coded as not applicable). The characteristic broadcasting has no influence on the number of follower comments per posting as displayed in Table 5. Whether the followers published a comment with or without intrinsic value hardly seems to be influenced by the characteristics of the image. The data shows only slight variations for the characteristics mobilization and personalization. Images that are rather not mobilizing are more often followed by user comments that actually add some value to the political discussion (66.7 percent). Contrary, follower comments without intrinsic value can be found slightly more often with images that have been identified as rather not personalized (35.6 percent) than follower comments with intrinsic value (27.8 percent). Thus, the answer to the third research questions – whether certain characteristics in the image enhance interaction and if so also deliberative style interaction –is no. Instead, it seems that images that are not mobilizing, rather personalized, and/or a snap shot counteract deliberation. Followers do not like to comment on personalized images that do not have any mobilizing character.

SOLUTIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS The results show that Swedish parties did not engage in two-way interaction on Instagram with their followers, with the exception of the Feminist Initiative. The Feminists regularly posted comments and in almost three fourth of them the party responded to follower comments. Some political parties – the Social Democrats, the Greens and partly the Feminists – at least attempted a more deliberative style in their posting practices. Interesting to note is that the Social Democrats and the Greens were the main opposition parties that had expressed interest in ruling together. Both parties had to attract many voters. However, given the pilot character of this study and that the sample (even though a total sample) for the Social Democrats and the Greens is rather small, the findings cannot be generalized. However, the overall conclusion still stands: Instagram and its practices of visual communication do not seem to change parties’ interaction when it comes to deliberation to any large extent (yet). Furthermore, the results reveal that only 13 percent of the followers contribute to an exchange of essential information in their comments, and whether parties’ captions were of intrinsic value or not, had no bearing on the number of follower comments. In other words, Instagram did attract interaction, but not much of interaction of deliberative nature. The study also focused on the influence of visual communication on interaction and the few deliberative exchanges taking place. The results suggest that whether a posting is rather broadcasting or not, neither influences the amount of comments by followers nor their deliberative nature. For the characteristics mobilization, personalization and privatization effects are rather minimal. Nevertheless, the findings demonstrate that when parties are posting an image that is rather not mobilizing, rather personalized, and/or a snapshot/selfie it tends to be accompanied with a caption without intrinsic value to it. The question arises to what extent the context influences posting practices on Instagram. This study examined party accounts only (given that Sweden is a party-based democracy), and at least for the characteristics 44

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personalization and privatization it may be assumed that images that are focusing on a single person and look spontaneous are seen as less beneficial to support party stances and ideological messages. Here, future research could focus on candidate accounts and whether personalized images and snapshots/selfies are published with a caption with intrinsic value as the candidate is in the focus of the discussion. In addition, comparisons of the use of Instagram in election campaigns in candidate-centered and partycentered systems might help to shed light on this issue. For the interaction practices of followers, the findings show that postings that were identified as rather not mobilizing attract fewer follower comments, but more often these comments include relevant and substantial information. The fact that postings that do not have an activating, dynamizing and involving character receive fewer comments is perhaps not surprising. Why followers rather post comments of intrinsic value might be revealed when examining the actual content of the comment. A snapshot/ selfie is also not really triggering any follower comments. Selfies are usually made to appear casual. For followers of a party account they may seem not official and professional enough to spur a discussion. On the contrary, the number of follower comments increases when a posting is rather not personalized. However, follower comments to not personalized postings often have no intrinsic value to the political discussion. Maybe here the counterpart (a visualized person) is missing to whom followers can “talk” to and whom they expect to react. Researchers should incorporate further characteristics that touch on affective behavior (such as personalization and privatization, e.g. when a selfie is posted) as these seem to have a somewhat greater impact on deliberation according to the findings.

FUTURE RESEARCH DIRECTIONS Instagram needs to be included when studying social media in political communication. For example, future studies should examine Instagram practices by smaller and larger parties, incumbents and opposition parties as approached by the equalization and normalization hypotheses (cf. Margolis et al., 1999). The presented results show that the Feminist Initiative, the only party that was not represented in Parliament, was most active on Instagram apparently trying to gain traction by using the new social media platform. Whereas larger parties such as the Social Democrats, the Christian Democrats, and the Centre Party hardly made use of Instagram. This seems to underline social media as most attractive for so-called underdogs, i.e., that less established parties with less resources are more dependent on social media platforms and thus more prone to explore their affordances (see Larsson & Moe, 2014). Complementary interview data with party officials might help to make any conclusions on this. The presented methodological framework gives a basic approach for future research on Instagram. However, to get a better understanding of the use of Instagram in general and of the influence of different visual characteristics in particular, especially cross-country comparisons are needed. Since 2014, when this study was conducted, the number of Instagram users increased from 300 million to over 1 billions users worldwide. These user numbers also show the great importance of adding Instagram to the social media ecology in studies of political communication online.

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CONCLUSION Instagram was a new social media platform in the 2014 Swedish national elections. This provided the opportunity to study initial attempts of political parties’ use of the platform. So far, Swedish parties have adopted Instagram to their social media campaigning toolbox very differently. Two parties, the Feminists and the Liberals, uploaded more than one posting per day during the hot phase of the campaign; whereas the Social Democrats and the Christian Democrats uploaded only 21 postings (in total). Based on these findings, it can be assumed that the development process of Instagram in political communication resembles the one of Facebook and Twitter (Jackson & Lilleker, 2011) and over time, political actors will become more and more active on Instagram. The main goal of this article was to investigate whether interaction and interaction of deliberative nature took place on parties’ official Instagram accounts during the 2014 Swedish election, which were among the first elections in which political parties used Instagram during a campaign. Interaction does not occur, with the exception of one party account. The relationship between parties and their followers is very one-directional and is neither conversational nor ongoing. Overall, influence of content-related characteristics of the images on interactive processes are also rather minimal. Instagram is thus no different from other social media platforms when it comes to two-way interaction with followers. In other words, the potential of visuals to change political communication that many of the authors highlight referred to in the introduction, was not actualized in this setting of campaigning Swedish political parties using Instagram. Instagram being image-centered does not change the way parties interact with their followers. Albei differently expected, a non-result is also a result. Hence, the question has to be addressed why the visual communication aspects of Instagram do not differentiate the platform from other social media? Future studies should take other content-related characteristics into account (see, for example, Russmann & Svensson, 2016). As this exploratory study is of pilot nature and based on a small (but almost total) sample, there are many limitations to it. Most obvious the results cannot be generalized to other settings. However, this study provides first evidence on different visual characteristics and their influence (although small) on transforming interaction and deliberative processes between political parties and citizens in election campaigns and thus may serve as a starting point for further research. Social media is more and more turning to platforms of images and following Schill (2012, p. 120) “there is an urgent need for more research, both theoretical and applied, that examines the functions of visual symbols in political contexts.”

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Svensson, J., & Larsson, A. O. (2016). Interacting with whom? Swedish parliamentarians on Twitter during the 2014 Elections. International Journal of E-Politics, 7(1), 1–15. doi:10.4018/IJEP.2016010101 Sweetser, K. D., & Weaver Lariscy, R. (2008). Candidates Make Good Friends: An Analysis of Candidates’ Uses of Facebook. Academic Press. Vaccari, C. (2013). From echo chamber to persuasive device? Rethinking the role of the Inter-net in campaigns. New Media & Society, 15(1), 109–127. doi:10.1177/1461444812457336 Vliegenthart, J. (2012). The Professionalization of Political Communication? A Longitudinal Analysis of Dutch Election Campaign Posters. The American Behavioral Scientist, 56(2), 135–150. doi:10.1177/0002764211419488 Williams, C. B., & Gulati, G. J. (2007, August-September). Social networks in political campaigns: Facebook and the 2006 midterm elections. Paper presented at the meeting of the American Political Science Association, Chicago, IL. Xenos, M. A., Macafee, T., & Pole, A. (2015). Understanding variations in user response to social media campaigns: A study of Facebook in the 2010 US elections. New Media & Society. doi:10.1177/1461444815616617

ADDITIONAL READING Bossetta, M. (2018). The digital architectures of social media: Comparing political campaigning on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Snapchat in the 2016 U.S. Election. Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly, 95(2), 471–496. doi:10.1177/1077699018763307 Laestadius, L. (2017). Instagram. In L. Sloan & A. Quan-Haase (Eds.), The SAGE handbook of social media research methods (pp. 573–592). Sage. Larsson, A. O. (2017). Skiing all the way to the polls. Exploring the popularity of personalized posts on political Instagram accounts. Convergence (London), 1–15. doi:10.1177/1354856517741132 Müller, M. G. (2007). What is visual communication? Past and future of an emerging field of communication research. Studies in Communication Sciences, 7(2), 7–34. Rose, G. (2016). Visual methodologies. An introduction to researching with visual materials. Sage. Russmann, U., & Svensson, J. (2016). Studying Organizations on Instagram. Information, 7(4), 58. Available online: https://www.mdpi.com/2078-2489/7/4/58/html Russmann, U., Svensson, J., & Larsson, A. (2019). Political parties and their pictures: Visual communication on Instagram in Swedish and Norwegian election campaigns. In A. Veneti, D. Jackson, & D. G. Lilleker (Eds.), Visual Political Communication in the Digital Era (pp. 119–144). Palgrave Macmillan. doi:10.1007/978-3-030-18729-3_7 Veneti, A., Jackson, D., & Lilleker, D. G. (Eds.). (2019). Visual Political Communication in the Digital Era. Palgrave Macmillan. doi:10.1007/978-3-030-18729-3

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KEY TERMS AND DEFINITIONS Broadcasting on Political Actors’ Instagram Accounts: Broadcasting refers to postings that transmit information on political opinions, positions, statements, and performances to the voters. Pictures are used as broadcasting instrument, if the distribution of information is in the center of the picture. Mobilization on Political Actors’ Instagram Accounts: Mobilization refers to a posting that calls for action. Postings are mobilizing if they convey an activating, dynamizing, and involving character to politics in general or to the campaign and the election in particular. An invitation to supporters to interact, to take part in a rally, to follow a politician, or to go to the ballot is considered as mobilizing. Personalization on Political Actors’ Instagram Accounts: Personalization refers to a posting that is primarily carried by one (or more) single person(s) (i.e., personalized) or whether a posting is primarily carried by many people or no people are seen in the picture (i.e., not personalized). Privatization on Political Actors’ Instagram Accounts: Privatization refers to postings primarily carried by one (or more) single person(s) that are predominantly displayed in a personal/private context (family, hobbies, personal matters, etc.). Contrary to displaying one (or more) single person(s) in a professional/political context (at a rally, shaking hands, giving a speech, etc.).

ENDNOTE 1



Uta Russmann and Jakob Svensson have equally contributed to this article.

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Section 2

Immersive Environment and Gaming

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Chapter 4

‘No Line on the Horizon’:

Virtual Reality in Digital Ecosystems and the Politics of Immersive Storytelling Christian Stiegler University of the West of England, Bristol, UK

ABSTRACT This chapter applies and extends the concept of social media logic to assess the politics of immersive storytelling on digital platforms. These politics are considered in the light of what has been identified as mass media logic, which argues that mass media in the 20th century gained power by developing a commanding discourse that guides the organization of the public sphere. The shift to social media logic in the 21st century, with its grounding principles of programmability, popularity, connectivity, and datafication, influenced a new discourse on the logics of digital ecosystems. Digital platforms such as Facebook are offering all-surrounding mediated environments to communicate in virtual reality (‘Horizon’) as well as immersive narratives such as Mr. Robot VR. This chapter provides an overview of the changing dynamics within Facebook’s VR strategy as well as an understanding of the politics of immersive storytelling and its underlying principles of programmability, user experience, popularity, and platform sociality, which define immersive technologies in the 21st century.

INTRODUCTION On October 6, 2016, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg gave a glimpse of his vision of social networking through Virtual Reality (VR) technology. When he took the stage at Oculus Connect in California to present a demo version of the company’s ideas for Social VR, he also showcased the launch of ‘Facebook Spaces’, a VR chat environment, which would enable users to connect with others in a virtual surrounding. Zuckerberg’s demo imagined Facebook’s social media platform as a three-dimensional space, in which users could move and interact, feel involved, and engaged with others. User’s profiles on Facebook would be enhanced by the creation of three-dimensional digital avatars, which would be able to fully interact with each other. In addition, ‘Spaces’ would allow users to view 360° content by literally DOI: 10.4018/978-1-7998-4796-0.ch004

Copyright © 2020, IGI Global. Copying or distributing in print or electronic forms without written permission of IGI Global is prohibited.

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becoming surrounded by content such as videos, and to meet friends via their digital animated avatars, share information and watch streamed entertainment content together. Users would gain a long-lasting feeling of presence, the sense of actually being inside a digitally created space. At that point, Facebook had already invested heavily in its VR play, acquired start-up company Oculus in 2014, and announced to invest further $3 billion over the next ten years, including the wireless Oculus headset released in 2018 (‘Oculus Go’), a high-end headset (‘Oculus Quest’) released in 2019, original VR content, its own volumetric VR cameras, an open-source JavaScript library to create cross-platform WebVR experiences (‘React 360’), and a dedicated section for educational content in the Oculus Store (funded with $10 billion). Oculus has also published two Social VR apps: ‘Rooms’ and ‘Parties’. ‘Parties’ lets users chat in a virtual space, ‘Rooms’ puts them in a shared space to watch videos, play games, and perform other group activities. Both apps are fully interactive versions of ‘Spaces’ and are connected to Oculus’s room-scaling software, which tracks users’ movements in the physical world and translates them to the virtual environment. Another Social VR project in partnership with VR broadcasting company NextVR, named ‘Venues’, has been announced at Oculus Connect 4 in 2017, a way of viewing massive live events such as sports and concerts in VR with multiple virtual participants. Mark Zuckerberg is convinced immersive technologies are the next big thing for entertainment, connectivity, and social networking in digital ecosystems such as Facebook: “[He] claims that the future of virtual reality will be social, stating that four of the top mobile applications in the world today are social, including Facebook and Instagram.” (Fermoso, 2017)

FACEBOOK’S ‘HORIZON’ AND THE LOGICS OF DIGITAL ECOSYSTEMS A few years after Zuckerberg’s announcement at Oculus Connect, the future of immersive digital ecosystems and Social VR looks slightly different. As of October 25, 2019, ‘Facebook Spaces’ and ‘Oculus Rooms’ have been shut down to “make way for Facebook Horizon” (Facebook, 2019), the company’s next try at a Social VR platform in 2020. Despite high hopes, particularly ‘Spaces’ was not able to achieve enough traction and did not convince the masses to buy in yet. While the idea of a social network in VR is still part of our cultural landscape, the market itself remains too fragmented with multiple platforms emerging and disappearing at the same time. For instance, in recent months Google’s sky high ambitions for their own mass market VR platform ‘Daydream’ have been shifted towards Augmented Reality (AR) technology instead. Unlike VR, AR focuses on utility instead of entertainment, which seems to be a better fit for Google’s core competencies. As a result, ‘Daydream’ has almost disappeared from Google’s portfolio. Mixed Reality (MR), on the other hand, pushed by Microsoft (HoloLens), is mainly designed to be used by businesses to improve manufacturing processes even though start up Magic Leap want to position MR as an entertainment technology. Currently, VR continues to do well in the games community with Sony (PlayStation VR) and HTC (Vice) competing for the newest content. Facebook remains committed to the idea of Social VR. The company’s newest platform ‘Horizon’ (Figure 1) combines features of both ‘Spaces’ and ‘Rooms’ but focuses more on the idea of an “everexpanding world” (Oculus, 2020) instead of multiple separated meeting places. VR is the ultimate immersive experience. The technology creates a digital world, which is visually separated from the physical one. All sensorial and perceptual levels are focused on the aesthetic illusion, “a lucid dream (…) difficult to distinguish from actual experiences until the laws of physics are suspended” (Haim, 2015, p. 117), and manifested by headsets, tracking systems, and controllers. Through haptic embodiments of the virtual 54

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Figure 1. Facebook ‘Horizon’

(© [2020], [Facebook]. Used with permission.)

environment, users are able to connect the real with the virtual, and increase the level of interactivity and connectivity (van Dijck, 2012). What Marie-Laure Ryan described as ‘digital wonderland’ almost twenty years ago seems like an accurate description of what Facebook imagines ‘Horizon’ to become: “[a] computer-generated three-dimensional landscape in which we would experience an expansion of our physical and sensory powers; leave our bodies and see ourselves from the outside; adopt new identities; apprehend immaterial objects through many senses; including touch; become able to modify the environment through either verbal commands or physical gestures; and see creative thoughts instantly realized without going through the process of having them physically materialized.” (Ryan, 2001, p. 1) ‘Horizon’ is part of Facebook’s strategy to expand its digital ecosystem to full sensory technology and fully immerse users on its social media platform. Facebook envisions its social media platform ‘Facebook’ as the foundation for the growth of its business (Figure 2), with additional services Video, Messenger, Search, Groups and communication tools Instagram and WhatsApp as the most influential assets to reach a mass market audience through mobile devices. However, immersive technologies are considered the next step as outlined in the company’s 10-year roadmap, most importantly through connectivity (drones, satellites, lasers, terrestrial solutions, telco infra and free basics) as well as artificial intelligence (AI) including communication through vision, language, reasoning, and planning. In addition, AR and VR technologies are part of Facebook’s strategy, such as AR tech, mobile VR, Rift, Touch (Rift’s haptic controller) and Social VR (incl. ‘Horizon’, ‘Parties’, and other all-surrounding mediated environments). Major digital companies are investing in VR technology and their influence spans across entertainment, games, journalism, film and TV. The result is what is called a ‘console or platform war’, in which the most accessible hardware with the most appealing software and content solutions still have yet to find its audience. On the hardware side, high-end market competitors Oculus, HTC, and Sony are linking their own individual headsets to premium content products (such as games and interactive VR experiences) to compete with cheaper cardboard and mid-range plastic solutions for mobile phones and their focus on 360° panoramic videos and browser-based experiences called WebVR. In addition, there is a new market for equipment like 360° cameras for consumers and professionals such as the Samsung Gear 360, Nokia OZO, GoPro Odyssey and GoPro Omni, Ricoh Theta, and Jaunt One.

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Figure 2. Facebook 10-year roadmap

(© [2016], [Facebook]. Used with permission.)

On the content side, the language of VR storytelling is about to get explored – from 360° panoramic videos (cinematic VR) of physical world-scenes to highly interactive computer-generated content, and a combination of both – with widely recognized VR productions such as the Mr. Robot VR experience (2016), the Academy Award nominated short Pearl (2017), Alejandro González Iñárritu’s VR installation Carne Y Arena (2017), and ILMxLAB’s Darth Vader VR Experience (2019). VR now fulfils the promise of being fully surrounded in mediated narratives such as the Mr Robot and Star Wars story universes, but also poses fundamental questions of uncertainty in relation to dramaturgical structures, the role of audiences and their ability to interact, move and communicate in fully immersive 360° narratives. There will be more and more content for mass market VR in the foreseeable future, which poses fundamental questions of how immersive technologies with emerging virtual communities, new democracies, and new economies will shape the future of digital ecosystems. This new frontier of immersion can be also discussed from a more pessimistic and dystopian angle with warnings against the digital divide, information glut, and extensive surveillance. Both outlooks are rooted in the general idea of new media technologies, with terms such as hypertext, virtual reality, and cyberspace, determining the shift from the material to the immaterial, from atoms into bits (Negroponte, 1995) and matter into mind (Barlow, 1996). VR is a further account of the cultural trajectory in cyberspace and contemporary digital cultures. It considers the social relations and contexts already factored into the technology. VR is the ultimate promise of immersive technologies and therefore a culmination of recent developments in digital ecosystems. This article provides an analysis of the hidden strategies and politics of immersive storytelling in VR by looking at the logics of digital ecosystems, in which they are embedded. By analyzing USA Network’s Mr. Robot VR it understands the rise of VR technology within the shift from mass media logic in the 20th century to social media logic in the 21st century.

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THE RISE OF IMMERSIVE TECHNOLOGIES Virtual reality is a technology that convinces the participant that he or she is actually in another place by substituting the primary sensory input with data received produced by a computer […] the virtual world becomes a workspace and the user identifies with the virtual body and feels a sense of belonging to a virtual community. (Heim, 1998, p. 221) Heim’s definition of virtuality refers to the notion of replacing the primary sensory input of reality with a new, virtual, alternative, digitally produced, and most importantly immersive reality. By looking at VR as a part of the extension of digital ecosystems, immersion becomes the key characteristic to define the new era of new media technologies. Immersion underlines the feeling of presence and the illusion of ‘being there’ in a mediated environment, the ‘make-believe’ of being involved, engaged and attached to mediated narratives as a psychological and physiological sensation. Murray describes immersion as the pleasurable “experience of being transported to an elaborately simulated place” which results from the “sensation of being surrounded by a completely other reality, as different as water is from air, that takes over all of our attention, our whole perceptual apparatus” (Murray, 1997, p. 98). While VR does not literally transport you to any other place, the shift of attention is crucial when defining immersive technologies and environments. With the growing importance of the internet, social media platforms, and digital communication tools, immersive technologies can be found in all kinds of industries. We are living our lives in the design of these mediated spaces. Over the past decade, the medialization of the self has affected people’s informal interactions, as well as institutional processes, and professional routines. By creating digital avatars of our perceived identity (often referred to as the ‘ideal self’) on social media platforms such as Facebook and Instagram, distributing selfies to craft the digital self as a substitutive reality, and by offering forms of involvement, engagement, and interactivity (user-generated content) in participatory (mobile) communication (social media debates, collective knowledge on wikis, etc.), the conditions and rules of social interaction depend on the grade of immersion in our performance and management of the self within digital ecosystems. How we make others and ourselves believe what we think we are, what we seem to know of the world, and how we communicate this knowledge, has much to do with how immersive the dynamics are between the digital management of the self, mass media, and consumption. Through the creation of virtual platforms, which are connected with each other within digital ecosystems, we are recreating and embodying our identities in virtual spaces and are consuming information, knowledge and entertainment in immersive spaces. May it be posting images on Instagram, texting on WhatsApp, or reading newsfeeds on Facebook, we are navigating our time on Facebook’s ecosystem. Our perception of mediated knowledge has much to do with how this knowledge can be distributed, accessed, and processed on and through digital platforms. The definition of digital ecosystems reshapes entire markets by including new digital business models, digital consumers, and digital technologies. What Jenkins sees as a shift from old to new consumers could be considered as one of the reasons why companies like Facebook invest in VR technologies: If old consumers were assumed to be passive, the new consumers are active. If old consumers were predictable and stayed where told them to stay, then new consumers are migratory, showing a declining loyalty to networks or media. If old consumers were isolated individuals, the new consumers are more

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socially connected. If the work of media consumers was once silent and invisible, the new consumers are noisy and public. (Jenkins, 2006, p. 18-19) Facebook is not the only corporation, which extends its ecosystem through an immersive approach. Digital platforms like Amazon and Netflix use emerging technologies to create immersive experience for their users. These platforms are designed to be immersive and to create profiles of their users based on their tastes, trends and social fragmentation. Phenomena such as the algorithmic flow of binge-watching illustrate the constellation of power relationships between media texts, algorithms, and immersion, as VoD platforms modify the reception of serial storytelling by skipping intros and ‘previously on’-segments to fully engage audiences and make them forget about the underlying principles and tactics of entertainment platforms (Stiegler, 2016). Amazon is applying the same tactics of algorithms to link individual shopping behaviour with entertainment consumption on Amazon Prime Video. Digital companies like Google, Facebook, Sony, Samsung, Apple, and HTC are major competitors in the global cultural industries, and they will continue to influence our understanding of knowledge, heritage, and identities through VR technologies (Hesmondhalgh, 2013). Cultural production, however, did experience a drastic change in the last two decades, with the process of digitalisation being the most immediate impact on technologies of cultural production. This has much to do with a rise of virtual and immersive technologies and a shift from mass media logic of the 20th century to social media logic of the 21st century. However, how do immersive technologies fit in the framework of social media logic? Are immersive technologies an extension of social media, such as both the majority of digital business strategies as well as Facebook’s 10 year road plan would suggest? Or are different parameters influencing the extension of digital ecoystems?

THE SHIFT FROM MASS MEDIA TO SOCIAL MEDIA LOGIC Mass media logic argues that mass media in the 20th century gained power by developing a commanding discourse that guides the organization of the public sphere while its principles increasingly invade all areas of public life, hence fully immerse users and audiences within mass media consumption and the tactics of mass media ecosystems. The influence of mass media logic became increasingly important in relation to mass media institutions, which were able to cement their institutional status through their influence on politics, economy, and social life. Over thirty years ago, David Altheide and Robert Snow (1979) defined the influence of media institutions by emphasizing their logic as a set of principles that penetrate and dominate the public sphere and its organisational structures: “The present-day dominance of media has been achieved through a process in which the general form and specific formats of media have become adopted throughout society […] – media are the dominant force to which other institutions conform” (Altheide & Snow, 1979, p. 15). They argued that through discursive strategies and performative tactics the power of mass media could be diffused and exercised. By defining which strategies and tactics make up mass media logic, Altheide and Snow singled out elements that related to the media’s ability to frame reality and claim neutrality and independence. For instance, by referring to Raymond Williams, they argued broadcast media creates a programming flow, which “saturate[s] coverage of events over a short period of time, slack off, and eventually turn to something else (Altheide & Snow, 1979, p. 238). The quick turnover generates a certain perception of reality in relation to the rhetorical power of language, and therefore dominates the selection of content itself, like a commodity principle. Television cameras and broadcast techniques add a sense of intimacy and intensity to the content, as can be seen in 58

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the ability to live-broadcast events. In addition, mass media has the tendency to present itself as neutral through standardized procedures such as neutral presentation by anchors, subjective commentaries by authoritative voices (experts), and the coverage of events by objective reporters, while in fact it operates as filter through which some people get more exposure than others. As a result, the authors argue that socalled public values are influenced by mass media and have a significant impact on institutional spheres. “In short, people may adopt a media logic as the interpretive framework through which definitions of reality are developed and problems solved.” (Altheide & Snow, 1979, p. 44) While the authors never use the term ‘mediated reality’, they are constantly referring to the concept as an ‘alternate reality’ shaped by the rules and conditions of mass media, and perceived through mass media technologies. Also, even though the authors do not mention the term ‘immersion’, it is evident that alternate realities achieve their potential through the adoption of immersive content strategies, may it be through presenting themselves as neutral and objective, or as the filter to interpret and understand the world. However, as the general transformations described by the authors have taken place in the 1980s, there have been a number of developments since then that reshaped media logic and question most of its characteristics. With computer mediated interaction, mobile communication and social media platforms, various cultural and technological trends have changed the media landscape with a set of new economic, technological and sociocultural implications. Van Dijck and Poell (2013) therefore coin the term ‘social media logic’ to add new elements and transform existing mechanisms. They are focusing on the social traffic on social media platforms, which they perceive as a drastic change in the way mass media logic could be defined. Both agree that social media logic remains to be entangled to a certain degree with mass media logic, when it comes to shape private, corporate and state forces. New developments could be defined as part of ‘social media logic’, which consists of four main elements: programmability, popularity, connectivity, and datafication. Programmability, for instance, consists of two parts: technology and human agency. While scheduling and programming for mass media are often visible, the technological mechanism through algorithms, protocols, interfaces, and platform organisation on social networking sites are not: “While algorithms are nothing but sets of coded instructions, it is important to observe how social media platforms shape all kinds of relational activities, such as liking, favoriting, recommending, sharing and so on. [...] The power of algorithms […] lies in their programmability: programmers steer user experiences, content, and user relations via platforms.” (van Dijck & Poell, 2013, p. 5) While the authors are mainly referring to Facebook and the way the platform is engaging its users by ‘friending’ other users, their definition also applies to other digital ecosystems that do not operate as social media platforms. Netflix’s strategy of distributing content to its audiences has much to do with this principle of invisible programmability based on algorithms and recommendations. Its premium content is actually very limited, but carefully planned and researched to maximize its appeal to a targeted section of the audience, as it can be seen in the recent relaunch of Gilmore Girls (a popular and missed TV show with a strong fanbase) and the science fiction show Stranger Things (which exploits nostalgia for the 1980s among today’s 30-40 year olds, who grew up with films such as E.T., The Goonies and Stand By Me). These productions are based on data and preferences provided by its users through ratings, searches and algorithms. The phrase ‘You might also like…’ at the end of an episode is more than just a recommendation; it’s a way to collect data from the audience: “Although today’s television climate provides viewers with a more personalized experience, creating a sense of choice and freedom users are constantly being conditioned by those very same recommendation systems, which thereby focus the range of choices and limit potential content diversity”, therefore “[d]igital television integrates social media logic.” (Groshek & Krongard, 2016, 59

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p. 5) Amazon even offers its customers pilot episodes for some of its planned shows on Amazon Prime Video, greenlighting whatever pilots get the best ratings. At the same time, streaming platforms feed the audience’s desire for more. Netflix gives users a few seconds between episodes to decide, if they want to continue to stay in their ecosystem. If they refuse to make a decision, the platform will do it for them: it not only starts the next episode, it also skips the intro to resume the narrative world without further interruption. Programmability merges with immersive technologies and provides non-stop entertainment based on underlying principles and tactics of digital platforms. What van Dijck and Poell therefore describe as ‘human agency’ is “the mix of crowdsourcing principles of social media with the editorial values expected of mass media.” (van Dijck & Poell, 2013, p. 6) Popularity as another grounding principle is strongly intertwined with programmability. Mass media logic established already how popular people are achieving the status of celebrities, as Altheide and Snow point out: “(1) the illusion of the images on television as ‘bigger than life’ phenomena; (2) the legitimizing role of television in establishing the importance of people and characters we see on television; (3) the extent to which viewers become personally involved with television personalities.” (Altheide & Snow, 1979, p. 51) Social media logic, however, does contain the same principles as it has transformed from being more egalitarian and democratic than mass media to having “distinct mechanisms for boosting popularity of people, things, or ideas, which is measured mostly in quantitative terms.” (van Dijck & Poell, 2013, p. 7) The like-mechanism and ‘like-economy’ (Gerlitz & Helmond, 2013) become profound strategies for these platforms publishing popularity scores and rankings across the board. The third grounding principle of social media logic is connectivity. While for a long time social media platforms were aiming for the pursuit of human connectedness or participation, the term connectivity as “socio-technical affordance of networked platforms to connect content to user activities and advertisers” (van Dijck & Poell, 2013, p. 8) seems more encompassing and accurate to capture the logic of digital platforms: “The shifts from analog to digital, from centralized to dispersed, from mass media to social media, from information transmission to collective intelligence, from old statistical extrapolations to new data feeds, all point to media use that is social by design, not social by default.” (Uricchio, 2009, p. 138) The ‘platform apparatus’ is able to track individual connections and behaviouristics, while deemphasizing the power of platform agency as a way to connect users, platform, and advertisers through and within immersive environments. The quality of content is crucial and is one of the biggest concerns of the platform owners: “[…] if the wires get clogged with sexually explicit messages or spam, the site will quickly become unfit for the purposes it was designed for. Protocols – both technical and regulatory – are thus put in place to keep platforms clean from polluting traffic.” (van Dijck, 2012, p. 148) In relation to this, van Dijck refers to ‘automated personalization’ as the alliance between consumers, content and advertisers to entail a strategic deployment of recommendations (van Dijck & Poell, 2013, p. 9). Even though there is a strong sense of the individual performing itself on the platform, there are still patterns of personalization governed by social media profiles. It becomes evident that connectivity is not so much about how and which people are connected, but rather through which sort of content, as can be seen in recent debates about ‘fake news’ and ‘alternative realities’ distributed on social media platforms. The final principle of social media logic is datafication, a term coined by Mayer-Schoenberger and Cukier to describe the ability of networked platforms to render into data many aspects, which have never been quantified before, such as metadata from smart phones, GPS locations, or the preference of music, books, films, games etc. (Mayer-Schoenberger & Cukier, 2013). Van Dijck and Poell include as well the possibility to add real-time data to social media platforms in forms of polls or surveys, which results in 60

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data gathering becoming sort of a premium content itself that is not only consumed but actively influenced by users: “An important aspect of datafication is the invisibility or naturalness of its mechanics: methods for aggregation and personalization are often proprietary and thus often inaccessible to public or private scrutiny.” (van Dijck & Poell, 2013, p. 10) While programmability, popularity, connectivity, and datafication build complex dynamics, which not only unfold on one particular platform, but on the whole range of platforms within a distinctive ecosystem, the role of VR and other immersive technologies is still unclear. The politics of immersion complement the logics and tactics of both mass media and social media by adding extra dimensions, which need to be analysed further.

THE POLITICS OF IMMERSIVE STORYTELLING Content productions distributed through immersive technologies on social media, streaming platforms, and AR/VR applications are influenced by a specific sustaining logic and widespread dissemination, which need to be scrutinized to understand their impact. Immersive experiences indicate an immaterial context of interaction between the user/audience and the mediated environment, meaning a kind of intangible architecture, which supports the mediated perception. Netflix is such a digital ecosystem, which uses immersive experiences to create a platform full of keywords, genres, and ratings to keep its users on the platform. The users, on the other hand, interact with the environment through the popularity of content (binge watching) and the wish to recommend and rate. In that sense ‘Horizon’ becomes another communication tool on Facebook through VR technology, as it is now possible to speak through a digitally animated avatar rather than just language and emoticons, voice messages, images (including memes), and video. VR content productions, which can be experienced through Quest and Rift, are connected through this intangible architecture by providing links to the existing ecosystem. This means immersive technologies create an organized field of relations that people navigate through by channeling their stream of awareness to the logics of the mediated environment. This leads to a splitting of consciousness such as the audience’s focus is on the mediated rather than the non-mediated aspects of their perception. Immersive content productions take advantage of creating a mediated environment, which gives users the opportunity to connect with an already established story universe as well as with the different channels of the digital ecosystem. One of the major VR content productions in recent years, which is also a legitimate narrative experience, is USA Network’s Mr. Robot Virtual Reality Experience (Mr. Robot VR). The VR production was launched in July 2016 as part of a transmedia marketing campaign to promote the second season of the network series about Elliot Anderson, an engineer with social anxiety disorder and clinical depression, who is recruited by an insurrectionary anarchist known as ‘Mr. Robot’ to join a group of hacktivists. The TV series has won multiple awards including the Golden Globe for Best Television Drama Series. For Mr. Robot’s second season, the network managed to reactivate the shows’ audience with a transmedia marketing campaign using Facebook Live and various other social media platforms. Around two months before the season premiered, USA Network shared a video of a faux press conference, in which President Barack Obama addresses the activities of the fictional hacker group ‘fsociety’, which is known from the series. The clip appeared to be authentic through a fake authenticity-approach, known from feature films such as The Blair Witch Project (1999) and Cloverfield (2008). In cooperation with Facebook Live, USA Network let ‘fsociety’ spread its anti-capitalist message around the globe, includ61

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Figure 3. Mr. Robot VR experience

(© [2016], [USA Network]. Used with permission.)

ing various live streams targeted at 13 regions in the course of 24 hours. Live streams were followed by a teaser clip for the next season with a much-discussed cliffhanger. The network even surprised fans with an unexpected turn by hacking itself and leaking the first episode of the second season within one of its livestreams. The stream was interrupted by ‘fsociety’, who leaked the episode, which was then immediately removed from the page after the stream ended. After that, the episode was made available in staggered succession and for a limited time on Twitter, BuzzFeed’s Discover channel on Snapchat, YouTube, and USANetwork.com. With 31,000 tweets from 20,000 unique users on Twitter the leak created excitement and anticipation for the show. Mr. Robot VR is a 13-minute VR narrative as part of the same campaign and was premiered at San Diego Comic-Con 2016. The audience experienced a flashback journey with lead character Elliot as he remembers an early encounter with his dealer and love interest Shayla. As the first global VR simulcast, fans were invited to a Baseball stadium to watch the experience together with the cast at the same time, since the content would disappear afterwards from the Within app, the VR start-up that distributed the experience created by VR production company Be Here Dragons. After that, fans were only able to access the production on specific VR platforms like Samsung Gear VR, Oculus Rift, HTC Vive, and Google Daydream VR. VR narratives such as Mr. Robot VR are very much an integral part of the 21st century as they are intertwined with the development of new media technologies, which include a shift from the material to the immaterial, and the extent in which they are embedded in society and everyday life (Lievrouw, 2004; Bakardjieva, 2005). While immersive storytelling in VR is still in a phase of development and therefore can not be assessed to its full extent yet, it is possible to refer to the underlying tactics of already established immersive productions such as Mr. Robot VR to better understand the complexity of how immersive VR productions are embedded in the logics of digital ecosystems. Building up on the grounding principles of social media logic, immersive storytelling on digital platforms is defined by programmability, user experience, popularity, and platform sociality.

Programmability The main grounding principle of the politics of immersive storytelling is programmability. As van Dijck and Poell argued, programmability is a key element to understand social media logic though technol-

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Figure 4. Mr. Robot VR, Comic-Con 2016

(© [2016], [USA Network]. Used with permission.)

ogy and human agency, and they defined it as “the ability of a central agency to manipulate content in order to define the audience’s watching experience as a continuous flow.” (van Dijck & Poell, 2013, p. 5) Programmability therefore consists of two parts, technology and content. Programmability refers to immersive content itself (mainly 360° videos, interactive storytelling, transmedia storytelling, games, etc.), which can be distributed through VR technology. Mr. Robot VR is an example of transmedia storytelling, as the narrative of the experience can only be understood in relation to season one of the series on USA Network. Without this knowledge it would not be possible to build up an emotional connection with the characters or understand the storyline portrayed in the VR narrative. By attaching the VR production to the already established story universe of the show, trademark narrative elements such as characters (the main character), settings (his apartment) and key features (voice over) can be used without further introduction. Mr. Robot VR is very much part of the continuous flow of the show’s narrative experiences, even though the second season of the show could still be watched and understood without watching the VR narrative. In terms of technology, programmability also means the ability to benefit from a diverse product portfolio and synergy effects within a media conglomerate. USA Network is owned by the Cable division of NBCUniversal. With a set of subsidiaries and joint ventures, NBCUniversal is able to reach out to partners such as Here Be Dragons, Facebook, and Samsung to achieve the biggest reach for its Mr. Robot VR production. “The idea behind [it] was that different parts of a corporation should relate to each other in such a manner as to provide cross-promotion and cross-selling opportunities, so that sales would exceed what was possible when divisions acted separately.” (Hesmondhalgh, 2013, pp. 195-197) Other examples can be found at The Sony Group, Alphabet, and Facebook. The Sony Group (PlayStation VR), for instance, engages business through four operating and connected components: electronics, motions pictures, music and financial services. By being able to provide cross-selling opportunities between entertainment content and VR technology, Sony offers long-established franchises on PlayStation VR such as Batman: Arkham VR. Players can wear the Batsuit and experience how it feels to be the Dark Knight. While the technology itself establishes immersive environments, it builds on past experiences with the Batman universe (films, comics, series) and associated sociocultural immersive phenomena

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such as fandom and theme parks. Alphabet Inc., on the other hand, the multinational conglomerate of which Google is a part of, also owns a wide range of subsidiaries, such as the research and development facility X, the self driving car project Waymo, the research and development biotech company Calico, and the broadband internet and cable television provider Google Fiber, among others. Alphabet is offering a diverse range of products, which are integrated within its solution for immersive media, such as YouTube, Street View, Play Movies and Play Store. Facebook as another example not only provides its social media platform, but also Oculus, Instagram, WhatsApp and a wide range of technology businesses in the fields of augmented, virtual and artificial intelligence sectors. In fact, in 2019 Facebook decided to put its corporate logo on both WhatsApp and Instagram to ensure users know about its corporate parent (Gilbert, 2019). Programmability in that regard does not refer solely to the platform’s algorithms and interfaces to influence data traffic and content, but also to the aspects of cross-promotion and cross-selling opportunities within a multinational conglomerate.

User Experience Immersive storytelling on digital platforms requires a different view on user experiences as user perception consists of two crucial dimensions: the representation of individuals and the nature of their interpersonal interactions. As an individual experiencing immersive productions, the user’s representation in the immersive environment is most commonly passively integrated in a story: as a person, who is present, but not recognised by other characters of the narrative (‘0th person’); or as a person, who is present, and is recognised by other characters of the narrative, but is not able to interact with them (‘3rd person’); or as a person, who is present and as well defined as a character, who is recognised by other characters, but not able to interact with them (‘2nd person’). The most interactive approach is an emergent position in an immersive environment inspired by games design (‘1st person’), meaning the user is a character in the story and able to direct the narrative to a certain degree, as well as interact with other characters or users. Although not strictly as a narrative design, Facebook offers this ‘1st person’ experience by letting users create virtual avatars in ‘Horizon’: “As we move into global interaction models, our technology must enable us to be natural, adapting to communication, navigating with our physical bodies, and interacting effortlessly with objects that self-assemble and allow us to easily create them using our imagination as the technology.” (Damer & Hinrichs, 2014, p. 27) However, non-social network-based experiences such as VR productions also need to consider user experience. The narrative experience of Mr. Robot VR connects immediately with the story universe of Mr. Robot. The narrative design establishes a 3rd person perspective: the user is present and recognised, but is not able to interact with other characters in the narrative. As viewers, the audience sits next to Elliot in his apartment, getting addressed by the show’s trademark voiceover. Together with various looks straight into the camera and breaking the fourth wall, the viewer is able to feel a sense of presence, which is further supported by subtle camera movements. As Elliott is answering a knock at the door, the user gets smoothly pushed into the right direction. Even though there is a still the opportunity to look in all directions, the narrative implements a directive element to guide the viewer in his or her perception. Further scenes in a ferris wheel car, or on the boardwalk take advantage of both VR technology as well as the notion of intimacy, which has been already established through the emotional connection fans have with the characters of the show. Even though 0th and 3rd person are most commonly used in current VR productions, the possibility to interact within immersive narratives increases with the use of haptic embodiments such as remote 64

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controls and body tracking systems. By giving audiences the possibility to (inter)act as users or characters in a mediated environment, the chances of feeling engaged and attached will increase. This feeling will intertwine with the platform’s strategies of programmability, popularity, and sociality. Platform providers obviously also have the ability to exploit the interactive potential of participatory cultures in VR: [T]he contemporary deployment of interactivity exploits participation as a form of labor. Consumers generate marketable commodities by submitting to comprehensive monitoring. They are not so much participating, in the progressive sense of collective self-determination, as they are working by submitting to interactive monitoring. The advent of digital interactivity does not challenge the social relations associated with capitalist rationalization, it reinforces them and expands the scale on which they operate. (Andrejevic, 2004, p. 197)

Popularity Individual user experiences are essential currencies for digital ecosystems to deploy complex algorithms and attract advertisers. Van Dijck and Poell point out that this grounding principle of social media logic has a profound influence on the user’s perception by implementing ways to manipulate, influence, and measure audiences through popularity figures (van Dijck & Poell, 2013, p. 7). Popularity is essential for digital platform providers as they are keen on creating popularity hypes and fandom phenomena. Mr. Robot VR, for instance, implements its storyline through the story universe of an already popular TV show on the same network, making it a significant contribution to strategies of programmability. Van Dijck and Poell also mention the individual approaches of platform providers to boost popularity of characters, things, or ideas, and Facebook’s mechanisms to measure which topics are discussed most. Immersive content productions on digital platforms are a result of this measurement, as these platforms are able to create content based on the data provided by its users, but also through the exchange with traditional mass media: “Popularity becomes enmeshed in a feedback loop between mass and social media, and, as was argued in the case of programmability, becomes part of a larger cultural arena where different institutional discourses and counter-discourses engage in a struggle to make their logics more pressing.” (van Dijck & Poell, 2013, p. 8) For social media platforms such as Facebook, ‘Horizon’ becomes another way to promote social experience and popularity figures through immersive technologies. However, social media has already established standardized metrics to measure data and to make it meaningful in social life. Digital tools like Google Analytics and Facebook Memology help to measure aggregated popularity and influence in digital ecosystems. These established metrics would need to be transferred to VR technology, so advertisers would have an understanding of the potential revenue of their investments.

Platform Sociality The fourth grounding principle of immersive storytelling is platform sociality. Sociologists and media scholars have investigated the behaviour of users on social media platforms (Boyd & Ellison, 2007), as well as how platforms like Facebook help users to maintain relations (Ellison et al., 2007). Immersive technologies such as VR take a distinct position within that research as they can be used to further support platform sociality (e.g. ‘Horizon’), even though VR technology is often perceived as an isolated, individual process of consuming content. Certainly the way in which platforms can be viewed as an 65

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intermediary between users is about the change with the introduction of VR technology on social media. Online sociality is strongly attached to the creation of avatars and digitally mediated environments, as the user’s focus is on the mediated rather than the non-mediated aspects of their perception. The architecture of digitally created environments needs to be designed in a way that invites users to spend time in these spaces to comfortably interact with others. However, also VR content productions are about to become part of platform sociality as they soon will have to compete with other entertainment experiences, such as cinema and concerts, which both allow a higher level of social interaction. In addition, participatory experiences through television content is becoming much more relevant as well, for example “to engage via Twitter while viewing a real-time televised event, using a shared hashtag to participate in a broader, synchronous conversation with other users.” (Groshek & Krongard, 2016, p. 2) Currently it is still not possible to integrate these engagement activities within VR experiences, because users have to wear headsets. However, there are efforts to apply social elements to VR productions, as it can be seen in the way Mr. Robot VR was presented in a baseball stadium. In addition, developments in establishing an infrastructure of VR cinemas (Wong, 2016) to enable cinematic experiences in VR are offering another way to engage users with each other.

CONCLUSION The battle for supremacy over the future of immersive technologies is taking place between the Hollywood studios and Silicon Valley tech industries (e.g. Google, Apple, Facebook, Amazon, etc.) in the increasingly fragmented digital media economy where content has emerged as its most valuable currency. All major studios and global digital industries are working on their own technological solutions to further immerse audiences in their digital ecosystem. This is not always an advantage: currently the marketplace for immersive technologies is too fragmented to have global impact. In addition, the range of affordable VR technologies for the masses is still too diverse, and offers everything from low-end cheap cardboard-solutions to mid-range products with additional features, and expensive high-end headsets, which run off external computers or game consoles. However, all of them are already part of an existing ecosystem, which offers the possibility to spread content across different platforms and to reach audiences through various channels. This article argued that the grounding principles of immersive storytelling on digital platforms are intertwined with social media logic and its elements of programmability, popularity, connectivity, and datafication. The politics of immersive technologies are strongly influenced by these principles, as they are embedded in and connected through the logics of already established digital ecosystems. Programmability, user experience, popularity, and platform sociality define the way these ecosystems operate through immersive technologies and immersive content productions. Mr. Robot VR, as one example of this type of content, displayed the importance of an existing story universe. In a transmedia storytelling approach the VR narrative has been intertwined with an already established franchise, which makes it easier for audiences to feel emotionally attached and engaged. Through programmability, digital ecosystems are able to position their formats not only in a story universe, but also integrate them within the strategy of a multinational conglomerate. This becomes more efficient when taking popularity into consideration and offering possibilities for platform sociality. The most crucial grounding principle for immersive storytelling though is user experience. While passive involvement remains dominant in current immersive narratives, social media platforms such as Facebook with its strategy to integrate interactive 66

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immersive world-building as part of its digital communication tools (‘Horizon’) will challenge immersive experiences to become as interactive as possible. This will give platform providers the ability to collect and exploit user data to attract advertisers and increase commercial success. However, the market for immersive technologies is still too fragmented to ensure that VR will penetrate deeply into the mechanics of everyday life, and affect all sorts of social interactions and routines. This is emphasized by Facebook shutting down ‘Spaces’ for ‘Horizon’, and Google’s shift from mass market VR to AR. Without a global platform, universal narratives, as well as accessible and affordable technology solutions, immersive storytelling in digital ecosystems will remain an experiment for a longer time.

REFERENCES Altheide, D., & Snow, R. (1979). Media logic. Sage. Andrejevic, M. (2004). The webcam subculture and the digital enclosure. In N. Couldry & A. McCarthy (Eds.), MediaSpace: Place, scale and culture in a media age (pp. 193–208). Routledge. Bakardjieva, M. (2005). Internet society: The Internet in everyday life. Sage. Barlow, J. (1996). A declaration of the independence of cyberspace. Retrieved June 24, 2016, from https://www.eff.org/~barlow/Declaration-Final.html Boyd, D., & Ellison, N. B. (2007). Social network sites: Definition, history, and scholarship. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 13(1), 210–230. doi:10.1111/j.1083-6101.2007.00393.x Damer, B., & Hinrichs, R. (2014). The virtuality and reality of avatar cyberspace. In M. Grimshaw (Ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Virtuality (pp. 17–41). Oxford University Press. Ellison, N. B., Steinfield, C., & Lampe, C. (2007). The benefits of Facebook ‘friends’: Social capital and college students’ use of online social network sites. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 12(4), 1143–1168. doi:10.1111/j.1083-6101.2007.00367.x Facebook. (2019). This app is no longer available. Retrieved February 04, 2020, from https://www. facebook.com/spaces Fermoso, J. (2017). Facebook invests $250m more in VR as Zuckerberg shows off wireless Oculus. Retrieved July 20, 2017, from https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/oct/06/zuckerberg-facebookvirtual-reality-wireless-oculus-connect-3 Gerlitz, C., & Helmond, A. (2013). The Like Economy: Social buttons and the data-intensive web. New Media & Society, 11(6), 985–1002. doi:10.1177/1461444812472322 Gilbert, B. (2019). Facebook is changing its logo to make sure users know it owns Instagram and WhatsApp. Retrieved February 05, 2020, from https://www.inc.com/business-insider/facebook-new-logoinstagram-whatsapp-parent-company.html Groshek, J., & Krongard, S. (2016). Netflix and engage? Implications for streaming television on political participation during the 2016 US presidental campaign. Social Sciences, 5(4), 1-18.

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Heim, H. (1998). Virtual Realism. Oxford University Press. Heim, M. (2015). The Paradox of Virtuality. In M. Grimshaw (Ed.), The Oxford Handbook on Virtuality (pp. 111–128). Oxford University Press. Hesmondhalgh, D. (2013). The Cultural Industries (3rd ed.). Sage. Jenkins, H. (2006). Convergence culture: Where old and new media collide. New York University Press. Lievrouw, L. (2004). What’s changed about new media? Introduction to the fifth anniversary issue of New Media & Society. New Media & Society, 6(1), 9–15. doi:10.1177/1461444804039898 Mayer-Schoenberger, V., & Cukier, K. (2013). Big Data. A Revolution that Will Transform How We Live, Work and Think. John Murray Publishers. Murray, J. (1997). Hamlet on the Holodeck. The Future of Narrative in Cyberspace. The Free Press. Negroponte, N. (1995). Being digital. Knopf. Oculus. (2020). Introducing ‘Facebook Horizon’, a New Social VR World, Coming to Oculus Quest and the Rift Platform in 2020. Retrieved February 04, 2020, from https://www.oculus.com/blog/introducingfacebook-horizon-a-new-social-vr-world-coming-to-oculus-quest-and-the-rift-platform-in-2020/ Ryan, M.-L. (2001). Narrative as Virtual Reality. Immersion and Interactivity in Literature and Electronic Media. John Hopkins. Stiegler, C. (2016). Invading Europe. Netflix’s expansion to the European market. In K. McDonald & D. Smith-Rowsey (Eds.), The Netflix Effect. Technology and Entertainment in the 21st Century (pp. 235–247). Bloomsbury. Thon, J. (2008). Immersion Revisited. On the Value of a Contested Concept. In F. Amyris, O. Leino, & H. Wirman (Eds.), Extending experiences. Structure, analysis and design of computer game player experience (pp. 29-43). Rovianemi: Lapland University Press. Uricchio, W. (2009). Moving beyond the artefact: Lessons from participatory culture. In M. van den Boomen, S. Lammes, A.-S. Lehmann, J. Raesssens, & M. Schäfer (Eds.), Digital Material. Tracing new media in everyday life and technology (pp. 135–146). Amsterdam University Press. van Dijck, J. (2012). Facebook and the engineering of connectivity: A multi-layered approach to social media platforms. Convergence, 19(2), 141–155. doi:10.1177/1354856512457548 van Dijck, J., & Poell, T. (2013). Understanding Social Media Logic. Media and Communication, 1(1), 2–14. doi:10.17645/mac.v1i1.70 Wong, R. (2016). World’s first permanent VR cinema opens in Amsterdam, and it’s very weird. Retrieved March 07, 2017, from http://mashable.com/2016/03/07/vr-cinema-amsterdam/#pYrP9IXHjgqY

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Chapter 5

The Pervasive and the Digital: Immersive Worlds in Four Interactive Artworks Daniel Paul O’Brien University of Essex, UK

ABSTRACT This chapter discusses the trajectory of immersive story worlds by considering four distinct interactive artworks. Blast Theory’s, A Machine to See With (2010), is a pervasive fictional experience that enables users, through the technology of their mobile phone, to become immersed within a fictional crime scenario across a real geographical setting. Their latter artwork app, Karen (2015), enables a different type of pervasive immersion through interstitial storytelling that incorporates the medium of the user’s smartphone into the virtual narrative space. Dennis Del Favero’s art project, Scenario (2011), and Extant’s Flatland, by contrast, are interactive and immersive stories that take place in digital spaces that interface with the body in unique ways. This chapter will explore each of these artworks through original interviews the author has conducted with each of the artists.

INTRODUCTION The immersiveness of virtual worlds is ubiquitous in a digital age. Virtual presence through online activity, such as gaming, shopping, socializing, or any form of communication, merges and coexists a real-life user with a virtual other, dividing selfhood into a relationship of being both here in an actual world and there in a virtual world simultaneously. Theorists such as Don Ihde, Brian Massumi, Anna Munster, N. Katherine Hayles, Brian Rotman and Mark B.N. Hansen have discussed this corporeal split in their respective works and fields of research. This chapter utilises these theorists, particularly Hansen’s by considering the role of the body in the immersive worlds of interactive art. As Hansen asserts in New Philosophy for New Media, immersive worlds such as virtual reality environments, comprise of a negotiation or mergence between that of a user’s body as it becomes enfolded into a virtual dataspace (Hansen, 2004, p. 162). This type of immersiveness, as Hansen notes, produces DOI: 10.4018/978-1-7998-4796-0.ch005

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a “dynamic coupling of body and image, where the body transforms the medium as the medium transforms the body” (Hansen, 2004, p. 186). Within this chapter the author adopts Hansen’s corporeal understanding of interactive art to consider four artworks that similarly hybridize the user’s active body within an immersive world to create narrative experiences. These worlds are Blast Theory’s A Machine to See With (2010), Karen (2015), Dennis Del Favero’s Scenario (2011) and Extant’s Flatland. In each artwork a coproduction between a body and a technology forms an interactive world, a world that falls in line with Oliver Grau’s writings on immersion. In Virtual Art: From Illusion to Immersion, Grau states that “immersion is mentally absorbing and a process, a change, a passage from one mental state to another. It is characterized by diminishing critical distance to what is shown and increasing emotional involvement in what is happening” (Grau, 2003, p. 13). This chapter’s particular interest in interactive digital art, rather than cinema or television as a site for immersion also follows Grau’s reasoning. Immersive media such as paintings, the cinema or television, as Grau asserts, “are delimited by a frame that is apparent to the observer” (Grau, 2003, p. 14), which to some extent leaves the observer outside of it. Interactive art by contrast puts a person inside a world by transcending them from an observer to a user, an active body with agency inside a world. As Ryszard Kluszczyński has noted, in interactive art an artist does not make a finished piece of work that is watched but rather, “produces an area of activity for the receivers, whose interactive actions bring to life an artwork-event” (Kluszczynski, 2010). Consequentially, an experience is co- shaped by a user and an artist. This is the very reason as to why the methodological approach of this chapter is similarly co-shaped through interviews between the author and interactive artwork designers.

A Machine to See With Just listen to the voice on the phone. The voice tells you what to do. The voice says you’re playing the lead in a movie. Hide in the toilets, find the getaway car, stake out the bank and take a deep breath. You’re going in. The description above is taken from Blast Theory’s website (Blast Theory, 2017), which describes their artwork, A Machine to See With. This is a pervasive game that involves a group of users following instructions on their mobile phones several years before smartphones became ubiquitous. As these instructions are spoken each user must carry them out, mobilising each individual participant across a real urban environment. Within a specific starting point in a city setting and at an arranged time, a participant’s phone will ring. The voice on the phone will then proceed to instruct a user about the fictitious bank robbery they are going on, leading them to real checkpoints and other participants before eventually reaching the doors of a public bank. The immersive fictionality of this experience relies upon the user obeying instructions through the technology of their mobile phone. The artists of Blast Theory (led by founding members Matt Adams, Ju Row Farr and Nick Tandavanitj) provide the opportunity for six participants to use their phones as a gateway to an interactive, immersive and pervasive story space, in which they construct a fictional event. Participants give their mobile numbers to the artists when signing up for this experience and are directed to a starting location at a specific time and place. Once ready, each participant receives a series of phone calls from an automated voice, created by the artists from the call-centre software Asterisk. This voice instructs each participant that they are going on a bank robbery and over the course of an hour, the voice phones each participant at sporadic moments, guiding and instructing them on where to go and what to do, with 70

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each directive moving participants closer to the targeted real-life bank. This type of artwork virtually reconstructs the space before participants in which “[t]he city is understood as a cinematic space and the eyes of the participants as the screens themselves” (Treske, 2015, p. 35). Such an experience is Blast Theory’s interpretation of ‘locative cinema’, which they describe in the following way: It is about cinema. We thought about the city as a cinematic space and considered how screens might be inserted into the streets or carried through them. Our approach was to think of our eyes as the screens themselves: as Chris Hedges says in The Empire of Illusion, ‘we try to see ourselves moving through our life as a camera would see us, mindful of how we hold ourselves, how we dress, what we say. We invent movies that play in our heads. (Blast Theory, 2017) Within this work, the Blast Theory artists create immersive spaces to be filled in by the user in both a physical and physiological manner as the voice on the phone robotically guides the player towards their fictional offence. This type of immersive performance, as Liam Jarvis notes, become “a threshold experience to transport unrehearsed audience members not just mentally, but physically inside a particular spatio-temporal circumstance or subjunctive ‘otherworldly-world’” (Jarvis, 2019, p. 7). The users are not able to verbally converse with the voice; instead they are absorbed by the voice physically and emotionally into a fictional world. The phone, which is usually a two-way communication technology, is reconfigured to a one-way variant of a machine that a user acts and ‘sees’ through. The technology of the mobile phone thus takes on a new meaning at a point before the ubiquity of smartphones. Participants are encouraged to improvise actions that feel right based on the guidance spoken to them by the automated voice. In the artwork the reduction of being controlled by the phone provides the opportunity to be amplified into a fictional space where each user can become a central character. This crime-based, mixed reality artwork, that blends the realness of a geographic city setting with a fictive bank robbery scenario, invites participants to fill this space with physical action and introspective sensation that they can feel within their skin. There are no screens depicting virtual imagery within this work, instead a user moves around an actual city that is given a virtual and immersive slant through the interface of the phone. A Machine to See With, commissioned by ZER01: The Art & Technology Network, Sundance Film Festival’s New Frontiers Initiative and Banff New Media Institute, was a work that began with the question ‘what could cinema be outside the traditional cinematic space?’ (BT interview, 11/2014). In an age in which cinema and visual technology are ubiquitous, downloadable to pocket sized devices and accessible at any time, combined with the inundation of urban cameras that countlessly photograph us throughout the day, Blast Theory’s artwork plays with the idea of cinema’s omnipresent affect and influence on the passing moments of our day-to-day lives. The voice, while instructing each participant on where to go and how to act, (turn right, blend in, look inconspicuous) has the capability of intensifying each player’s own physical comportment, as they begin to visualise themselves in the starring role of a crime motion picture. In an interview the author conducted with Ju Row Farr she explained this structure and the importance of the artwork’s narrative and immersive frame: Creating a structure and world in which people can participate is obviously very important and one of the things we are interested in is story. We see story or narrative across fiction, the real (the documentary), the imaginary and the virtual, so our thinking on narrative roams across those four areas. There has to be a story or journey that makes sense. The participant needs to know what they’re being asked

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to do in order to enter into that world. They need to know their part in that story and what their place is in this work, (their call to action) then we can move what they’re going to do or where the story or structure is going to twist. If you are talking about a classic narrative structure with a dramatic arc where the climax comes two thirds of the way in, we test and revise rigorously where those points are, and we willfully play with those. (BT interview, 11/2014) Within this work, Blast Theory furnish their participants with the tools to move to and from emotional states as frequently as they move to and from geographic locations. Users are guided from checkpoint to checkpoint across a city in preparation for the final act of entering and robbing the bank. A player might begin their journey by being directed into a public washroom. From here the voice instructs the players to rate themselves on how they perform under pressure by asking them to score themselves between one and nine on the keypad of their phone. This task is intended to give the player a sense of control over whether it will be them or an accomplice (another player sharing the experience) that will perform the robbery or instead be assigned to the post of lookout. In actuality these choices do not affect the prerecorded instructions and every player will be, at carefully timed intervals, the lookout and the one to enter the bank. Other tasks are also requested of the player, such as taking out all their money and concealing it somewhere about their person. Such requests are contrived to resonate with players as familiar cinematic tropes designed to ease them into the performing roles of onscreen characters by turning their own possessions into props and the actual city into a set. This idea is intensified by a different strand of content within the artwork running parallel to the fictional heist. Juxtaposed to the role of bank robber, Blast Theory also provide participants with the opportunity to experience an additional meta role of an actor on set playing the character of the bank robber in a heist movie. The voice on the phone informs the user that the city around them is nothing more than artificial scenery, built solely for the user to act and star in. The voice will occasionally remind the user to imagine that a camera is on them and will prompt them to think about their own actions and gestures in terms of where the camera is placed and the type of shot it might be. Within the washroom, the voice on the phone may inform the player that the (imaginary) camera is filming them through gaps in the wall. The voice may further prompt the user to hold certain personal items of inventory out towards the (imaginary) camera so that the (imaginary) spectator might learn something of their protagonist. Subjective viewpoint is thus multiple within this artwork through the arrangement of fluctuating roles between character, actor and external spectator, which Farr explained in the following way: What we believe is that the cinema is inside people; that our senses are the machines to see with. It’s kind of like this is the cinema world and we are walking through it and we don’t need a bit of rectangular glass to show us that or to frame that. So, we’ve framed it through story and description of the camera moving up your body and that everything around you is paper thin and made up. (BT interview, 11/2014) As Farr indicates the player’s body is the machine to see with in this artwork as it performs two roles side by side: the criminal and the actor – and adopts four multiple perspectives at once: criminal, actor, external spectator and pervasive game player. When the author asked Farr the significance of these shifting perspectives she replied: We are under no illusions that what we’re doing is making a fiction, this is a fictional experience, but our works are often in the real world. So, we’re aware as people that when we’re going around and

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we’re listening, let’s say to a story on a pair of headphones, what will impact on that story is the other stuff in the real world. For example, taking the headphones off to get your car keys out, or pay for the coffee you’ve bought. There are always these interruptions and there are always these multiple levels in which we operate as individuals. So, the artwork is trying to recognise and play with those things by destabilising the participant. We want, within a very tight timeframe to be able to pull the participant around and destabilise them without psychological damage. [A Machine to See With] is meant to feel visceral, it’s meant to feel real and I suppose that’s what we really like. We want that sense that we are alive now. And we want it to feel like it is a possibility and that’s not just an intellectual thing but also a physiological positioning. I like that sense that you can physically feel different to the world around you, and we do that all the time. If we feel worried or anxious things look different, you can feel that in your body, the world around us looks different and that’s all we’re doing. In a way [the artwork] is using those things that we naturally have as resources: physiological resources. (BT interview, 11/2014) A Machine to See With is organised in a specific way so that each player never actually enters the bank, but this is not revealed until the very last second. As the player draws closer to the building after fulfilling the automated instructions of scrutinising it, walking around it and devising an escape route, the voice informs the player it will begin a countdown from ten. The human puppet is instructed to have their hand on the door handle of the bank ready to go in at one. In the final second the voice tells the player to abort the mission, abruptly ending the experience at what is devised to be a tense moment in the body of the performer. Through this arrangement Blast Theory sets the stage for a user to experience the emotive and physiological sensation of a criminal, mere moments before their offence. The intensity is designed to magnify the user’s fictitious experience and stay under their skin long past it. This amplified sensation, taken from the screen and figuratively injected placebo-like into the sensing body of the user, works in tandem with magnified feelings of paranoia and potential grandeur through the partial belief of an invisible movie-camera watching their every move. In a different interview, Tandavanitj comments that: …[o]ne of the strongest responses from people is … a sense of being watched, and we’ve invoked that quite a lot, because we talk about a camera being on you, and trying to frame it as being cinematic and placing you within a field of view of a camera. And people feel extremely paranoid, they don’t know whether there is a camera there or not. (Dias, 2012) During the interview, Farr also recounted that past players have misread the people around them, sensing through modified physiological radars, that other members of the public are somehow involved in the experience and conversant to the player’s criminal intentions, highlighting the immersiveness of the world that the artists create. The artwork therefore amplifies fictive sensation in the user’s own body, as well as in the external space of the city and bodies of others. Blast Theory’s artwork creates an immersive world by initiating fictional interaction between the participant and their phone, members of the general public and the five other players whose paths might cross. Consequentially, the immersiveness of the world is both real and virtual, as the collective roles and perspectives of criminal and actor and heightened sense of corporeal and spatial awareness, come together through the technology of the phone. The phone technology and the user’s body thus adhere to what Jason Farman describes in Mobile Interface Theory: Embodied Space and Locative Media. Within this work Farman cites Elizabeth Grosz’s, Volatile Bodies: Towards a Corporeal Feminism, which states 73

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that, “[t]he body must be regarded as a site of social, political, cultural and geographic inscriptions, productions or constitution” (Grosz, 1994, p. 23). In Mobile Interface Theory Farman uses Grosz and Jacques Derrida’s concept of the mise en abyme (used metaphorically to show human inability to escape culture adapted from Derrida’s indispensability of ‘the text’) as a way to argue that embodiment, or being a body, is always inherently linked to existing within a cultural space. For Farman, “spaces and bodies are co-constitutive as they produce one another, and this production must be theorized with cultural and physiological specificity” (Farman, 2012, p. 18). Farman utilises Henri Lefebvre’s The Production of Space that states: “[e]ach living body is space and has space: it produces itself in space and it also produces that space” (Lefebvre, 1991, p. 170). This intertwinement of body and space can be considered a compounded relationship in tune with Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s Phenomenology of Perception that states, “[t]o be a body, is to be tied to a certain world, … our body is not primarily in space: it is of it”(Merleau-Ponty, 2002, p. 171). This is echoed by Don Ihde’s interpretation that body and world are folded into one another. “This is to say … what we eventually come to know of ourselves is strictly reciprocal with what we come to know of the world. Without world there would be no self; without self, no experience of the world” (Ihde, 1983, p. 53). Farman considers space as being synonymous with culture, asserting that: “our bodies, our spaces, and our technologies are all formed within culture and subsequently work within the bounds of culture to transform it” (Farman, 2012, p. 25). With this in mind Farman considers how a technological interface (such as a phone) can elicit new experiences of embodiment and open new worldly spaces through the body. By way of example, Farman cites Allucquére Roseanne Stone’s sociological study of phone sex from her article ‘Split Subjects, Not Atoms; Or How I Fell in Love with My Prosthesis.’ Within this work Stone draws upon her experience of time spent with phone sex workers, reasoning how “what was being sent back and forth over the wires wasn’t just information, it was bodies” (Stone, 1994, p. 176). As she explains: The sex workers took an extremely complex, highly detailed set of behaviors, translated them into a single sense modality, then further boiled them down to a series of highly compressed tokens. They then squirted those tokens down a voice-grade phone line. At the other end of the line the recipient of all this effort added boiling water, so to speak, and reconstituted the tokens into a fully detailed set of images and interactions in multiple sensory modes. (Stone, 1994, p. 177) Stone’s description is what Blast Theory achieves by replacing phone sex with phone narrative or phone immersion. The technology of the phone opens up new fictitious world spaces for users to see with fresh eyes. This is how the technology of the phone, as well as the body, become machines to see with, as they work together to create an immersive, virtual and imaginary environment; an idea that is carried over in the next example.

Karen A more recent artwork by Blast Theory titled Karen (2015) creates an immersive world through a user’s smartphone. This interactive app (created by Blast Theory) enables players to participate in an episodic and fictional experience with a life coach; the eponymous Karen, who players watch, communicate and interact with through a pervasive relationship. Like A machine to See With, the medium of the mobile phone is taken into consideration in this work as Karen and player communicate with one another through 74

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short pre-recorded video calls. These calls are staged in such a fashion as to give the illusion that the participant and Karen are communicating by way of a video call in real time, evoking a sense of liveness. There is course of nothing actually live about this exchange except for the user’s own experience of it. There is an illusion of liveness which resonates with Philip Auslander’s understanding of this term. For Auslander liveness is the effect of mediatization, a term borrowed from Jean Baudrillard, meaning to bring all discourse under the dominance of a single code. As Auslander states, the concept of liveness (a live event) can only be considered through the binary opposite of something that is recorded. As he asserts: historically, the live is actually an effect of mediatization, not the other way around. It was the development of recording technologies that made it possible to perceive existing representations as “live.” Prior to the advent of those technologies (e.g., sound recording and motion pictures), there was no such thing as “live” performance, for that category has meaning only in relation to an opposing possibility. (Auslander, 1999, p. 7). To put this differently, the concept of liveness attains its meaning only through its opposition to that of recorded media, meaning the two states are inextricably linked. The idea of liveness is achieved in Karen through pre-recorded vignettes designed to play out in real-time through a process of interstitial storytelling; a type of narrative that unfolds and is incorporated into the user’s schedule at unforeseen intervals of the day. The app for example will stage a video phone call from Karen at unplanned times which the user can accept or reject, which will have consequences as to how your relationship with the life coach develops. The app will show missed calls from Karen, pervasively inserting the user’s phone interface into the illusionistic narrative space. The rejection of a daytime call may prompt an evening one, or a recorded message from Karen. The calls, lasting approximately two-three minutes, occur every day over a two-week period. Karen asks question to which the user responds to by pressing particular choice buttons or agrees and disagrees with statements by giving numerical ratings as responses. As time and the story move along the calls become more inappropriate, and a breach of personal space is seemingly invaded. A notion that Sherry Turkle has spoken out about as smartphones and new media technology continue to blur the distinction between public and private space. In her book Alone Together: Why We Expect More from Technology and Less from Each Other, Turkle discusses the strange space of being online and tethered to each other through social media. As Turkle asserts: When part of your life is lived in virtual places […] a vexed relationship develops between what is true and what is “true here,” true in simulation. In games we expect to play an avatar, we end up being ourselves in the most revealing ways; on social-networking sites such as Facebook, we think we will be presenting ourselves, but our profile ends up as somebody else – often the fantasy of who we want to be. Distinctions blur (Turkle, 2017, p. 180-181). As Turkle further notes, the space between public and private lives intersect with strange consequences. Our private space and thoughts become externalized through technologies that make us public. She further asserts, that with social robots, arguably something that Karen could be considered, “we are alone but receive the signals that tell us we are together” (Turkle, 2017, p. 182). Karen is structured in a way that records and analyzes our data input through the player’s choices, which is shared at the end of the experience, to reveal something about the player. 75

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Upon the first play, the user’s encounter of Karen seemingly takes the life coach by surprise as she answers the call en route to her flat. The call begins outside in a public street before entering the hallway of an apartment block, visually merging public and private space. The player is afforded an intimate gaze of Karen through the mobile technology that moves too close to her face and hair at overfamiliar angles as she struggles to keep hold of her phone, bag and shopping while climbing the stairs to her apartment. Once at the top she rummages through her bag for her keys, affording the player brief entry into this private bag space before further visual disorder takes over. The player is offered confusing angles of Karen that look up at her face from below as she finds her key and enters her home, during which she maintains a demeanor between the space of casualness and professionalism. The phone technology affords the player an all too intimate look at Karen from close and unflattering angles, which appropriately sets the tone for a series of periodic videos that become increasingly inappropriate over time. The app is designed to have longevity, so after this initial meeting with Karen (pre-recorded like all the videos that will follow) the player must wait a number of hours before the next session. The theme behind the life coaching narrative is about taking control of one’s life, which becomes paradoxical with an interface that can only be accessed when the technology permits it through the programmed timeframes. Within this immersive world the phone, similar to A Machine to See With, controls the participant. Immersive worlds and interactivity are often complexly linked with the illusion and surrendering of control. Open-world games (or any games for that matter) are defined by rules. Interactivity is often constructed through a limitation of choice that calls into question who is controlling who, a topic thoroughly explored in Charlie Brooker’s Black Mirror: Bandersnatch (2018). Like this interactive fiction that acknowledges the user and Netflix into its immersive narrative world and questions who is controlling who, the structure of Karen is also mirrored in the content. Karen is the player’s fictional life coach, but over the course of gameplay, the question as to who is really in control becomes accentuated. The first interaction in the hallway, leading to her home, foreshadows some of the awkward and unprofessional blurred boundaries that will follow. Once invited into the home Karen begins to ask the player personal details about their childhood, which involves the player selecting touchscreen answers to questions. This process also takes the form of rating on a scale as to how happy or unhappy their childhood was (similar once again to A Machine to See With). The player’s limited input quickly and discursively prompts the life coach to talk about herself and her ex-partner, again flagging an intimate level of inappropriate conduct between client and professional. The experience gradually becomes more inappropriate over the two-week duration with Karen calling the player whilst intoxicated eventually leading to an exchange between the player and Karen’s spouse who manages to find the player’s confidential data that Karen has shared with him. As Farr explained to the author, “the app is more about the player helping Karen than the other way around” (BT interview, 11/2014). Karen is a work about data analysis, a comment about the way in which modern social media platforms and online shopping websites, remembers, collects and shares information, controlling users through the illusion of being in control within an immersive space. The following case study is another example that follows this idea more vigorously.

Scenario In contrast to Blast Theory’s pervasive real-world experiences, Del Favero’s Scenario is an interactive and immersive story space that takes place in a digital environment. Created at iCinema (Centre for Interactive Cinema Research established in 2002 at the University of New South Wales), this interactive 76

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artwork immerses five participants simultaneously by taking its cue from their physical activity. This involves the users walking around the projection space and following on screen characters in order to structure and mobilise story events within the virtual world. The AVIE auditorium (Advanced Visualization and Interaction Environment) is a 3D projection environment containing a cylindrical screen with a diameter of ten metres across and four metres high. It is a mixed reality environment, a meeting place where five corporeal users and ten digital screen characters converge. Six pairs of stereoscopic projectors within the AVIE give the illusion that these characters inhabit the same space as the users. This is strengthened by the donning of 3D glasses and a custom-built audio system. When first entering the AVIE participants are greeted by an eerie voice amidst the sound of a waning thunderstorm. The voice beckons the spectators to come forth, directing their attention to the imagery of large disembodied eyes that float around the cylindrical, panoramic screen space. The voice instructs the spectators to choose one of these eyes to be their ‘eye’ into the virtual milieu, which the participants do by moving towards them. After selection, each eye is mounted by a light- coloured digital humanoid figure, which takes the spectator through an underground labyrinth of shadowy passageways. The digital figures in these early parts of the work serve as guides to the participants before developing to avatars that become tethered to the rhythm and movement of each of the user’s bodies. From the first moment of entering the space the user becomes virtually wired into the installation through the movement of their bodies that are sensed by the technological and immersive architecture of the space, revealing a specific relationship between the narrative, technology, body and space of the digital world. As Del Favero and Timothy Barker have highlighted, the origins of Scenario was to test out the formation of meaningful relationships between humans and technology by generating “innovative research in the field of machine learning and artificial intelligence (AI), along with iCinema’s ongoing research into immersive and interactive environments” (Favero & Barker, 2010). The result of this transaction between a human user and digital character in Scenario is what they term a co-evolutionary narrative. In a separate paper by Neil Brown, Barker and Del Favero, this term is defined as “a narrative that evolves or emerges based on a relationship formed between a human user and a digital agent able to respond autonomously” (Brown, Barker, & Del Favero, 2011). After each user chooses their eye, they become immersed in an atmospheric journey. This journey begins with the sound and imagery of falling rain as participants are led through passages that appear to move as if they (the user) are traversing the space. Occasionally the humanoid guide stops in their tracks to pick something up, showing it to their human followers. These exhibited objects are smooth ‘bloodless’ body parts that appear to have once belonged to another humanoid character before something or someone fragmented it. Here the users are supposed to encounter a sense of mystery, atrocity and criminality. This is assisted by the dark ambient tones of these strange backdrops, designed to coerce a sense of uncanniness and foreboding in each participant’s body. This is heightened as Del Favero and Timothy Barker write, by the way users experience “the ambiguity of the sensory objects that surround [them]” (Favero & Barker, 2010) juxtaposed with sensations that are “relatively familiar as [they] can see [their] own physical bodies and the bodies of the other users”(Favero & Barker, 2010). Like A Machine to See With, or Karen an immersive world dichotomy of here and there, real and virtual is established, highlighting Munster when she claims that, “our bodies, analog compositions that they are, can … transform themselves and become virtual selves” (Munster, 2006, p. 114). For Munster “analog/digital relations are interdependent rather than separate” (Munster, 2006, p. 114), allowing a trajectory or flux to extend beyond our bounded bodies into a virtual other. This is a concept shared by many. Hayles comments 77

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that informational patterns such as email are a way that “problematizes thinking of the body as a selfevident physicality” (Hayles, 1999, p. 27), while Rotman claims likewise, stating that email and other electronic communication channels, change a user into a parallel form of self in which their electronic presence exists virtually beside their organic flesh body (Rotman, 2008). Each theoretical idea about being a body is elucidated in Scenario. Furthermore, participants are again required to adopt an active role within the story to keep the immersiveness charged, which within this artwork is acknowledged and recognised by the digital characters. Within the third ‘act’, the users are transported to an open clearing in a forest. Scattered about this bucolic setting lay more body parts, and off to one side is a shadow, a large human figure. The users learn through the voiceover that this silhouette and the limbs littered in front of it belong to a colossal baby. The five participants are then assigned the task of reassembling the child back to wholeness. The means to perform this task involves each light-coloured character developing into an avatar and mirroring each of the participant’s movements and gestures. The avatars beckon to the users, asking them to help. The users must then move around the space, locating the body parts before returning them to the figure of the child through this process of avatarial mimicry. This restorative task is made difficult by dark shadow characters, programmed with artificial intelligence to autonomously block the user’s light avatars and impede the child from repair. This process transpires through infrared cameras within the AVIE that senses movement and feeds this data into a software programme called iTRACK (Favero & Barker, 2010). iTRACK communicates each user’s body motion data with the digital characters, “which then reason about an appropriate course of action to take” (Favero & Barker, 2010). The dark characters are programmed to hinder movement by obstructing the light avatar’s path to the child. Making approximately five thousand decisions a second (DD interview, 06/14), the dark characters independently learn and respond to the user’s movements in order to debilitate their corporeal efforts. If dark succeeds, the space collapses into blackness followed by the imagery of raining ash to symbolise the burning out of the child’s life. If on the other hand the users succeed by outsmarting the machine, the child comes to life and walks through the surrounding forest as snow begins to fall, a symbolisation of renewal (Barker, 2012). As Edward Scheer has identified in his analysis of Scenario, the broken child is pivotal to the artwork through its symbolic evocation to Jacque Lacan’s concept of the fragmented body’ (Scheer & Sewell, 2011, p. 68). In Lacanian psychoanalysis the development of a child’s ego in the mirror stage, whereupon the child perceives itself as a whole for the first time and begins to forge an identity, is fuelled by the desire to escape their previous and vulnerable existence as an assemblage of fragmented limbs. As Scheer identifies by way of Malcolm Bowie’s writings on Lacan, “the body once seemed dismembered, all over the place, and the anxiety associated with this memory fuels the individual’s desire to be the possessor and the resident of a secure bodily ‘I’” (Bowie, 1993, p. 26). The restoration of the infant’s body is therefore more than just a game but is rather a story and immersive space portraying what it means to be a body. In an interview the author conducted with Del Favero he elaborated on this, stating: A baby goes through a process of having to put itself together. To become a person you have to be able to articulate not only your intention to move your arm but actually recognise that your arm is attached to your body. To do that requires an imaginative function. You are human. You are putting a body together in the virtual world [the baby] but you are also putting your body together with the help of the virtual characters. Your behaviour in the space changes what happens and it [the space] changes you. (DD interview, 06/14)

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Del Favero’s description is indicative of Hansen’s description of body-brain activity in virtual reality environments, particularly in the sense of a dynamic coupling that takes place between a user’s body and the artwork imagery, where the body and medium transform one another (Hansen, 2004, p. 186). Del Favero’s exposition is also symptomatic of body ecology in terms of how parts connect to and relate to one another, and how in Brian Massumi’s sense of affect, bodily movement always fills an incorporeal space of potentiality. In Parables for the Virtual: Movement, Affect, Sensation, Massumi describes affect as a virtual co-presence of potentiality that is integrated into humans as bodily beings. Massumi asserts that, “the body is as immediately abstract as it is concrete; its activity and expressivity extend, as on their underside, into an incorporeal, yet perfectly real, dimension of pressing potential” (Massumi, 2002, p. 31). In other words, affect is a threshold in which the real proprioceptive body converges with. Affect can therefore be considered a virtual, incorporeal space for potential action and changeability. As Massumi states: What is being termed affect … is precisely this two-sidedness, the simultaneous participation of the virtual in the actual and the actual in the virtual, as one arises from and returns to the other. Affect is this two-sidedness as seen from the side of the actual thing. … Affects are virtual synesthetic perspectives anchored in (functionally limited by) the actually existing, particular things that embody them. The autonomy of affect is its participation in the virtual. … Affect is autonomous to the degree to which it escapes confinement in the particular body whose vitality, or potential for interaction, it is. (Massumi, 2002, p. 35) Consequentially, a body is put together with every move it makes in a process of continuous becoming. This is something that Del Favero and Barker delve further into when they highlight how Scenario’s model for action is structured by a theory of assemblage that is developed by Gilles Deleuze and broadened by Manuel DeLanda’s A New Philosophy of Society. Within this work, Barker and Del Favero highlight that DeLanda’s assemblages are a way to consider a collection of wholes, such as the whole of an atom, organ, human body, ecosystem or society. Regardless of the content, an assemblage consists of all the parts that make up this whole: However, it is always more than a mere aggregate of these parts. For instance, it is not that a human body is constituted simply by an aggregate of organs. Rather, the human body is constituted by the organs’ capacity to act and to work with one another. Similarly, a society is not made up merely by a sum of people. What makes the society an assemblage is the capacity that each individual has to interrelate within the collective. In short, an assemblage is always constituted by the capacity for interaction between its parts. (Favero & Barker, 2010) In other words, it is not just the parts that make up an assemblage but also how they act, or how they could act, through the potentiality of their interaction to one another. “It is the affect of the parts – as their capacity to act on one another – that matters, not their materiality, individual power or visual appearance” (Favero & Barker, 2010). DeLanda considers a human conversation as an assemblage for it is made up of specific rules and organisational states that condition the exchange of information. People, language (sub-divided into words and tone), the scenario as to why they are conversing, (family, friends or colleagues or any other association) and the unforeseen potentiality of what might be said, or how something might be interpreted, 79

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are all integral parts of such a discourse assemblage. In a similar capacity, the co-evolution narrative of Scenario is also something that can be considered a conversation between human and computer within an immersive space. As Andrew Stern states, “[b]y making the computer listen to the audience (the first half of reactivity), think about what it heard (autonomy), and then speak its thoughts back to the audience (the second half of reactivity), the artwork can have a dialog, a conversation with the audience” (Stern, 2001). This conversation of Scenario between the digital characters and the human users relies upon an embodied assemblage through the way that the iTRACK system detects motion, translates it into digital data and responds accordingly. Added to the role the human user plays during the artwork, the design of the interface by the artist and technical procedures of a computer programmer are all integral parts of the assemblage. The immersive digital world of Scenario sets out a specific relationship for the user, whereupon their corporeality is detected and reduced into code, then instantly projected into the circular screen, amplifying the user’s body into a parallel form of self. This parallel body becomes the means to experience a parallel narrative of the child who will either live or die based upon how users perform, once tethered (in a virtual capacity) to their avatars. The experience of the artwork is one of curiosity and discomfort, of sharing a space with something anterior to the self or trying to come to terms in a shared space with the other. This is something that Del Favero elaborated on in the interview: We started with the notion of trying to find a way to allow users to interact with intelligent characters. […]We were interested in how viewers are motivated inside this technical space [Scenario] and the connection between your unconscious motivations and your physical behaviour, because that’s what this technology is trying to grapple with. It’s trying to engage with your motivations and your motivations are both things that you are aware of but by and large they’re things you’re not aware of. They play out on the peripheral of your unconsciousness. (DD interview, 06/14) The desire to save the child during the restorative process serves as a reminder of the performing role of the caring parent or nurturing adult, which as Del Favero commented, is an intrinsically primal and human response to a child in distress (DD interview, 06/14). If a user goes above and beyond to save this child from anguish, or alternatively is indifferent to the whole affair, these conscious or unconscious feelings are presented physically within the space, revealed through the user’s bodily endeavours. Later in the interview, Del Favero discussed how the idea of concealed desire and the conflation of unconsciousness buried within the conscious subject is thematised within the structure of this work, which is also inspired by the notorious Josef Fritzl case of 2008. As Del Favero explains: We were interested in the idea in the Fritzl story of the house, which was two houses in one: the underground house and the above ground house, the house of crime and the house of a family. The (Fritzl) house was a machine, another technology. And if you looked at this architecture, this machine from one perspective all you could see could was a normal family life but then if you changed perspective it became something else, a bit like an electron being either a wave or a particle. It depends on how you interact with that architecture, that’s how the story evolved. (DD interview, 06/14) Del Favero describes the house as a machine, before him Deleuze and Felix Guattari use the concept of a machine to reformulate the notion of desire. The desiring machine, as they call it, relates to a “direct 80

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link between desire and production” (Young, Genosko, & Watson, 2013, p. 85). The desiring machine, according to Deleuze and Guattari, is the way in which the unconscious produces desire in a manufactured way. This is the desire to connect to other systems or machines, or the way in which “components couple and connect with one another” (Young et al., 2013, p. 85), such as the breast machine of the mother, the education machine of school or the communication machine of language. Deleuze and Guattari, in a way that resonates with Del Favero’s work, offer an alternate interpretation of desire from Freudian psychoanalysis. For Freud desire is established from lack. For Deleuze and Guattari, as for Del Favero, desire can be thought of as a productive force that is machined. A machine is the flow of this productive force, consistently interrupted by other machines. As Deleuze and Guattari state: “[a] machine may be defined as a system of interruptions or breaks (coupures). … Every machine, in the first place, is related to a continual material flow (hyle) that it cuts into” (Deleuze, Guattari, & Hurley, 2004, pp. 38-39). The underground prison of the Fritzl home is a machine that interrupts the domestically normal looking flow of family life in the above ground house and vice versa. A machine is actualised within Scenario so that activity interrupts spectatorship, movement interrupts the flow of story, and movement from user to character and reciprocally from character to user interrupt and affect one another, which as Del Favero and Barker state, can be clearly seen: We have observed that users tend to move in Scenario in a much slower and deliberate manner than in real world interactions. This may be [… that] the users’ movements are affected as they attempt to regulate physical movements to the movements of the characters on the screen, as they follow the users around the space. [Also] because the users are innately aware that they are being closely watched and that all of their movements are being given significance, they may tend to reason more thoroughly about the consequences of their otherwise ‘natural’ movements, which produces these slow, deliberate movements, largely designed to ‘test’ their effect on the digital characters. (Favero & Barker, 2010) The sensing technology of the interface has real observable effects on the user’s movement. Users move more slowly around the space as the digital pace of the machine interrupts and conducts the flow of natural bodily rhythm. Scenario as Del Favero explained to the author is an experience of performance that utilises four ‘E’s: expanse, embedment, embodiment and enactment. The embodiment occurs as the human’s whole-body interfaces with the environment of the AVIE, allowing them to become embedded as code in the digital architecture. The user is thus expanded/extended into this codified space in which their presence, embedded in the narrative flow, becomes a fertile ground to enact meaning making as co-authors and embody an interactive narrative within an immersive space.

Flatland A final case study to consider is Flatland: an interactive, vibro-tactile artwork from Extant; a professional performing arts company of visually impaired artists working for visually impaired and fully sighted audiences. Within Extant’s work visual disability becomes an opportunity to explore new immersive worlds and creative space through the body. Extant’s production of Flatland takes place in total darkness and requires audiences to navigate the space through sound and touch using a haptic cube device called an Animotus, which works like a compass to guide users around a darkened auditorium. The show is based upon Edwin A. Abbott’s Victorian novella Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions, which tells the story of a group of anthropomorphic shapes within a 2D universe, primarily from the 81

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point-of-view of a character called A-Square. Abbott’s satirical story uses the two-dimensional world of Flatland to consider a class system made up of lines and geometric shapes who are the characters of this world. Within Abbott’s story the shapes can only recognise each other through sound and touch. Perception in the book is thus an auditory and tactile one which Extant’s production takes advantage of. In an interview the author held with Maria Oshodi (Artistic Director of Extant) she explained why Flatland was such an apt text to adapt. I wanted to find a way to use touch to unfold a narrative. You are guided around a space by something that you can feel (which has a vibro-tactile feedback structure and intimacy between the individual user and device as they kinesthetically move through space). When you arrive to where you are going through the physicality and sense of touch with the environment that surrounds you, a separate relationship opens up through the audio. Some of the materials in the space that you come to are quite abstract and what I was trying to do was connect that with my level of sight which is very little at the moment. If I go into a strange space and don’t know what it is, i.e. don’t immediately get it through your hearing you have to touch something. And if that does not immediately translate something identifiable you have to then move to get the next thing, so you build back to this language that you are creating for yourself where you are, and that becomes a gradual, incremental unfolding of a setting. (MO interview, 07/15) Extant’s production deals with the aftermath of Abbott’s story which sees the protagonist, A Square, exiled from his homeland after encountering a strange phenomenon. In Extant’s adaptation (which at the time of meeting with Oshodi in 2015 was a pilot production), events are reorganised for a more interactive experience. In this work A-Square (renamed as Elder Square) is performed by an actor who meets with the four participants/audience members before they enter the Flatland world of the darkened auditorium. Elder Square tells the participants of his story and exile and how he is enlisting their help so that they can smuggle him back into his darkened universe. Elder Square then prepares the participants for their mission by directing them to don protective interactive suits, an idea that Oshodi explained in more detail during our meeting. As she notes, the pilot for this production took place in a large disused church in the middle of Southwark Park. The church, as Oshodi explains, was a gutted open space that was used to portray this world by creating different environments consisting of “elastic ropes, velvety walkways, pipes and e-textiles”[Extant.org]. In our interview Oshodi highlighted how the church was very cold and that neoprene suits which bear the appearance of boiler suits were required attire for each participant. These suits serve multiple functions, in addition to keeping the user warm the suits also house the electronics for the experience that interact with the handheld cube (the Animotus) which identifies where the user is positioned in the environment and guides them around the darkened space. The Animotus, is a “3D printed cube sliced horizontally through the middle so that the top half can translate and rotate relative to the bottom” (Flatland.org). The rotational angle indicates the direction to a target that the user should face. So, if the upper face turns left then this would be the direction that it’s user would need to turn towards. The upper half of the device would then protrude forward, directing the user to walk. Designer Adam Spiers states that, “the simple idea is that when you’ve arrived at your target destination, it becomes a little cube again” (3D Print.com). The Animotus interacts with the suit which interacts with the environment to guide the users around the space. As Oshodi explained to the author,

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electronic conductive materials were built into the set so that when users touch certain parts of it the set becomes activated either through vibrational or acoustic feedback. Individual zones respond in different ways, one of them for example is a taut crisscrossing of bungee ropes at irregular angles, like a spider’s web which users move through. The e-textiles trigger different sounds as users touch it. (MO interview, 07/15) The physical location of each participant in Flatland is thus translated by the Animotus and cues a specific sound effect. Consequentially, the artwork enables users to author their own access to content through the way in which they move through the space, similar to that of Scenario and a Machine to See With. In Flatland the body is central to the experience in the way that the users wear the haptic suits that responds to their movement through ubitagging which registers their location and communicates with the Animotus. This gives way to a symbiotic relationship of movements triggering technology, as the technology guides the movement, similar to Hansen’s description of the “body [transforming] the medium as the medium transforms the body” (Hansen, 2004, p. 186).The Animotus thus becomes a tactile extension of sight within a sightless setting, as well as an extension of movement as users imitate its direction and take their cue from it to move forward or stop based on the way it protrudes or retracts. However, because the user has to be compliant with this technology in order for it to work, the Animotus does arguably limit the user from free roaming, raising once more the question of who is controlling who, similar to Blast Theory’s artworks. As Oshodi highlighted during our interview, Extant’s Flatland was in partial collaboration with Punchdrunk Theatre Company, who along with Blast Theory are currently leading the way in interactive theatre and performance across Britain. As Oshodi stated, Flatland, does contain certain moments that cannot be changed but even though elements of the story are fixed, the way in which the audience member/participant encounters them is wholly unique through an immersive world setting that priorities the body to make meaning. This affords participants a richer, kinaesthetic experience that enfolds or co-evolves between the environment, user’s body and tactile tools, transcending an audience member’s typical role of spectator to a performer.

CONCLUSION Within this chapter, four distinct immersive worlds have been discussed through: Blast Theory’s A Machine to See With, Karen, Del Favero’s Scenario, and Extant’s Flatland, supported with firsthand interviews with each of the artists. In each artwork the author has considered how the respective worlds (pervasive and digital) are activated through a user’s mobility. Consequentially these immersive worlds become animated through an ecology between technology and the human body where a user has control and simultaneously is controlled. In Blast Theory’s world this enables a user to see an immersive world through the interface of their body and phone apparatus, while in Del Favero’s, the digital artwork permits the user to co-create the events of an immersive world through engagement with AI and motion sensing technology. A combination of the two is apparent in Extant’s Flatland. Despite the difference in technological sophistication, each artwork creates environments through convergence of the human body with technological hardware. Through this relationship, unique and stimulating worlds of immersion and narrative are accessible to users who both observe the story and world, and in turn, are assimilated into the story, becoming part of the world. 83

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REFERENCES Auslander, P. (1999). Liveness: Performance in a Mediatized Culture. Routledge. Barker, T. (2012). Images and eventfulness: Expanded cinema and experimental research at the University of New south wales. Studies in Australasian Cinema, 6(2), 111–123. doi:10.1386ac.6.2.111_1 Blast Theory. (2017). A Machine to See With. Retrieved from https://www.blasttheory.co.uk/projects/amachine-to-see-with/ Bowie, M. (1993). Lacan. Harvard University Press. Brown, N. C., Barker, T. S., & Del Favero, D. (2011). Performing digital aesthetics: The framework for a theory of the formation of interactive narratives. Leonardo, 44(3), 212–219. doi:10.1162/LEON_a_00165 Deleuze, G., Guattari, F. Ì., & Hurley, R. (2004). Anti-Oedipus. Bloomsbury Academic. Dias, M. P. (2012). A Machine to See With (and Reflect Upon): Interview with Blast Theory. Liminalities: A Journal of Performance Studies, 8(1). Retrieved from http://liminalities.net/8-1/blast-theory.html Extant Theatre. (2015). Flatland. Retrieved from https://extant.org.uk/productions/flatland/ Farman, J. (2012). Mobile interface theory: embodied space and locative media. Routledge. Favero, D. D., & Barker, T. S. (2010). Scenario: Co-evolution, shared autonomy and mixed reality. Paper presented at the 2010 IEEE International Symposium On Mixed and Augmented Reality-Arts, Media, and Humanities (ISMAR-AMH). 10.1109/ISMAR-AMH.2010.5643299 Grau, O. (2003). Virtual art: from illusion to immersion. MIT Press. Grosz, E. A. (1994). Volatile bodies: toward a corporeal feminism. Indiana University Press. Hansen, M. B. N. (2004). New philosophy for a new media. MIT Press. Hayles, K. (1999). How we became posthuman: virtual bodies in cybernetics, literature, and informatics. University of Chicago Press. doi:10.7208/chicago/9780226321394.001.0001 Ihde, D. (1983). Existential Technics. State University of New York Press. Jarvis, L. (2019). Immersive Embodiment: Theatres of Mislocalized Sensation. Palgrave Macmillan. doi:10.1007/978-3-030-27971-4 Kluszczynski, R. W. (2010). Strategies of interactive art. Journal of Aesthetics & Culture, 2(1), 1–27. doi:10.3402/jac.v2i0.5525 Lefebvre, H. (1991). The production of space. Oxford, UK: Blackwell. Massumi, B. (2002). Parables for the Virtual: Movement, Affect, Sensation. Duke University Press. doi:10.1215/9780822383574 Merleau-Ponty, M. (2002). Phenomenology of Perception. Routledge. doi:10.4324/9780203994610

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Munster, A. (2006). Materializing new media: embodiment in information aesthetics. Dartmouth College Press. Rotman, B. (2008). Becoming beside ourselves: the alphabet, ghosts, and distributed human being. Duke University Press. doi:10.1215/9780822389118 Scheer, E., & Sewell, S. (2011). Scenario. University of New South Wales Press. Stern, A. (2001). Deeper Conversations with Interactive Art Or Why Artists Must Program. Convergence (London), 7(1), 17–24. doi:10.1177/135485650100700103 Stone, A. (1994). Split subjects, not atoms; or, how I fell in love with my prosthesis. Configurations, 2(1), 173–190. doi:10.1353/con.1994.0016 Treske, A. (2015). Video Theory: Online Video Aesthetics or the Afterlife of Video. Bielefeld: Transcript. Turkle, S. (2017). Alone Together: Why We Expect More from Technology and Less from Each Other. Hachette. Young, E. B., Genosko, G., & Watson, J. (2013). The Deleuze and Guattari Dictionary. New York: Bloomsbury Publishing; doi:10.14361/9783839430583

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Gaming Digital Content Creation to Engage Youth in Participatory Politics Sohail Dahdal https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0050-1051 American University of Sharjah, UAE

ABSTRACT Social media platforms are increasingly used to disseminate political messages resulting in significant increase of political content exposure among youth. However, research has shown that this increase in consumption does not correlate positively with an increased interest in politics. This high exposure versus low interest indicates a certain level of apathy towards political participation. This chapter proposes that in order for youth to experience a stronger engagement in participatory politics, they need to feel challenged and skilled enough to be able to participate effectively in participatory politics by creating political content on digital media platforms. This chapter draws on Csikszentmihalyi’s flow theory premise that a state of total absorption, or “flow,” can be attained in a game-like environment in which the actors are highly skilled and the challenges match their skills. The author proposes a framework that relies on a multi-phased ‘skill and challenge’ youth training program in a game-like collaborative environment to improve youth participation in politics.

INTRODUCTION Young people throughout the world are increasingly relying on social media as their main source of news, entertainment, and information. This has been especially evident in the last decade, with the phenomenal success of large social media platforms, starting with MySpace and followed by Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Snapchat (Boyd, 2007; Kaplan & Haenlein, 2010). While there is empirical evidence that this increase in media consumption also increases young people’s exposure to more political content (Delli Carpini, 2000; Head, 2007; Xenos, Vromen, & Loader, 2014), this increase in exposure has not significantly increased their interest in political participation. Recent research shows that even though DOI: 10.4018/978-1-7998-4796-0.ch006

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there is an increase in exposure, this increase is not followed with engagement in production or collective action (Ekström, & Shehata, 2018). Instead, we have witnessed a steady decline in interest in political activism among youth (Harris, Wyn, & Younes, 2010; Smith, 1999; Snell, 2010). Therefore, how do we reconcile a higher exposure to political content with a low interest in politics? One problem is in the nature of what is present on social media in terms of political videos. Most of them lack a meaningful call to action, or a challenge requiring youth to use their skills in order to participate. This lack of a meaningful challenge results in apathy towards participatory politics among youth (Hao, Wen, & George, 2014; Hooghe & Boonen, 2015; Pilkington & Pollock, 2015). Another key problem is that the creators of digital political videos are often advocacy groups, non-profit organizations or celebrity politicians. Youth are rarely involved in this process. This top down approach contributes to the lack of engagement of youth in political messages. In relation to youth’s engagement on social media platforms, we consider the action of viewing a political messages as the lowest level of acceptable engagement in which the youth is ‘informed’, while the highest level of engagement is when the youth takes ‘ownership’ of the political message and proceeds to participate in the creating (or re-versioning) of this message. Our definition of engagement is based on research published by the International Association for Public Participation, which proposes five levels of participation: inform, consult, involve, collaborate, and empower as the highest level (Participation Spectrum, 2014). The objective of this paper is to look at what would produce the highest level of engagement with the aim of involving the youth in the process of creation and not just viewing. This would empower those youth and ensure meaningful engagement beyond the token ‘share’ and ‘like’ - often referred to as ‘slacktivism’ (Christensen, 2011; Lee & Hsieh, 2013; McCafferty, 2011; van Gestel & Strick, 2015; Kristofferson, White, & Peloza, 2014). The mechanism by which these youth feel empowered and the nature of the content that they would create and consume, is key for this process. In this paper, we will not present specific solutions, but rather we will point to a framework and a mechanism that can be used by activists and researchers to create real life political content made for (and by) the youth. This gives it a better chance of producing participatory political engagement (Head, 2007; Sheedy, MacKinnon, Pitre, & Watling, 2008; Kahne, & Bowyer, 2019). One major problem when it comes to engaging youth in the process, is that a majority of the digital videos on social media platforms that youth typically watch, are often humorous viral videos or celebrity pulp. These videos are often sensational with very few cultural or political messages (Agichtein, Castillo, Donato, Gionis, & Mishne, 2008). By contrast, most political messages available online are dry and sombre and are created by non-youth. This seems to decrease the chance of feeling ownership and interest in the content by the youth (Smith, 1999). Understanding the nature of content that youth consume on social media and how to improve the quality of the messages that are embedded in this content, is important not only as a study of online habits but also because it informs the youth’s offline actions and world view. Dana Boyd discusses how social media platforms affect how young people interact in society and the importance of understanding their online and offline engagements with content: Social network sites have complicated our lives because they have made this rapid shift in public life very visible. Perhaps, instead of trying to stop them or regulate usage, we should learn from what teens are experiencing. They are learning to navigate networked publics; it is in our better interest to figure out how to help them. (Boyd, 2007) Embedding a cultural or political message in a video and then making this video go viral, is no easy task. This is where the concept of a meme becomes a valuable tool to study how cultural and political 87

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memes can become viral on social media platforms and how we can utilize this understanding to create a framework to enable better methods to communicate these messages to the youth. The term meme in its original form was coined by Dawkins (1976). However, it has since been appropriated by the Internet to mean a digital unit of content that is shared, copied, re-versioned, and spread virally. It is also important that the concept of memes implies that this self-contained, self-propagating digital content is able to keep the cultural or political message embedded, even after it is duplicated and re-versioned (Distin, 2005; Shifman, 2012). It is important to note that Shifman’s definition of memes departs significantly from the original concept of memes that was coined by Dawkins in the 1970s. The major difference is that digital memes because they are online and can replicate quickly “are now present in the public sphere not as sporadic entities but as enormous groups of texts and images”, as Shifman notes in an interview with Henry Jenkins (Jenkins, 2014). Therefore, memes in the digital world are entities in the public sphere that can only be effective when created, accessed or shared and re-versioned by their intended target audience - in this case, youth (Shifman, 2013). A quick survey of memes that have gone viral, as documented on the meme tracking website ‘Know Your Meme’ (www.knowyourmeme.com), reveals that most viral memes are made by celebrities and lack any cultural or political messages. An example is the Nicki Minaj meme that has gone viral and was re-versioned thousands of times within days of its release. It is a short video of Nicki twirling around to board a plane. This movement was picked up by her fans and made into a meme that was re-versioned thousands of times (Nicki Minaj Challenge, 2017). One might argue that this is the nature of a message that youth find engaging, because it comes from their favourite celebrity. Why would they engage in political messages, even if it were in the form of a meme? It is important to point out that politicians, who are also celebrities, seem to have the power to create memes that have a political message and are provocative. At the time of their creation, they seem to attract some youth. However, those memes are often created by activists at the time of an election. As a result, the message and the provocation is not reaching the mainstream youth. For example, during the 2008 U.S. election campaign, Barak Obama was quoted as saying ‘you can put lipstick on a pig, but it’s still a pig’. This was quickly seized upon by his Republican rival as an unacceptable attack on his running mate, Sarah Palin (Earle, 2008). As happens with all things Obama, the Internet quickly made this into a meme. As a result, the ‘lipstick on a pig’ meme was born and re-versioned thousands of times in the span of one week (Leskovec, Backstrom, & Kleinberg, 2009). This meme carries a politician message that became viral. However, its success was the result of the young base that supported Obama’s election campaign. In other words, the youth were involved in the creation of those meme with a considerable level of engagement. In this paper, we propose engaging youth to create political memes similar to the ‘lipstick on a pig’ meme, by creating a structured game-like process that starts with the political message and ends with a meme that can be distributed, shared and re-versioned. The key to this process is the first phase of creation, which involves considerable skill and time investment. The youth would need to be totally absorbed in the process, as well as skilled and committed for the challenge. This commitment can be accomplished, if the creator attains a state of flow (Csikszentmihalyi, 1975, 1982; Csikszentmihalyi & Csikszentmihalyi, 1988). Csikszentmihalyi’s flow theory asserts that when a state of flow is attained, an actor becomes totally absorbed in the process of creation. Therefore, the final goal becomes less important and the process itself provides engagement. A person in that state is less aware of the self and totally absorbed in the task at hand. The state of flow requires that the actor have good skills and that the challenges to achieve the goal are difficult, but within the actor’s skill set. It is, therefore, equally important that not only are the youth encouraged to create, but also that they are trained and skilled, so they can feel empowered 88

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and hopeful they will create an impact. By combining memes’ ability to transmit provocative political messages with the engagement produced with flow, we are able to engage young people in participatory politics over social media. The process we are proposing is split into three phases – similar to a film production cycle. It starts with the idea and field reach to find a topic. The creation phase then produces the first versions of the memes. Finally, the re-versioning phases include duplicating, publishing and promoting the meme. This process will be carefully designed as a multi-level game that requires skilling for each level, performing the tasks with clear outcomes and measuring tools that enable the youth to engage and attain a state of flow. The gaming element will be implemented at each phase so the challenge is harder at each level. The youth are also trained with new skills that are compatible with the challenge. This process is described in detail in Section 5 below. The outcome of this process will be political memes that are created by the youth and then re-versioned and distributed on social media networks. The resulting memes, created by the youth themselves, will have entertainment value and/or provocation. They will also carry a political message that relates directly to the youths’ interests. This elevated level of engagement (ownership of the process) has the potential to encourage those youth to participate in offline politics and civic activities (Sveningsson, 2016). Therefore, it is hoped that it can increase their overall interest in politics.

SOCIAL MEDIA, YOUTH AND THE RISE OF CONTENT CONSUMPTION In the early days of social media, youth primarily used social media platforms to communicate between friends, announce social events, and share image memes (Boyd, 2007). Social media is now still used as a tool for communication, but it is increasingly becoming the preferred channel for youth to view all their media content in the form of digital videos. The nature of videos that youth have access to, is broad and can vary from entertainment and pulp celebrity gossip to more serious topics such as political messages. It is most important that youth seem to engage with videos that use humour, provocation or shock value. Those videos rarely carry meaningful cultural or political messages (Sreekumar & Vadrevu, 2013). This rise in the popularity of short-bite content demonstrates that more young people are accessing their content online. However, the nature of this content and the question of what makes a video popular remain largely unanswered (Figueiredo, Almeida, Benevenuto, & Gummadi, 2014). The more content there is on social media, the more chances are that young people will be exposed to political messages. There is an urgent need to examine ways to deliver political content that is, by nature, able to engage young people on important questions of identity, values, and the future of their local politics and global political messages. More importantly, this content should have an embedded call to action that shows a clear path for online and offline meaningful participation that is able to create an impact. One way to do this is by ensuring that the creation of the memes, is by young people from a physical locale and that the memes are specific to local politics, thus inspiring related offline actions (Carter & Arroyo, 2011). A great deal of research discusses the role of social media in political engagement in general, and among young people in particular. While it is not yet clear how much this role leads to tangible results on the ground, most researchers agree that this role is amplified among young people due to their high rate of social media consumption (Bennett, 2008; Loader, 2007; Xenos et al., 2014). It is important to note some researchers argue that social media might be a distraction which will have the opposite effect by keeping people busy online and thus feeling there is less need to go to the streets (Gladwell & Clay, 2011; Morozov, 2011). On the other hand, some researchers assert the role of social media as an effective 89

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tool to communicate and mobilize online communities (Shirky, 2008). For example, when Egypt banned journalists from Tahrir Square, social media and net citizens were able to deliver powerful images, videos and messages that were then broadcast by traditional media (Eltantawy & Wiest, 2011). The power of social media was not just used for communication, mobilization, and news gathering. The important role that social media played in the events of the Arab Spring was already developing, years before the events in Tunisia. Social media use before the Arab Spring in Egypt meant that Egyptian young people were already consuming content that was intended to provoke action. This content was spread across social media platforms many years before the Arab Spring (Abdulla, 2010, 2011). It, therefore, provides a glimpse of the power of social media to engage youth in participatory politics. The more youth consume videos with political messages on social media, the more pressing and urgent it is to research and examine ways to engage them in the process.

THE LITERATURE ON MEMES One of the key premises of our proposition, is that memes are powerful provocateurs. They are well received by youth and well-disposed to a game-like process of creation that will lead to a state of flow. The concept of a meme was first noted by biologist Richard Dawkins in his book, The Selfish Gene (Dawkins, 1976). Dawkins used the term to describe ideas or behaviours that can spread from one person to another within a culture. Since then, the concept of memes as units of cultural transmission has been adopted by sociology and philosophy, with Douglas Hofstadter coining the term “memetics” by analogy with the biological equivalent of genetics (Hofstadter, 1981). By the end of the twentieth century, memetics was a term used regularly, if not without controversy, around what the smallest unit that would constitute a meme is (Blackmore, 1999; Brodie, 1996). The term has since been re-appropriated by the Internet to a more narrow definition of self-contained units of media that have cultural value and are able to spread online virally (Distin, 2005; Shifman, 2012). As mentioned above, there has been considerable debate over what constitutes a meme, the smallest unit of a meme, and whether that unit is a vehicle of content or the content itself (Atran, 2001; Dawkins, 1982). As a result, there are two different approaches to memetics. They differ on who the boss is: is it the actual idea expressed by the meme, or the vehicle carrying this meme? Susan Blackmore refers to people as meme machines operated by numerous memes that are helpless in the process (Blackmore, 1999), while Conte considers memes to be spreadable ideas and people as actors contributing to this spread (Conte, 2000). We adhere to the latter premise and to the potential power of memes to transmit contagious ideas as part of the complex human-media interaction, where the meme’s totality is part of the new emerging media ecology (Postman, 2000). Regardless of how internalized or externalized memes are, and who the transmitter is, what matters most is that memes operate from a micro level of personal transmission to a macro level of global value adaptation. In addition to the embedded ability of memes to transmit political and cultural information in small infotainment bites, a successful meme is able to reproduce itself in multiple versions while preserving the coded message (Thompson, 2012). This is particularly effective, if the message includes a call to action that can be transmitted through re-versioning to spread globally. Memes have three key characteristics: fidelity, fecundity, and longevity. What makes memes powerful and of interest for the process of youth engagement, is that when they are able to carry a political message embedded in an entertaining narrative, this message, once mimed, will have a life of its own that is 90

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capable of growing, mutating and infecting on a global level. This was previously only possible through physical contact. The meme, therefore, carries out the task of a political agitator. It is important to note here that while in biology high fidelity transmission is the norm, with Internet memes, especially those memes with high political value, high fidelity transmission is the exception (Atran, 2001). This can be problematic, if we need to ensure the successful spread of these political messages. It, therefore, becomes important not to rely solely on Internet memes. It is also vital that these memes operate within a media ecosystem that is capable of receiving and transmitting them efficiently, so that we can minimize the low fidelity found in Internet memes. Therefore, the environmental and cultural context, in which these memes are created and then released, becomes a very important factor in providing the right parameters for the cultural transmission to occur effectively (Atran, 2001; Sperber, 1985). Even though political memes have low fidelity, they still possess most of the characteristics of other Internet memes, in that they are easily replicated, they are adaptable, and they carry a cultural value that can be transferred from one person to another. This allows them to mutate and to provide a second tier of transmission. The secret to increasing their fidelity is to make them provocative (Shifman, 2013, p. 119). Bennett (2003, p. 32) cites the example of a man named Jonah Peretti who took Nike to task by meme-ing a provocative exchange between himself and Nike, in which he requested that Nike honour their promise of personal freedom by printing the word “Sweatshop” on his customized Nike shoes. The meme went viral and a big part of that was the provocative nature of the message. Provocative content is especially effective, when targeting young people (Carter & Arroyo, 2011; Knobel & Lankshear, 2007). The key questions are why we are attracted to provocative memes and how we can use this attraction to engage young people with political content that might otherwise not be provocative. We need to be clear in defining what we consider provocative for the purpose of this discussion. Provocative content can be negative, such as an extremist message that promotes destruction, as in the case of ISIS, which uses social media extensively and effectively, not only for propaganda and recruitment, but also as a tool of terror: “In this context, ISIL’s broadcast of Twitter feeds of executions and crucifixions carried out in Aleppo and Deir Hafer turned social media into a tool of offensive psychological warfare and battlefield tactics” (Klausen, 2015, p. 20). The public can also be easily influenced not only by terror groups but also by conservative western ideologies that further alienate young people by reinforcing an ‘us vs. them’ narrative. For example, recent anti-immigration memes often resort to misinformation and fake news, as in the case of a picture of a Syrian refugee with a machine gun and an army uniform with the caption “Remember this guy? He was posing in ISIS photos last year—now he’s a ‘refugee’, are we suckers or what!” The man later turned out not to be an ISIS member, but a former Free Syrian Army commander (Kleinfeld, 2015). Provocative content can also be positive, for example, the #illridewithyou campaign in Australia that came as a response to one Muslim woman being afraid of riding the Sydney buses in the immediate aftermath of the Martin Square café siege and subsequent anti-Muslim sentiment (BBC, 2014; Falzon, 2014). In this case, the meme had a provocative message that said I will ride with you to show you that I am not anti-Muslim and that I will put my actions where my words are. The message became an instant viral hit and gained national media coverage. What is also worth mentioning here, is that many of the young people who engaged with this meme did not only share it but also remixed it by taking a selfie with the message I’ll ride with you. Our intention is to focus on positive provocative memes, and in particular provocative memes, as a tool for engaging young people in politics. We believe young people will engage best with content that both challenges their perception through provocation, but also entertains through humour (Konstantineas & Vlachos, 2012; Kurultay, 2012).

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The key factor in determining what makes a meme successful, is the set of attributes that can classify a meme, first as meme, second as a successful meme, and third as a meme that is capable of replication and reversion. Memes tend to be categorized in clusters with clear characteristics for each cluster that can help in classifying the meme and its effect (Ferrara et al., 2013). Proactive memes, in this case, are the perfect vehicle for carrying a Trojan horse of political content that often serves as an activator (Van Dijck, 2013, p. 127), which makes those memes predisposed to quickly being shared by young people. Furthermore, they are more likely to be re-versioned, while preserving the hidden political message (Carton et al., 2015; Ratkiewicz et al., 2011). An example of a humorous and provocative meme that carries a political message is the viral YouTube video “Crush on Obama” (Burroughs, 2013; YouTube, 2007). The Obama Girl meme was, in fact, re-versioned in numerous ways. However, it still carried the hidden political message, which is Obama is cool (Poppen, 2014). To get the youth to invest in the often involved task of creating effective memes, we are proposing to game the process of creation and in doing so, creating a state of flow that can keep the youth engaged in all phases of the process.

GAMING THE PROCESS TO CREATE FLOW Most Internet memes rely on humour, surprise, or pure emotional value to make them go viral, while political memes have to resort to other methods in order to compensate for the lack of humour. In most cases, the viral value of these political memes relies heavily on the creators’ stature in their local community and their online network once published on social media. This is why the human factor becomes essential for the success of these memes (Jenkins, 2014; Shifman, 2013). In other words, we need to ensure that the initial transmitters and creators of a political meme do so with such a strong belief that it can be infectious within their immediate networks. It must also have sufficient force and enthusiasm so that it has the momentum to be further transmitted to a third tier outside of their local sphere to the wider public sphere. In order to do this, we need to look at the concept of flow developed by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, “which is about creating a holistic experience that people feel when they act with total involvement” (Csikszentmihalyi, 1975, p. 36). This holistic experience and total absorption can only be achieved, if the person creating the meme has such an enjoyable experience that nothing else seems to matter: “The experience itself is so enjoyable that people will do it even at great cost, for the sheer sake of doing it” (Csikszentmihalyi, 1990, p. 4). Flow theory is often used in reference to sports, music, painting, dance, and any other creative activity where the actor is totally immersed in the activity, so that the experience itself carries more rewards than the accomplishment of goals. At face value, political activities might not be as engaging to young people as a football game, dancing to their favourite tunes or even creating a painting. However, creating political memes, if planned correctly, can achieve flow in the same way as any other creative activity: When skills are perceived to be greater than challenges, people tend to feel bored. When challenges are seen as being higher than skills, they tend to feel anxious. When both challenges and skills are low, the person tends to feel apathetic. It is when high challenges are perceived to be matched with high skills—a subjective condition we have come to call flow—that a person experiences the highest levels of wellbeing. (Csikszentmihalyi & Nakamura, 1989)

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Csikszentmihalyi (1990) identified the following key factors, which, if present, will create a flow experience: (a) intense concentration on the task at hand, while still preserving awareness of the actions taken, (b) loss of reflective self-consciousness, (c) the sense of total control over the actions and tasks undertaken, and (d) the process of undertaking the tasks will become as rewarding as the goals expected from completing that task. Once these elements are achieved, it can be said that the person executing this action has attained flow. This flow can occur in a game-like environment, if there are milestones of obstacles and rewards. We propose that young people should be introduced to a game-like learning environment, where they can gain the necessary skills to research ideas for memes that might relate to 1) their daily life, 2) have a tangible goal, and 3) can be packaged as an Internet meme. If we ensure that the initial phases of creating those political memes take place in a game-like environment with high skills and high challenges, we can create optimal conditions for flow to occur, ensuring that such a meme will have enough energy to go past the first tier transmitters (Asakawa, 2004; Csikszentmihalyi, 2014).

A SAMPLE FRAMEWORK OF THE PROPOSED PROCESS For the purpose of illustrating this framework in more detail, we outline a sample multi-phased process to game political meme creation working with youth from one locale engaged over a period of time with the aim of creating memes that relate directly to their locale. This process would start with the youth put in rapid incubators to train on field research, so they can interview their peers (in groups of twos) in the search for political topics that affect their local youth. This phase ends with each group giving a three-minute pitch of important topics that affect their locale. All pitches are peer judged using a rubric on a specially made app for this process. Note that this will also be game like with each youth getting a score. Once completed, the app will automatically assign larger groups of 3-4 to work on the top three ideas in Phase Two. In this phase, the youth enter a second level training incubator in which they learn how to create video memes out of the political messages selected. At the end of this phase, all memes are screened and the best three memes are selected using the app. They are also judged by the youth themselves, with each youth getting scored based on their group’s results to add to their Phase One score. The last and final phase in this game-like process is the re-versioning of the memes, which is an individual task. There will be training in this phase on re-versioning memes, followed by a 24 hour marathon re-versioning session in which the youth will re-version and publish their memes. This process will be judged based on how viral each re-version is, with the final score tallied to the total score of each youth. On the conclusion of this process, the highest scores will be recognized and credited to the app’s hall of fame - see Figure 1 (Gaming Meme Creation Diagram) for a visual representation of the process. It is Important to note that this proposed framework, and the process outlined above, while relying on tested theories, will need further validation in future research. The process outlined should also serve only as guideline, where the numbers in the group and the number of chosen ideas and memes will be highly dependent on the number of youth involved, the scope of the project and the locale where the project is executed. This multi-phased game-like process can happen in a collaborative environment that not only engages young people individually, but as part of a community, thus achieving collaborative flow (Admiraal, Huizenga, Akkerman, & Ten Dam, 2011; Kaye, 2016; Pace, 2004; Sa, Teixeira, & Fernandes, 2007). Once young people are engaged and a state of flow is attained, the nature of the content, being of a political nature, will directly influence their identity formation. Therefore, when youth are presented with an 93

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Figure 1. Gaming meme creation diagram

opportunity to make an actual change, even if the goals are challenging, they will engage (Clay, 2012). One important part of the process is the deliberate slow multi-phase process during which it is necessary to ensure that the transmission speed is high enough to generate flow but low enough to preserve the political message from the danger of rapid mutation (Bisin & Verdier, 2001; Cavalli-Sforza, Feldman, Chen, & Dornbusch, 1982; Gergely & Csibra, 2006). A delicate balance needs to be struck, so that we ensure effective transmission but at a rate that protects the original meme from too much mutation. In spite of variations within each local community, the power of the receiver in the interpretation of a meme will have a direct influence on the nature and fidelity of the transmission of such a meme. Atran, in his article “The Trouble with Memes,” uses the example of a group of marching Maoists, noting that:

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In the statement “Let a thousand flowers bloom,” you can bet that most marchers do not have the same flowers in mind, or any flowers at all, or even a medium fidelity version of what others have in mind. What the crowd has in common, is a context, for example, a rally against “western influence.” The shared context mobilizes background knowledge in peoples’ minds. (Atran, 2001, p. 365) On a global level, identity becomes that important shared context, which is necessary to preserve the originality of such variants across locales (Love et al., 2016). With new augmented technologies, live streaming and increased use of the location-based properties of mobile phones, there are even more new opportunities for engaging young people in political content, as well as new challenges, as those technologies emerge. For instance, the latest development in social media, makes it easy for young people to access localized content that is readily available at any time at the touch of a fingertip and that directly relates to their daily lives. This means that today’s youth can be much more aware of news and activism in their local vicinity than pre-social media youth. They are, therefore, more likely to engage with this local content, which promotes more engagement in political activities (Vromen, Xenos, & Loader, 2015). Many social media apps like Instagram and Snapchat are providing digital tools that enable youth to create standalone digital stories shot and edited directly from the App (Minsberg, 2015). This vast array of digital tools readily available for youth to engage with the creation of memes, combined with training and a game-like environment, will make engagement in political meme creation enjoyable and will engage youth so that they make the leap from spectators to participants.

CONCLUSION Young people are increasingly relying on social media as their only source of entertainment, news, and information. As a result, they form their worldview, identity, and political persuasions through interaction with content-rich social media platforms. This interaction presents an opportunity to engage those youth in the political process. The problem we are faced with is, that while there is clear empirical evidence that the today’s youth are more exposed to political content than their pre-social media counterparts, it is also evident that they are, in fact, less interested in participating in the political process. This paper proposes a framework that aims to (a) engage youth in the creation of provocative, politically charged memes; (b) make that process game-like so that the youth feel empowered to take participatory politics offline; and (c) embed a call to action that enables these memes to carry the call to participatory action from the local youth creator to a global youth network and from the online platforms to offline participatory political activism. The paper proposes that young people be trained on the narrative structuring of political messages, so they can turn those messages into a digital provocative memes. This training will result in highly skilled youth who are motivated to create. When this is combined with a structured, collaborative, gamelike environment, where the youth are given multi-level tasks with obstacles and rewards, they will feel empowered by their skills and motivated by a state of flow. Once the process of creation is complete and the memes are published, the youth are also more likely to engage in offline participatory politics, because of the already formed collaborative gaming environment and the follow-on effect of the state flow they attain while creating the memes. Our proposition is to devise a degree of difficulty in these early phases that requires a state of total attention. This state of attention or flow, once achieved, will 95

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serve to create high quality, entertaining, provocative memes that are also carriers of political messages via coded keywords. This can only be possible, if the youth involved feel that the process is competitive and has clear goals, phases, obstacles, and rewards. This is precisely what the flow theory stipulates in order for those young people to attain a state of flow. This collaborative, game-like environment has the potential to create strong online and offline ties, in addition to the meme-ing of political messages. Furthermore, the viral qualities of the memes created are elevated, because they are provocative in nature and are created by the youth themselves. Other youth are more likely to re-version, if they are presented with content created by their peers. The re-versioning from one locale to another will, therefore, create long-lasting political awareness and strong engagement that starts on social media created by local youths and spreads offline locally and online globally. This paper does not include practical tools but rather a conceptual framework that has the potential to address the lack of participatory political engagement among today’s youth. It is our hope that further research based on this proposition can involve participatory action research with fieldwork, where the youth can participate in a case study of a participatory political campaign that involves the creation and propagation of politically provocative memes with an embedded call to action. Through the process of researching this paper, we came across many examples of success stories of political memes that spread and we re-versioned. Those memes were able to preserve the political message and were re-versioned by youth. Our framework is aimed at proposing a process that can replicate this success and not just produce one of the cases. The power of gaming the process, such that youth are in flow, will provide the level of engagement that can increase the success rate and provide a formula that can be used by youth organizations concerned with educating youth about politics, but also cultural and participatory civic engagement.

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Section 3

Fake News and Images

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Chapter 7

Fake News:

Origins and Political Impact Fadi Safieddine University of East London, UK Rawad Hammad University of East London, UK

ABSTRACT This chapter examines the buzzword “Fake News.” In recent years, politicians, media, and members of the public have used and misused the term, fake news, in a variety of contexts. This chapter focuses on the impact of fake news as it is linked to political participation through internet activism. An essential part of understanding what constitutes fake news is to appreciate the different characteristics and labels—Alternative Truth, Post Truth, Propaganda, Satire, and more—which leads readers vulnerable to the impact of fake news on a platform that requires little accountability for the facts or the harm it inflicts. The barriers to presenting a journalistic outlet as nothing less than a reputable news agency are only a few clicks away. In an era dominated by social media platforms, there is evidence that these networks inadvertently facilitated the propagation of fake news and their clickbait-driven profits.

INTRODUCTION There have been overwhelming concerns about the impact of fake news since the beginning of 2016, especially in the aftermath of several surprise results in the UK Brexit Referendum and the USA Presidential elections of 2016. These concerns have been replicated across the globe, from the French Presidential elections of 2017, the Brazilian Presidential elections of 2018, the Arab Spring Revolution of 2011, and the Bolivian protests of 2019. Examples are mounting of fake news repeatedly meddling in national and local politics; so much so that some argue the term “fake news” has become synonymous with the “weaponisation” of news by foreign powers. Berghel’s (2017) research shows that political fake news has the tendency to be reposted, shared, and propagated at a much faster rate than truthful news. Indeed, by the time a rebuke arrives, the fake news DOI: 10.4018/978-1-7998-4796-0.ch007

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 Fake News

would have spread and the damage would no longer be containable. Rubin, Chen and Conroy (2015) confirmed that there is a strong correlation between a person’s prior beliefs and resistance to changing that belief following a fact-checking rebuke. There is a rewarding aspect to being part of a new phenomenon linked to social media attention that is truly hypnotic. This reward mechanism is that linked to notifications alters things, such as milestone celebrations associated with the number of followers and likes, which is said to be addictive, regardless of whether the material is factual or otherwise (Mejias, 2017). Being the first to share an outrageous piece of news that aligns with one’s beliefs, then to see it being shared, validated, and praised, adds to the excitement and rewarding experience. At the top of the chain of the fake news content are the creators. These fake news creators are mostly driven by financial rewards but, on occasion, have political or religious motives. There is a form of pyramid scheme, which is demonstrated in Figure 1.

Figure 1. Social media pyramid and ladder for success

In this pyramid scheme, and at the top of the chain, are the content creators who reap much of the financial and political rewards. Despite this, they are likely to be the least noticed. The first and second layers can be considered as major and minor influencers, respectively. Depending on their role, one may find individual influencers referred to as a “YouTube Star, Twitter Personality, or Gamesters.” At the same level, one would find popular newsgroups, media, special interest, and advocate pages, but these are most likely to be well-established celebrities and politicians with social media accounts. The third and fourth layers can be linked to individuals and groups, such as social media activists and promoters. One may argue that users in layers three and four aspire to move up to influencer status. Finally, there are the major and minor social media users occupying the fifth and sixth layers. These are individuals with various stages of social media development and may include occasional users who are only active when interesting events take place. Cyberbot armies, automated fake accounts designed to share, repost, and move up hashtag trends are said to infest layers five and six ahead of a given democratic events. The content creators may use a top-down or bottom-up approach in pushing their content. Ultimately, content creators’ success depends on their news being picked up by a top tier group or by individual

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users. Regardless of how they reach their objective, the objective is for a given post to go viral and, in return, lead to an avalanche of clickbait (Safieddine, Dordevic, & Pourghomi, 2017).

BACKGROUND A review of the literature shows that fake news existed since human beings realised the importance of having alliances Reilly (2018). Also, fake news goes beyond political news to include vaccinations, health, financial dealings, history, science, religion, celebrity and gossip, to mention but a few. Before explaining what one may mean by the term “Fake News,” this section presents a set of incidents that have been described as fake news by researchers and journalists.

Alternative-Truth Alternative-truth refers to statements that are made with little or no evidence to back them up. For instance, the suggestion that Barack Obama was not born in the United States or the slogan ‘£350 million a week for the NHS if the UK leaves the EU’ during the UK Brexit referendum. Both represent good examples of alternative truth. Such statements are not facts, as they are not true; they can be best be described as “opinion-based facts.” These make more sense as an ideological statement meant to appeal to a specific base. Attempts to reconcile these statements with reality would not likely bear fruit in changing ideologist views. For ideologues, the meanings of the words are their effects on the base, and the need to fact-check these statements is irrelevant (Berghel, 2017).

Hoax (Fake) Web Sites Hoax web sites are online web sites that claim to be factual. However, they are not. According to Burkhardt (2017), fake web sites are popular for many reasons, and they are not limited to politics, news, or other domains. Topics include faking the moon landing, buying dehydrated water, microwave mind control, time travel, an alternative White House, and countless other fake news pages. At the time the authors were writing this chapter, Wikipedia had documented some 172 fake news outlets (List of Fake News Websites, n.d.).

Social Media Nearly from the first inception of online social networks, be they in the form of chatrooms and/or social forms, users used them to communicate and share local and international news. However, since 2007, these platforms have seen a surge empowered by better networking and the integration of various multimedia elements, such as pictures, videos, and animations. It has been found that adding visually manipulated media elements, such as pictures to a post, will significantly increase the impact and the credibility of fake stories (Allcott & Gentzkow, 2017). The power of such posts can be understood when one refers to a picture or diagram that backs the post. Take Figure 2, which has been massively shared after the Nepal earthquake of 2015. The shared photo captures a boy and a girl holding each other, but under the following caption, “Two-and-a-half-year-old sister being protected by her four-year-old brother in Nepal” (Pham, 2015). Social media users who shared this photo and wrote strong emotional comments 105

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may not know that this photo was actually taken in Vietnam around 2007 by a travelling photographer. The girl was simply feeling shy and wanted the protection of her brother. Yet, the same photo has been shared again and again for different purposes, either to describe the fatalities of civil war in Syria or the violence in Burma. Due to its emotional impact and ease of sharing, social media users were not able to recognise that the photo was fake despite the obvious differences between how people look like in Burma, Syria, and Nepal. Figure 2. Vietnam photo of a brother and sister reused as fake news

Targeted Fake News User profiling has gained considerable interest in the last three decades due to its role in generating a personalised view of a system to a certain user based on their data, interactions, ethnic origin, etc. User profiling has been used primarily in marketing and networking domains to improve the user experience. For example, it has been used in education to recommend learning contents that are useful to learners based on their knowledge and interests. Nevertheless, profiling users in social media has led to a negative impact when it is linked with fake news. There is evidence that the Donald Trump election campaign profiled Facebook users to perform targeted postings of news on religious and political affiliations. For example, in the 2016 presidential elections, the topic of gay marriage in the US was seen as a decisive subject. Facebook and Twitter users were sent targeted messages based on their views on LGBTQ+, religion, and political affiliations (Lacapria, 2016). Users with strong conservative views received messages that told them Donald Trump was against gay marriage, and that he was committed to overturning

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it. On the other hand, gay allies received a completely different message where Trump was carrying a rainbow flag with the caption “LGBT for Trump” (Guilford, 2016). In reality, both of the previously mentioned messages were inaccurate. Donald Trump did not discuss this issue during his campaign and remained neutral.

Figure 3. Two contradictory social media posts used during US presidential elections of 2016

Mass Media In 2014, the Washington Post published an article that was said to be the first to address the modern appearance of “fake news” in a social media context. In that article, the author interviewed Paul Horner who infiltrated mainstream news with fake news (McNair, 2017). McNair’s research showed that the Internet had much more fake news than initially thought. Some of these stories included a suggestion that the artist Banksy was arrested. However, the McNair article exposed how vulnerable mass media was to this type of trending social media fake news. Published in 2013, Paul Horner created an article that claimed that President Barak Obama offered personal funds to the Museum of Muslim Culture in Mississippi during the US government shutdown (Dewey, 2014). There is no museum in Mississippi, and the article was completely false, but the story went viral and was picked up by several mainstream media sites.

Nonpolitical News As aforementioned, fake news has targeted approximately all domains, including political news, social, health, nutrition, and so on. For instance, Rowe and Alexander (2017) listed claims of amazing cures for every subject, ranging from mental health to complex situations such as cancer. One such fake news was the impact of sour honey that was said to cure cancer. The posts claimed pharmaceutical companies, cooperating with Hillary Clinton, were deliberately hiding these facts from the public Kasprak (2017). Snopes, a fact-checking website, communicated with Agora Inc., the company promoting the previously mentioned post, but received the following reply:

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We are extremely reticent to censure our analysts and writers. Instead, we encourage them to speak boldly. And let readers decide for themselves. Of course, we will be wrong often. And occasionally embarrassed. (Kasprak, 2017) Such responses can be seen as an attempt to legitimise the publication of fake news.

News Agencies In this category, there are individuals who label mainstream news agencies as “fake news” as opposed to online purposefully invented fake news. On numerous occasions, US President Donald Trump has labelled various news organisations as fake news because he did not like the reports produced by these organisations. This is a misuse of the term “fake news.” The examples presented in this section represent a small set of published fake news, but they are sufficient to set the scene for more insightful discussions around fake news.

TYPES OF FAKE NEWS In the period between 2016 and 2020, the authors have identified seven types of media that politicians or researchers have labelled as fake news: (1) satire news; (2) parody news; (3) propaganda news; (4) manipulated visual content; (5) fabricated content; (6) alternative truth and; (7) false connection. However, not all of these labels are correctly labelled as “fake news.”

Satire News This is factual news, but it is presented using humour, irony, exaggeration, ridicule, and mockery (Brodie, 2018). Examples of TV satire programmes include Saturday Night Live in the USA and The Daily Mash in the UK. Usually, humour provides a critique of the news, whether it is economical, social, or political. Satire news has some levels of factuality. Though it should not be considered as factual news. One school of thoughts, e.g., Love (2007) argued that satire news was not fake news. For example, a screenshot of a tweet created to appear as a historic, but genuine, Donald J. Trump tweet stating: If the Dow Jones ever falls more than 1000 “points” in a single day, the sitting president should be “loaded” into a very big cannon and shot into the sun at TREMENDOUS SPEED! No excuses! (News Literacy Project, 2018) That post was shared on the day the Dow Jones dropped 1175 points. Later on, Shaun Usher, the author of this tweet, insisted it was nothing more than a piece of satire. Usher did not think anyone would believe the tweet to be genuine. Decontextualising the story or any part of it is the key challenge for satire news, because usually when users share such stories, the context cannot be retained. Moreover, The Onion news is a satirical digital newspaper that publishes articles that combine both the real and the fictional, but with a satirical tone in a traditional news organisation format. The power of this approach is to connect the story with current affairs. Scott Dikkers, the original editor of The Onion, explains in various contexts that satire is not fake news. The editor maintains that The Onion 108

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does not intend to pass its news as factual, and when that has happened, it would be accidental. Purcell (2017) agrees that insisting satire news adds an important perspective to the current news, but is not intended to be dishonest.

Parody News Parody news refers to stories that are completely fabricated, but intended as a joke with clear disclaimers. Parody plays a practical joke with the readers, where the trickster engages the target into playing without their knowledge or permission. Parody in media has been around for a very long time. Similar to satire, readers may not be able to relate to the original source/context. Therefore, parody news could be turned into fake news. This can be linked to the digital story, “Clinton Deploys Vowels to Bosnia” published by The Onion (1995). Someone copied The Onion’s parody story and circulated it by email to a large audience. As a result, the article got shared without being linked to its wider context. While parody stories tend to give clear indicators that they are not factual, there is evidence that parody news can still be mistaken as factual. Certain topics are said to be unsuitable to be used in either satire or parody, because there are people with a strong predisposition to believe the topic regardless of how many clues are placed to suggest otherwise. This is known as Poe’s Law (Brodie, 2018). Topics associated with evolution, abortion, vaccinations, and government conspiracies are said to be linked to Poe’s Law.

Propaganda News This type refers to news that has some elements of factual streaks. However, the creators of propaganda news deliberately twist or exaggerate certain claims to a point where it does not reflect reality and misleads the audience (Reilly, 2018). When propaganda news is created, it is based on an entity, e.g., government, public figure, a political party, organisation, etc. Unlike previous fake news types, Propagandists may: (1) fabricate facts, (2) be selective with facts or (3) present opinionated facts (Edgar & Sedgwick, 2002, pp. 313–14). According to Bakir and McStay (2018), propaganda news is challenging, because the variability of dishonestly focuses on what is not presented. An example of misleading content drawn from a hypothetical reporting id that of naming politicians for not voting on a motion without highlighting that some of them were unable to attend on that day for medical reasons or otherwise. According to Bakir and McStay (2018), there are two types of propaganda. First, “Overt propaganda,” which is a more open and transparent form of propaganda, such as propaganda promoted historically by military and dictatorships with the intention of influencing public opinion. Second, there is “Covert Propaganda,” which presents itself as factual news, concealing its true intentions, importance, and source. The invasion of Iraq by the US is a suitable example of this type of fake news. CNN and the New York Times admitted that they inadvertently published false information pushed by the US military as part of a psychological operation (Love, 2007).

Manipulated Visual Content This type of fake news is associated with visual elements such as videos or photos that are manipulated by users to add false content. There is a tendency to contextualise false information by presenting a visual element to support an argument or a claim. There are several instances of this type of fake news appearing on social media. Manipulated Visual Content (MVP) is gaining popularity due to the increas109

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ing number of users who are willing to share or react without reading and doing further investigation. Manipulated visual content is found to be one of the most common fake news types on social media. Most social media users prefer to see visual elements, e.g., videos and photos, rather than just text. Additionally, some social media platforms require users to incorporate visual content into their messages; e.g. Instagram, Tiktok, and Snapchat are the most effective ways to disseminate visual posts. Figure 4. the Manipulated image of Abraham Lincoln

Figure 4 depicts a historical example of manipulated visual contents (i.e. images) as it shows a heroiclike photo of Abraham Lincoln. This image has been manipulated by the photographer, Thomas Hicks, to create a photo of the 16th US president. Manipulating images using various editing software is common. However, the new challenging type of manipulated content is deepfake videos, also known as deepfake technology. In such videos, artificial intelligence and/or machine learning algorithms are used to superimpose images and video clips onto a video so that it appears authentic. There have been various deepfake videos published for key persons, including the US President, Barak Obama (Maras & Alexandrou, 2019).

Fabricated Content With this type of fake news, the discussion is around completely fictional or made-up content, where there is no relationship between the story/news and reality. Hence, this means that the reader will receive the message as if it is authentic, but the reality is different, as it is completely fictional. This is the most popular form of political fake news used during the 2016 UK referendum and US presidential elections. Burkhardt (2017) describes such news as containing misinformation or misdirection that may have sinister motives. Unlike parody news, fabricated content does not indicate its fictional nature. Examples of fabricated content already presented in this chapter are that of sour honey as a cancer cure, US President

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Trump having a clear opinion on gay marriage, and former US President Obama using his personal funds to keep a Muslim Museum open in Mississippi.

Alternative-Truth The term is abbreviated as Alt-truth, but also has linked with similar terms such as Alternative-Post, Alternative Facts, Post-Truth, and Post-Facts. In some cases, these terminologies are used interchangeably, even though there are minor differences between them. For instance, Alt-truths are used to describe statements that present explanations associated with minor evidence to their validity. On the other hand, “Alt-facts” refer to cases where “…an ideologue offers an account of the facts that have no basis in reality; they are not false statements, but rather alternative facts.” (Berghel, 2017, p. 41). Finally, the term “Post-truth” is a description of events that plays footloose with the truth. Due to the similarity between these terms, the term “Alt-truth” will be used in this chapter to refer to this type of fake news. This type of fake news is one of the most challenging since it is a combination of truths and lies. It also closely correlates with propaganda news. The Death Tax ruse promoted on Facebook stated the Labor Party would secretly bring back the death tax; messages targeted conservative voters. This type of fake news was completely false and referred to Inheritance Tax. However, because it was been given another name that was misleading, it allowed people to use different figures, fabricated or factual, to support or challenge the tax. In this instance, the tax was designed to help middle-class citizens, but those who were against the tax managed to fabricate some figures and claimed that the tax would affect middle-class citizens.

False Connection This type of connection refers to news or post titles that do not match their content (Bakir & McStay, 2018). The most common tactic here is to provide an eye-catching title that tends to be an exaggeration for key facts. Sources can be easily found to back any given claim to add credibility to the story and the connection. In March 2016, The Sun newspaper in the United Kingdom published a piece of news under the title, “Queen Backs BREXIT,” linked to two unnamed sources. Due to the impact of the headlines, the Independent Press Standards Organisation (IPSO) labelled the title as “misleading” and forced the newspaper to publish its findings (The Sun, 2016). False connection is not new and has been around in tabloids and some newspapers. However, false connections are used online as clickbait income where users click to read the story only to realise the facts are not well established.

DEFINITIONS OF FAKE NEWS Decomposing the term “fake news” into two sub-terms: “fake” and “news,” news refers to a product of journalism, a field that is expected to deliver “independent, reliable, accurate, and comprehensive information” (Kovach & Rosenstiel 2007, p. 11), such journalists are expected to be impartial, honest, independent, free, and self-governed. Similar to any other job, journalists create, edit, and produce the news, but this does not mean that they produce fake news. “Fake,” as a term, is associated with forged, counterfeit, unauthentic, imitation, deceitful, dishonest, misleading, and fraudulent, to name few (Abbasi, Zhang, Zimbra, Chen, & Nunamaker, 2010). Thus, from a wider perspective, fake news is associated with

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the intention to mislead or misinform users (Wardle, 2017). According to the literature, the following three variations of fake news definitions have been identified: 1. Fake News as an Internet Phenomenon 2. Fake News Definitions as an Innocuous Problem 3. Fake News as Completely Fabricated Content

Fake News as an Internet Phenomenon This refers to “…online publication of intentionally or knowingly false statements of fact” Klein & Wueller, (2017, p. 6). However, this definition ignores the satirical websites and posts. There is some value in considering fake news as purely an online problem since online and social media has enabled the widespread of fake news. However, this definition does not reflect reality. Reviewing human history, it is obvious that there was no time where tools, such as social networks, were at the disposal of fake news generators, but this did not stop early historians, politicians, writers, and journalists from creating fake news in their time. As the saying goes, “history is written by the winners.” Thus, it is shortsighted to limit fake news to an online phenomenon. It is not accurate to advocate such a definition as exclusively the case.

Fake News Definitions as an Innocuous Problem From this perspective, fake news is defined as harmless, regardless of its intentions. Lazer et al. (2018) used the term “fake news” to refer to fabricated information as copycat news media content, but not in an organisational process or intent. Furthermore, Secor and Walsh (2004) summarised it: Something is made public, people react, take it seriously, then somehow the rug is pulled away, and people first suspect, then realise that they have been fooled. Sometimes a state of uncertainty prevails, and the event fades from public consciousness; sometimes the hoaxer gets unwillingly unmasked much later; sometimes the hoaxer is exposed to public opprobrium; more often, the hoaxer claims credit to construct public notoriety for himself or herself. (p. 72)

Fake News as Completely Fabricated Content There is no widely accepted definition for this category. For instance, Allcott and Gentzkow (2017) defined it as “… news articles that are intentionally and verifiably false, and could mislead readers,” (p. 213). However, Oremus (2017) used the term to refer to “…information that is designed to be confused with legitimate news and is intentionally false.” Nonetheless, Rini (2017) defined it as: …. one that purports to describe events in the real world, typically by mimicking the conventions of traditional media reportage, yet is known by its creators to be significantly false and is transmitted with the two goals of being widely re-transmitted and of deceiving at least some of its audience. (2017, E45)

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Nevertheless, what is common between these definitions is that they assume that fake news is completely fabricated and that there is a sinister intention behind its creation. The intention here plays a key role. Thus, the following is one definition that sums up the finding that fake news is a: “…phenomenon in which news or narratives that have been manufactured to deliberately deceive a targeted audience where it is designed to be transacted through a networked economy which disseminates through the trust and ethical or psychological disposition of the network. (Ibrahim & Safieddine, 2020, p. 15)

HOW TO IDENTIFY FAKE NEWS One of the significant variances between online news generators and established news agencies is that established agencies have in place procedures to review and validate the information they receive. Newspapers employ fact-checkers to vet a reporter’s article before it is published. They often require more than a single source before publishing an article and limit reporters’ reliance on anonymous sources. These practices seem likely to raise the veritistic quality of the reports newspapers publish and hence the veritistic quality of their readers’ resultant beliefs. (Goldman, 2008, p. 117) While newsagents are not 100% fail proof, the majority of newsagents remain far more reliable than online blogs or social media groups. Tandoc, Lim, and Ling (2018) suggest that with fake news, intention is a critical component in this definition. The main intention behind fake news is not to create amusement or promote harmless fun. Fake news is a form of weaponisation of media, especially when combined with news bots, newsgroups, and targeted posting. The popularity of fake news already has impacted the legitimacy of journalism and eroded the trust that citizens have in established media. Tandoc, Lim, and Ling (2018) identified two dimensions that characterise the definition of fake news: facticity and deception. The former refers to how factual a news article or a post is, while the latter refers to the intention behind the post, where an error of judgement or humour would not lead to define a piece of work as fake news. For certain news, someone might rate its facticity level as low, which would mean the news was completely fabricated. Similarly, deception can be ranked in the same way. This provides a more accurate way of assessing the factuality of news. Sometimes, one may have the correct news, but if it may be misused, but this does not lead to nullifying the factual news. There are other measures, such as intention, which measures the content creator’s intention to mislead the audience. Based on these factors, one can rank satire and parody differently in terms of their facticity. Satire is based on facts, while parody is completely fabricated. However, they both score low on their intentions to deceive their audiences, as they both aim to entertain or amuse. Nonetheless, Fabrication, False Connection, Alternative Truth, Propaganda, and Manipulated Visual Content would get a high score for deceptive intention. Thus, the high deceptive intention is the main driver in identifying fake news (Table 1). Table 1 details ways of assessing fake news that allows for a better way of judging incidents where genuine mistakes happen in reporting by assessing whether the motivation to deceive is sufficient enough to label it as fake news or to consider it in the prism of professional mistakes. Thus, one can discount satire and parody news as fake news. Also, a reader can deduce from this analysis that attempts to discredit news agencies as “fake news” simply because they dislike their political reporting, is wrong. Where a 113

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Table 1. A typology of fake news definitions Author’s Immediate Intention to Deceive

Level of Facticity

High

Low

High

False Connection Propaganda Alternative Facts

Satire

Low

Manipulation Fabrication

Parody

piece of parody is mistaken for real news, it should never be classified as fake news. The exception is when one can prove that the creators of a particular content purposefully removed key indicators and contextual links in order to pass the information off as factual news.

IMPACT OF FAKE NEWS There are several reasons why fake news has become an important topic of debate. To start with, there are now user-friendly online tools that allow anyone with a little journalistic and computing experience to present themselves as a legitimate news agency. Many web-hosting companies provide templates that allow users to create professional-looking websites that appear to be professional blogs and/or local newspapers. It is not difficult for an individual to create what appears to be a reputable political newspaper. Also, there are competing social media platforms fighting for more memberships and visitor traffic. Until late 2016, these platforms had little or no regard for the dangers of fake news. In reviewing the impact of fake news, this section will consider that pivotal point in history and its political impact, but one is reminded that fake news has permutated in the form of fake medical news, celebrity news, financial news, local news and. on several occasions, the lynching of innocent people (Ibrahim & Safieddine, 2020, pp. 43). The next section focuses on the impact of abusing social media tools to influence voters during the 2016 Brexit referendum and the US Presidential elections.

US Presidential Election of 2016 One may argue that the US Presidential election of 2016 was a turning point in academic and media realisation of the impact of fake news. This realisation came about when evidence pointed to several fake news social media posts, which went viral. As such, researchers questioned whether fake news stories had impacted voters’ decisions in the 2016 US election (Allcott & Gentzkow, 2017). There are substantial reasons for asking this question. First, surveys around the time of the election showed social media as the main source of news for 62% of US adults (Gottfried & Shearer, 2016). Second, social media was found to be the primary platform for those sharing fake news posts as compared to the sharing of established news agencies posts. Finally, a significant proportion of people who view fake news cannot distinguish their authenticity (Allcott & Gentzkow, 2017). A survey by Allcott and Gentzkow (2017) presented a list of 12 conspiracy theories that have supposedly dispersed over the past half-century. Bowman and Rugg (2013) used polling data to show what proportion of US adults believed these conspiracy statements to be true. A summary of Allcott and Gentzkow’s (2017, p. 215) findings is presented in Figure

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5. The survey showed that people still believed well-established fake news to be true, even many years after they have been categorically dismissed as untrue. Figure 5. Survey data showing the proportion of US adults who believe established fake news

The content creators of the 2016 US presidential election fake news were said to be linked to hoax websites that passed themselves as legitimate news agencies. These sites published fabricated and misleading US election conspiracy theories as news articles using slightly modified names of legitimate news agencies, such as ABCnews.com.co and bizstandardnews.com. Following the 2016 election, several media reports attempted to identify the sources of the fake news. BuzzFeed and the Guardian investigation identified the main source of the fake news articles as originating from the small city of Veles, Macedonia (Subramanian, 2017). More than 100 fake news websites, all of whom coordinated to promote each other’s fake posts, were linked to Veles. One website, EndingtheFed.com, was said to be the source of four of the top 10 popular fake news stories to hit Facebook. The website was found to be run by a 24-year-old Romanian man (Townsend, 2016). An investigation by Sydell (2016) identified several fake news sites and domain names, such as WashingtonPost.com.co, NationalReport.net, and USAToday.com.co as being owned by a US registered company called by Disinfomedia. The company records suggested it employed between 20 and 25 writers. All these investigations suggested two crucial motives behind much of the work done to write and publish fake news on social media: 1) The primary motivation is likely to be based on political and ideological beliefs; 2) The creativity and ingenious writing self-proclaimed truths have to come with strong beliefs in the cause.

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For example, there is evidence that the owner of Disinfomedia and the person managing the EndingtheFed.com website had invested interests in supporting Donald Trump’s campaign. Beyond political and ideological beliefs, there are equally strong financial motives. Clickbait on fake news articles that go viral is said to have significant rewards attributed to their creators. Teenagers in Veles, for example, created fake posts that favoured both the Trump and Clinton campaign. Subramanian’s (2017) investigations suggested that many of these juvenile teens earned tens of thousands of dollars through clickbait. The impact of fake news on the US presidential elections remains a topic of studies years after the 2016 event. In the immediate aftermath of the US presidential elections of 2016, Allcott, and Gentzkow’s (2017) survey found that the average US adult reader remembered at least one or more fake news stories. Readers of pro-Trump fake news had a higher inclination to believe these stories when compared to readers of pro-Clinton fake news. The researchers set their questions as follows: Does how much the fake news affects election results depend on the effectiveness of the fake news exposure in changing the way people vote? Earlier that year, a study by Spenkuch and Toniatti (2016) on the impact of a TV ad campaign to increase voters shares by approximately 0.02 percentage points. Spenkuch and Toniatti (2016) assessed their findings against a database of fake news and concluded that fake news stories would have shifted vote share by a hundredth of a percentage point. Thus, if one assumes a fake news article has the same persuasive power of a one TV ad campaign, one has to conclude that the impact on the US voters would have been quantifiable.

UK Brexit Referendum of 2016 The Brexit Referendum of 2016 refers to the UK vote on leaving the EU, and is said to be marred with accusations of misuse of facts and the spreading of fake news (Hern, 2017). There had been accusations of external entities involved in the spreading of fake news. Since the referendum, several researched have attempted to find a link that would identify whether there is substance to the claim that Russia interfered in the 2016 Referendum. British researchers from Swansea University, City University, the University of Edinburgh, and the University of Oxford have attempted to discover if a link does exist. At Swansea University, Hern (2017) analysed data on Twitter for the period between May and August 2016. The approach was based on identifying the distribution of public attitude before, during, and after the referendum. Using Twitter’s API streaming of the hashtag Brexit, the researchers amassed 28 million tweets. Key to the analysis was to link activities to personal details of users, such as date an account was created, dates of tweets, amount of activities, and the number of users following these accounts. To identify the difference, the researched accounted for both sides of the argument by identifying applicable hashtags. One-third of all tweets on the referendum came from less than 1% of twitter accounts. Hern identified what they believe to be 20% of the accounts as cyber bots. Some have argued that the criteria for identifying cyber bots may not be fool proof as it was based on what the researchers describe as an “abnormal number of tweets per day.” The criteria included midnight to early morning tweets, the use of unreliable platforms for news, and a large number of repeated tweets and retweets. Swansea University researchers concluded that bots on Twitter could influence public opinion. However, more concerning was the suggestion that political referendums and elections could be predicted by studying cyber bot interactions on social media. In the aftermath of that research, media reports suggested some 150,000 bot accounts linked to Russia had been active during the Brexit Referendum, and went dormant or closed after that event (Payne, 2017). 116

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At City University, Bastos and Mercea, (2019) likewise used hashtags linked to Brexit on Twitter for the period between April 2016 and August 2016. The researchers investigated cyber bot activity to: (1) identify dissemination of hyper-partisan and polarising content; (2) identify characteristics of the lifespan of a cyber bot, focusing on fluctuation of activities before and after the referendum; (3) determine if cyber bots influenced the Brexit discussions; (4) determine if cyber bots resulted in quicker propagation of news than human users through reach, circulation, and intensity, and; (5) identify cyber bots from human users by measuring whether the account was located in a network of human users or if it was restricted to groups of botnets only. The study examined 10 million tweets that referenced applicable Brexit hashtags posted between June 10 and July 10, 2016. Similar to earlier research, Bastos and Mercea, (2019) examined data of profiles that were used to published posts focusing on the presence or absence of geographic data, date from which the account was created, followers to following ratio, and activity levels. Oddities in such data helped identify human users from cyber bots. Bastos and Mercea were able to identify some positive predictors of cyber bot activity including the number of tweets by a user, unusual username words, content posted using a web link, reciprocating retweets, and the dates when the accounts that were created closely linked to the announcement of the referendum event. After reviewing 794,949 accounts, it was determined that only 30,122 users were located in the UK. Nearly 5%, or 40,031, users either deleted, changed their status to private, locked their account, or changed their usernames after the referendum. Accounts identified as cyber bots were found to tweet eight times more, leaving slogans, than other Twitter users. Moreover, 63% of hyperlinks in cyber bot tweets were no longer active. Of the overall accounts, Bastos and Mercea identified only 1.7%, or 13,493, cyber bot accounts with Russian links. This ratio of cyber bots was significantly below Hern’s (2018) study of the total cyber bots they identified as 20%. Narayanan, Howard, Kollanyi, and Elswah (2017), from Oxford University, identified what they believed were highly automated accounts that were either linked to Russia or promoted Russian content. Furthermore, the researchers looked at the content retweeted by automated accounts and, specifically, a sample of videos during the referendum. Posts were then classified by the quality of the political news shared into high quality, established news outlets, extremist content, sensationalist content, conspiratorial content, disguised commentary, fake news, and other forms of spam news, as well as those linked to Russian sources. The dataset included over five million tweets collected in two batches with one batch collected from June 6 to June 12, 2016, and another batch collected from June 17 to June 23, 2016. The sampling approach identified tweets from 1,112,403 unique Twitter users. To begin with, Narayanan et al. (2017) analysed the Brexit hashtag related to Twitter traffic from a list of accounts linked to Russia. The researchers identified only 105 of these accounts actively tweeting or retweeting Brexit related topics, and these accounts generated only 15,964 tweets in that sample. In all, the total tweets amounted to just 0.3% of the total traffic. In addition, only 3% of the Russian accounts exposed in 2017 by Twitter generated any traffic during the Brexit debate. Next, the researchers reviewed the content of posts related to news shared during these Brexit conversations on Twitter. Content attributed to Russian news agencies, such as Russia Today and Sputnik got little attention on Twitter. Only 6% or 511 of the 87,169 links shared were to Russian media sources. Most of the content (63.9%) included hyperlinks to established UK news agencies. Next, the researcher reviewed YouTube videos shared by the same sample of twitter users. Using a self-defined labelling system, the researchers identified over 11.0% of the content as fake news, with only 8.0% of the content linked to professional news agencies. The content generated by citizens and

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social groups stood at 22.7%, and 5.3% of videos were classified as parody or satire. Finally, only 1.4% of the videos were linked to Russian news sources. These four studies, all published independently from one another, determined that fake news, supported partly by cyber bots, played a part in the 2016 Brexit referendum debate. The impact of interference, however, is still open to debate. These findings, when linked to research on the impact of political advertising on public opinion by Spenkuch and Toniatti (2016), suggest that in all likelihood fake news had a bearing on the results, but more research is needed to assess the extent of that impact.

CONCLUSION Once upon a time, some people suggested that fake news was benign, fun, and a harmless part of the Internet age. This chapter shows that fake news goes beyond its non-factual nature or lack of validity to locate itself as an influencer of opinions, as enabled through social media and its data capitalism. This chapter presents a sample of what many countries could experience in the future where social media platforms are playing an ever-increasing role in political debates. The hope is that democracies will learn to adapt to the new realities without risking their freedom or integrity. The line that many social media giants will have to tread plays directly into the debate of freedom of expression and the risk of censorship. One can argue that social media platforms have learned from those experiences and that it is unlikely future elections and referendums will be affected in the same way. However, with the ideological, political, and financial rewards being so high, those who have benefited from such control laps are unlikely to give up easily. The power and rewards associated with controlling fake news suggest that those behind it will likely explore every loophole technology has to offer. The challenge for social media will be to develop policies and tools quickly enough to adapt to and overcome the fake news challenges.

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Love, R. (2007). Before Jon Stewart: The truth about fake news. Columbia Journalism Review, 45(6), 33–37. Maras, M.-H., & Alexandrou, A. (2019). Determining authenticity of video evidence in the age of artificial intelligence and in the wake of deepfake videos. The International Journal of Evidence & Proof, 23(3), 255–262. doi:10.1177/1365712718807226 McNair, B. (2017). Fake news: Falsehood, fabrication and fantasy in journalism. Routledge Company. doi:10.4324/9781315142036 Mejias, U. A. (2017). Fake becomes legit: Disinformation, social media and democracy. The Disorder of Things. Retrieved from http://www.democraticaudit.com/2017/02/20/fake-becomes-legit-social-mediaand-the-rise-of-disinformation-in-democracies/ Narayanan, V., Howard, P. N., Kollanyi, B., & Elswah, M. (2017). Russian involvement and junk news during Brexit. The computational propaganda project. Algorithms, automation and digital politics. Retrieved from https://comprop. oii.ox. ac.uk/research/working-papers/russia-and-brexit News Literacy Project. (2018, July 6). A fake Trump tweet goes out of control. Retrieved from https:// newslit.org/get-smart/rumor-review-a-fake-trump-tweet-goes-out-of-control/ Oremus, W. (2017). Facebook has stopped saying ‘fake news.’ Retrieved from http://www.slate. com/ blogs/future_tense/2017/08/08/facebook_has_stopped_saying_fake_news_is_false_news_any_better.html Payne, A. (2017). Russia used a network of 150,000 Twitter accounts to meddle in Brexit. Business Insider. Retrieved from https://www.businessinsider.com/russia-used-twitter-accounts-to-meddle-inbrexit-investigation-shows-2017-11 Pham, N. (2015, May 4). Haunting ‘Nepal quake victims’ photo from Vietnam. BBC News. Retrieved from https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-32579598 Purcell, C. (2017, August 26). The Onion: Inside the biggest “fake news” outlet in the world. Morning Herald Sydney. Retrieved from: https://www.smh.com.au/entertainment/the-onion-inside-the-biggestfake-news-outlet-in-the-world-20170822-gy1chg.html Reilly, I. (2018). F for fake: Propaganda! hoaxing! hacking! partisanship! and activism! in the fake news ecology. Journal of American Culture, 41(2), 139–152. doi:10.1111/jacc.12834 Rini, R. (2017). Fake news and partisan epistemology. Kennedy Institute of Ethics Journal, 27(2), E– 43–E-64. doi:10.1353/ken.2017.0025 Rowe, S. B., & Alexander, N. (2017). On post-truth, fake news, and trust. Nutrition Today, 52(4), 179–182. doi:10.1097/NT.0000000000000224 Rubin, V. L., Chen, Y., & Conroy, N. J. (2015, November). Deception detection for news: Three types of fakes. In Proceedings of the 78th ASIS&T Annual Meeting: Information Science with Impact: Research in and for the Community (p. 83). American Society for Information Science. 10.1002/pra2.2015.145052010083 Safieddine, F., Dordevic, M., & Pourghomi, P. (2017, July). Spread of misinformation online: Simulation impact of social media newsgroups. 2017 IEEE Computing Conference.

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Secor, M., & Walsh, L. (2004). A rhetorical perspective on the sokal hoax: Genre, style, and context. Written Communication, 21(1), 69–91. doi:10.1177/0741088303261037 Spenkuch, J. L., & Toniatti, D. (2016). Political advertising and election outcomes. Kilts Center for Marketing at Chicago Booth–Nielsen Dataset Paper Series. Subramanian, S. (2017). Inside the Macedonian fake-news complex. Wired MAGAZINE, 15. Swift, J. (1710). The art of political lying, The Examiner. Retrieved from https://www.thoughtco.com/ art-of-political-lying-by-swift-1690138 Sydell, L. (2016). We tracked down a fake-news creator in the suburbs. Here’s what we learned. National Public Radio. Retrieved from http://www.npr.org/sections/alltechconsidered/2016/ 11/23/503146770/ npr-finds-the-head-of-a-covert-fake-news-operation-in-the-suburbs Tandoc, E. C. Jr, Lim, Z. W., & Ling, R. (2018). Defining “fake news:” A typology of scholarly definitions. Digital Journalism, 6(2), 137–153. doi:10.1080/21670811.2017.1360143 The Onion. (1995). Clinton deploys vowels to Bosnia. December 5. In University of Pennsylvania School of Arts and Sciences online records. The Onion. Retrieved from https://www.ling.upenn.edu/ ~beatrice/ humor/clinton-deploys-vowels.html The Sun. (2016). Revealed: Queen backs Brexit as alleged EU bust-up with ex-deputy PM emerges. The Sun Newspaper UK. Retrieved from https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/ 1078504/revealed-queen-backsbrexit-as-alleged-eu-bust-up-with-ex-deputy-pm-emerges/ Townsend, T. (2016). Meet the Romanian Trump fan behind a major fake news site. Retrieved from http://www. inc.com/tess-townsend/ending-fedtrump-facebook.html Wardle, C. (2017, Feb 16). Fake news. It’s complicated. FirstDraft. Retrieved from https://medium. com/1st-draft/fake-newsits-complicated-d0f773766c79

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Fake Photos in the European Refugee Crisis: The “Invasion” Narrative of the Radical Right Anita Howarth https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0102-6096 Brunel University, UK

ABSTRACT The escalation of fake news and images during times of crisis and uncertainty is not a new phenomenon, but something quantitatively and qualitatively different is happening now. This chapter adopts an aesthetic approach to locate fake images in the gap between a form of representation and the representation itself. Anxiety with fake images deployed by the radical right during the refugee crisis is about a politics of manipulation within that gap, which enables an image to be re-appropriated or altered fundamentally in ways that reorder the range of possible interpretations to fit a pre-determined narrative. While fake images are not their exclusive preserve, the radical right is widely associated with them, and this chapter explores an aesthetic conceptualisation of fake images through an analysis of the La Vlora fake image, which was used to buttress their invasion narrative. The chapter argues that the affective power of reimaging was derived from a nativist ideology and a storyline that echoed a dystopic, anti-immigration novel that has assumed cult status in extremist circles.

INTRODUCTION Images have, since time immemorial, served not only to illustrate a story but also to tell it: not only to capture notable happenings but also to provide visual cues of the momentous, whether it be in the form of cave paintings, stained glass windows for medieval congregations or privately commissioned artwork of wealthy patrons. Images were crucial in building mass readerships, critical to the growth of print capitalism, and in narrating the social lives and struggles of ordinary people, something fundamental DOI: 10.4018/978-1-7998-4796-0.ch008

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to the creation of mass parties and western democracies (Park, 1923; Hughes, 1937). The ‘desire to see and understand our realm through images is not a new phenomenon’ (Proitz, 2018, p. 549), nor are attempts to tell a story primarily through visuals or to fake images. Such desires and endeavours are deeply engrained in social and political cultures, though what is happening now is quantitatively and qualitatively different from what happened before. The photographic image, shaped by the emergence of the digital as the ‘historically dominant form of the image’ (Osborne, 2010, p.59), could for the first time in history be circulated instantaneously on the internet, consumed simultaneously by anyone anywhere and endlessly manipulated, re-appropriated and recycled. Fake news refers to fabricated or distorted information that ‘taps into existing beliefs’ and ‘astutely mimics’ journalistic forms (Waisbord, 2018, p. 1866), drawing on fabricated or misleading content and moulding images in substantive ways to fit with, and add credence to, a pre-determined narrative. Neither the term nor the form is new, although the conditions in which fake images now circulate are substantively different. Not only is there a crisis of the legitimacy of political institutions, the legacy media, having lost their dominance over news, no longer act as gatekeepers of public communication, and the citing of facts produced by experts in support of political claims are treated with scepticism by significant tranches of the public (Waisbord, 2018). Facts assume validity and credibility only in so far as they confirm existing beliefs and values in the so-called post-truth politics (Corner, 2010). The malleability of digital forms has rendered news texts and images unstable artefacts in a media landscape that is more fragmented than at any time in history, where different truth regimes jostle with each other in conditions of information plurality or chaos and digital content is readily downloaded and manipulated. The rapidly changing political, media and communication landscape has coincided with public perceptions of rising immigration, weak governments and a ‘migrant crisis’ spiralling out of control (Ibrahim & Howarth, 2018a). A confluence of factors, including globalization and precarity of employment, have helped create febrile conditions, allowing the rise of extreme forms of anti-immigration and xenophobia propagated by the radical right. Given the centrality of the digital image in the contemporary age, it is unsurprising that the biggest refugee crisis in Europe since World War 2 should have generated an unprecedented proliferation of visuals (Memou, 2019) or that the radical right should capitalise on opportunities to circulate counter-narratives through fake images. The focus of this chapter is the deployment of such images by radical right groups in constructing a visual counter-narrative of the crisis as invasion. In de-emphasising public debate about fact versus fabrication, fake versus authentic, the chapter does not presume these are unimportant to public communication but instead seeks to move away from binaries that detract from an exploration of the visual narratives that fake images support. The theoretical foundation is grounded in Peter Osborne’s (2010) exploration of the ontological anxiety unique to the digital image as a form and where concern is centred on the potential to alter the artefact itself and in the process change the perceived relationship between the image and reality. The potential to alter allows for the creation of a multiplicity of fake variants that resonate in today’s echo chambers and are capable of being endlessly recycled on the Internet. The anxiety is not only ontological but also political in that it reflects a concern about power and who wields it, i.e. who alters the image, for what purpose and with what consequences. While Osborne sees contemporary anxiety as emerging out of the gap between the acts of capture and visualisation, the aesthetic turn views the gap as being between ‘a form of representation and what is represented’, not as a source of critique about what is accurate or inaccurate, but as the site of politics and political struggle (Bleiker, 2001, p. 510). An aesthetic approach to exploring the invasion narrative draws attention to the symbolism of fake images arising out of the nativist ideology of the radical right and Jean Raspail’s Camp of the Saints (1975), which has acquired 123

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a cult status in the movement, and from which much of the affective fear and fury in the fake images derives. The invasion narrative does not operate in isolation but draws its energy from countering others circulating in the mainstream, accentuating certain elements while discrediting others. Mainstream visual narratives distinguish between those deserving pity and those undeserving it (Ibrahim & Howarth, 2018a); the radical right has narrated all ‘migrants’ as undeserving of pity, and the expression of it as constituting a weakness that risks fulfilling Raspail’s apocalyptic vision of the demise of Europe as a white civilization.

CONTEXTUALISING FAKE IMAGES IN THE EUROPEAN REFUGEE CRISIS A Crisis of Political Legitimacy and Information Chaos The peaking of the European refugee crisis in 2014 – 2015 and the circulation of fake images during that period emerged at a critical juncture in the European political and media landscape. Major institutions that had buttressed western democracies and played a critical role in rebuilding Europe after 1945 faced a legitimacy crisis (Waisbord, 2019; Bobba, 2019). Public distrust and disillusionment with politics were translated into falling turnout rates at elections. Mainstream parties were shrinking, and a small but sizable proportion of voters had given their allegiance to the radical right or realigned their political engagement away from elections towards protest and issue politics. The legacy media, i.e. newspapers, television and radio, that for much of the 20th century had played a critical role as providers of political news necessary for the formation of an informed citizenry, were now facing their own legitimacy crisis (Waisbord, 2019). Objectivity rituals that shored up professional practices and the credibility of journalists were increasingly viewed cynically as masking a pro-establishment agenda, and the readerships of legacy news organisations were falling as consumers migrated to social media in search of information they trusted or that confirmed their existing beliefs (Waisbord, 2019). The crisis of political legitimacy in western democracies coincided with ‘seismic changes in public communication’ (Bennett & Livingston, 2018, p. 1868). Web 2.0 and the expansion of social media empowered members of the public to become partakers in the production and circulation of content and allowed new quasi-news syndicates to emerge - primarily on the radical right, e.g. Breitbart News Network - which were able to challenge mainstream political and legacy media accounts of immigration. As information abundance replaced information scarcity, the legacy media lost their dominance over public communication and their control of the dynamics of news and information (Waisbord, 2019). In an age of information scarcity, editors had acted as gatekeepers on flows of information; however, as the old mechanisms of control eroded in a media landscape more diverse and plural than ever imagined, what emerged were conditions of communication chaos (Waisbord, 2019). The shifting landscape benefitted populist appeals to emotion and belief. The architecture of the internet is such that, as content leaked out of the so-called echo chambers on radical right sites into more mainstream debate and consumers retweeted or reposted it, either because it resonated or outraged, otherwise marginalised voices gained hitherto unimagined profiles. While public communication was undergoing profound dislocation, the digital image also emerged as the dominant mode of communication. The process started with the shift to digitization in the 1990s, then accelerated after the turn of the millennium when technology companies added in-built cameras to mobile phones, social media platforms dedicated to hosting images were launched and, after 2010, news 124

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organizations migrated more content online, where there was no limit on the number of images they could upload (Ibrahim & Howarth, 2018a). The convergence of mechanisms to generate and circulate images with the creation of vast repositories of archived and searchable images, added to daily, have created an almost unlimited supply of source materials for anyone looking for images to illustrate a social media post, to recaption or manipulate an existing one (Toyama, 2003). Given the unimaginable supply of source materials allied to the expansion of photo editing software, it is unsurprising that fake images should proliferate. Or that there should be a growing public fascination with them, manifest in individuals creating their own archives on blogs and creating organizations such as the Museum of Hoaxes, set up to explore ‘deception, mischief and misinformation through history’ by curating a special collection of ‘hoax photos’ (2019). There has also been growing alarm in fields as diverse as legacy news organizations, cryptology and digital forensics at the exponential increase in the tools of deception. The rapid growth of a fact-checking movement attests to the depth of concerns about what the circulation of false information might mean for public debate, but the fact-checkers are themselves coming under intense scrutiny as the very value of truth comes under attack (Kessler, 2019). Fact-checking and digital forensics as emerging fields of expertise face particular challenges from the architecture of the internet itself, which facilitates instantaneous, simultaneous and widespread circulation of voluminous content at a speed that humans cannot keep up with, particularly at times of crisis when more fakes and hoaxes tend to circulate (Flamini, 2019). Even when a fake image has been detected and the social media host takes it down, it may resurface on another site weeks or months later (Flamini, 2019). While only a handful of people may have seen the expose of the altered image, millions could have seen the fake. The technologies available for detecting fake images, such as reverse image searches and the verification of the metadata in the image file, are relatively basic but as techniques of manipulation become more sophisticated more detailed forensic analysis is needed to detect fakes. However, the pace of innovation in deception technologies is outstripping the pace of detection (Farid, 2019). It is unsurprising that when ‘seeing and hearing are no longer believing’ and ‘trusted sources are losing their integrity’ (Worrall 2017), there should be heightened anxiety around the legitimacy and credibility of visuals circulating on the internet, particularly the xenophobic forms propagated by the radical right.

The Radical Right and Immigration The ‘third wave’ radical right emerged in Western Europe during the 1970s, marking the beginning of what newspaper commentators came to see as part of ‘Europe’s drift to the right’ (Los Angeles Time, 23 April 2002 cited Mudde, 2013, p. 2). The movement emerged in the distinctive conditions of crises and chaos already outlined, but part of their success has been the rapid adaptation of their style of communication to the opportunities presented by a changing media landscape. The decentralised architecture of the internet has enabled the radical right to create platforms to communicate more spontaneously with members where their message both resonates and reverberates in echo chambers before leaking out into wider spaces. The truncated nature of social media messaging generally is not well-suited to the careful marshalling of evidence and rational argument, however it does suit the pithy and provocative statements deployed by the radical right. The ‘Manichean outlook’ of the radical right expressed in binaries of us versus them and people versus elites (Bobba, 2019, p. 14) is more able to find expression in the truncated message format of Twitter and the deployment of sound-bite type fake images or memes than complex policy issues and nuanced debates on immigration. So effective have their communication strategies

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been that the radical right is now seen as having ‘colonized large sections of the internet’ (Foroughi et al., 2019, p. 154). While there are significant variations between Europe’s radical right parties and groups, they all have in common extreme anti-immigrant and xenophobic beliefs and sentiments. The affective force in the populist rhetoric of the radical right derives from an ideology that ‘holds that states should be inhabited exclusively by members of the native group and that non-native elements are fundamentally threatening to the homogenous nation-state’ (Mudde, 2007, p. 19). The ideology sets up a fundamental antagonism between natives versus migrants, who are ‘othered’ as parasitical and unwanted, legitimizing the exclusion of anyone who differs from the ‘natives’ in culture, religion or ethnicity. The intense antagonism towards the other also fuels a populist rhetoric where appeals to emotion and belief take precedence over those to reason. In her ethnographic study of the rise of the American Tea Party, Arlie Hochschild (2018) found that the roots of the resurgent radical right lie less in the reality of economic distress as in the story about it, the perception that the members’ linear progression to the American Dream had stalled, their path obstructed by a variety of minority groups and immigrants, given preferential treatment in jobs and housing and aided and abetted by corrupt politicians. The affective impetus behind the movement came not only from economic discontent but also from a cultural perception, narrated through a deeply-rooted mythology, the thwarting of which was blamed on a perceived influx of immigrants and the conspiring of the political establishment and legacy media and political elites to aid the other at the expense of the native. This chapter argues that the fake images of the radical right cannot simply be reduced to arbitrary lies; that fabrications and manipulations are particularized in ways that support pre-existing narratives that are highly mediated. The Internet has become a ‘fecund ground’ for the rise of post-truth, not only as a space, as the OED suggests, where ‘objective facts are less influential … [than] appeals to emotion and personal belief’ but also one in which ‘public opinion itself dissolves into a variety of narratives … competing for information’ (Foroughi et al., 2019 pp. 140-141). This chapter locates fake images circulated by the radical right in this ‘narrative ecology’ (Foroughi et al., p. 141).

The European Refugee Crisis In 2014, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees warned that the world faced the biggest ‘forced migration crisis’ since World War 2, with 65.3 million people displaced by conflict, persecution and famine seeking refuge in neighbouring states and further afield (Gower & Smith, 2015). The ‘European crisis’, a fraction of that experienced in North Africa, had been building since the onset of the so-called ‘Arab Spring’ in 2011 but was fuelled and sustained by ongoing civil war in Syria, as well as persecution and conflict in Eritrea, Afghanistan and Iraq. As the UN refugee camps in neighbouring states became overcrowded and the infrastructure was overwhelmed, millions gravitated towards the EU border. In 2015, the EU’s border agency Frontex reported that twice as many people (849,000) had landed on Greek and Italian shores in the first 11 months of the year than in the previous 5 years combined, with as many as 4,000 arrivals a day on the Greek islands (Papademetriou, 2015). Millions ventured across the treacherous Mediterranean in small, unseaworthy boats operated by smuggling gangs and, by 2015, as many as 3,695 had gone missing or had drowned during the crossing (Papademetriou, 2015). The scale of the European crisis necessitated an unprecedented degree of coordination in an under-developed area of EU policy where, collectively and individually, member states were ill-equipped to manage the biggest influx of desperate and destitute people since the Balkan conflagration in the 1990s (UNHCR, 2015; Ibrahim & Howarth, 2018). The ‘sense of chaos’ on the EU borders escalated in ways that tested politi126

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cal consensus and deepened divisions over who had responsibility for the desperate men, women and children landing on the European shores (Papademetriou, 2015). The initial ad hoc response posed an ‘existential crisis’ in the EU as the frontline states struggled to cope; countries such as Britain refused to accept ‘migrants’ who had already entered the EU, and tensions were ratcheted up over internal border controls in a political entity that allowed free movement within the Schengen area (Banulescu-Bogdan & Fratzke, 2015). Tensions were exacerbated by growing public hostility to migration fuelled by successive waves of enlargement which had taken place over the decades and a resurgent radical right, for whom the crisis seemed to confirm their most primal fears. It was in this context that razor wire was rolled out across Europe (Ibrahim & Howarth, 2018b). Many of the world’s refugee crises take place away from the direct gaze of the public, whose primary source of information is through news outlets and social media and where the ‘other’ person is reconstituted as a threat to sovereignty and security, thereby visually de-humanized (Bleiker et al., 2013, p 398). The European crisis was simultaneously distant in the flight of the forcibly displaced in north Africa, yet also proximate in its unfolding along major transport routes of Europe as thousands of refugees and migrants walked or crowded onto trains in the direct gaze of the public, politicians and the media, making possible an unprecedented proliferation of images taken both by professionals and passers-by, which were then uploaded onto social media platforms. The European crisis was highly mediated and ‘a very visual’ one, where images provided snapshots of subplots within a wider drama, whether it be boats and bodies in the water or Alan Kurdi’s body on a Turkish beach, thousands walking roads on the Croatian-Slovenian border or the violent burning of the Jungle camp in Calais. Images such as those of Kurdi’s body prompted an intensely contradictory response: an outpouring of public outrage and pity among some Europeans on social media as well as dramatic, racist and denigrative discourses by others (Burrell & Hörschelmann, 2019, p. 45). The polarisation played out in a narrative ecology between stories of suffering and counter-narratives of the radical right, which viewed pity for the other as a weakness that threatened the survival of Europe itself (Alduy, 2017).

Ontological Anxieties With Digital Fake Images Fake news is not a new term as it dates back to at least the 1890s, but it became popularized and part of the English vernacular after the 2015 Brexit referendum and 2016 US Presidential election (Flood, 2016). Originally, the term referred to fabricated content that mimicked news, but it is morphing and, more recently, ‘fake news’ has been weaponized by populist leaders to disparage and discredit content critical of their conduct or policies. Nor is the phenomenon new. Fabrications were a common feature of sensationalist mass newspapers for much of the 19th century, and only after public opprobrium at the more outrageous accounts threatened the commercial viability of the press did editors develop codes of conduct and rituals to curb the more extreme forms of fake news and images (Schudson, 2001). Such measures minimised the more overt fabrications but never eliminated them from journalism (McNair, 2017). Journalistic norms and rituals around facts have developed in tandem with the expansion of photography, not only in newspapers but also in wider society. An occupational ideology emerged on news desks rooted in the belief that ‘seeing is believing’ and that images could corroborate the ‘truthfulness’ of the news report (Newton, 2013). Such beliefs were at odds with a form which, since the advent of photography, has been open to manipulation in a variety of ways, including appropriating an image, then decontextualizing and recaptioning it, then using it to illustrate or corroborate an entirely unrelated event, 127

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often in an entirely different context. Most recently, a photograph which claimed to depict a Syrian boy orphaned by the war sleeping ‘between the graves of his parents’ was found to have been miscaptioned, having originally been taken as part of an art project in a different country (Broderick, 2014). Faking may also entail making physical changes to the artefact itself that go beyond cropping, retouching or ‘tidying up’ and, in the process, substantively altering what was depicted to fit a predetermined narrative, or accentuating certain components of the image and de-emphasising others. Engravers, for instance, working in the 1850s on images depicting colonial subjects accentuated certain physical attributes of the racialized other to fit with existing stereotypes of the ‘savage’ (Willis, 2011). A similar technique applied to a digital image provoked an outcry and accusations of racism when Time magazine, using photo-editing software, darkened the features of O J Simpson at the time of his trial (Carmody, 1994). Chemical and digital technologies have also made possible the superimposing of one image on another to create a third, most famously in an 1860 photographic portrait of President Abraham Lincoln, which located his head on the body of another man to emphasis his gravitas and statesmanship (Waters, 2017). Similar principles have been used to alter images throughout the history of photography; however, the major difference is chemical manipulation in a darkroom never attracted the same degree of social anxiety as digital manipulation has (Osborne 2010). John Corner has drawn attention to how the proliferation of fake news after 2015 has sparked a ‘largely non-academic wave of anxiety and interest’ (2017, p. 1106). Anxiety is of sociological interest, the exploration of which, in this chapter, starts from Peter Osborne’s (2010) contention that contemporary concern about digital images is an ontological one which centres on understandings of the relationship of the original image to the real. Manipulation of any image takes place in the gap between two ‘disjunctive and hence potentially separable’ processes: i.e. the ‘event of capture’ when an image is taken and stored and the ‘event of visualisation’ when the artefact is produced from what is stored (p. 60). The gap is present in the production of both chemically and digitally produced images, the difference being that with the digital form, captured material is stored in code on an image file, making it particularly vulnerable to manipulation and open to the possibility that all trace of alteration could be rendered invisible (Farid, 2019). The mounting anxiety of the proliferation of fake news and images has spawned a growth in the number of fact-checkers attached to legacy news organizations or as stand-alone operations, whose work is aided by the emergence of free software such as reverse image searches or metadata analysis on the image file itself. Provided that the camera’s GPS function was enabled at the point of capture and the metadata is untampered with, every iteration or change to the image before visualisation and circulation on the internet is captured in the image file (Farid, 2019). The verifier can then cross-reference the history of the image or its metadata against the claims made in the caption about an event, place or person. The use of such software has enabled a network of factchecking organizations across Europe to identify at least 162 cases of fake news on the refugee crisis, including images that had been recaptioned or manipulated (France24 Observers.com, 2018). Whether public exposure of fake images mitigates ontological anxieties by holding up to scrutiny the fabrication or whether it fuels anxiety by providing evidence of the prevalence of the practice, this is unclear. Either way, fact-checkers operate with inherent disadvantages because of the time lag between the circulation of the image (and, in some cases, its virality) and the posting of the outcome of the checks. There is also no obligation for an organization or social media site to take down a fake image once their attention has been drawn to it and, even when they do, the architecture of the internet means the fake image can be endlessly recycled, only to resurface on other websites or be reposted on social media. Not only do the multiple visualisations of the original image and the propensity for some to be endlessly recycled fuel anxiety over digital images, there is also the fear that more sophisticated changes 128

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by professionals, sometimes in support of criminal activity, may be invisible if the camera’s GPS has been disabled and metadata altered or destroyed (Farid, 2019). The challenge for image forensics, says Henry Farid (2019), is that innovation in deception technologies is evolving faster than the tools and techniques of digital forensics to detect it. Concerns about the vulnerability of the digital form are not new, having emerged as early as the 1990s when alarmed editors and cryptologists drew attention to the readily modifiable nature of the digital image, the ‘speed, ease and precision’ by which it could be modified and the possibility that changes may leave no visible trace of the original or the alterations (Gladney & Ehrlich, 1996, p. 497). The chapter suggests ontological anxiety is also being fuelled by the way in which protocols put in place in the 1990s to safeguard the ‘integrity’ of the digital form, reasserting its mimetic relationship to the real as a hallmark of the credibility of the profession, are now breaking down. At the time, altered images on the cover or entertainment pages were seen by editors as acceptable because they were deemed to fall under artistic or creative license, while those embedded in news stories, where the photographic depiction of the ‘real’ was intended to corroborate the facts, were deemed to be taboo (Harris, 1991). Responses to breaches of the taboo, seen as not only compromising the ontological integrity of the image but also damaging public trust in the profession, were punitive, in some cases costing the photojournalist his job and the removal of his entire portfolio from the archives (Carlson, 2009). As post-truth politics intrudes into the depicting of news in the 21st century, such protocols and taboos rooted in occupational ideologies about the mimetic nature of the image are being profoundly disrupted. It concerns not only the photoshopping of images of fashion, lifestyle or entertainment pages, presumably for ‘creative’ purposes, which attracted the attention of legislatures concerned about the impact of size zero models on public health. In 2018, Time magazine was attacked for using a ‘fake image’ of a crying child being towered over by Trump on its cover page as a symbol of the administration’s child separation policies on the US-Mexican border. It subsequently emerged that a stock photograph from the Getty collection had been used and the girl had not, as widely assumed, been separated from her parents. It was, therefore, seen as inaccurate to use her as a symbol of the traumatic consequences of government policy (Kirby, 2018).

The Aesthetic Turn and the European Refugee Crisis This chapter draws on the aesthetic turn in politics to segue from the ontological to the symbolic. The turn emerged in the 1980s out of a critique of dominant mimetic accounts of the image as an imitation or mirror of the event which, it was argued, obfuscated the ‘highly arbitrary nature’ of depictions which we take to be real (Bleiker, 2001, p. 509). While Osborne explores the gap between the acts of capture and visualisation as a site of ontological anxiety with the digital image, aesthetic approaches view the gap between ‘a form of representation and what is represented’ as ‘inevitable’ and the ‘very location of politics’ (Bleiker, 2001, p. 510). David Campbell (2007) illustrates the potential of the aesthetic approach in his analysis of the Darfur conflict, in which he argues that a critique of the gap between image and its external referent goes beyond questions of true or false. The issue for Campbell is not the (in)accuracy of representations but how images serve as metaphoric symbols with the potential to evoke different interpretations and affective responses of pity, anger, or revulsion. An aesthetic analysis is concerned with ‘visual performance of the social field, whereby pictures bring the objects they purport to simply reflect into being’ (Campbell 2007, p 379-380). The act of faking images of news events is one that seeks to constrain certain meanings, supporting others in ways that underpin ways of seeing and narrating. The

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attempt to post-capture and fundamentally alter what is physically depicted in a news event is a political act of fitting the image to a predetermined narrative that serves an ideological agenda. French philosopher Jacques Ranciere (2007; 2014) argues that aestheticization invites a rethinking of political power by illuminating social hierarchies that order what can or cannot be seen or said, that determine who can see or speak and that organize space and time within what is understood to be intelligible. Where the marginalized are unrecognized, their aspirations and interests remain unseen and/or unheard. For Ranciere, politics correctly understood is an inherently disruptive attempt by the victimized and excluded to assert themselves, to be seen and heard. Where their efforts are successful, the distribution of the sensible is redrawn in more egalitarian ways; however, this politics of possibility also encounters a politics of malevolence (cf. Hawkins and Straughan 2016, p. 2). The act of fleeing across the Mediterranean in search of refuge from persecution and war is an assertion by the vulnerable of the right to live, their flight a plea to be heard and visualised in dramatic images of boats and landings, rescues in the Mediterranean and drowned bodies washed up on beaches. The arrival in the EU of large numbers of the forcibly displaced overwhelmed and disrupted existing infrastructures, but the preoccupation of European states with shoring up defences and procedures raises doubts as to whether their cries for help and their pleas for refuge were heard (Ibrahim & Howarth, 2018b). The voices of Europe’s refugees were also mediated through others, their subjectivities imposed on them in a malevolent politics constructed by senior ministers presenting their governments as simultaneously holding firm against a ‘flood’ of migrants while being morally pragmatic in differentiating between ‘genuine refugees’, who were welcome, and ‘illegal migrants’ or ‘economic migrants’, who were not (Ibrahim & Howarth, 2018b). Governments resistant to hosting refugees in the first place but reluctant to be seen to eject those who faced death if returned to their country of origin assumed the power to designate who was ‘genuine’ and who was not, who should be granted asylum and who rejected, to decide, in some cases, who should live and who should not. Such adjudications were framed within a wider EU policy imperative resistant to asylum while holding to a public veneer of upholding international treaties (Ibrahim & Howarth, 2018c). News images of hundreds of thousands in boats, on beaches and on the roads of Europe appeared to corroborate ministerial rhetoric of a ‘flood’ of migrants. Disruption to trains and trade, captured in graphic images of long traffic jams and refugees attempting to stow aboard vehicles, evoked public anger at the inconvenience as well as criticism from industry of a perceived failure of governments to control borders. Virulent oratory of ‘swarms’ of migrants ‘marauding’ suburbia and ‘terrorising’ passers-by were used by the British and Hungarian governments to legitimize the rolling out of razor wire across Europe and the dispatch of warships to the Mediterranean. Images of sunlight glinting on the wire and of black-clad riot police protected by shields charging unarmed refugees captured something of the violent malevolence of the response (Ibrahim & Howarth, 2018a). Not all responses were violent. Periodic outpourings of public outrage and pity followed viral materialised accounts of mass drownings in images of rows of wooden coffins in a hangar (Squires, 2013). A plethora of images depicted the rescue of people from overcrowded boats about to sink or others already in the water at risk of drowning, but perhaps the most iconic image of the European refugee crisis was that of Alan Kurdi’s dead body washed up on a Turkish beach in 2015. Yasmin Ibrahim (2018, p. 1), in theorising the image as simultaneously evoking pathos and a ‘new type of (in)humanity in Europe’, argues that the internet ‘constantly re-appropriates iconic images into new artistic and creative formats where images can be stripped of context, re-hashed and endlessly circulated as cultural artefacts, bearing the burden of history yet disenfranchised from it’. The radical right deployed fake images in a visual

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narrative that challenged any pity as weakness within a wider story of invasion and government failure to hold firm and control the borders of the sovereign state.

Fake Images and the Invasion Narrative of the Radical Right This chapter conceptualises fake images as a form of visual narrative imbued with a symbolism derived from political cultures where appeals to emotion and belief take precedence over those to reason and fact. Rethinking fake images as manipulations or re-appropriations to fit pre-existing narratives opens an exploration of the beliefs, values and primal fears that were, for the radical right, confirmed by the escalation in the European refugee crisis. Radical right narratives are often infused with nostalgia, a mythic notion of a past when European societies were homogeneously white, but the nub is a nativist belief that states should be inhabited exclusively by the indigenous population and that anyone else is inherently threatening (cf. Mudde 2013). The counter-narratives of the radical right do not emerge in isolation but gain their ‘sustenance and virility’ from what circulates in mainstream politics and legacy media (Foroughi et al., 2019, p. 141). Accounts from the UN of the biggest refugee crisis since World War 2, from centre-right politicians of a ‘swarm’ of migrants, and legacy media reports of a ‘flood’ entering Europe that were visualised in a proliferation of images of small overcrowded boats landing on the beaches or of rescues from the waters of the Mediterranean fuelled the sense of grievance in the radical right. The visual narrative was given a particular national twist by the pro-Brexit campaign group Leave.EU in the run-up to the 2015 British referendum, when they circulated a fake video of a boat full of migrants that purported to show how easy it was to enter Britain illicitly (Channel 4 News, 2019). The video went viral, garnering hundreds of thousands of views on Facebook, but satellite data obtained by Channel 4 News showed that the men had not left UK territorial waters. Leave.EU’s fake video was only one of a number of visuals that supported the invasion narrative, but images of small over-crowded boats seemed insufficient to fully capture the belief of impending invasion and the magnitude of the threat of Europe being overrun by migrants. Radical right groups reimaged the invasion narrative by appropriating an existing series of images of the La Vlora packed to the rails, with more migrants clambering up vessel’s ropes desperate to board a ship bound for Europe or standing in row upon row on the quayside, waiting to board (Kleinfeld, 2015). The image, captioned ‘Invasion of Italy’, where ‘6000 illegal immigrants arrived in just 48 hours’, formed the centre-piece of the website of Islamophobic group Pegida, eliciting a range of extreme responses, including calls for the ship to be ‘torpedoed’ with migrants on board (Kleinfeld, 2015). The image was also circulated widely, including on Riposte Laique in France, by political parties in Belgium and by the vice president of the Italian Senate, affording the explicitly anti-immigrant claims a veneer of legitimacy and respectability (France24 Observers, 2015; 2018). A reverse image search on the photograph by fact-checkers traced the series of images to 1991 when La Vlora was crowded with Albanian refugees destined for Bari in Italy. The same image had been downloaded, recontextualized and recaptioned to support the invasion narrative in 2014-2015 (France24 Observers, 2015; 2018). The affective resonance of the La Vlora images for the radical right lies less in what they depict and more in what they symbolise: a set of meanings that transcend time, space and event about the crisis and the wider narrative of European immigration. The racialisation of the crisis was not the preserve of the radical right. Visual narratives in legacy media and political establishments were already infused with colonialist constructs, evoking fears that the colonisation of Africa and India would be reversed, 131

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that the coloniser would be colonised and that civilized urban spaces would revert to the jungle and its laws (Ibrahim and Howarth, 2018a). At one level, such constructs can be understood in terms of radical right narratives leaking out of echo chambers into the mainstream; at another, primal fears of invasion from the ‘Dark Continent’ run deep in western popular culture. The storyline in the film and video game Jumanji is of the jungle unleashed in the middle of white suburbia, and in documentaries such as Killer Virus and Plague Doctors, the message is one of lethal viruses being transmitted from the tropics to the West and threatening to replace civilization with savagery. The fake images of the radical right build on existing cultural tropes but also take their virility from one of their canonical novels, Jean Raspail’s Camp of the Saints (1973), seen by some as an apocalyptic account of the migrant crisis (Donohue, 2019). The dystopian, anti-immigrant novel narrates how a flotilla of boats with Indian migrants sets out for the southern coast of France, presenting the liberal political establishment with a dilemma where ‘to let them in would destroy us. To reject them would destroy them’ (Raspail, cited Peltier and Kulish, 2019). Weakened by pity for the plight and suffering of the other, the government’s response is too little too late. The military fail to repel the invaders, political elites capitulate, the French public collapses, morally poisoned by their ‘damned, obnoxious detestable pity’ for ‘other races’, and the West falls to the ‘black and brown’ invasion ‘swarming’ across Europe (Raspail 1975, cited Alduy, 2017). Cecile Alduy attributes the affective power of the novel to the ‘very vivid images of near destruction of the white race and the absence of resistance from the government’ (cited Peltier and Kulish, 2019). The novel is unremitting in its racism in that it constructs the characters solely in terms of pigmentation, and is nativist in its assumptions of a zero-sum fight to the death between races where the pity of white liberals for the other ultimately dooms Europe. The book was implicitly evoked after the 2009 demolition of the informal refugee camp in Calais known as The Jungle by a British newspaper columnist who warned that the ‘tide of despair has only just begun’ (Johnston 2009, cited Ibrahim and Howarth, 2018a). Five years later, French right-wing politician Marine Le Pen explicitly evoked the narrative after images of Alan Kurdi’s body on a beach had gone viral when she cautioned against the weakness of public pity, urging the public to read the book so as to be forewarned of ‘hundreds of thousands of migrants who will come tomorrow … [threatening] a real migratory submersion’ of Europe (cited Alduy, 2017). The over-arching visual narrative of invasion during the 2014-5 crisis also comprised two imbricated sub-plots, one constructed the racialised other as a threat, therefore undeserving of pity, and the other one centred on so-called ‘staged drownings’, suggesting any pity had been manufactured by the legacy media (Funke, 2019). Again, fake images drew febrile energy from rumours and fears circulating in mainstream political discourse and legacy media that ISIS fighters may have infiltrated the ‘refugee trails’ of Europe (Dearden, 2015). The radical right re-appropriated the notion of infiltration to depict ‘jihadists’ arriving in Europe. One of their recaptioned images, purportedly of an ‘Islamist’, was debunked by BBC factcheckers, who ascertained that the depicted man was not an ISIS fighter but a former commander in the Free Syrian Army who had been profiled by Associated Press a month earlier (Kleinfeld, 2019). While the distinction may be irrelevant for nativist thinkers for whom any other entering their space is abhorrent, the refuting of their narrative by fact-checkers becomes for many of the radical right ‘evidence’ of a ‘conspiracy’ between establishment politicians and the legacy media (Foroughi et al., 2019, p. 135). The notion of conspiracy was given an added twist with claims of ‘staged drownings’ intended to evoke pity and ‘sway public opinion’ (Funke, 2019). The claims centred on the drowned body of Kurdi which, it was claimed, had been moved to a more photogenic spot to maximise its affective potential. The image provided by radical right groups as ‘evidence’ of staging was identified as being of Alan’s 132

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older brother, Galip, whose dead body had been found a few hundred meters away. Another ‘drowning’ video, since removed from YouTube, depicts veiled women in the water, filmed by a production crew on the beach, with a Czech male voice claiming it was staging a scene of drowning. AFP reported that the video had attracted 1.2 million views on YouTube, Facebook and Twitter within days, but further investigation found that the video was of a documentary about the 1922 exodus of Greeks from Asia Minor which had been re-appropriated to serve the ideological agenda of the radical right (Funke, 2018). The re-appropriation and manipulation of images by the radical right not only supported a pre-determined narrative, but it also constructed the antagonist in accordance with pre-determined colonialist stereotypes of the racial other. At one level, there is nothing new about this. Historically-rooted racial stereotypes of the foreign other, date from the colonial era, when Europeans first encountered the African ‘savage … endowed with violent and sexual impulses’, assumptions bolstered by pseudo-scholarly data from the mid-nineteenth century (Hawkins, 2017, p. 39). The invention of the photographic camera overlapped with the peak of colonialism, so it is unsurprising that since its inception, photography has been tainted with racist ideologies, including where the act of imaging the other has been about western violence against the racialised others (Sealey, 2017). Colonial images were manipulated in ways that constructed the other as the ‘inferior race’, to illustrate racial differences (Willis, 2011). Yet, so too was the darkening of O J Simpson’s face on the cover of Time magazine to coincide with his trial for murder,, a manipulation that the editor insisted had ‘no racial implication’, despite the perception in Afro-American circles that it had given Simpson a sinister appearance (Carmody, 1994) in keeping with white perceptions about the criminality of the black body, in particular, the male. All the fake images reviewed for this article have depicted the male adult other sans wives and children, feeding scepticism about their claims, articulated in a post on Pegida UK which said that ‘if refugees needed protection, they would bring their wives and children’ (cited Dearden, 2015). Billy Hawkins’ (2017) argument about the dominant images of black men in America, is equally valid in Europe; i.e. that black heterosexual masculinity has been ‘strategically defined’, where black or brown men had their ‘identities pre-arranged for them’ (p. 39). The malevolent politics of race continues to silence their voice, legitimizing such actions by constructing the actions of the racialised other within symbols of menace and threat. The imperative to maintain control seeks to confine the racialised body to its place and to roles that maintain ideologies of control and white supremacy (Hawkins, 2017, p. 39-40).

CONCLUSION Faking photographs is not a new practice or phenomenon, but something quantitatively and qualitatively different is happening with digital images in the contemporary age. Not only is the digital image a source of ontological anxiety, something notably absent from its precursors, the form has also attracted alarm because of the political implications of radical right groups that have colonised parts of the social media, wielding a symbolic power through the visual narratives they tell. Since the 1990s, the profile and power of the radical right have grown as they have adapted communication strategies that appeal to emotion and belief to suit new social media platforms and, in the process, colonising significant parts of the internet. In a context where there is a crisis of political legitimacy through the disruption of the traditional media landscape and conditions of information (dis)order, a different narrative ecology has emerged in which the radical right has been able to circulate its own story beyond its own platforms. Fake digital images have become a critical tool for the radical right within the shifting ecology. Aes133

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thetic approaches shift the focus of analysis away from accurate versus inaccurate imaging to the gap between the form of representation and the representation itself, thereby facilitating an exploration of the manipulation of an image to fit pre-determined narratives and ideologies. The invasion narrative of the radical right, graphically captured in the fake image of the La Vlora, derived much of its energy from an unprecedented crisis of forced migration and the perception that governments, weakened by pity for the other and supported by a complicit media, had lost control of the situation. While the crisis fuelled the existing anti-immigration sentiments and primal fears of the other, the invasion narrative of the radical right derived a coherence from a nativist ideology and the apocalyptic vision of the demise of Europe as a white civilization, as narrated in Camp of the Saints. An exploration of the faking of images to fit a pre-determined narrative facilitates an exploration of deeper, more profound dislocations. In this perspective, post-truth politics manifested in fake images are more usefully thought of as a ‘symptom’ of a deeper crisis of trust in western societies that ‘no amount of fact-checking alone … will resolve’ (Myers, 2018, p. 392; Fischer, 2019, p. 133).

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Campbell, D. (2007). Geopolitics and visuality: Sighting the Darfur conflict. Political Geography, 26(4), 357–382. doi:10.1016/j.polgeo.2006.11.005 Carlson, M. (2009). The reality of a fake image: News norms, photojournalistic craft, and Brian Walski’s fabricated photograph. Journalism Practice, 3(2), 125–139. doi:10.1080/17512780802681140 Carmody, D. (1994, June 25). Time responds to criticism over Simpson cover. The New York Times. Retrieved 06 December 2019. https://www.nytimes.com/1994/06/25/us/time-responds-to-criticism-oversimpson-cover.html Channel 4 News. (2019, April 16). Revealed: How Leave.EU faked migrant footage. Retrieved 06 December 2019. https://www.channel4.com/news/revealed-how-leave-eu-faked-migrant-footage Corner, J. (2017). Fake news, post-truth and media–political change. Media Culture & Society, 39(7), 1100–1107. doi:10.1177/0163443717726743 Dearden, L. (2015). The fake refugee images that are being used to distort public opinion on asylum seekers. Independent. Retrieved 06 December 2019 https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/thefake-refugee-images-that-are-being-used-to-distort-public-opinion-on-asylum-seekers-10503703.html Donahue, K. C. (2019). In the Camp of the Saints: Right-Wing Populism in Twenty-First-Century France. In Cycles of Hatred and Rage (pp. 117-142). Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. doi:10.1007/978-3-03014416-6_6 Farid, H. (2019). Fake Photos. MIT Press. doi:10.7551/mitpress/11736.001.0001 Fischer, F. (2019). Knowledge politics and post-truth in climate denial: On the social construction of alternative facts. Critical Policy Studies, 13(2), 1–19. doi:10.1080/19460171.2019.1602067 Flood, A. (2016, November 2). Fake news is ‘very real’ word of the year for 2017. The Guardian. https:// www.theguardian.com/books/2017/nov/02/fake-news-is-very-real-word-of-the-year-for-2017 Foroughi, H., Yiannis, G., & Fotaki, M. (2019). Leadership in a post-truth era: A new narrative disorder? Leadership, 15(2), 135–151. doi:10.1177/1742715019835369 FRANCE 24 Observers. (2015, September 15). Beware the fake migrant images shared online. Retrieved 12 October 2019. https://observers.france24.com/en/20150915-beware-fake-migrant-images-shared-online FRANCE 24 Observers. (2018, August 5). How fake images spread racist stereotypes about migrants across the globe. https://observers.france24.com/en/20180105-fake-images-racist-stereotypes-migrants. Furness, H. (2012, May 27). Syrian massacre in Houla condemned as outrage grows. The Telegraph. Gladney, G. A., & Ehrlich, M. C. (1996). Cross‐media response to digital manipulation of still and moving images. Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media, 40(4), 496–508. doi:10.1080/08838159609364371 Gower, M., & Smith, B. (2015). Briefing Paper: Migration pressures in Europe. House of Commons Library, (CBF 7210). http://researchbriefings.parliament.uk/ResearchBriefing/Summary/CBP-7210#fullreport Harris, C. R. (1991). Digitization and manipulation of news photographs. Journal of Mass Media Ethics, 6(3), 164–174. doi:10.120715327728jmme0603_4

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Hawkins, H., & Straughan, E. (Eds.). (2016). Geographical Aesthetics: Imagining Space, Staging Encounters. Routledge. Hochschild, A. R. (2018). Strangers in their own land: Anger and mourning on the American right. The New Press. https://africasacountry.com/2019/03/camp-of-the-saints Hughes, H. M. (1937). Human interest stories and democracy. Public Opinion Quarterly, 1(2), 73–83. doi:10.1086/265063 Ibrahim, Y. (2018). The Unsacred and the Spectacularized: Alan Kurdi and the Migrant Body. Social Media+ Society, 4(4). doi:10.1177/2056305118803884 Ibrahim, Y., & Howarth, A. (2018a). Calais and Its Border Politics: From Control to Demolition. Routledge. doi:10.4324/9781315169712 Ibrahim, Y., & Howarth, A. (2018b). Communicating the ‘migrant’ other as risk: Space, EU and expanding borders. Journal of Risk Research, 21(12), 1465–1486. doi:10.1080/13669877.2017.1313765 Ibrahim, Y., & Howarth, A. (2018c). Review of Humanitarian Refuge in the United Kingdom: Sanctuary, Asylum, and the Refugee Crisis. Politics & Policy, 46(3), 348–391. doi:10.1111/polp.12254 Jasanoff, S., & Simmet, H. R. (2017). No funeral bells: Public reason in a ‘post-truth’ age. Social Studies of Science, 47(5), 751–770. doi:10.1177/0306312717731936 PMID:29034796 Kessler, G. (2019). Introducing the Fact Checker’s Guide to Manipulated Video. The Washington Post. Kirby, J. (2018, October 12). Time’s crying girl photo controversy, explained. Vox. Retrieved 12 October 2019. https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2018/6/22/17494688/time-magazine-cover-crying-girlphoto-controversy-family-separation Kleinfeld, P. (2015, September 19). Calling Bullshit on the Anti-Refugee Memes Flooding the Internet. Retrieved 12 October 2019. https://www.vice.com/en_uk/article/zngwz9/kleinfeld-refugee-memesdebunking-846 McNair, B. (2017). Fake news: Falsehood, fabrication and fantasy in journalism. Routledge. doi:10.4324/9781315142036 Memou, A. (2019). Spectacular images of the “refugee crisis”. Photographies, 12(1), 81–97. doi:10.1 080/17540763.2018.1501728 Mudde, C. (2013). Three Decades of Populist Radical Right Parties in Western Europe: So, What? European Journal of Political Research, 52(1), 1–19. doi:10.1111/j.1475-6765.2012.02065.x Museum of Hoaxes. (1997). Accessed 06 December 2019. http://hoaxes.org/about Myres, J. D. (2018). Post-Truth as symptom: The emergence of a masculine hysteria. Philosophy & Rhetoric, 51(4), 392–415. doi:10.5325/philrhet.51.4.0392 Newton, J. (2013). The burden of visual truth: The role of photojournalism in mediating reality. Routledge. doi:10.4324/9781410605900

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Osborne, P. (2010). Infinite exchange: The social ontology of the photographic image. Philosophy of Photography., 1(1), 59–68. doi:10.1386/pop.1.1.59/1 Papademetriou, D. (2015). Top 10 of 2015 - Issue # 1: Migration crisis evaluates European consensus and governance. Migration Policy Institute. https://www.migrationpolicy.org/article/top-10-2015-issue1-migration-crisis-tests-european-consensus-and-governance Peltier, E., & Kulish, N. (2019, November 22). A racist book’s malign and lingering influence. The New York Times. Retrieved 06 December 2019 https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/22/books/stephen-millercamp-saints.html Ranciere, J. (2007). The politics of aesthetics: The distribution of the sensible (G. Rockhill, Trans.). London: Continuum Publishing. Raspail, J. (1975). Camp of the Saints. Scribner. Schudson, M. (2001). The objectivity norm in American journalism. Journalism, 2(2), 149–170. doi:10.1177/146488490100200201 Squires, N. (2013, October 5). Divers in Lampedusa discover dozens of dead refugees trapped inside sunken boat. The Telegraph. Retrieved 06 December 2019. https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/ europe/italy/10358153/Divers-in-Lampedusa-discover-dozens-of-dead-refugees-trapped-inside-sunkenboat.html Stieber, C. (2019, March 17). Camp of the Saints. Africa is a Country. Toyama, K., Logan, R., & Roseway, A. (2003). Geographic location tags on digital images. In Proceedings of the eleventh ACM international conference on Multimedia. ACM. 10.1145/957013.957046 UNHCR. (2015). Worldwide displacement hits all-time high as war and persecution increase. https:// www.unhcr.org/558193896.html Waisbord, S. (2018). Truth is what happens to news. Journalism Studies, 19(13), 1866–1878. doi:10.1 080/1461670X.2018.1492881 Waters, Ml. (2017, December 6). The great length taken to make Abraham Lincoln look good in portraits. Atlas Obscura. Retrieved 06 December 2019. https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/abraham-lincolnphotos-edited Willis, E. (2011). Re-working a photographic archive: John Hunter Kerr’s portraits of Kulin people, 1850s–2004. Journal of Australian Studies, 35(2), 235–249. doi:10.1080/14443058.2011.562230

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Race and the Digital Imaginary

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Chapter 9

Facebook Aesthetics:

White World-Making, Digital Imaginary, and “The War on Terror” Sadhvi Dar Queen Mary University of London, UK

ABSTRACT What is the relationship between digital imaginaries and whiteness? Following recent calls to investigate the juncture between whiteness and the internet, this chapter seeks to provide a critique of imagery posted on Facebook in the aftermath of ‘terror attacks’ in Paris 2015. The author renders these images as structured by deep forms of white world-making, ways of thinking and feeling that reproduce whiteness as ethically superior, innocent, and in need of preserving at the cost of non-white knowledges and peoples. In this chapter, the author argues that the internet provides yet another site for whiteness to engage in white world-making by extending the white gaze to digital platforms in the service of transforming the violence of Paris into a racialised attack on white innocence. As such, the Paris images are understood as responding to and perpetuating a digital imaginary in which the political capacities of images relate to an ethics of violence to the non-white Muslim body.

INTRODUCTION The reproduction of whiteness relies on its constitution as an invisible ‘raceless’ identity, thereby equating white subjects and their specific cultural mores and values with the universality of the human. (Thobani, 2007: 172) What is the relationship between digital imaginaries and whiteness? Following recent calls to investigate the juncture between whiteness and the internet (Nakayama, 2015), this chapter seeks to provide a critique of imagery posted on Facebook in the aftermath of ‘terror attacks’ in Paris 2015. Rather than comprehending these posts as a user-reaction to a violent event, I render these images as structured by deep forms of white world-making, ways of thinking and feeling that reproduce whiteness as ethically DOI: 10.4018/978-1-7998-4796-0.ch009

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superior, innocent and in need of preserving at the cost of non-white knowledges and peoples. In this chapter, I argue that the internet provides yet another site for whiteness to engage in white world-making by extending the white gaze to digital platforms in the service of transforming the violence of Paris into a racialised attack on white innocence. As such, the Paris images are understood as responding to and perpetuating a digital imaginary in which the political capacities of images relate to an ethics of violence to the non-white Muslim body. The possibility for anti-racist activism on the internet is thus deemed severely mitigated in the context of digital corporations structuring social media platforms - the algorithms that curate online imagery and their viewers’ gaze are racist (Noble, 2018). During/in the aftermath of the Paris shootings (13 November 2015), Facebook became a platform for the production and circulation of photographs, cartoons and filters representing or reacting to the events. These images varied in content and form and a selection became viral. The viral images concentrated attention to the Western European location of the attacks (Paris) and simultaneously challenged notions of nationality and citizenship by their appeal to Facebook-users globally. The viral images varied; some depicted the chaotic aftermath of the shootings (see Image 1), other images portrayed shrines to those who lost their lives in the attacks (see Image 2) and, there were also photos of various international landmark buildings lit up in the colours of the French flag (see Image 3). Other representations included a filter that superimposed the colours of the French flag onto users’ profile pictures (see Image 4) and, arguably the most iconic image to emerge on social media newsfeeds was a drawing of a peace sign constructed from the outline of the Eifel Tower (see Image 5). It is not unusual that Facebook users posted, commented on and shared Paris images after the attacks. Social media has become a platform for sharing affected and affecting imagery immediately after violent events. Indeed, Facebook, alongside other social media platforms (Instagram, Twitter, Flickr, Tumblr), has offered an activist space where users may communicate to build community after experiencing violence (Linder et al., 2016). Others have hailed online community-building as invested with potential policy implications for citizens surviving national trauma (Dufty, 2012). Thus, the spontaneous circulation of Paris 2015 images on Facebook can be rendered a working through of trauma, expressing a need for community-building and as a strategy for recovery. Yet, while these studies have celebrated online community-building as an agentic process that can restore the sanctity and safety of those who have been traumatised, there are other critiques that foreground the political context within which violence is imagined and made sense of. Thobani (2007: 169) argues that the ‘War on Terror’ reconfigures “the practices that constitute whiteness through its definition of the West as endangered by the hatred and violence of its Islamist Other”. She foregrounds a ‘new’ imperial imaginary where the deployment of the discourse on ‘terror’ presents the current ‘threat’ and ‘terrorist’ violence as being of global proportions - committed to the destruction of the West at all costs. In this configuration, whiteness is re-centered as innocent of its colonial histories and contemporary complicity in the subjugation of brown and black people. This colonial amnesia is critical to Europe’s enduring self-image of a morally virtuous agent that represents a universal humanity invested with the responsibility to restore the rights of, and justice for, oppressed people (Bassel and Emejulu, 2017). In this vein, digital scholars can extend the analysis of explicitly racist posts to those representing European moral goodness where both registers sustain a belief in white innocence and white superiority. In this chapter, I draw on Fanon’s (1961) concept of colonial violence to unpack viral imagery circulated in the aftermath of Paris 2015 and conjoin it to online processes of white world-making. Fanon (1961: 33) articulates how colonial violence targeting black and brown bodies is normalised by a disembodied 140

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whiteness that (re)configures itself in the form of universal moralising “values”. Connecting these values to digital imaginaries, I employ Ranciere’s (2004, 2009) work on the politics of aesthetics to develop a conceptual framework locating Paris 2015 images within a digital communication paradigm that frames colonial violence. Through conducting a semiotic analysis of the Facebook images that draws on an interpretive philosophy, I explore the ways in which social media configures post-traumatic imagery for the purposes of sustaining colonial amnesia.

Whiteness, Colonial Violence and the Internet Scholars of critical race theory have defined race as a changeable and de-centred configuration comprised of “social meanings constantly being transformed by political struggle” (Omi and Winant, 1994: 55). As such, race is a socially constructed “concept which signifies and symbolizes social conflicts and interests by referring to different types of human bodies”, one “constructed and transformed socio-historically through competing political projects” (Omi and Winant 1994: 71). Race is a contested concept because its formation manifests through the political project, a project that is imbricated with forceful dynamics, claims and intersections. Racism is demonstrated in the way formation recreates “structures of domination based on essentialist categories of race” (Omi and Winant, 1994: 71). Extending these debates is scholarship that works with the concept of whiteness. Whiteness is what Ruth Frakenberg (1993) has identified as a structural position of social privilege and power that normalises the benefits racist societies award white groups, as well as normalising white violence (both physical and non-physical) targeting black and brown bodies. The study of whiteness therefore shifts attention away from the scenes of intergroup racial conflict or interracial co-existence to a critique of the “reproduction and maintenance of systems of racial inequality” (Hartigan, 1997: 496). Culture, including visual culture, in this framework is used in two ways (Hartigan, 1997: 497): “Primarily, it establishes a register apart from individual identity that affects and defines white people collectively while suggesting a broad range of means by which racial matters influence or inform the lives of white people, asserting that they, too, are ‘racial’. Secondly, the notion of ‘white culture’, developed and consistent through the long centuries of white global domination, reifies whiteness as a definable entity.” Here, the cultural dimensions of digital life are rendered as central to maintaining the certainty and consistency with which whiteness self-presents itself as innocent. When we employ whiteness as an analytical object to make sense of the seemingly innocuous Paris 2015 imagery, posting such images online can be rendered a racial act of identifying with white innocence in the face of colonial violence. On social media platforms, communicating one’s identity or identification with a community is entangled with multiple acts of showing. These acts are not a one-way process by which opinions or life events are made available and rendered visible to the world, instead they are knotted with Facebook’s liberal branding of itself, as a corporation that builds a common world movement1. Yet this commonality is framed by a distinctly liberal political economy within which the vocabulary of whiteness becomes the lingua franca for legitimising community-building that restores Europe’s innocence. Facebook provides users with the collaborative expertise of bearing witness to global events and traumas, to translate and produce knowledge about events as well as sensing and exposing them. Thus, Facebook has become a space for human sense-making structured by and reproduced through collective forms of visual representation (Matusitz, 2013; Kellner, 2015) that produces value for whiteness. Such forms of visual representation are associated with 9/11 imagery and how the circulation of these images played a central role in shifting the vocabularies of whiteness. 141

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The ‘War on Terror’ traces its own genesis to the 9/11 attacks. The destruction of New York’s iconic twin towers signified that the great Western powers were not infallible, and the transformation of this event into a media spectacle reverberated across the world, repeating the fact of America’s vulnerability (Thobani, 2007). The ‘War on Terror’ was launched by the Bush Administration in close co-ordination with its European and North American allies to reassert its dominance in the world, and as Thobani2 (2007: 169, my italics) has argued, “the battle to control the meaning of the attacks was no less intense than the one waged on the bodies of Muslims named as the enemy”. While the Bush Administration sought to enlarge its imperial hold over the oil-producing regions of the Middle East and Central Asia, the twin tower attacks were framed by a discourse of an “epochal assault in the West and its civilizational values” (Thobani, 2007: 169). By arguing Western civilization was under attack for being civilized, whiteness was able to reconfigure itself as innocent, unguarded and exposed while normalising hatred of a fanatic and uncivilised non-Western Other. While many scholars and activists have sought out Fanon’s (1961) thesis on colonial violence to understand decolonial struggles, I adopt a reading of Fanon to account for the coloniser’s reproduction of white European culture as innocent and vulnerable. His critique of colonial violence bears a specific significance to the Paris 2015 shootings, since his decolonising politics were borne out of his patent rejection of an expansive and entrenched French colonialism. The writings which I draw on here were formulated during the vicious French-Algerian War (1954-62) when he was writing for the Algerian National Liberation Front in exile from Tunis. These illuminations offer an incisive critique of French colonial society, the struggle against colonialism and the affective registers of colonial relations. Fanon identifies that the making and re-making of Western culture as civilizing, sensible and innocent is central to coloniser’s perpetuating the oppression of global majorities while re-framing decolonial struggles as dangerously unpredictable and therefore a threat to Western civilization. Where the coloniser admits defeat and retreats from colonised land, colonial authority will persist to create a neo-colonial order that privileges white Europeans and Americans. Establishing this neo-colonial order rests on the production and reproduction of Western culture as a universally humanising force that colonised people can relate to rather than resist. This configuring of white European culture enables whiteness to selfpresent as morally superior to colonised people’s as well as leaving open the possibility for the colonised to identify with whiteness – which Fanon argues is an act of colonial de-humanisation. Bringing Thobani and Fanon’s critiques of whiteness together, we can see how notions of witnessing colonial violence and creating community for self-recovery in borderless digital spaces need to become contextualised by the city space of Paris. Paris has long been celebrated by people across the political spectrum as exemplifying a geography of white rebellion. Paris’ imaginary evokes the 1789 French Revolution, the student riots of May 1968, and the more recent gilets jaunes movement that has sustained a year-long anti-establishment protest. These historical and contemporary events are framed by popular discourses that connect Paris to an ideology of refusal, of dynamic recovery and whitely dissent. By centering these Parisian tropes, France’s long history of African - Caribbean colonialism and its continuities with contemporary racial conflicts is made periphery, if not completely denied. For example, France does not record any ethnic data, arguing that it is a colour-blind nation. This position is a historical one and has led to sustained levels of marginalisation and the resulting deprivation of communities of colour (Bassel and Emejulu, 2017). The lack of ethnic data gathering has made antiracist organizing and advocacy extraordinarily challenging, though communities of colour have built and sustained movements such as Mwasi Collectif, Indigenes de la Republique and gilets noires to pursue a politics of survival. 142

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Further, France’s “colonial continuum” has manifested in blatant anti-Muslim legislation, such as the passing of the 2004 law banning religious signs in state schools that effectively outlaws Muslim women from wearing religious clothing (Indigenes de la Republique, 2005). This law was amended in 2010 to ban women from wearing burkas and niqabs in public. France’s political racelessness belies its explicit and concerted efforts to suppress Muslim identities and anti-racist activism. The racial morality of France is one that universalises whiteness at the cost of the rights of non-White others. In this political context, witnessing and self-recovery are structured by the whiteness of Paris - a social imaginary that needs to be teased out through an explicit analysis because white innocence has been normalised by the ‘War on Terror’. Demarcated from the violence against blackness/brownness, whiteness becomes a moral goodness and the city’s survival becomes inscribed through that imaginary. As Facebook users posted images and illustrations depicting their post-traumatic recovery, this act of collective remembering affirmed whiteness’s innocence and became redemptive to the black and brown bodies that were framed as causing the violence. I now turn to the issue of Facebook imagery and its connection to community-building. Drawing on Ranciere’s (2004, 2009) critique of aesthetics I build a conceptual framework to make visible the whiteness of the images that structure the users’ gaze along essentialist categories of race.

Making Sense of Facebook Aesthetics, Making Sense of Whiteness (Lest whiteness and blackness become static versions of the marxist superstructure/base paradigm—discrete, separate entities rather than constantly entangled registers—ethnographers must devise means to analyze how whites, as racial subjects, are embroiled in predicaments where the meanings of race are unclear and shifting, subjects of discourses or local idioms that are fashioned in fast-changing sites. (Hartigan, 1997: 502 For Jacques Ranciere, art and community are inseparable because of the singular politics that underscores the very way we imagine these concepts. Ranciere’s contribution to art theory is his critique of aesthetics that contradicts the progressive narrative of art moving from ‘modern’ through to ‘post-modern’ to ‘contemporary’ epochs. For what is usually referred to as the ‘modern’ period, Ranciere comprehends as an ‘aesthetic’ revolution that continues till today. The emergence of the aesthetic regime came at the end of the eighteenth and beginning of the nineteenth centuries, at the time Enlightenment transformed European politics, philosophy and economies towards operations that were increasingly dependent on slave labour and colonial extraction for wealth creation and industrialisation. Against the heavily regimented structuration of art forms that depicted them as corresponding to ‘high’ or ‘low’ art, the aesthetic revolution reframed our experience of it. Most significantly, the aesthetic revolution transformed art into an anti-representational pursuit. As decolonising analyses have shown, this gave rise to the idea that art must play a political role in the mobilisation of imagery to make visible European sensibilities and instil their registers within the viewer’s imaginary. I retain Ranciere’s critique of aesthetics, inasmuch I engage with the Paris images as Facebook aesthetics – a register of imagery where whiteness assigns roles, practices and capacities to the communities represented (explicitly or implicitly) in the images, while affecting the viewer’s sensibilities. I contend that this aesthetic regime transforms the boundaries between art and life because art’s function is to produce an affected encounter where viewers are drawn into a relation with Europe as moral superiority. This aesthetic relation is both individual to the viewer who is moved by the image to post, comment and 143

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re-post and it is communal because the relation to the image established in this encounter transforms the social boundaries of meaning-making. However, in identifying the online communities that Facebook aesthetics (re)make, we must heed Hartigan’s warning to be mindful not to build a structural argument reproducing whiteness as immutable and the idea of European innocence as beyond challenge. Returning to Ranciere’s conceptualisation of aesthetic art, the aesthetic regime contravenes the idea that art has an originary interpretation, or a singular meaning. Aesthetic art creates the conditions for dissensus, because it opens up the possibility for the re-ordering of bodies, boundaries and voices that go against traditional patterns. What is supplied to individual senses does not lead to predictable imaginaries. That is precisely why art is at the heart of politics that produce boundaries and communities and why Facebook imagery posted in the aftermath of the Paris 2015 shootings must be understood as a shifting, not cemented, discourse on race.

Whitely Imaginaries / Imageries The aesthetics of the Paris images are not predicated on their content, the images are aesthetic because they frame post-trauma through an affecting relationship with the image that subjectifies whitely users turning the white gaze on them and on their sensibilities. We can discern the politics of these images as divisive because community is built by the act of posting or liking the post, so these acts are transformed into an identification with the image. Those whose senses remain undisturbed and untraumatised can be identified within the register of the user who fails to know the trauma of the city’s mourning. Some acts of identification were blatant and obvious. By applying and sharing the profile picture filter that uses the French flag (image 4), the user superimposed two identities: their own and France’s. The filter provided the user with a way of engaging in self-recovery by literally becoming the national flag of France. Here, the flag’s muted and transparent tones represent the morality of liberalism – of a common humanity that is restrained as well as appropriated. France’s humanity can be assimilated into any global user’s identity. The proliferation of the flag filter transforms France from the location of a violent event into an imposing and a universally generous force. The profile picture filter is aesthetic because it reconfigures whiteness’s reach by producing a post-traumatic community in the service of universalising France’s moral superiority and its mourning’s global relevance. An image that was widely circulated on Facebook was a photograph of the damaged glass windows of a restaurant in the Bataclan district, where one of the Paris shootings took place (see Image 2). The restaurant’s shattered but exquisitely clean window is punctuated by two sharp bullet holes. Placed delicately within each hole, is a wilting flower: sometimes a rose, sometimes a carnation; but always the flowers placed in the gaping wounds of this once lively café are a shade of love: red, pink or white. This image was circulated and posted on Facebook (alongside other social media and news websites) the day after the Paris attacks. The image performs an economy of attention that reduces the heterogeneity of colonial experience to a single interface between a post-colonial moment and whiteness’s innocence. The bullet-holes signify the violation of human life, while the fading roses suggest the benevolent yet assertive democracies of the West. The photograph expresses simultaneous defiance against the terrorists and solidarity with a whitely universal humanity. The image therefore expresses an anti-terror politics and a nostalgic note of collective love, which memorialises a disembodied whiteness while invisiblising the brown body at the centre of the political issue. The photograph of the bullet-holes and roses draws attention to itself; it defines itself within a particular way of seeing colonial violence. The way the image does this is by functioning as a collage, assimilating 144

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at least four disparate, but timely, events: the anti-Vietnam peace rally outside the Pentagon in 1967 (see image 6); the civilized Paris as symbolised by the elegant glass windows; the erratic shooting as signified by the violent glass shatterings, the open, hopeless voids of the bullet holes; and, the post-shooting trauma/nostalgia as connoted by the delicate and velvety red roses that are both deeply romantic and whimsical. The conjoining of disparate, affected histories (whitely peace, colonial violence, romantic mourning) evokes desperate feelings within the viewer. The temporal collage produces a divided community: the non-White-Other-terrorist and the knowing-sensing-White-Parisian. On Facebook, the consumption and circulation of images produce user newsfeeds of knowable sensibilities that accumulate value when the user identifies with a common recollection of history and a universal reaction to colonial violence. The arranging and re-arranging of Facebook images, through the circulation of them, becomes an “inventory of traces of history” (Ranciere, 2009: 55). Facebook newsfeeds, whether belonging to a single-user or a group, take the listing of images on the webpage as a testimony to a shared experience, a world in common. Facebook enables a collection of images to signify a shared capacity to be affected by white trauma. In this sense, the Facebook user is both the artist and the archivist, being affected and affecting others in their pursuit of promoting Europe’s moral reach. This is also how Facebook aesthetics grasp the subjectivity of users in a specific way that is different to an encounter with an art object in an offline space. Facebook aesthetics are operationalised through co-creation that transforms the image into a community-building process. Community-building is accomplished by inviting responses, commentaries and correspondence about the image. Facebook imageries create relations and encounters, as well as an archive of art-objects to be looked at. Value is not only accumulated through the number of likes, but also by how the likes come to signify a community affected by the image. User-initiated commentary of the image provides the semblance of democratic plurality: the liberal tenet of producing community through communicative conflict is evidenced by Facebook making visible and inciting spontaneous vocality. Social media platforms appear to provide the means to escape structured discourses – to incite a spontaneous break from a visual regime by offering Facebook users the power to select images on their (and others) newsfeeds to like and promote. However, Facebook aesthetics undermine the emancipatory effects of democratic conflict by calibrating newsfeeds to include the most popular or sponsored posts, thus creating racialised archives of meaning that undermines the perceived autonomy of the user. Facebook promotes a visual regime that accumulates value through whitely consensus-building, through users collectively performing an imaginary that colludes with European liberalism.

The White Man’s Eifel In this section, I shift attention from the consumer of Facebook imagery to the producer of it in an attempt to understand firstly, the role of white artists in shaping discourses of colonial violence and secondly, the possibility of Facebook aesthetics for transforming whitely sensibilities. Within liberalism’s imaginary, public activity is recognised as a form of civic power that has the potential to disturb political identities, to kilter the structuring forces that divide communities. Thus, management of the visual regime can aid the stratification of liberal subjectivities – between those who have the right to remain civic, sensing beings and those who do not owing to their lack of talent to speak, to listen, to understand. Ranciere (2004: 8) describes the power of aesthetics as invested in those with the “ability to see and who (have) the talent to speak”. This position of privilege over the aesthetic regime provides some identities and groups with more reason to speak up and also to be listened to. 145

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In the immediate aftermath of the Paris shootings, allegedly after a minute of learning about the attacks (Wired, 2015), the white French artist Jean Jullien painted an image in his sketchbook of a peace sign using the outline of the Eifel tower (image 5). He spontaneously took a photograph of the image and posted it on his Twitter and Facebook accounts with the caption, “Peace for Paris”. Within a matter of hours, the image had gone viral, and by the 17 November 2015, the image had been re-tweeted over 44,000 times, accumulated 163,000 likes on Instagram and had been shared over 22,000 times on Facebook (The Telegraph, 2015). Over the following months, the image was copied and sold on Tshirts, banners, mugs, pens, postcards, and a plethora of purchasable consumables. It was also used as a backdrop for a Coldplay concert, as a logo on the Saint-Etienne football team’s kit and was drawn with a plume of white smoke by an anonymous aeroplane pilot over the blue skies of Lyon (Guardian, 2016). Understanding the aesthetic quality of Jullien’s image requires reading the image against the particular discursive configuration of the ‘War on Terror’ preceding his moment of artistic inspiration. The Paris shootings occurred 11 months after the attacks that took place in the city at the Charlie Hebdo newspaper headquarters. Inspired by Charlie Hebdo’s market placement as a satirical and illustrated magazine, artists and illustrators drew cartoons in defiance against the attacks and argued for the protection of art as a mechanism to unlock the public’s imagination that can present political arguments beyond the confines of using words or rhetoric. The Charlie Hebdo shootings drew out wide political debates across Europe on the nature of freedom of speech and its enshrinement in democratic states. Central to these debates was the issue of Charlie Hebdo’s consistently racist and Islamophobic satire that was defended by French politicians and media personalities as highly evolved but inaccessible and unintelligible to non-French readers. France’s great tradition of satire was promoted as innately democratic by Charlie Hebdo’s advocates. In these discussions, whiteness’s claim over art was reasserted as an integral part of ensuring European democracy and moral values prevail. In interviews given shortly after the Paris peace sign went viral, Jullien states that the power of images supersedes the written word, that the image is a “universal” language that has a practical role “In selling ideas as much as selling products” (Wired, 2015). As such, Jullien’s illustration was a continuation of the Charlie Hebdo defence, but it was also an important departure because it appeared like a corporate logo - a branding of European innocence with the capitalist symbolism of hope and happiness. In stating the equitable relationship between art and branding, Jullien freed himself of his main vocation (to illustrate, to design, to craft) and took on the role of producing great art: he came to occupy “the space of public discussion and take(s) on the identity of a deliberative citizen” (Ranciere, 2004: 40). This position was awarded to a white cis man who had a history of illustrating for corporations to market goods and services. In one of Julien’s interviews, he explains his motivation for painting the image. He states that the image was created, not in his capacity as an artist, but as an expression of a common humanity exerting the need for compassion in the face of terrorism, he states: “It was more an instinctive, human reaction than an illustrator’s reaction” (Wired, 2015). Jullien identifies his image as synonymous with living speech; it is a call for dignity in a visual form: a decisive moment of deliberative action represented by a new logo for Paris. Despite, Jullien’s insistence that his image is beyond the representational (it is an immediate expression of interiority, not the adaptation of expression to an appropriate form), he relies on the aesthetic regime to brand whiteness’s sensibility as consumerist optimism. Just as the Renaissance movement a few hundred years ago, that sought to distil the complexities of a human story in a single detailed frame, Jullien states his role in society to make his images speak a similarly multifaceted story. However, instead of using the fine layers of oils coloured by colonial commodities (carmine, Indian yellow, ultramarine), built up by the artist and enriched over a period of time, 146

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Jullien describes the image as a spontaneous logo created without thought or measurement; without the reasoned sensibility of fine art. Jullien implies in his interviews, traditional forms of European art remove the artist from the realm of spontaneous experience. Jullien’s logo addresses, what he believes is, a common need within a community in mourning (peace, hope). To manifest peace, Jullien’s logo severs the violence from the event by evoking the happiness and security of a humanity to come. Thus, unlike the democratic leaders, who invoked a ‘War on Terror’ in the face of American vulnerability, the Paris peace-sign condones a moral gaze that invokes an ethics of violence against the non-White Other without naming it. The humanisation of security has led to liberalism and humanitarianism becoming fused (Duffield, 2007), leading to a re-organisation of life in which an ethics of violence prevails against those non-Whites who do not sense, emote or celebrate Paris’s universality. This is a strategy that does not require fixing a location to be destroyed or a mass of people to be murdered, it is part of a political economy that depends on the free circulation of liberal signs; it is creative, imaginative and optimistic. Jullien’s logo operationalised a white gaze that values life on the basis of its potential to be visibly hopeful and vital, here Facebook aesthetics configured whiteness as consumerist and global. Paris was made universally consumable. The movement of Jullien’s logo depended on unbridled digital travel, internationalisation and exchange; its virality was also reliant on a distribution of the sensible that drew attention to humanist experiences of hope and happiness. These affects were necessary to purge trauma from whiteness, in order to maintain the fiction of an undifferentiated global community in mourning. The near complete absence of viral Facebook imagery that bears witness to the horrific and ongoing deaths of millions of people in the Arabic-speaking world is no better indicator of the power of online imagery securing political outcomes that benefit whiteness.

Facebook Inc: Curating Whiteness Through an Aesthetics of Paris The internet has had a profound impact on society and one of its biggest social media platforms, Facebook Inc., is an online network that has accumulated over 1.44 billion monthly active users since its inception in 2005 (Statista.com, 2015). Facebook is a multinational corporation and has online offerings across all countries, except in regions that actively block social media networks3. Facebook’s impact on society has been analysed by investigating its effect on social relations (Ellison et al, 2011; Ellison et al, 2007), its role in knowledge production (McFadyen et al, 2004) and also its bearing on users’ self-esteem levels (Steinfield et al, 2008). These studies have documented the impact of Facebook on how users value each other and experience one another, suggesting that offline social relations are experienced differently, as well as contending online identities are entwined with offline experiences (Hine, 2000). In this way, Facebook imagery performs a transformation of user experience as it makes a mark on the viewer’s subjectivity as well as being marked by it. The image is value-less; it is reproduced efficiently and freely on screens to be viewed and shared infinitely. The image has no monetary value, yet its power is its potential to disaggregate and transform experience. Facebook images of the Paris 2015 shootings engage a white gaze, or a white structure to sense the world. By sharing and posting the image, the user builds a whitely community which responds and transforms whiteness – the images become the focus of political conflict that shape and permeate both user-identities and the institutionalised digital space of Facebook feeds. The diffusion of these images constitutes a universal ethical dimension that is grounded in the liberal politics of bearing witness to a common world: a consensus that may restore meaning and “seal the cracks in the social bonds” (Ranciere, 2009: 122). The power of Facebook aesthetics is its ability to re-configure the boundaries of communities by concentrating the user’s gaze toward a particular 147

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way of experiencing terrorist events. Facebook art produces an experience of global politics structured through whitely reactions to online images in the form of likes, comments and shares that engage the user’s sensibility so that they may experience colonial violence through whiteness’s innocence. Defining art has been a philosophical as well as a political preoccupation for social philosophers, art critics, social activists and artists. Historically, the controversy of defining art has been associated with the need to name it and to thereby distinguish it, in normative terms: to unfold what art should be and what it ought to generate within the senses and souls of its viewers. By introducing the nominal category of ‘art’, the artistic object is dislocated from the artist who creates it and, instead, is celebrated by way of forming consensus around its disturbing or enlightening qualities as experienced in the artistic encounter. Here, the dislocation is not purely spatial (the art moves from the artist’s studio through the walls or archives of a gallery to the online archive of Facebook newsfeeds), but rather it is subjective. When we begin to draw lines between what art is, and what it is not, the viewer is re-drawn as well. For art to be experienced as such, there is a disassembling of the subject: a severing of her cognitive capacities (that attend to the art-object) from her affective experience that structures the encounter. The Facebook user must be able to make sense of the qualities imbued in the pictorial image or sculpture to experience its white power. Thus, defining what art is through the nominal categorising of it is not purely a hermeneutic exercise savoured by the reasoning mind, but also, a political exercise that determines who is recognised as community. I locate the Paris 2015 images within a distribution of the sensible – a distribution that signifies a political economy of bodies, voices and capacities that are reified by imagery and structured by a racialised digital imaginary.

CONCLUDING REMARKS In this chapter, I have sketched out the relation between the Paris 2015 images (their production and consumption) and the aesthetic regime they (re)produce. Ranciere’s (2009) problematisation of the sensible and its relation to art offers a vista to interrogate art that goes viral, allowing a deeper analysis of the subjective dimensions of viral imagery and its relation to the communal politics within which viral art circulates and is consumed. However, Ranciere’s thesis is not enough to make sense of the ways Facebook reproduces whiteness as well as how it is reconfigured in the current digital epoch. Fanon’s concept of colonial violence provides us with a mandate to go beyond what causes an image to go viral, and to argue for a decolonial analysis of how online aesthetics reconfigure whitely sensibilities that render Europe innocent. User-activity and the co-created dimension of online art provide the promise of community-building that has the potential to counter hegemonic politics. Indeed, the promise of Facebook is exactly that: to unlock regional boundaries and to affirm anti-racist solidarities. However, political ideas embedded in art can be objectified and extracted to engage a particular gaze for viewing violence and experiencing trauma. When these events happen elsewhere and outside the immediate experience of the individual, the potential for objectification increases dramatically. Immediate experiences or observations can help correct colonial delusions or racial misconceptions, however, the fantasy of a common humanity that a social network recreates instils a belief in whiteness’s moral superiority. As such, Facebook imagery signifies a reduction of experience; it’s consumption and circulation stand in for an ethical witnessing of Othered bodies who have produced historically rich and alternative definitions of whiteness’s sensibility and ethical framing. 148

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Facebook aesthetics could acknowledge the impossibility of bearing witness to the non-white Other’s trauma, but that would mean embracing trauma as human, rather than something that is to be expunged from cyber-imagination to make room for whitely optimism. This requires the production of content that evolves to manoeuvre outside the white gaze. Five years on from the Paris attacks, we can trace the establishment of counter-hegemonic content that undoes the ethics of violence from the position of the non-White Muslim other. We see the undoing of the white gaze and male tenor in the spoken works of the British poet, Suhaiymah Manzoor-Khan (AKA The Brown Hijabi). She interrupts the whiteness of digital culture, refusing to be categorised by sights of white world-making. She does this by making visual language redundant as she posts performances of her non-page poetry. Her brown orality performs in digital space to undo white gazing. In one of her most viewed posts, she orates a poem called British Values in which she delivers the lines, “Britain is body-popping outside of the tube, Brick Lane before it was cool, Britain is bilingual, Britain is the burqa, Britain is praying in the changing rooms, Britain has its feet in your sink… Britain is barbaric, Britain has blood on its hands and its back to the wall… Britain is believing in human rights whilst removing them all”. (Manzoor-Khan, 2019) Here, we witness how colonial trauma is divorced from the belief in white innocence. Colonial violence is sensed outside an ethics of violence, it is reckoned with in a register that is multifaceted, incongruous, visceral. This register for sensing trauma rejects the liberal politics that support Europe’s colonial amnesia and cast-off the fantasy of whiteness’s purity. Before aesthetics became the visual regime through which art, the artist and its viewers accrued value, it was the decorative and religious forms of art that were celebrated by social elites. Through the industrialisation of image-making, reproductions of European art became available to those who may not have previously had the means to access an encounter with it. The photographic image appeared alongside the expansion of modern liberalism and the proliferation of the visual regime was cemented in the imagination of a whitely populous. Art became egalitarian in whitely communities while it exercised division and dehumanisation among non-white peoples. Despite the communal sharing of mass-produced art, the pictorial image, in its most classic terms, was and remains an opportunity for calibrated gazing. It’s contemporary form potentially undermines the figurative realm of image-making, because its value is accrued by communal acts of knowing, not by the representational qualities of it. The online image builds on this propensity to affect the communal gaze and, simultaneously, the image itself is affected by its viewers who can comment on, photoshop, or edit it. The encounter itself is democratised, freeing the art to speak and be spoken to. I should make clear here, that I am not aligning the subjective encounter between the viewer and Paris 2015 imagery to what has been described as the concept-less character of the aesthetic experience - or what Benjamin (1936) memorably called ‘aura’. For, it is not the subjective pleasure that the image performs within/for the whitely viewer, but the broader structures that reconfigure pleasure sensed by the whitely viewer that are drawn on in the online encounter. Where Benjamin argues that the technical qualities of art pre-form its political and aesthetic qualities, I am proposing that its viewers already recognise the value of whitely imagery because it is consumable and consuming within a liberal political economy. In becoming consumable online, the image does not lose its political power; it constructs new forms of desire within the consumer. The entrance of Paris 2015 imagery online is therefore not a new way of doing politics, but it is part of an emergent political discourse that informs ways of being white.

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REFERENCES Bassel, L., & Emejulu, A. (2018). Minority Women and Austerity: Survival and resistance in France and Britain. Policy Press. Benjamin, W. (1936/1968). The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction. In B. Ardent (Ed.), Illuminations. Schocken Books. Duffield, M. (2007). Development, Security and Unending War: Governing the World of Peoples. Polity Press. Dufty, N. (2012). Using social media to build community disaster resilience. Australian Journal of Emergency Management, 27(1), 40–45. Ellison, N. B., Steinfield, C., & Lampe, C. (2007). The benefits of Facebook “friends:” Social capital and college students’ use of online social network sites. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 12(4), 1143–1168. doi:10.1111/j.1083-6101.2007.00367.x Ellison, N. B., Steinfield, C., & Lampe, C. (2011). Connection strategies: Social capital implications of Facebook-enabled communication practices. New Media & Society, 13(6), 873–892. doi:10.1177/1461444810385389 Fanon, F. (1961). The Wretched of the Earth. Grove Press. Frankenberg, R. (1993). The Social Construction of Whiteness: White women, race matters. Routledge. doi:10.4324/9780203973431 Hartigan, J. Jr. (1997). Establishing the fact of whiteness. American Anthropologist, 99(3), 495–505. doi:10.1525/aa.1997.99.3.495 Hine, C. (2000). Virtual Ethnography. Sage. doi:10.4135/9780857020277 Indigenes de la Republic. (2005). L’Appel des Indigènes. http://indigenes-republique.fr/le-p-i-r/appeldes-indigenes-de-la-republique/ Kellner, D. (2015). Media spectacle and the crisis of democracy: Terrorism, war, and election battles. Routledge. doi:10.4324/9781315633480 Linder, C., Myers, J. S., Riggle, C., & Lacy, M. (2016). From margins to mainstream: Social media as a tool for campus sexual violence activism. Journal of Diversity in Higher Education, 9(3), 231–244. doi:10.1037/dhe0000038 Manzoor-KhanS. (2019). Facebook. https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=396771270918620 Matusitz, J. (2013). Terrorism and Communication. Sage. McFadyen, A. M., & Cannella, A. A. (2004). Social capital and knowledge creation: Diminishing returns of the number and strength of exchange relationships. Academy of Management Journal, 47(5), 735–746.

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Nakayama, T. K. (2017). What’s next for whiteness and the Internet. Critical Studies in Media Communication, 34(1), 68–72. doi:10.1080/15295036.2016.1266684 Noble, S. U. (2018). Algorithms of oppression: How search engines reinforce racism. NYU Press. doi:10.2307/j.ctt1pwt9w5 Ranciere, J. (2004). The Politics of Aesthetics (G. Rockhill, Trans.). Bloomsbury Publishing. Ranciere, J. (2009). Aesthetics and its Discontents (S. Corcoran, Trans.). Polity Press. Statistica.com. (2015). Available at: https://www.statista.com/statistics/264810/number-of-monthlyactive-facebook-users-worldwide Steinfield, C., Ellison, N. B., & Lampe, C. (2008). Social capital, self-esteem, and use of online social network sites: A longitudinal analysis. Journal of Applied Developmental Psychology, 29(6), 434–445. doi:10.1016/j.appdev.2008.07.002 The Telegraph. (2015). Jean Jullien: the artist mistaken for Banksy who created the Peace for Paris symbol of solidarity. Available at: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/art/what-to-see/jean-jullien-peace-forparis-symbol/ Thobani, S. (2007). White Wars: Western feminisms and the ‘war on terror’. Feminist Theory, 8(2), 169–185. doi:10.1177/1464700107078140 Wired. (2015). Meet Jean Jullien, the artist behind the “Peace for Paris” symbol. Available at: https:// www.wired.com/2015/11/jean-jullien-peace-for-paris/

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Facebook’s values include: to “make the world more open and connected” and Mark Zuckerberg, CEO, recently made a statement that Facebook will fund causes that share the corporation’s mission of “connecting people and building strong communities” (The Economist, The New Face of Facebook: How to win friends and influence people, 9th April 2016) Thobani’s central thesis is that the ‘War on Terror’ unleashed a cultural war pivoting around gender equality. She argues that gender equality has been Europeanised and that the non-white Other has been identified as inferior owing to the forms of gender inequality prevalent in non-white societies. While her critique of the role of white feminisms in reproducing this racial logic have deeply influenced my thinking on the matter, this chapter does not use a feminist lens to form a critique of whiteness. These countries include Turkey, Iran, Pakistan, China, Vietnam and North Korea.

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Chapter 10

The Twisted Fairy Tale Behind How Light-Skinned Girls Are ‘Trending’ Monica Majumdar Queen Mary University of London, UK

ABSTRACT This research study is an exploration of the ways in which a beauty ideal is constructed from the promotion of skin lightening products across social media platforms Instagram and Facebook. In addition, it investigates consumers of skin-lightening products, the social media ‘influence’ behind the adverts and their response to these advertisements, in a particular ethnic community: British Bangladeshi. The study through the examination of respondent’s skincare regime using photo-elicitation and semi-structured interviews sought to deconstruct their aesthetics through skin colouring products. Combining visual discourse analysis from social media advertisements, the study presents the voices and experiences of the seven women to show how they construct their identities through the ‘fantasy’ of whiter skin.

INTRODUCTION For several years, the use of skin lightening products among South-Asian women has been as common as it has been controversial. The most harmful chemical founded in skin lightening products is hydroquinone, and by law it cannot be used in cosmetic products which have been sold within the UK (Bunn & Hobbs, 2013). As a result, Trading Standards are attempting to control the availability of the most toxic skin lightening products across the UK. Despite this, these are easily available in stores such as beauty complexes, ayurvedic stores, the black market, pharmacies and online. Negative health effects associated with these products include cancers and Ochronosis. In addition to this, the long-term use of these products will interrupt melanin production and “paradoxically will darken the skin” (Draelos, 2009, p. 43)

DOI: 10.4018/978-1-7998-4796-0.ch010

Copyright © 2020, IGI Global. Copying or distributing in print or electronic forms without written permission of IGI Global is prohibited.

 The Twisted Fairy Tale Behind How Light-Skinned Girls Are ‘Trending’

BACKGROUND Some of the biggest names in the cosmetics industry, such as Unilever, L’Oréal Group, Johnson & Johnson and Neutrogena are increasingly keen to capitalize on the skin-lightening phenomenon by marketing skin whitening products as ‘better skincare’ for ‘glowing appearance’ (Seymour, 2013) According to Sheehan (2014) ʺAdvertising reinforces a cultural history of determining worth; particularly a woman’s worth and striving to meet the cultural ideal is a key selling message used by many types of advertisers involved in selling beauty-orientated productsʺ (p. 96). This raises the questions if the blame for the use of skin-lightening products with adverse health effects can be solely laid at the feet of marketers, or are they just cynical opportunists and are there other forces at play? The demand for skin lightening products highlights the need to identify social and cultural dynamics and for marketers and organizations as a way of gaining a greater understanding of consumer’s motives. Cultural influences and marketing are intrinsically connected as the actions of marketers serve as a vehicle to transfer meanings or values from the culturally constituted world to consumer goods (Luna & Gupta, 2001).The hegemonic representations of light complexions continues to question the role of women’s coloured body, reiterating the importance of researching cultural influences and the visual depiction of skin lightening products. Social media and other forms of advertising is often argued to play an affirmative role in women’s lives. Going through various hashtags on Instagram including #skinwhitening #skincare #hyperpigmentation #skinlightening there are numerous imagery emphasising the significance of fair skin as a means of achieving an ideal physical form. Social media offers a ‘collaborative’ space for social interactions based on physical appearance and how do we physically present our self. Skin colour becomes a loader signifier of identity and value. Thus, for this, it is the basic role of the social media to make such advertisements that will promote the message that the colour of the skin of an individual is an indisputable fact that cannot be hidden. It results that people will become addicted to using such products that cause them harm (Anuradha & Gopalsamy, 2014). The act of skin lightening becomes a promenade measure for improving self-esteem (Mikos, 2016). Within the advertisement, many of the marketers have focused on delivering such a message which signifies both the conspiracy of traditional Bangladeshi beliefs and tradition and also their values (Stuart, 1992). Likewise, strengthening the desire of skin lightening as a mark of status, beauty, assets, and freedoms. Furthermore, in the world of social media dark and beauty do not go together (Maxwell et al., 2016). Beauty becomes one look, static and universal, as it illustrates repetitiveness rather than embracing differences (Maxwell et al., 2016). Women are considered to be a fundamental unifying category of human existence in all of its levels and senses (Viglione et al., 2011). This association makes women bodies a challenged space that turns into a commodity and testing sites by other regimes (Tatum, 2017). To adopt new trends young Bengali women have adopted new digital media platforms such as video sharing sites and blogs to foster virtual communities. Moreover, these digital platforms will help women to remain in touch with the other beauty products that will help them to bring changes in their skin colour (Stuart, 1992). In addition to this, there are many of the factors that promote the colourism, but social media plays a vital role to enhance its concept (Mathews & Johnson, 2015). As it is a bitter truth that every individual wants fair complexion and for this, they use whitening products described in the media magazines. The reason here is the attraction towards fair complexion. Social media has a vital role in this regard as it 155

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promotes the message that bright skin colour has more chances to succeed in comparison to the dark skin tone people (Warren, 2019). As Huda & Ali (2015, p.12) put forward “media is considered as the agent of social change” yet it seems to be advertising and other popular media that frame negative beliefs about skin. In British Bangladeshi women’s understanding of beauty, ‘whiteness’ is an important commodity. Growing up, skin colour is relayed through the story of the ‘Three Gingerbread Women’. The first gingerbread woman was too pale because the baker had taken her out of the oven early and the other was left in the oven for too long which meant she was too dark. Third time around, the gingerbread woman was perfect, a light brown colour and everyone that came to the bakery had a desire for this piece (Damme, 1996). At the time this story had little importance, but with time it was obvious like the gingerbread women, family and friends were given labels. How it is that on the one hand, skin lightening represents ‘positivity, happiness and acceptance’, and on the other hand girls’ resistance against, and at the same time acceptance of skin lightening. The use of skin lightening products is deeply disturbing, and it is crucial to understand what makes these products ubiquitous and popular (Britton, 2012). It’s apparent that much has been written about marketing as a communication tool from the organisation’s point of view; however, little has been produced on the relationship between social media adverts, skin lightening, ethnic representation, and racial stereotyping. To investigate the skin lightening phenomenon, the study will focus on examining the way skin lightening products are promoted by brands and social media influencers across Instagram and Facebook. In doing so there will be a focus on the visual representation of women in skin lightening advertisements and tracing how social media advertisements work in relation to a broader system of meanings.

Cultural Meaning of ‘Whiteness’ Skin colour has been and continues to endure as a decisive factor in assigning people to racial groups and distinguishing individuals within the same racial category (Jones, 2013). For decades the attribute of ‘whiteness’ has acted as a categorizing mechanism in socioeconomic classes among Asians and Africans; both in the colonial era and now as immigrants (Britton, 2012). As Mizutani (2006) proposes ‘whiteness’ is not solely about light complexions or cultural norms; it is also closely linked to a renewed interest in colonial influences. The British considered themselves of a superior race and higher class than Bangladeshi’s, Indians and Pakistani’s, therefore stereotypical images were those that associated dark skin with ugliness, stupidity, evil and ‘headless mass’. In doing so inequalities and the socially constituted forms of discursive power exemplified from the dominant to the subordinate (Bogart,1986). As a result, being ‘White’ in Bangladesh, India, and Pakistan was a ‘textual object’, a representation of the victorious, imperial race; the western industrial reign and validation of colonial rule revolved from inter-group racism into today’s generation representation of intra-group racism (Bashir et al., 2002). De Mooji (2010) suggests there is a discourse of ‘Whiteness’ representing intelligence, honesty, happiness, chastity, moral virtue, motherhood and beauty whereas ‘Dark’ corresponds to laziness, immorality, criminality, and ignorance. A study conducted by Rondilla & Spickard (2007) identified four key themes when discussing ‘Colourism’ and the notion of ‘Whiteness’: ‘Beauty is light’, ‘Stay out of the sun’, ‘Avoid being romantically linked with or married to dark people’ and ‘White equals upper class’. Rondilla & Spickard (2007) advocate an individual’s perceptual filtering induces ‘Whiteness’ as a relatable ideal and a power dynamic. ‘Whiteness’ is perceived as a political tool, an effort at euphemism, 156

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to incorporate what is a transparent racial perception, not a biological essential. The outlook of beauty illustrates how sexism and racism interrelates to construct a pecking order of women from the lightest to the darkest; the lightest are ‘racially privileged’ therefore have wider access and the most resources, whereas the darkest have access to the least (Anuradha & Gopalsamy, 2014). The multiculturalism of light skin and ‘attractiveness’ is part of how racial aesthetics to function. Lighter skinned women are regarded by most either consciously or unconsciously as superior. In the midst Asian culture, ‘white/ fair skin’ has become the embodiment of beauty and a symbol of prosperity; with the central desideratum situating around a Eurocentric ideal of beauty’, attracting a spouse, higher self-esteem, job market competitiveness and earning potential (Li, Min, Belk & Kimural, 2008). Writing about the Bangladeshi culture in particular, ‘Dark/black’ represents a symbol of dirt, ‘wrong-doings’, hell and unfairness, while the compositional interpretation of ‘white’ promotes positive messages, taken as a sign of wellbeing, purity, and cleanliness. Religious ideologies reinforce the negative association of dark-skinned women in society. Hinduism accounts for almost 45% of the Bangladeshi population and ‘Kali’, a dark-skinned goddess, is a symbol of ugliness, brutality and the ill-fated. Bearing resemblance to Kali’s complexion is considered inauspicious (Li, Min, Belk & Kimural, 2008). Nayeem (2012) proposes a ‘community of practice’ i.e. the collective set of values and beliefs dictated and upheld by members of a society/culture through numerous measures. Examples of this are the consumption of ‘Badaam good’ (Almond milk), daily bathing in rose water, application of sandalwood body paste and Ayurvedic medicine. The traditions of ‘Gaye Holud’ (application of turmeric paste) prevails in the Bangladeshi culture as a technique of brightening the bride’s skin. According to Arif (2004), the ‘scopic regime’ of the Bangladeshi culture marginalizes the place of a woman with dark skin. The visual cultural viewing of daughters with dark complexions is often deemed as burdens. Financial incentives through dowries ensure desire from grooms as well as guaranteeing a ‘happy’ marriage life (Anuradha & Gopalsamy, 2014). The dowry amount is argued to be substantially higher in comparison to a ‘fair’ bride, who offers the asset of an ‘appealing light’ complexion that would be socially accepted by ‘higher castes’. Members of the Bangladeshi community are more likely to display in-group favouritism when either complexion or financial incentive acts as a ‘bonding’ factor (Anuradha & Gopalsamy, 2014). To sustain a place within society and attain the ‘privileges’ gained by lighter-skinned females many Bangladeshi women have engaged in the skin-lightening epidemic (Anekwe, 2014). Conversely, Bashir, Zeeshan & Sabbar (2002) suggests today’s generation are more health-conscious rather than concerned about their skin tone. The underlying aim for Bangladeshi women is to feel a sense of confidence from ‘fairness’ products; however, this notion of confidence in today’s generation stems from a sense of accomplishment gained from achievements within the educational and working field (Afsana, 2014). Nonetheless “the merging of new technologies with old colonial ideologies has created a context where consumers can purchase ‘racial capital” (Hunter, 2011, p.142). This racial capital aligns with phenotype and the ‘ways of seeing’ how people identify others rather than how an individual perceives their self-image.

Cultural Influences on Attitudes Nayeem (2012) suggests, skin lightening manufacturers acknowledge cultural dimensions. Their social media presence and marketing strategies incorporate an understanding of how to assimilate cultural influences and address culturally specific attitudes and behaviours. The relationship between cultural elements and consumption has been recognised by numerous authors. For instance, Said (1993, p.3) 157

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suggests culture represents two meanings ʺFirst of all it means all those practices, like the arts of description, communication, and representation and the other relative autonomy from the economic, social, and political realms that often exist in aesthetic forms; one of whose principal aims is pleasureʺ. Culture is a notion that inspires a narrative element in establishing a sense of identity and a way of thinking. Anuradha & Gopalsamy (2014) propose values, social media pressures, the need to follow ‘trends’ and cultural allegiance is closely linked to consumption decisions. Patil & Bakkappa (2012) describe culture as a pervasive influence which underpins every angle of social behaviour. Culture is encapsulated in everyday life and as a measure of communication within society. Cosmetic purchases ʺrepresent one of the most important ways women present and transform their public personaʺ (p.41) From a self-presentational perspective, body image is a fundamental attribute to self-concept and cosmetics enable the management of both self-image and social impressions. Luna & Gupta (2001, p.65) elaborate by proposing ʺregional subculture and familial values influence the end line foundation of an individual’s cultural value systemʺ. In principle, the desire for ‘Whiteness’ is sought after for several reasons. An overarching notion of the desirability of whiteness in multiple literature sources seems to be a ʺre-representation of beauty and virtue of an individual within a communityʺ (Li, Min, Belk & Kimura, 2008 p.445) and to evolve with social media trends to maintain a status of self-worth. Several researchers provide an insight into cultural dimensions by researching how consumers in particular social and cultural groups position themselves concerning the purchasing beauty products (Patil & Bakkappa, 2014; McCort & Malhorta,1993) A scope for further research identified in Koubaa, Ulvoas & Chew (2011) study of ‘the dual impact of traditional and national cultural influences on expatriate ethnic groups’ attitudes and willingness to buy’ is to broaden the research to include individuals with an upbringing in a host environment but who are still exposed to the cultural values of family/ inherited nationality. In doing so a wider understanding of how embedded national culture structures come to be translated into social connotations around beauty as well as insights into the effects of sub-culture such as spousal and family roles, or digital influences in a consumer’s affective state, i.e. the state consumers find themselves at the point of purchase.

Advertisements as a ‘Sphere of Ideology’ The overall observation acknowledged from numerous literature and empirical studies is that the focal point of advertisements is the development of ‘self-concepts’; which is either achieved by accentuating the familiarity of a product offering or encouraging the purchase of a product (Kotwal, 2008). As suggested by Zinkhan & Hong (1991) if there is a gap between the subjective meaning assigned to a product and it addressing an individual’s self-image and ‘self-concept’ of the ideal state, it will act as a significant barrier in purchasing behaviour. ʺThe self-esteem motive prevails, the product matching with one’s ideal and social self-concept would be preferredʺ (p.350). The association with ‘self-concepts’ plays a key role in advertising effectiveness, ʺsince purchases provide a vehicle for self-expressionʺ (p.351) In some cases, social media adverts will be based on ‘compositional interpretation’; the images within the advertisements will be viewed by consumers as what they are, rather than for what they do and how they are used (Afsana, 2014) Accommodating this need, brands with a digital presence or social media influencers distinguish themselves with offerings that ʺappeal to emotions and play on unconscious motives to persuade people to buy things they do not needʺ (Bogart, 1986, pg.5). As Goldman (1992) states ʺwith ads being so pervasive and our reading of them so routine, we tend to take for granted the 158

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deep social assumptions embedded in advertisements; we do not ordinarily recognise them as a sphere of ideologyʺ. (Goldman, cited in Rose, 2012, p. 107). Some scholars argue social media adverts act as a ‘coping structure’, as it facilitates connections between moral standards and complexion ideals. Cosmetic/beauty products conform as ‘reason advertising’ integrating a balance of beliefs, stimulating cultural manifestations in conjunction with the fundamental message of achieving the desired ‘look’ demanded by society (Hugo, 2012). Consumers find themselves searching for ways to signal their identification, illustrating how they value the same things others do and make a ʺstatement to others about the degree to which we value our identity as part of a particular group or sectorʺ (Sutherland, 2008, p.83). Manufacturers within the skin lightening industry draw on that exact notion, by focusing on how the brand is viewed and reciprocating the type of person we aspire to be and what will come of purchasing that item of consumption (Sutherland, 2008) Consumers expect an element of truth within advertising but do not expect it to be impartial. As a result, consumers are more likely to be drawn in and reward advertisers if advertising messages are congruent with their cultural values (Zhang & Gelb, 1996). As Nielsen (2013) further elaborates, 73% of consumers globally react to advertisements which indicate the personal progression in the areas of well-being, health, social standing and earning potential, therefore manufacturers uphold the capacity of guiding the message; a crucial factor in advertising effectiveness. Several researchers suggest advertisements reinforce distinctions between ethnic groups and race (Alyssa, 2008). Leong (2006) proposes advertisements advocate a fusion of traditional and modern ideals of beauty; the image is intentional and represents beauty as submissive acceptance. On the one hand ‘whiteness’ is a ‘focaliser’ which ʺtranscends class, wealth and now extends into the realm of race and ethnic identitiesʺ, thus successfully connecting ‘whiteness’ with modernization while ‘racializing the aesthetics of beauty’ (Leong, 2006, p.178). Goon & Craven (2003) suggests in a social context, ‘whiteskin’ presents beauty, an asset of an individual within a society/ culture and as a form of performance. It represents a mark of cultural and social distinctions in retrospect of historical and racial background. The fashion sector and online media have abetted the phenomenon through visual content distinguishing between races and underpinning the desire for white skin (Anekwe, 2014). The representation of Caucasian and Eurasian models within advertisements reiterates western ideologies, predating to colonialism; emphasizing the construction of female beauty. A study conducted by Zaidi (2000) advocates that amongst the Bangladeshi, Indian and Pakistani community ʺthere is a conventional protocol in place where children are expected to obey their parents and have a profound place in societyʺ (p.530). Consequently, social media adverts incorporating ‘soft-selling’ techniques through the means of illustrating strong family ties, relationship building and advancements in the social hierarchy are deemed as favourable brands. Panwar & Agnihotri’s (2006) study found a strong correlation between a respondent’s low self-esteem and their parent’s expectations. Findings exemplified a key driving force to purchasing skin lightening products lies in the attempt of pleasing others. Individuals who uphold self-consciousness of their appearance will select products based on creating an impression, a primary response to counter negative feelings or as a benchmark of success; ‘public self-consciousness regardless of the incentives is regarded as a segmentation variable for socially consumed products. Although various research indicates a correlation between advertising and sociocultural environment, according to Sutherland (2008) the criticism lies in whether ʺanyone believes that any ad will make them run out and buy the advertised product. Nothing has that kind of persuasive or coercive powerʺ (p.14). As Grohs (2007) identifies, the foundation of these studies focuses on clarifying the cultural values of 159

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the society in which the advertising has appeared, instead of reading between the lines of what has appeared and the individual’s verbal descriptions of how they perceive the advertisements. Indisputably advertisements through social media platforms are an integral part of modern society. The advertisements via social media are said to serve the most efficient ‘vehicle of communication’; describing new fabrics, new creations, new means of food, wear and the latest trends (Scanlon, 2013). Nonetheless simply being motivated to pay attention does not appear to separate consumers against deception or make them less likely to draw inferences from advertising. The global context of ‘white beauty’ sells an all-inclusive lifestyle; the digital presence promotes sophistication, beauty and wealth (Leong, 2006) consequently encouraging a ʺstrong desire by consumers to achieve aesthetic whiteness, if not a white identityʺ (Hunter, 2011,p.149) Striving towards acceptance from a collective society instead of ‘individuality’ formed based on one’s positive views and ethnic origin is likely to have a deep impact on an individual’s self-consciousness (Anekwe, 2014). Yet the importance of fitting into modern society’s current trend of beauty has become more prevalent than ever. Skin-lightening addresses the concern of social approval, it promotes ʺindividual empowerment through submission to skin colour hierarchiesʺ (Hunter, 2011, p.158) In summary, skin lightening products are considered as the pathway to a ‘happier personal and professional life’ by confronting psychological matters like self-perception and self-esteem.

The Power of the Image Sergan (2013) proposes that within the Bangladeshi media there is a clear distinction between light-skinned and dark-skinned models. Light-skinned models are highly sought after whereas the dark-skinned model is rarely seen. Light skin is portrayed as a representation of beauty and success. ‘The skin-lightening market is waiting to cash in on people’s hidden aspiration. Sergan (2003) further proposes that racism is deeply intertwined with caste and colonialism, in today’s society, it finds expression in consumer behaviour and story-telling via social media. Hejase, Hamdar, Farha, Boudiab & Beyruti. (2013) suggests the use of pictures, profiles, and phrases are intentionally used in advertising materials as a means of encouraging viewers to perceive the imagery at a subconscious level rather than a conscious level. Leacock (1982) elaborates by suggesting ʺAdvertising may be described as the science of arresting the human intelligence long enough to get money from itʺ (cited in Health, 2012, p.3) Adverts can ‘seduce’ our subconscious by adapting to our cognitive and affective (i.e. emotional) traits to create a desire or need for a product or service or as Zajonc (1980) pointed out that ʺone might be able to control the expression of emotion but not the experience of itʺ (p.156). Adverts are perceived communicate to emotions which makes consumers think differently and put little conscious consideration into buying decisions. If advertisements can address cultural expectations, consumers are more likely to perceive the product or service as satisfying their self-esteem and promote acceptance among peers and family (Rudd & Lennon, 1994) In regards to skin lightening advertisements by exemplifying and combining both traditional and westernized visual signifiers (Damme, 1996) i.e. the use of Caucasian and Eurasian, i.e. light-skinned women act as an ‘illusion of inclusion’ (Hunter, 2011); consumers buy into the marketers’ words and are under the perception their bodies and beauty are valued and socially comparable with others. Myers cited in Oakley (2009) suggests ʺcosmetic advertising promotes a false vision of life as a method of social controlʺ (p.12).

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As Kilbourne (2014) further elaborates, the orientation towards status forms the roots of stereotypes. Individuals find it challenging to question the main cultural messages perpetuated and reinforced by social media; the digital presence acts as a ‘national’ form of peer pressure that diminishes an individual’s values. As scholars have illustrated it is crucial to consider social influences when examining advertising effectiveness (Alyssa, 2008). Alyssa’s (2008) research suggests the effect of beauty advertisements on consumers is minimal. The viewpoint stems from the perspective that advertisements cannot call to mind goals individuals don’t already possess; advertisements may activate and manipulate goals however this is no different from advertising for everyday necessities. Britton’s (2012) perspective is that skincare products are ‘compensatory tools’ which women use to compensate for their lack of self-esteem and self-consciousness. She goes on to suggest from a young age women use cosmetics to modify their physical appearance and physical aesthetics to control social situations for brief periods such as puberty. Women can construct a ‘malleable self’ to influence how they are perceived by others and how comfortable they feel in different situations, rather than adapting to the imagery in adverts (Duncombe, 2012). Khatri (2006) suggests advertising works on two key components: credibility and attractiveness. Celebrity endorsements embody both those elements by building awareness, viral diffusion and sustaining an emotional connection with the consumer. Men’s and women’s faces and bodies whether in the form of celebrities or animation has been utilised and marketed in advertising for several decades. Celebrities are deployed as a common currency. However, due to their repeated use, their effectiveness is fading (Oakley, 2009). Often consumers are sceptical of whether celebrities are endorsing brands out of real interest or doing it for the sake of their career and financial incentive. Nonetheless, celebrity presence rejuvenates a stagnant brand, acting as a mark to counter anonymity and increasing interest in a cluttered marketplace- as well as providing the brand with a unique identity (Fleck-Dousteyssier & Korchia, 2006). In viewing social media followers go from being an observer, potentially an adversary to a ‘part author’ by analysing the visual perception and reacting with instinctive emotions (Gordon, 2006). They attempt to identify with ‘self-identity’ imagery, as found in skin lightening adverts which usually shows a transition from the ‘real self’ to the ‘ideal self’. In viewing these adverts it is unlikely that consumers become a ‘critical audience’ where they reject the symbolism of the image but accept the images as a societal norm (Duncombe, 2012). As a result, consumers become attached to what is being sold and the meaning behind the image. From the literature, it is clear that the portrayal of and desire for whiteness is complex. ‘Whiteness’ has become a mechanism by which individuals are placed on a hierarchical structure, operating as a visual agent in outlining the boundaries of cultural identities of ‘self’ and ‘others’. A woman’s social position seems to be determined by skin tone. By looking at advertising and marketing, the contribution of this study is to establish the way ‘whiteness’ is seen as significant in a social-cultural paradigm. Besides, the study further expands on understanding the role of culture concerning skin colour by presenting the perspectives of Bangladeshi women concerning the use of skin-whitening products and their advertisements.

Insights Attempting to understand the perspectives of the women and investigate the significance participants give to the skin lightening requires a qualitative research approach. Little is known about British Bangladeshi women and their stance vis-a-vis skin lightening; therefore, an epistemological position is informed by acknowledging that knowledge is co-produced between the researcher and the women as research 161

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participants (Bogart,1986). The interviews act as a ‘knowledge production site’, where experiences and reflections are in flux. In this instance, the research study poses questions and seeks answers, informed by the responses of people exposed to social media adverts and actively using skin lightening products. A total of seven participants were recruited. The women have been given pseudonyms for confidentiality purposes and also a way of giving the participants a ‘voice’. Among the recruited participants, there was variation between the age group, marital status, employment, and educational background. The majority of participants were recruited from the Oxfordshire area, with two from Berkshire. A key part of the interview included talking about photos or known as the visual methodology of ‘photo-elicitation’. Social media advertisements sourced from the following hashtag searches on Instagram #skinwhitening #skinwhiteninguk #skinlightening #skinbleaching #fairandlovelyuk. Emphasis was placed on the effect of the advertisement on the participant, e.g. their thoughts, feelings, behaviours, and thoughts about whether the advertisements made them want to buy the advertised product. Here the focus is on the ‘narrative’ and cognitive processes of British Bangladeshi women and understanding their representation of stories which are normally taken for granted and now accounts of their skin lightening experiences will be broken down into 6 topics.

The Married Woman and the Colour White We are faced with a time-limit of when we should be married, it’s sort of first-come, first serve. We are led to believe that if we are lighter, the more desirable we are. (Tahmina, n.d.) The participants made strong links between having fair skin and their suitability as brides. Aesthetic preferences and physical appearance of white skin socially constructed the notion of beauty and the chances of finding a suitable partner. Many of the women indicated as well as feeling more attractive, having a light complexion marks them as somewhat superior, thus reducing any financial burden on their families associated to marriage dowry as they become more ‘desirable and eligible’ for marriage whereas a dark skin tone would bring humiliation and discrimination. As Sahay & Piran (1997) have put forward “Within the South Asian culture, the words beautiful and fair are used synonymously, and there is often a preference for a female with a light complexion in marriage, if other considerations are equal” (p.162). Although the women of this study referred to the caste systems as a factor for distinguishing between the priority and social ranking for between light and dark-complexioned people, many felt the representation of Caucasian or lightened celebrities within licensed magazines goes hand in hand with the male demand for light-skinned women. Tahmina suggests; ‘‘Despite being surrounded with female members such as sisters and mothers whom would fall into maybe the darker skin tone category- Bengali men are fixated on having a wife similar to those represented advertisements- they don’t realise what they are surrounded by other ideals seem more appealing to them. The media portrays the lighter girls as the more privileged ones, high status accordingly you’re going to be upgraded if you can match that skin tone’’ Here two elements have been identified, firstly the possible practice of ‘hypergamy’, which Hunter (2002) describes as “where individuals marry to move up in social status” (p.181) In this case, light skin equates to a form of social capital and marrying someone of light complexion can assist in increasing one’s status or seeking a partner with the same social standing. Secondly, the fixations and ‘unrealistic’ expectations potential husbands uphold. Many of the women felt the visual representation of women within social media advertisements is not a true reflection of the average Bangladeshi woman. The 162

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women of this study seemed to draw on how the average Bangladeshi woman may be dark, short and curvy however by portraying the complete opposite within the adverts, men are brought up to believe attractiveness is associated with fair skin. Selecting a partner has become a marketplace, men pick and choose but in turn, this affects the women’s self-esteem and confidence. The general outlook from the women is that fair skin will increase the likelihood of an arranged marriage, or as Farzana suggests “Marriage is the initial aim, I see myself being picked finally” which suggests the aspect of physical appearances outweighed emotional, intellectual and spiritual traits. The terms ‘being picked’ convey an element of insecurity as there is a longing for acceptance and approval, which is only gained by being in someone else’s skin. This is an illustration of how the thought of beauty is used to allocate women into a ‘beauty queue’ where the one’s complexion determines how socially and physically desirable is in regards to marriage (Hunter, 1999) By default, dark skin is associated to menial labour whereas fairness is aspirational; a woman with light skin is perceived as one that doesn’t need education or well-paid jobs to prove her worth. For a man a bride with a dark complexion, associates to primitiveness, uncleanness and ritual impurity. To the preference of their mothers, men are expected to bring home a daughter in law that conforms to society’s ideal of beauty, to either elevate or maintain their social standing, ensure future offspring carry this social capital and not to blacken the families face and legacy; “Lighter skinned girls are desirable for marriage - a wealthy and handsome man come by and take you away. It’s a ‘twisted fairy tale’ I guess. Having darker skin just makes it harder for parents to send her off for marriage. You’re also pitied...hate being pitied, everyone just says things like ‘oh poor girl, how will you marry her, it will be hard to find a good lad for her” – Farzana On the whole, the set ideals of how ‘potential brides’ should look and behave are interpreted by the participants to be reinforced by the ‘Instagram look’. The visual representation of women with light skin tones, sharp features, and silky hair seizes on men’s urges and as a result, women go out of their way to sustain these unrealistic expectations.

Domains of Womanhood and Manhood My brother is darker than me however there is no need for him to use it- there shouldn’t be an issue of marriage for him and I don’t think anyone would expect it of him, he’s a boy at the end of the day and I’m a girl. (Rashida, n.d.) The participants perceive men, women, culture, and social media to be consciously or subconsciously telling ‘dark women’ that they are ‘undesirable’. Women are treated as objects and can only be successful in life if they have ‘fair’ skin. As the participants view it, for men being dark can be easily compensated for by education and jobs. Whereas for women, having a successful career or educational background means little if you are of dark complexion. The gender difference seems to be predominantly obvious when it comes to the complexion. Being white is always ‘in style’ and is described to represent beauty and femininity. As the women advocate within the Bangladeshi culture, there are internalized white supremacist ideals of beauty and their place in society is dictated by those moral assumptions. Throughout the interviews there were references to ‘expectations’, about how society and ‘others’ would think, as illustrated below;

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That everyone should come towards the ‘light’, it’s not meant to be funny, but that’s how it sounds like I guess when you think out loud. Society is practically telling us that we need to convert into this skin tone to be considered beautiful. It’s sort of like a cult thing, there’s this sort of ‘rite of passage’ thing -Farzana Being dark is promiscuous and categorises you as one of the ‘unmarriable’ and can even be grounds for divorce whereas being light indicates stability or as Hunter (2002) suggests “Women who possess this form of capital (beauty) can convert it into economic capital, educational capital, or another form of social capital” (p.177). There is a ‘woman’s place’, a hierarchy of beauty and being at the bottom could threaten both your future as well as your family’s. As Rondilla & Spickard (2007) suggest ‘women’s bodies are commodities objectified for male consumption, the entire beauty industry is built on the foundational principle that women will alter their bodies through make-up, coloured contact lenses, plastic surgery and many more to increase their amount of beauty, or capital’ (p.13). The perspective is that only when you have a ‘white face’ will you stand out from the crowd. There is also the desire to mimic the west, to appear modern and advanced. As Farzana comments: ‘Bangladeshi actresses don’t look like regular Bangladeshi women, some are half white or European, but they are representing Bangladeshi side of their heritage, and it’s confusing, guys see that and think it’s possible to get a fair-skinned Bangladeshi girl, and so we girls sort of complying to it to be liked. If you have a group of friends in doing it with you, it becomes therapeutic almost, like it’s how we bond, it’s a craze, I don’t even see myself in my skin tone when I close my eyes, I see myself in a light skin tone Men regardless of skin tone, are placed in the mind-set of accepting society’s traditional outlook of being ‘a man’ while being able to embrace their ethnic heritage without ridicule. Discourses of the superiority of whiteness linked to power (colonial or patriarchal) present in the British Bangladeshi community and perpetuated by women (mothers, aunties) and men alike prescribe the importance of bringing home a fair bride. The women in the study appreciate and are drawn to men that are ‘different shades of brown’, however they feel that men do not have this attitude towards them. In discussion about brothers, fathers and spouses there was a sense of intimidation, insecurity and colour consciousness. Various driving factors for attaining a lighter skin tone were discussed, one participant described light skin to give her ‘superpowers’ which not only helped combat the criticism from men and show their degree of privilege. As the research shows, the participants feel the need to compete for attention or to establish visual identity.

Taking Off the Outer Darkness and Revealing the New You I feel like I have to lead a double life to be accepted into society. These images force me to underestimate my looks and believe lighter is better, I feel like adverts are a direct way of saying no, no this isn’t you and this is you (lighter) (Tahmina) What is clear from the research is that women believe beauty is based on a ‘western’ standard. Seeing the same type of images often enough makes them seem natural and the visual depiction of women within the media normalises ‘whiteness’. As Tahmina conveys

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It’s hard to fit into a society where being ‘white’ is beauty- the new face. These adverts are pairing the terms radiant to whiteness. Disregarding the fact you can be glowing and radiant even with dark skin. It gives the impression that you’re not good enough. It’s actually degrading to women As Rondilla & Spickard (2007) suggests ʺthe images within skin lightening adverts are compelling, they are designed to make racism, sexism and other forms of social injustice appear to be natural, normal and inevitable parts of lifeʺ (p.83). As the research participants suggest the messages within advertising campaigns are ‘intoxicating’ and it promotes the idea that skin lightening products could help bring out the ‘real you’. As noted by the participants dark women are ‘model minority’ as they are only used to illustrate transformation, a point of comparison or an ‘illusion of fact to future’. The use of dark women acts as a relatable ideal, and the advertising strategy relies on exploiting prevailing social stigma’s associated with dark complexions. Through the participants perspective there’s an emotional connection, as the dark image represents their current state both physically and emotionally, and by promoting an upper hand over darkness it presents a solution to their problems. As Farzana comments That being lighter is like the way to go about being appreciated beauty wise, that I need it and that it’s a solution to my life’s biggest problem, my dark skin. Its access to validation, to belong, to be accepted, loved, respected The focus on light skin, creates a difference and shows how this lifestyle can be alluring. As Hunter (2007) states ʺthis is the paradoxical discourse of the new beauty regime. It is simultaneously inclusive, multicultural, and new, while remaining Eurocentric and oldʺ (p 90). This style of advertising ‘teaches’ the way to look and consume and conform to the norms and values of different social groups. On the other hand participants view it as exposing the idea of women being objects. In general the participants were able to unmask the ideologies behind the advertisement and the inner meanings of the message. As the participants pointed out the mass media captivates a stereotypical mind-set towards darker skin tones. It is most often perceived as the undesirable and dull skin tone, and though at a subtle level it reinforces discrimination and negative racial distinctions. Farzana comments If you look at adverts right now they use the words light, bright but avoid using the word dark- in a sense it’s like subliminal message. The adverts aim on ‘practically’ helping you rather than ‘emotionally’- give you that new face of confidence Participants frequently mentioned self-objectification is reinforced through media images and societal messages emphasising the physical attributes of women, it condemns the sole representation of an individual to be based on colour hierarchy. Dark cancels out the word beauty and from these advertisements the implicit message women are fed is that simply they are not light enough to achieve societal status. It is selling the idea that an attractive appearance is an accomplishment and all positive values can be easily achieved. Although some of the participants felt they could not relate to the celebrities in the skin lightening advertisements, they were often described as attractive or beautiful and participants expressed a desire to look like them and mirroring their lightness. Laboni comments ‘‘we too can be our own stars and in order to do so we have to follow the regime and structure of these celebrities/ models. The element of beauty lies within this tub of cream’’. Rondilla & Spickard (2007) advocate ʺif you can get people to buy 165

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the image, they spend most of their day trying to get the goods, not thinking about the politicsʺ (p.84). There is a notion that one’s original state is ‘white skin’ but that over time they became dark. So the use of skin lightening cosmetics signifies a going back to their ‘natural state’. The use of the terms ‘bright’ and ‘glow’ insinuates a type of ethnic cleansing, a way of smoothing out uneven skin or accentuating looks. Through the participants perspective it’s apparent that they are satisfied to be British Bangladeshi as it gives them a unique and distinctive identity, however, through skin lightening they seek becoming better versions of themselves.

Keeping It Hush and Pretend You’re White It’s weird but we don’t admit to lightening our skin, we just quietly do it and pretend we’re light-skinned naturally, it’s our comfort zone. (Farzana, n.d.) Although the act of skin lightening is a widespread and growing phenomenon, it is a taboo subject. Finding participants to interview to discuss this topic was difficult and as the research puts forward very little are willing to admit to the practice; I really wouldn’t tell people, I would feel ashamed, I would feel self-conscious, and I wouldn’t want to let too much out but I come from a background where people believe you should be lighter. (Rashida, n.d.) From the participant’s perspectives, there are several judgments, ridicule and labelling behind skin lightening including the assumptions of self-hate, ‘selling out’, shame of one’s ethnic origin or simply not understanding the motives behind the use of skin lightening products (Draelos, 2009). The insight taken from the research data is that there are several types of Asian skin, from dark to light whereas there is an expectation that those from an African origin should embrace their skin colour as they are known as the ‘darker race’. In the participant’s perspective the logic behind this is that those from an African origin are referred to as ‘black’ and due to the social and historical movement, the label ‘black’ represents empowerment and success (Britton, 2012). Based on their physical characteristics they are perceived to be judged more favourably. It is important to mention that in the participant’s perspective the illustration of dark Asian women in advertisements preached relevance and the ‘fair girls go far’ morale whereas the visual representation of African women within skin lightening advertisements is deemed as narrow-minded and discriminating. As Rashida offers, when looking at one of the advertisements “They have used someone from an African background, which I find quite disrespectful. I think if you’re from that kind of background you should embrace it more because that’s what you are and that’s what it is, whereas with Asians you get light Asians and you get dark Asians, and everyone wants to be the light Asian”. There is a collective view from the women that no one likes to be known as racist so being African and dark skin is normal yet coming from a ‘chameleon of a background’ (Rashida)’ i.e. Bangladeshi, skin colour is a problem. This demonstrates that within the community girls find themselves continually compared to others, parents fear other people’s ignorance and remarks. There is a task of ‘proving’ oneself as an authentic member of the community, as women are treated better on account of their skin tone. As the research the women are not necessarily making a ‘Whiteness’ move but there is much more emphasis on being considered good enough to be part of the social sphere, gain esteem of others and acceptance in their own eyes. The aim is to be a lighter shade of brown rather than white. 166

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Within the Bangladeshi culture, as a social dynamic entity, there is a positive attitude towards the views, experiences and emotions of fellow members of the community (Arif, 2004). However, this is up until the point of establishing cultural identity, there is a trend to ignore ‘individuality’ and there are two most frequently practiced colours, white and black. There is denial to racist ideologies but instead the assumption that a woman’s body is a form of ‘text’ which denotes a special identity and acts as a sign to the society. The outlook stands that skin tone is natural and by possessing a ‘white’ appearance is the way for a better future. Growing up, outsiders or members of the community will never directly suggest the use of skin lightening creams, it is an idea that a ‘good mother’ should teach her child. As one participant described, her mother’s persistence to use skin lightening creams meant she grew up thinking “I really don’t even see myself in my skin tone when I close my eyes, I see myself in a light skin tone” (Farzana) What the research shows that the matter of dark skin tone brings shame yet as a community directly reinforcing this mind-set could bring chaos and insecurity so it is expected that if the mother wants the best for her daughter, she will ensure they adapt their identity so they are comfortable amongst their ‘own people’ and ensure they are appreciated across many diverse cultures.

Tension Between Own Moral Values and Practice It’s a market for girls, sounds bad but that’s how it is, and light skin girls are trending. (Farzana, n.d.) Throughout the research what perhaps stands out most is rationality to justify the use of skin-whitening products. Many participants have knowledge of the potential side-effects and some even went to discuss how they should feel pride within their natural skin tone; yet they still continue to buy these products. The decision behind buying skin lightening products is the idea that ‘even tone’ is within reach, it has become as part of their daily skin care regimens: I think it’s the same as cigarettes, the packaging states that smoking can kill but it doesn’t stop. I respond with that’s what they say about hair dye too but do people stop. ‘That look’ has been formulated by the society’s expectation of a bright, fair, pore-less, flawless complexion. I think to myself I should look like that and I’m not putting enough effort to get ‘that look -Fahmida Overall there is the mentality that skin colour goes above fashion. The general viewpoint from the research is that the women have the aim of lightening their skin tone, however if they were to discuss the reasons behind the use of these products to friend or peers it would be described as improving blotches and blemishes on the skin, to address unevenness and enhance their features. Comparisons were made to hair dye and how the action of skin-lightening is no different and the preference for fair skin in some instances is to the point of obsession. As indicated through the research much of this obsession stems from advertising portraying people with dark complexions as unsuccessful or unhappy, thus perpetuating the view that dark skin tones are inferior. Combined with Bangladeshi society’s attitude concerning fair skin, there’s a degree of cultural assimilative brainwashing (Aneweke, 2014) which makes it crucial to come towards ‘the light’. The imagery and text utilised on social media creates unrealistic illusions of what the readers should aspire to be. Not only do women find themselves under constant self-surveillance and aesthetic awareness, but there is a ‘third person effect’ which can evoke facial and body dissatisfaction, as well as affecting an individual’s self-esteem and identity in pursuit of the ‘perfect body’. Most questioned the use of the 167

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product and described how they hope future generations could move away from these stereotypes, so everyone could feel confident in their own skin. However, when weighing-up the current implications of dark skin, the underlying social issues and the ‘shame’ it could bring onto family members, participants choose collective acceptance of the ‘trend’. There is conscious awareness of the health implications and how skin lightening weakens one’s individual identity. As a result, their identities are constructed in rather narrow ways, they ‘become’ their skin colour. Repeatedly the participants interviewed went back and forth between references to physicality and colour as one element, and culture and behaviour as another. Often the women of this study associated other people’s complexion with a specific behavioural or social placement. For instance, Fahmida referred to how her sister in law is an ‘outcast’ because is she dark and put it down to religious beliefs. As she comments “She’s Hindu she will never be our colour, when you’re born that colour you will remain that colour. What she’s trying to do is make herself look equally light and presentable”. Though the admonitions appear cruel it revolves to understanding that the standard of living abides to a ‘colour-struck’ world. To an extent it seemed to be a take on euphemism, by discretely disclosing what is a ‘racial judgement’ however describing ‘light skin’ as a biological essential and a way of life. It is worth noting how there is a perceived colour affiliated to perceived status. As the perceptions of beauty become fixed, it formulates a way of being and how this social value translates to family and friends.

CONCLUSION From listening to the voices of a small group of British Bangladeshi women this study has investigated the world of skin lightening and its marketing. As identified through the research from a young age British Bangladeshi women are taught the value of skin colour. However, it has been found that the phantasmagoric nature of skin lightening products, it makes sense that women have often made the fantasy of being ‘lighter’ as the focal point of their skin care regime and as inevitable parts of life. Social media adverts advocate a socio-fantasy of a new identity and acceptance from the community that women desire, through very subtle depiction of images and words, reinforcing the desire for light skin as a mark of status, privileges, beauty and asset. It can be argued that colonial influences have created a negative perception of dark skin tones among the British Bangladeshi community and these advertisements simply reinforce historic and cultural beliefs, so maybe advertisements should not be held responsible for shaping how dark and light skin tone is valued. The social media adverts ‘cloak the true history’ of skin lightening and offer a ‘new global beauty’ ideal in its place. As underpinned by the research, advertisements have a critical role in pressuring women to look different from what they do, there is a need to gain approval from others and acceptance in their own eyes. The images and messages in the advertisements play a role in shaping the ideal self-image. When British Bangladeshi women strive for ideal beauty, they look at a set of standards different to the authentic appearance of the average Bangladeshi woman, an ‘instinctive’ preference for a Eurocentric, white face with westernised features or as Hall (2013) describes it as seeking a “racialized regime of representation” (p.237) For women who are conscious of their appearance, the use of lighter-skinned models constructs a relatable idea. Offering the possibility of escaping the ‘darkness’ of the present while opening up the space of white standards of beauty in the process of imaging the future. This form of beauty becomes universal, communicating to several women in different circumstances, it illustrates sameness, no difference. As the commentary from the participants indicates the image of dark skin focuses on a problem 168

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that needs to be fixed. Women are imprisoned by the ‘atomistic pleasures’ promised by advertisers which are social and psychological. Here the power of advertising campaigns is at play, women are because of racially informed ideologies however being in a “naive state can result in confusion, cynicism, and paralysis’” (Duncombe, 2012 p.364) as women are manipulated to redefine their sense of beauty, shifting how dark skin is understood and underrepresenting who women are. There is a paradox within the advertisements, it portrays choice, freedom and another identity to aspire to be. It could be argued that there isn’t a choice at all; the representation of homogenised white beauty means women are limited to certain ways of being and their social position is co-constructed through these images. In the participants’ perspective, there is beauty-status-eligibility code behind skin tone which seems more important for women than men. Whether through the means of image or text, skin lightening advertisements state how women should alter their appearance to please their husbands or future spouses. Skin lightening adverts both reflect and construct gender and ways to act. It is through the images in skin lightening adverts that a recognizable version of the ‘ideal woman’ emerges. With a particular western look and well-defined features, there is a focus on the model’s appearance and the pleasure this establishes. It appears there is a “spectatorial look in which the male is invited to buy into the ‘look’ of the model and incite identification with the look displayed” (Hall, 2013, p.310) Rather than embracing the diversity in appearance, British Bangladeshi women buy into a homogenous look and turn to invest in fantasies of what they want to become. Advertising, specifically beauty advertising, implies that it is “a matter of attractiveness, the world is moving forward, and races no longer matter because beauty belongs to everybody” (Rondilla, 2012, p.86) In principle, the insight gathered from this research study and the message behind skin lightening advertisements is that the communication tool is implemented from an organisations or influencers’ point of view and benefit, rather than looking at the cultural implications. Marketers should start taking responsibility for promoting products that offer freedom and choice, rather than products that promote and sanction racist views on skin colour and repress equality for women. Marketers create the idea that British Bangladeshi’s are just one product and reverting to their natural state, thus ‘perfection’.

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Food and Environmental Campaigns

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Chapter 11

Innovation for Human Development:

Exploring the Potential of Participatory Video for Two Grassroots Initiatives Alejandra Boni INGENIO (CSIC-UPV), Universitat Politècnica de València, Spain Monique Leivas INGENIO (CSIC-UPV), Universitat Politècnica de València, Spain Teresa De La Fuente Universitat Politècnica de València, Spain Sergio Belda-Miquel Departament de Comercialització i Investigació de Mercats, Universitat de València, Spain

ABSTRACT In this chapter, the authors examine to what extent a participatory video process promoted by a group of university researchers and conducted in collaboration with two grassroots innovations in the city of Valencia (Spain) has been a tool of human development innovation. They explore both the process and the product using different categories belonging to the participatory action research and human development and capabilities approach literature. They conclude that the process has expanded the capabilities of the participants, particularly those relating to rethinking and re-signifying their own innovative practices, and the more instrumental capabilities developed in connection with the use of video and teamwork. Furthermore, videos contribute, firstly, towards spreading a certain vision of the grassroots innovations aligned with the values of human development and, secondly, to creating communicative spaces where such innovation can be shown and discussed.

DOI: 10.4018/978-1-7998-4796-0.ch011

Copyright © 2020, IGI Global. Copying or distributing in print or electronic forms without written permission of IGI Global is prohibited.

 Innovation for Human Development

INTRODUCTION Can digital technologies serve to highlight and strengthen the work of social organizations that promote a model of a more equitable and sustainable development? This is the question we want to answer in this article, in which we will analyse an eight-month participatory video (PV) process, promoted by a group of university researchers and conducted in collaboration with two social organizations in the city of Valencia (Spain): the Fuel Poverty Group and Sólar Dómada. We call these two groups Grassroots Innovations (GI) according to the definition by Seyfang and Smith (2007), who understand GIs as: Networks of activists and organizations generating novel bottom-up solutions for sustainable development; solutions that respond to the local situation and the interests and values of the communities involved. In contrast to mainstream business greening, grassroots initiatives operate in civil society arenas and involve committed activists experimenting with social innovations as well as using greener technologies. Business and industry are no longer the only actors of innovation, but also groups of people from civil society, mainly activists or non-profit organizations, that generate bottom-up innovation in response to local needs. The aim of this kind of innovation is to lead to a transition to a more sustainable society, introducing a normative direction of innovation (Smith et al., 2010; Belda-Miquel and Pellicer-Sifres, 2019). In this paper, we complement this normative perspective of innovation for sustainability with the human development and capability approach, which arises from such a tradition in humanist social philosophy and humanist economics (e.g., Haq, 1999; Nussbaum, 2000; Gasper, 2009). Following previous attempts of dialogue between GI and human development (Pellicer-Sifres et al, 2017), we can call this kind of innovation GI for Human Development (GI4HD). The first GI4HD is Fuel Poverty Group, a new group of volunteers, mainly university students that want to challenge fuel poverty1 by giving advice on how to reduce fuel consumption. This group is part of a wider network named the Platform for a New Energy Model2, which works towards a more democratic and sustainable energy model. The other group is the Solar Dómada3, a group of people who are occupying a private plot, highly deteriorated at the time of their occupation (2013), as a way to assert the need for social spaces in the neighbourhood. Solar Dómada also seek to highlight that another kind of coexistence between neighbours is possible; one based on respect and intercultural coexistence. In the centre of the plot is the Garden of Ca Favara, one of the symbols of neighbourhood participation, involving more sustainable practices of food production and consumption. There are, therefore, two experiences of GI that have a common aim behind their activism in that they both seek a more equitable, democratic and sustainable livelihood. The differences between them lie in: the area in which they are located (energy and production of urban space); the age and characteristics of their members (university students in the case of Fuel Poverty Group and people of different ages, educational levels and careers in the case of Solar Dómada); and their strategies (information and technical advice in the case of Fuel Poverty Group and occupation of urban space in the case of the Solar). Over a period of six months (from October 2015 to March 2016), a group of researchers (including the authors of this chapter) worked with these two groups and facilitated a PV; understood here as a participatory action research where people created their own film, using digital video technology. This PV was a five-stage PV process, from the initial definition and planning to the public screening and debate on the videos. From our perspective, the innovative component (towards human development) of the PV is situated in two areas: firstly, as an action research methodology, the PV process enables people’s participation 176

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with the aim of generating learning, agency and contextual knowledge from the participants (Lunch & Lunch, 2006; White, 2003; Millán & Boni, 2016; López-Fogués et al., 2018;). In this sense, the methodology is totally coherent with the core values of human development and can itself be considered as a kind of innovation towards human development. Secondly, the innovation is found in the product, the video itself. The video narratives can disseminate the practices of the GI4HD, offering a space for critical reflection on the structural constraints that may hamper the diffusion of innovations. Furthermore, the audiovisual work itself has its own agency (Latour, 2005); not only does the PV create opportunities for learning, agency expansion and empowerment during the process, but the product also has the potential to create opportunities for advocacy (Wheeler, 2012), and to contribute towards removing the barriers that limit human development. In this chapter we want to examine to what extent this PV process has been a tool of human development innovation. We will explore both the process and the product using different categories belonging to the participatory action research and human development literatures. With regard to the process, we will pay attention to the communicative spaces developed using the PV. As stated by Kemmis and McTaggart (2005), communicative spaces are forums “in which people can join one another as co-participants in the struggle to remake the practices in which they interact” (p. 563). Inside these communicative spaces, the co-participants interact, discuss, learn (consciously and unconsciously), create knowledge and are exposed to power dynamics that can hamper, boost and, in any event, influence participation dynamics (Gaventa & Cornwall, 2008; Boni et al, 2017). Therefore, the three main questions to be explored will be: 1) To what extent, in the different communicative spaces created during the PV, did participation take place? 2) What kind of knowledge was co-created? 3) Did participants expanded their agency and capabilities? Both agency and capabilities are two main categories of the human development approach, to which we will refer in depth in section 3. With regard to the product, we will analyse to what extent the narratives of the two videos produced are coherent with human development values and whether the video achieved its potential as an agent of change. In the next part, section 2, we describe the PV process developed, identifying the different communicative spaces produced; in section 3 we address the main characteristics of the theoretical framework applied; in section 4 we discuss the evidences obtained and, lastly, in section 5 we conclude with some considerations of PV as an action-research tool that contributes to human development of grassroots innovations.

THE PV PROCESS According to several authors, PV can be understood as a manifestation of the relationship between the media and the world of development (Scott, 2014; Plush, 2012), but it is also identified as a methodological tool within the scope of Participatory Action Research (Fals-Borda & Rahman, 1991). PV like Participatory Action Research is a method of research and collaborative action characterized by the active involvement of people, the participants of the process. The facilitators are those who help structure the process and encourage interaction and discussion among participants to deepen contextual knowledge and, thus, look for possible solutions (Millán & Boni, 2016). Video is considered a means of creative communication; it is easily accessible and also, when basic technical support is provided, easy to use. In PV, the art of “storytelling” and the collaborative construction of the audiovisual content, mainly seek to provide a space for critical reflection on processes and 177

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social struggles and to appeal for advocacy and action on injustices that affect the participants. The PV process also enables those involved to exercise power and take control while generating agency and empowerment between participants (Lunch & Lunch, 2006; Wheeler, 2012; White, 2003). In our particular case, PV was used as an action-research method to try to grasp the contextual knowledge produced and as a way to empower members of the two local initiatives through various cycles of reflection and action. An additional objective was to produce an output – the two videos4 – that can be useful tools for the goals of the various participants: for the local organizations, as a tool to show and disseminate their activities and add new constituencies; and for the group of facilitators, members of INGENIO a Spanish Institute devoted to knowledge management and innovation5, as a way of illustrating a way of conducting research and discussing its social relevance. The 8-minute video by Solar Dómada presents the occupied plot as a place where coexistence between neighbourhoods is promoted and more sustainable lifestyles are demanded, which are respectful of the differences between cultures and between generations. At the heart of the plot there is a small orchard, literally dug into the cement, symbolizing a space of resistance against a model of the unsustainable and individualistic city in a peripheral and difficult urban environment. The second video (6’50”) illustrates a recent problem in the Spanish context; that of fuel poverty. The video shows evidence of what is meant by fuel poverty and how conducting a review of the entire energy consumption of a household can lead to improved energy efficiency. In Figure 1, we illustrate the different phases of PV (diagnosis, planning, production, curation and sharing) according to a definition developed by Millán and Frediani (2014) and later used to guide other PV processes (Boni & Walker, 2016; Boni & Millán, 2016; Millán & Boni, 2016; López-Fogués et al., 2018). During the five phases we identify the three different communicative spaces that occurred during the PV: inside the GI4HD, between these and facilitators and between GI4HD, facilitators and other people. Figure 1. Stages of participatory video development Source: Millán and Frediani, 2014.

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In the first phase, diagnosis, participants identified the most relevant issues. This phase occurred in two types of communicative spaces: inside GIs and and between groups and facilitators. In the case of Solar Dómada, the intra-group space was particularly important as it enabled a reconstruction of the history of the group. In the case of the Fuel Poverty Group, the interaction between this group and the other participants enabled them to think about the narrative of the video, embracing a broader perspective of fuel poverty. The second phase was planning, where the storyboard was developed. This occurred primarily inside groups and then it was socialized in a communicative space of a collective nature, which was also very much appreciated by the participants, allowing them to reflect on the narratives and contents of the two videos. The third phase was the video production. In the case of the Fuel Poverty Group, the participants asked people outside the action research about the significance of fuel poverty or how they felt about being labelled “energy poor”. As we will discuss in section 4, these interactions were a very important source of learning about rethinking the idea of ​​fuel poverty and the scope of performing energy consultancy as a mechanism to deal with it. In the case of Solar Dómada, the production phase stimulated a variety of communicative spaces between group members and the neighbourhood, providing various perspectives on the plot. The contribution of the facilitators at this stage was to provide technical assistance in recording. The fourth phase was the publication (curation) of the two videos, which in the case of Solar Dómada was conducted with the help of an external facilitator, while in the case of the Fuel Poverty Group, the task was taken on by the group itself. There was a collective communication space where videos were pre-viewed internally. For the Fuel Poverty Group, this space of collective discussion allowed them to refine the video narrative. The PV cycle ended with the public presentation of the videos in an emblematic site in the city of Valencia, due to its political character (Ca Revolta). After the screening there was an interesting dialogue between group members, facilitators and the audience, composed of activists and academics and neighbours of the Solar Dómada.

MAIN CATEGORIES TO EXPLORE INNOVATION FOR HUMAN DEVELOPMENT As stated at the introduction, to analyse the PV process we use three categories frequently mentioned as significant in the participatory action research and the capability approach for human development literature. The first is “communicative spaces”. As Kemmis and McTaggart state (2005, p. 563), “PAR offers an opportunity to create forums in which people can join one another as co-participants in the struggle to remake the practices in which they interact”. The same authors define practice as the real, material, concrete and particular actions of particular people in specific places, which can “comprehend what people do, how people interact with the world and with the others, what people mean and what they value, the discourses in which people understand and interpret the world” (Kemmis & McTaggart, 2005, p. 565). The second category is participation. According to Bradbury-Huang (2010), participation can be considered on a broad spectrum: from a minimum involvement of practitioners (for example, in a needed consultation) to having those practitioners as co-researchers and co-designers. The third category is knowledge. As we mentioned at the beginning of this paper, through participation in communicative spaces, knowledge is produced. This knowledge is assumed to not only be the understanding of the

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topics addressed, but also practical knowledge (the skills developed) and the values that underpin the knowledge produced (Kemmis & McTaggart, 2005). The other theoretical perspective is the capability approach for human development, which was developed in answer to the question “Equality of what?”. Sen’s response (1992) was to insert capabilities into the evaluative space, that is to understand and measure development as a process of expanding the real freedoms (the capabilities or well-being freedoms, the opportunity aspect of freedom), that people enjoy to be and do what they have reason to value (their plural functionings or well-being achievements). Well-being is thus understood in terms of how a person can “function”, or what a person can actually be and do. If capability is freedom of opportunity, agency is freedom of process. Agency refers to the ability of the individual to pursue and achieve the objectives they value. An agent is, as Sen notes (1999), someone who acts and makes change happen. As Deneulin (2014) explains, “well-being not only depends on what a person does or is, but on how [author’s emphasis] she achieved that functioning, whether she was actively involved in the process of achieving that functioning or not” (p. 27). Sen’s answer to his famous question “Equality of what?” is not only equality and democratically decided basic capabilities, but also, and just as importantly, equality of agency and process freedoms (Crocker, 2008). The last characteristic of the capability approach for human development we want to highlight is its multidimensional and integral understanding of good lives. The plurality of dimensions and underpinning of values constitute a crucial anchor and guard against its easy domestication (Boni et al., 2016b). All the values matter and support and reinforce each other. In a more detailed definition of the central values of human development, Alkire and Deneulin (2009) identify four interlocking principles of equity, efficiency, participation and empowerment, and sustainability and elaborate each as follows: 1. Equity draws on the concept of justice, impartiality and fairness and incorporates a consideration for distributive justice between groups. In human development, we seek equity in the space of people’s freedom to live valuable lives. It is related to, but different from, the concept of equality, which implies the equality of all people in some space. In human development, equity draws attention to those who have unequal opportunities due to various disadvantages and may require preferential treatment or affirmative action. 2. Efficiency refers to the optimal use of existing resources. It is necessary to demonstrate that the chosen intervention offers the highest impact in terms of people’s opportunities. When applying this principle, one must conceive of efficiency in a dynamic context since what is efficient at one point in time may not necessarily be efficient in the long run. 3. Participation and empowerment is about processes in which people act as agents – individually and as groups. It is about the freedom to make decisions in matters that affect their lives; the freedom to hold others accountable for their promises, the freedom to influence development in their communities. Whether at the level of policy-making or implementation, this principle implies that people need to be involved at every stage, not merely as beneficiaries or spectators, but as agents who are able to pursue and realize goals that they value and have reason to value. 4. Sustainability is often used to introduce the durability of development in the face of environmental limitations but is not confined to this dimension alone. It refers to advancing human development such that progress in all spheres – social, political and financial – endures over time. Environmental sustainability implies achieving developmental results without jeopardizing the natural resource base and biodiversity of the region and without affecting the resource base for future generations. 180

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Financial sustainability refers to the way in which development is financed without penalizing future generations or economic stability. Social sustainability refers to the way in which social groups and other institutions are involved and support development initiatives over time, avoiding disruptive and destructive elements. Cultural liberty and respect for diversity are also important values that can contribute to socially-sustainable development. As Alkire and Deneulin point out, these four principles are not exhaustive; other values, such as responsibility or justice, could also be considered. However, we agree with Ibrahim (2014) that an intervention inspired by the human development approach should incorporate all four dimensions; even if its main focus is on one dimension of value, the others must also be considered in relation to the main value chosen. For example, efficiency should not be considered on its own. Thus, departing from the four values identified by Alkire and Deneulin (2009) and the categories of capabilities and agency illustrated above, in the next section we analyse to what extent the capabilities and agency of participants were expanded through the PV process (also analysed through the interaction between communicative spaces, knowledge and participation) and if and how the main narratives of the two videos inspire and adhere to the main values of human development. Finally, we consider whether the audiovisual products were able to exert their agency once the PV process had ended. We will base our evidence on participant observation conducted throughout the process along with three groups interviews to members of the two GIs at the end of the PV process. In the case of Solar Dómada, two group interviews were conducted: the first with 3 women participating in the GI and the second with two men. The reason for doing it this way is that, during the PV, a difficult power relation between one of the women and the two men was detected. To enable the interview to flow more naturally, it was decided to separate the two groups. In the case of the Fuel Poverty Group a single group interview was conducted with a woman and a man. All the interviewees give us their informed consent. The exploration of the narrative of the two videos has been performed by analysing the dialogues that appear in both videos, regardless of any other characteristics thereof (for example, non-verbal expressions). It is, therefore, an exploratory study that paves the way for future applications of the capabilities approach for human development in the analysis of audiovisual content. One limitation of this exploration is it has been made only by the authors of this paper, without involving the participants of the PV process. The authors are aware that incorporating the participants in the analysis could be more coherent with principles of human development and PV. Also, could be a more fruitful way as it can provoque new communicative spaces that can produce meaningful learning and knowledge.

THE PROCESS. EXPANDING CAPABILITIES AND AGENCY THROUGH COMMUNICATIVE SPACES We will begin this section by analysing the potential of communicative spaces (both collective and within the groups) to create knowledge and foster participation. Starting with the collective communicative spaces mentioned before, both groups acknowledge that the first collective meeting was highly motivating and exciting. As noted by one of the members of the Solar Dómada: It was very encouraging to see that your team [INGENIO team] was interested in our initiatives and because the problems we often have is making ourselves understood by our neighbours... I thought it was a good opportunity to become known in the neighbourhood... also to try something new, editing a video is far from what we normally do.

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In terms of the knowledge produced, we can identify the second collective moment that happened at the planning phase as being extremely powerful – when the two organizations shared storyboards. During moments of dialogue, participants were able to contrast their visions on the themes that would be address in the videos. For example, one of the members of the Fuel Poverty Group indicated: XX told us that energy is not only electricity… there is solar thermal energy in the roofs of the houses... [all of these] are reflections from other points of view that you can get if you talk to people, and especially if you talk to groups that are already committed... [this is] where richness lies. In the case of the Fuel Poverty Group, the collective moment helped the group to adopt a less paternalistic perspective of fuel poverty. Their first option was to show one person affected by fuel poverty and how the energy consultancy could help to reduce her energy expenditure. After the ideas exchange during the second collective moment, the group decided to include a more political perspective of fuel poverty, introducing references in the storyboard concerning the energy oligopoly that exists in Spain and which hinders better energy consumption. Regarding facilitation, members of the two groups expressed that horizontal relations between facilitators and members of the two GIs had a positive and significant impact on communication and exchange of ideas. It was also highlighted in the final meeting that collective spaces had been planned and managed in a very careful way. They were experienced as pleasant and friendly spaces, where people felt comfortable and relaxed, having a positive effect on people’s participation. The importance of the emotional aspect in the process has been one of the greatest learning aspects for the facilitation team. Relationships between people are crossed by emotions, and creating communicative spaces where these emotions can be channelled positively is essential in order to generate more knowledge sharing and enhance participation. With regard to the communicative spaces that have occurred within groups, for Solar Domada’s members, the exchanges that happened during the diagnostic and planning phases were very important to reconstruct the history of the organization and the role played by each of its members. As noted by one of the participants: We remember especially when we were recalling those moments with pictures... they were very emotional moments... I loved it when all of us answered without digressions what we wanted to show in the video... we had never seen such an organized and respectful relationship as the one that occurred that day. In the case of the Fuel Poverty Group, one of the most interesting communicative spaces from the perspective of knowledge production took place at the production stage when interviewing a woman affected by fuel poverty. The interviewer noted that the most shocking thing was to realize that the woman wouldn’t have considered herself fuel-poor if she had been living on her own but she would reconsider this position if this affected her ability to meet the basic needs of her family. Another important learning aspect for the members of the GIs was the limitations of their voluntary action as a way to challenge fuel poverty. As one of them indicated: The difficult part is that we can help reducing the bill but we can’t help you to get reconnected to the power supply... it’s an economic issue... this where we say: we can only go so far as fuel poverty volunteers… Finally, the act of making the two videos has also contributed to the acquisition of new technical skills. At the beginning of the process, some of the participants believed they were totally incapable of making a video. A special mention must be made regarding the power relations that occurred throughout the process; on one side, although the PV process puts the team of facilitators in a position of superiority due to their mastery of the audiovisual tool (Millán & Boni, 2016), this was not a hindrance throughout the process. 182

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In the case of the Fuel Poverty Group, the group requested technical support when needed, but much of the technical work was done by the group itself. Participants recognized that the video could have had a higher technical quality, but their attitude was that this was a first approach to the tool, which would enable them to make more videos in the future. On the other hand, in the Sólar Dómada group, power relations played an important role. In fact, one of the external facilitators ended up in charge of technical tasks and coordination of the PV process, precisely as a way to mediate between group members. This was viewed positively by most participants, because it was the way to “save” the process and finalize the video. However, one of the participants said he would have liked to have more control over the process, but the difficult relations inside the group favoured the delegation of coordination and technical tasks to an outsider. With regard to the expansion of capabilities and agency among the participants, one of the main capabilities developed was the awareness capability or the capability to carry out self-critical investigation and an analysis of their own reality (Gaventa & Cornwall, 2008) that contributes towards rethinking and reframing the particular practices of the participants (Kemmis & McTaggart, 2005). Examining the PV results from a capability lens shows that, throughout the five stages, the process provided the necessary communicative spaces (internal and external) for participants to formulate and express how they understand the challenges they were facing. Regarding the facilitators, we can say that this PV process enhanced their capability to reflect and improve their understanding of their role as facilitators in the social development field (Boni & Walker, 2016). The facilitators were able to clearly envisage the drivers than can bring about a better performance of PV processes. Paying attention to emotions, or providing safe spaces for participants to share and exchange knowledge, feelings and emotions, was crucial during the PV process. We can also highlight the expansion of more “instrumental” capabilities such as the “social relations and social network” capability, or the capability to “Participate in a group for learning, working with others to solve problems and tasks and form effective or good groups for collaborative and participatory learning”, both described by Walker (2006, p. 128). All of these capabilities were developed in the interaction between different communicative spaces both inside groups and in the relationship between groups and facilitators, with the exception of what happened with one of the people from the Solar Dómada who, for personal reasons also related to power dynamics, distanced herself from the process. With regard to the expansion of agency, we must say that prior to starting the PV, all members of the two GIs recognized themselves as agents of change. What was provided by the PV was a major focus on that capacity for change. For example, as we said above, for the Fuel Poverty Group, the PV involved them becoming aware of the limitations of energy consultancy and volunteering as a way to fight and reverse such a complex issue as fuel poverty, which is linked to economic and political factors. However, the fact that the group exists within a wider movement, that of the Platform for a New Energetic Model, also allowed the GI to form a deeper understanding of the group’s “room for manoeuvre” to change a structural problem like fuel poverty. In this regard, we note that the communicative space of the final presentation of the two videos, in which there was an interesting debate on these issues, was very positive for the formation of agency of the members of the Fuel Poverty Group. On the other hand, this collective space served to increase the visibility of the Fuel Poverty Group within the Platform, which also indicates an increase in the agency space of this group. Concerning the Solar Dómada, in the case of the two men, they entered the PV with a strong impression of being agents of change; in this sense, the process strengthened this agency capacity to some extent. For two of the three women, they gained more recognition from their peers as agents of change 183

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and, at the same time, they reinforced their perception of being change makers. In this sense, we can say that the process was extremely empowering for them. But, for the other woman, as a result of power imbalances with its male peers, the process was extremely disempowering and she decided to abandon it. In that sense, the PV was not positive for this participant and, as in other Participatory Action Research processes, more attention from the facillitators should be paid to power relations, as these are crucial in those kind of research.

THE PRODUCTS. COMPLEMENTARY APPROACHES FROM THE HUMAN DEVELOPMENT PERSPECTIVE In this section we address the content analysis of two videos from the perspective of the four values of human development: equity, efficiency, participation and empowerment, and sustainability. In the video of the Solar Dómada, entitled “The Orchard of Ca Favara”, the most relevant values are those of participation and sustainability. The Orchard is represented as a space “where things can happen” or “where values contrary to individualism and competitiveness are practiced”, as narrated by two neighbours. Other characters highlight that the Garden is almost the only green space in the neighbourhood and gives it a better quality of life, making it possible to grow plants and vegetables in the middle of an extremely industrial environment. Additionally, the plot is a place to carry out recreational activities, and used by people of various origins and ages. Somehow, though not predominantly, the value of equity is shown, understood as equal opportunities to make use of the Garden. By contrast, the videos by the Fuel Poverty Group, emphasize the values of equity and efficiency. The first value is expressed in much of the dialogues and testimonies that appear in the video. Fuel poverty is presented as a problem that affects many people, more than it seems, and that can happen in “ordinary” households. In fact, one third of the video is a conversation that occurs in a “normal” home where the mother of two children narrates how fuel poverty not only impedes her from heating water or warming her home, but also makes her feel ashamed. This is a really multidimensional view of poverty and very much aligned with the values of human development. Another key aspect that appears in the video is efficiency; the second part of the video narrative is dedicated to showing how homes can be more energy efficient with the help of the Fuel Poverty Group, that performs energy consultancy. The video concludes by briefly highlighting the various activities of the group to illustrate the value of collective participation in order to change the energy model. Interestingly, one value that does not appear, despite being closely related to the theme of energy, is that of sustainability. We can conclude that neither of the two videos incorporates all four values of human development as a whole; rather they are complementary. Also, it is true that there are no counter-values to those of human development. The final analysis we want to address in relation to the two videos is the capacity of the video itself to exert its agency, detached from the process of its creation. We consider three different communicative spaces to address this issue: the public screening at the end of the PV cycle and the presentations of the videos in two additional spaces: in a training session aimed at Cuban practitioners, and in a Spanish Master’s degree on development aid. Both of them took place at the Polytechnic University of Valencia. The public screening was the most interesting communicative space, leading to meaningful debates on central questions in the two narratives. On the one hand, in the case of the Fuel Poverty Group, the discussion focused on the difficulty both of measuring fuel poverty and knowing who can be considered 184

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as a fuel poor – those who cannot afford the electricity bill, or those unable to heat their house, or those who have to choose between cooking, heating or having hot water? The name itself somehow stigmatizes people as “poor”, and many people do not want to be recognized in this way, which makes it difficult to obtain information from them. Also, the discussion touched upon role of gender in fuel poverty, as it is women who are trying more to cope with its effects in the home. In the case of the video by Solar Domada, the discussion focused on the importance of making visible the work done in peripheral and industrial areas, such as that where the plot is located. This led to a debate about the role that PV can play in the long term and with different audiences. The role of the university in accompanying these kinds of long-term processes was also discussed, with the intention of trying to avoid temporary collaborations, as various activists remarked at the public screening. The communicative space with Cuban practitioners was interesting because it allowed, on the one hand, to show the PV as a communication tool for social change and, on the other hand, to bring about an exchange of perspectives on the potential of GI4HD in recovered urban environments in Cuba and in Valencia. Finally, the projection in the Master’s course served to illustrate the potential of PV as a tool of participatory action research and the role the university can play. Something that was verified is the potential of video as a very good communicative tool; its visual nature makes it more comprehensible, regardless of the literacy of the audience and its easily reproducible properties make communication possible without the need of those who appear in the images to attend (Millán & Boni, 2016). In a global context where the low cost and easy access to platforms and digital devices are making it easier for citizens to propose and communicate alternatives participation and influence to the traditional structures of political and social power, video is currently emerging as the audiovisual medium with the greatest social influence on digital content (Vallet et al., 2015).

CONCLUDING THOUGHTS From the analysis in terms of the expansion of capabilities and agency and the alignment of the narratives of the two videos with the values of human development, we can say that the PV has proven to be a methodology that enhances GI4HD. The process has expanded the capabilities of the participants, particularly those relating to rethinking and re-signifying their own innovative practices, and the more instrumental capabilities developed in connection with the use of video and teamwork. This capabilities expansion occurs through participation in communicative spaces in which knowledge is created from the internal interaction of the members of the innovations and in the relationship between these and facilitators. There is also an enabling communicative space when the participants interact with outsiders. As in other processes of action-research, the capabilities expansion is limited by power relations, as seen in the case of Solar Dómada. In relation to agency, although members of both GI4HD can be considered agents of change in the sense given by Amartya Sen (1999), we can conclude that, especially in the case of the Fuel Poverty Group, through rethinking their practice, individual and collective agency has been fostered. The idea that it is necessary to go beyond energy consultancy to combat fuel poverty gives a more structural approach to the practice of the Fuel Poverty Group. Furthermore, the two audiovisual products can also be considered as part of the innovation for human development. As illustrated in the example, videos contribute, firstly, towards spreading a certain vision of the GI aligned with the values of human development and, secondly, to creating communicative 185

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spaces where such innovation can be shown and discussed. In spite of this, we cannot conclude from the examples that the videos have had an impact on policy change, which may be one of the potentials of PV (Wheeler, 2012). As a limit of this work we can point out that both the analysis of the process and the outputs (the two videos) can be done with a major involvment of the participants. Indoubtely, this can reinforce the participatory side of the research and can provide new communicative spaces to produce learning and knowledge. Also, it would be of interest to explore the potential of PV innovation in the production system of scientific knowledge itself. The fact that it is a methodology of participatory action research, that is being promoted from a research group that is embedded in a university, leads us to an interesting reflection regarding the potential of these research methodologies to promote innovation in ways that generate and disseminate a kind of knowledge aligned with human development values. This would be an even greater contribution of PV towards contributing to a more equitable and sustainable development model.

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ENDNOTES 1



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Fuel poverty can be understood as the difficult situation faced by a household that can’t afford to pay for their energy consumption, leading to a lack of normalized access to gas and electricity. This situation brings about a deprivation of the freedom to live a decent life (Pellicer & Lillo, 2014). http://www.nuevomodeloenergetico.org [retrieved 20th September 2016]. http://domonomada.blogspot.com.es [retrieved 20th September 2016]. Available at https://repensandoelcambioclimatico.wordpress.com/5o-ciclo-proyeccion-publica/ More information of the Institute is available at https://www.ingenio.upv.es/en

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Climate Change and Sustainability Issues in Indian Newspapers Nirmala Thirumalaiah Hindustan Institute of Technology and Science, India Arul Aram I. https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8130-461X Anna University, Chennai, India

ABSTRACT Climate change conferences had wide media coverage – be it on newspaper, radio, television or the internet. The terms such as ‘climate change’, ‘global warming’, and ‘El Nino’ are gaining popularity among the public. This study examines the news coverage of climate change issues in the major daily newspapers—The Times of India, The Hindu in English, and the Dina Thanthi, Dinamalar, and Dinamani in regional language (Tamil)—for the calendar years 2014 and 2015. This chapter describes how climate change influences nature and human life, and it is the basis for social and economic development. The news coverage of climate change and sustainability issues helps the reader better understand the concepts and perspectives of environment. Climate change communication in regional newspapers and local news stories may increase the public’s interest and knowledge level regarding climate change and sustainability issues.

INTRODUCTION Major environmental issues in India are air pollution, water pollution, land degradation, ocean and coastal threats, resource depletion, deforestation, shrinking wetland, endangered species, loss of biodiversity and climate change/global warming. These environmental problems are adversely affecting the health and life of biological nature including humanity. India suffers from the effects of climate change, especially it impacts the vulnerable groups such as indigenous community, rural poor and children. The DOI: 10.4018/978-1-7998-4796-0.ch012

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 Climate Change and Sustainability Issues in Indian Newspapers

devastating deluge of December 2015 in Chennai was a result of the rise of sea surface temperature to above normal in the Bay of Bengal causing unprecedented heavy rain. Climate change and sustainable development are interrelated. Climate change influences nature and human life and it is the basis for social and economic development (IPCC, 2007). Climate change is included as one of the goals in the new agenda for sustainable development to ‘take urgent action to combat climate change and its impacts’ (Sustainable Development Goals, 2015). It is a serious global environmental issue and it affects millions of people worldwide. In developing countries, poor and marginalized groups are worst affected by the impacts of climate change such as drought, floods, extreme weather events, shortage of food and drinking water. India is one of the countries in Asia most susceptible to climate change. The devastating deluge of December 2015 in Chennai, Tamil Nadu was a result of the rise of sea surface temperature to above normal in the Bay of Bengal causing unprecedented heavy rain. A study on climate change in Anna University in 2013 predicted that temperature will rise to 3.5o C in Tamil Nadu by the end of this century. According to the predictions, the temperature will rise by 1o C in next 30 years and the sea level will rise by 53 cm by the end of this century along coastal Tamil Nadu. According to the report ‗Natural Disasters Saving Lives Today Building Resilience for Tomorrow‘, the coastal cities in India will be at risk as an impact of flooding due to rising sea levels and extreme weather conditions (2014). Combating climate change to achieve sustainable development is a challenge for society. Sustainable development is a goal for the present and future generations to achieve equal rights and opportunities that help lead a good human life (Brundtland, 1987). It is also a goal to raise the standard of living of the poor. The socio-economic-environmental dimensions must be in balance to attain sustainable development. Sustainability is understood as continued growth; and establishing sustainability in policy circles is the outcome of enormous communicative effort by key decision making and policy planning fora such as the World Summit on Sustainable Development and the Conference of Parties (COPs) on climate change (Miller & Dinan, 2015). Sustainable development is the idea of progress, and progress is one of the most powerful notions in the modern world. Sustainable development involves economic growth, environmental conservation, social justice and not just for the moment, but in permanence (Dryzek, 2005). Media coverage of climate change and sustainability issues help the reader better understand the concepts and perspectives of environment. Climate change conferences had wide media coverage – be it on newspaper, radio, television or the internet. Newspapers have played an important role in disseminating climate change and sustainability issues discussed in the conference. The terms such as ‘climate change’, ‘global warming’ and ‘El Nino’ are gaining popularity among the public. News reporting on climate change must address the challenges posed in the deeper social and economic dimensions of sustainable development. Reporting needs a multi-faceted approach, in making people understand the complexity of climate change. Although facts, figures and rational analysis are necessary, they are insufficient in persuading individuals and communities to adopt more climate friendly lifestyles, practices and use of technologies. Senior journalist G. Krishnan (2009) said, “reporters are often reluctant to admit that they do not understand the subject; instead, they merely reproduce the contents of the press releases or briefings.” This study aims to analyze the framing of climate change and sustainability issues in dominant newspapers in Tamil Nadu. The objectives of the study are: • •

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To examine how climate change and sustainability issues are represented in the Indian newspapers To identify the prominent frames in the Indian newspapers

 Climate Change and Sustainability Issues in Indian Newspapers

NEWSPAPER FRAMING STUDIES This study analyzed the newspaper coverage of climate change and sustainability issues from the theoretical perspective of framing. Framing is regarded as a prominent area of research in analyzing the news production. It is an angle or perspective from which a news story is told. It is a reconstruction of reality from various angles. Journalists use different sources from a particular news angle and then the story is treated. Journalists and editors choose not only which events to cover, but also which aspects of the events to emphasise (Yarchi et al. 2017). So it has a certain influence, i.e., the selection of sources and the way they seek the information. Also constraints such as time, travel and organisational pressure influence the framing. As mentioned by Entman (1993), framing involves selection and salience i.e. to select some aspects of a perceived reality and make them more salient in a communicating text in such a way as to promote a particular problem definition. He also says that journalists may follow the rules for objective reporting and yet convey a dominant framing of the news that prevents most audience members from making a balanced assessment of a situation. Framing analysis of news frames can help understanding the choices and interpretations of journalists. Framing a story may define the nature of the debate and suggest the audience how an issue can be interpreted (Van Gorp 2010). Most of the researchers used framing in diverse ways. Chetty et al. (2015) investigated the framing of climate change science in New Zealand newspapers using content analysis and found that the Politics, Social Progress, and Economic frames were most prominent in coverage. More emphasis on the Politics frame was in the coverage of actions and comments of world leaders in relation to talks and negotiations at various international policy events. Politicians and world leaders were primary actors accountable for the issues and to solve the problem. A study by Dirikx and Gelders (2009) examined climate change issues in French and Dutch newspapers. Their study observed that the Consequences frame was found to be most prominent followed by the Responsibility frame. Many articles mention the need for urgent actions, refer to possible solutions and suggest that governments are responsible for and/or capable of alleviating problems. The news media play a key role in shaping the climate change information and the increase in coverage was attributed to politics than nature science and climate talks (Boykoff and Boykoff 2007). Calderón et al. (2015) in Spanish-speaking online media during COP16 (Cancun-2010) and COP17 (Durban-2011) found that the principal sources were politicians and it discussed that there exists a ‘nationalistic domestication’ and that media coverage does not respond to local needs. According to Pompper (2004), the mainstream newspapers used frames that relied heavily on government and industrial sources where voices of the common people were suppressed. A study by Kosteralla et al. (2013) found that there is reduced reliability in the Greek media with regard to the quality of environmental information. Djerf-Pierre et al. (2015) examined a newspaper each from Sweden and Australia in framing renewable energy as an environmental, political, scientific, economic and civil society issue. Economic frames were prevalent in the newspapers and they focused on elite actors. Institutional (politics and industry) factors influenced the way issues were framed i.e., the amount of attention given to different forms of renewable energy. Differences in the media system and the newspaper organizations also influenced the way the specific newspaper addressed the issue. The Swedish newspaper was influenced by the proactive environmental politics and it gave higher degree of freedom for individual reporters compared to the Australian newspaper. Feldman and Milosavic (2015) examined how the threats of climate change and efficacy for actions to address it in US newspapers between 2006 and 2011. Results showed that The Wall Street Journal was least likely to discuss the impacts of and threat posed by climate change and most likely to include negative efficacy information 191

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and use conflict and negative economic framing when discussing actions to address climate change. The inclusion of positive efficacy information was similar in all newspapers. Climate impacts and actions to address climate change were more likely to be discussed separately than together in the same article. Xie et al. (2015) study examined the media coverage of climate change in the British and Chinese national press. There were similarities and dissimilarities in the use of news frames. The most prevalent frames in the Chinese newspaper were responsibility and human interest. In the British, the consequences frame was the most prevalent frame. But in China, the consequences frame was used less often than the responsibility and human interest frames, but more often than the conflict frame. The media in China have strong political-orientation and authority focused, so the responsibility frame was used more often in the Chinese stories than those of the British. Habib and Hinojosa (2016) examined the national news sources (The New York Times, The Washington Post and Los Angeles Times). Environmental concerns were linked to responsibility and conflict because these frames focused on blame and disagreement in regards to government and the industry, which were shaping policies and taking actions that affect the environment. Climate change issues in the Southeast Asian countries were increased after 2006. Stories framed were more on moral judgments than solutions Freeman (2017). Tong (2014) analyzed investigative reports on environmental problems in Chinese newspapers and found that the Chinese newspapers framed environmental problems in a way criticizing the economic priority and policies of the Chinese government which were accountable for environmental problems. News organization in China encourage reporting on environmental problems and stress journalistic independence and social responsibility. Neverla et al. (2012) highlighted that providing knowledge on climate change issues in Bangladesh is difficult because of low literacy rate. It has been found that media represent government policy makers and environmental activists extensively, and the voices of scientists and lay people were under-represented. Limited journalistic capacity and dependency on western media were the major impediments to climate change. Reza and Haque (2011) found that coverage of environmental issues in Bangladesh newspapers prioritized three subjects, protecting the rivers, stopping deforestation and minimizing pollution level as top agenda of the local environment. Global climate change stories received more attention than local environmental issues. This showed that the media drew the attention of policy makers. The study suggested that media should create awareness and to persuade key policy makers to take appropriate measures to protect the local environment. Al-Foori (2015) used content analysis and frame analysis in examining the Omani newspapers and found that the responsibility frame was more prominent and the human interest frame is the second most prominent frame. The responsibility of the government to solve environmental issues was highest in the newspaper. The human interest frame showed the level of personalization in news production, which stressed how individuals were affected by the problem and provided more human examples. The conflict frame was less prevalent and it was found that local news was rarely framed in conflict. Billett (2009) analyzed four English newspapers in India on climate change issues using discourse analysis. Climate change was framed as India is not being responsible. Many stories framed the historical patterns of greenhouse gas emissions by developed countries as the cause for current climate change. A minority of the samples presented responsibility as ‘common but differentiated’, however per capita emissions in the western countries were primarily responsible for excessive resource consumption. Stories dealing with mitigation believed that only the developed countries should cut its emissions and argued that India must prioritize its commitments to poverty reduction and economic growth. The Indian media present climate change in the scientifically representative frame compared to western media. Conflict 192

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and responsibility frames were prominent frames of Indian media coverage. English-language press in India reflects elite perceptions (Boykoff 2010). Though India has the highest editions and circulations around the world, research on regional language newspapers is limited. Many scholars have studied only the English newspaper coverage with elite perception.

METHODS This paper examines the climate change and sustainability issues based on quantitative and qualitative content analysis. The periods for the analysis were limited between the calendar years 2014 and 2015 as the major events of Lima and Paris Climate Summit (COP20 & COP21), U.N. Sustainable Development Summit and disastrous floods in Chennai happened during this period. Each article was treated as a unit of analysis. The sample was collected from the online archives of the newspapers. The news articles from archives were taken for data collection using the following environmental search terms ‘climate change’, ‘global warming’, ‘greenhouse gas’ and ‘sustainable development’. In the regional newspapers, equivalent Tamil terms were searched for. Articles were identified based on the concepts of climate change and sustainability issues. Climate change stories included impacts of climate change such as glacier melt, extreme events such as floods and drought. It also included impacts on people and livelihood issues. It also included criticism of countries which are not doing enough about climate change (Al Foori 2015). For quantitative analysis the topic was dealt by three different categories: (1) Impacts of climate change: The news items that linked climate change and its impacts on ecosystems and impacts on people were included; (2) International negotiations: News items on climate change negotiations, COP conferences, and criticism of countries were included. (3) Other issues: This included news items of other topics on climate change such as mitigation. The qualitative analysis of the text was identified based on the previous studies of Nisbet (2009), Semetko & Valkenburg (2000) and Nambiar (2014). Many researchers have mentioned that climate change in news coverage differs by country and culture, especially between developing and developed nations. Some of the frames of Nambiar (2014) which suit the Indian context have been taken up for the study. These frames focus on sustainability discourses and help to locate the perceptions of developed vs. developing nations in a global context. The frames included in the study were ‘Social Progress’, ‘Economic’, ‘Scientific’, ‘Conflict’, ‘Human Interest’ Public Accountability / Governance’, ‘First World Accountability’, and ‘International Perspective’.

FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION Frequency of Coverage The climate change coverage is more prevalent in the English newspapers than in regional language (Tamil). The climate change theme contained stories on impacts such as glacier melt, marine life, birds and animals, coral bleaching, and extreme events such as floods and drought. It also included the impact on people and their livelihood issues.

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Figure 1. News articles with climate change and sustainability issues

News about the impact on various ecosystems was prominent in The Times of India (n = 46). The Hindu covered stories on melting of the Gangothri and other Himalayan glaciers and their impact. The ‘other’ category of the climate change theme included news items of mitigations and adaptations and livelihood issues. These stories suggested solutions to tackle climate change and sustainability issues which must be addressed immediately to face the challenge ahead. The public and the government responsibilities in mitigating climate change actions were identified. Individual action and increasing awareness of climate change were also highlighted. Many people in India are unaware of the impact of the climate change. If they read more, they will learn more and invoke change. Especially, the regional media need to cover more of climate change issues in a simple and understandable way and relate it to Indian scenarios than the western focus. Table 1. Climate change news coverage Newspapers

Number of Stories Impacts

International Negotiations

Other

Total

The Times of India

46

26

24

96

The Hindu

38

31

21

90

Dina Thanthi

7

5

1

13

Dinamalar

4

2

2

8

Dinamani

2

11

6

19

The greater importance given to the news coverage of climate change by the English newspapers can be attributed to the success of the Paris climate agreement. The events had an impact on both the intensity and the topics being covered (Yarchi et al. 2017). The strong international focus on stories 194

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addressing climate change significantly reduced differences of coverage in domestic responsibility or of the potential for domestic mitigation action within India (Billett 2009). In climate change stories, local people and the local environmental challenges were under-reported. The English newspapers only covered national and international news stories related to the conference and statements by political leaders. This showed the lack of journalistic capacity in understanding the local environmental challenges. World leaders and their views were observed more in Dina Thanthi which shows that emphasis is given to policymakers. The obsession with policymakers with regard to climate stories is an easy way out to report climate news, but this has resulted in the further marginalization of the marginalized people. A few news items on socioeconomic impacts on vulnerable groups such as indigenous community, rural poor, and children were also observed in this study.

Frames of Climate Change and Sustainability Issues The frame analysis is used to study the characteristics of interpretative elements of the newspaper items. The discussion attempts at exploring the accountability of the dailies on the basis of prominence given to the news coverage in the English and Tamil newspapers for the calendar years 2014 and 2015.

Scientific Frame This frame includes scientific explanation, research reports and opinions. The views of climatologists and experts about Chennai floods, global warming and its impact were highlighted. The terms such as ‘El Nino’ and ‘sea level rise’ were often discussed in the articles. The following passages from The Hindu and the Daily Thanthi demonstrate this: Since 1957 to 1980s, there were only about three El Nino years, categorized under strong or very strong, but from 1980s the frequency has increased and we have seen over 10 El Nino years, said Prof. Bhanu Kumar. Whenever the surface temperature of Pacific Ocean rises by 2oC to 5oC above normal, we have the El Nino factor working and it has direct impact on the northeast monsoon (The Hindu, December 12, 2015). Pacific Ocean temperature near South America is normally between 60oF to 70oF. When the temperature rises above 80oF, the region gets affected due to climate change. The El Nino effect causes increase in temperature in Southeast Asia and North Australia. The ocean temperature also increases because of El Nino. (Translated by the authors from the Daily Thanthi, December 8, 2015). December 2015 seems to be a period covering the most frames on climate change. The recent past historic rains and floods in Tamil Nadu and Paris climate summit (COP21) may be attributed to these frames being necessity of the context. Figure 2 shows the link between the drought and the impact of El Nino. The word ‘El Nino’ was frequently found in the headlines. It was mentioned that during El Nino, surface water in eastern and central equatorial in the Pacific Ocean warms up abnormally; leading to changes in wind patterns that impact weather across large parts of the globe including India. This type of news items always uses academic sources and research reports. These news stories require some basic knowledge about the environmental science among the journalists. 195

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Figure 2. Link between the drought and the impact of el nino

Source: The Times of India, 23 April 2015

The ecological impact highlighted about species extinction of starfish, bees, and birds. Importance of forest and their impact and deforestation were also covered. Warming of Tibetan plateau, Alaska, and Himalayan regions like Siachen glacier were covered. Both energy conservation and shortage were dealt. Nuclear power and its role in limiting carbon dioxide, sustainable energy solar and wind power to mitigate climate actions were also discussed in the news articles. English newspapers serve the elite readers and it has a special page ‘In School’ to focus on issues with more information. Regional newspapers focus more on current events in a lighter sense as most of its readers comprise people with elementary education. Climate change information often contains technical jargons which were difficult to understand. Figure shows an interesting infographic in Dinamalar published during the Paris Summit. This infographic is designed to explain complicated data in a simple way and makes information comprehensive and easily readable It explained the carbon emission in a simple, understandable way. The infographic highlighted carbon emission levels and the temperature rise. It shows the carbon dioxide emissions in 2014 were higher in China and US, compared to other countries. It also highlighted the per capita carbon dioxide emissions by different countries such as Qatar, Kuwait, Oman, Aruba, US, China, and India. The infographics indicate that the per capita emission by India is at the agreeable level, while many developed countries are unwilling to reduce their emissions.

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Figure 3. Infographic of carbon emission Source: Dinamalar, 16 December 2015

First World Accountability Frame First World Accountability frame were prominent in English newspapers. These frames were discourses of developing world. In this aspect there was hardly any coverage in the regional newspapers. This frame discussed the matters concerned of developed nations’ responsibilities and the principles of common but differentiated responsibilities. The UNFCCC emphasized the equity dimension of climate justice by mentioning the ‘common but differentiated responsibility’ in the charter. It states the need of involvement of the developed countries to solve the issue of global warming and must help the developing countries with technological advances and finance to respond to climate change.

Conflict Frame This frame identifies the disagreement between developed and developing countries during the COP20 and COP21. It is demonstrated in the following stories: 197

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The already rich want no responsibility for their historical emissions. They want no differentiation between them and the rest. (The Times of India, 8 December 2014). Figure 4 shows one of the news items with caricature published in the national section titled ‘World’s richest 10% cause 50% of emissions’. It was based on a study by Oxfam that reveals the chasm between the developed and developing countries in carbon emissions. As argued by Billet (2009), climate change is framed as India is not being responsible. And the western countries are primarily responsible for excessive resource consumption. The cartoon depicts the position of India as well as China with the elephant and dragon which are pulling the train very hard on one side. On the other side, the train is moving with high carbon emissions indicates the position of rich nations. Though the scenario is true, it discourages readers from mitigating climate change. The newspapers need to report the gap between the richest and the poorest in the country. Much environmental degradation is happening in the name of development which is affecting the poor. Figure 4. Cartoon of climate change bandwagon Source: The Times of India, 10 December 2015

Social Progress Frame The Social Progress frame highlights the quality of life, finding solutions to problems and sustainability (Nisbet & Newman, 2015). The climate change mitigation and adaptation activities, low carbon emission, smart cities, and sustainable lifestyles were highlighted. This frame was comparatively more in English newspapers. The regional newspapers covered a few articles in the Social Progress frame. This shows that regional language newspaper had given less importance to local news stories on sustainability.

International Perspectives Frame This frame highlighted issues in a global context. Lima and Paris climate agreements were covered frequently in the English newspapers. English newspapers are slightly prominent in the coverage of international negotiations. Most of the stories in The Hindu were reported by G. Ananthakrishnan, who represented the Paris conference. They contained stories on decisions and policymaking of a climate agreement at COP20 and COP21. Policymaking and sustainable solutions were discussed with an in-

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ternational view. To cite an example of the sort of coverage, a news item titled, “Paris deal may bind India on emissions data” in Figure 5. Figure 5. Coverage of COP21

Source: The Hindu, 14 December 2015

Coverage of this frame in the newspapers with greater importance may be attributed to the success of the Paris climate agreement which incorporated equity in favour of developing nations. The strong international focus of articles addressing climate change significantly reduced coverage of differences in domestic responsibility or of the potential for domestic mitigation action within India (Billette, 2010). The strong international focus on stories addressing climate change significantly reduced differences of coverage in domestic responsibility or of the potential for domestic mitigation action within India (Billett 2009). In climate change stories, local people and the local environmental challenges were under-reported. The English newspapers only covered national and international news stories related to the conference and statements by political leaders. This showed the lack of journalistic capacity in understanding the local environmental challenges. World leaders and their views were observed more in Tamil newspapers which show that emphasis is given to policymakers. The obsession with policymakers with regard to climate stories is an easy way out to report climate news, but this has resulted in the further marginalization of the marginalized people.

Human Interest Frame This frame included vulnerable groups such as indigenous community, rural poor, children impacted by climate change. The articles in English newspapers consistently used this frame. “The human interest frame can be used as a very dramatic and effective device to attract attention to significant issues. It generates genuine reader involvement and deepens their interest in the issue thus embodied” (Nambiar

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2014, p. 194). The human interest frame included the news items, showing how individuals and groups are affected by climate change issues and the news texts and visuals that might generate feelings of outrage, empathy, caring, sympathy or compassion. It also includes scientific explanations, facts, and findings. The climatologists’ and experts’ opinion about global warming and its impact are also included in the human interest frame. This frame was effectively used by all the newspapers. Semetko and Valkenburg (2000) in their study found that the human interest frame occurs significantly in sensationalist newspapers. Also, television news employs this frame more prevalently than the press. Both the English and Tamil newspapers used this frame frequently. The human angle and their problems are prominent in these stories and the newspapers often report issues that directly affect the people. Always an environmental news item is interesting when it has a human connection to it. For instance, climate change impact on coral reefs is also linked to the livelihood issues of fisher folks. Figure 6. Chennai flood victims Source: Dinamani, 14 December 2015

Figure 6 shows a news item of Dinamani which was published after floods in Chennai about the encroachments of various water bodies which affected the livelihoods of marginalized groups. The visual emphasized how individuals were affected by the problem. All newspapers carried such stories immediately after the 2015 floods. These stories evoked sympathy in visuals. It is evident that the coverage, especially in human angle, was highest during times of disasters. Nambiar (2014) study observed that the human interest frame is frequently used in Indian print media. She points out that the human interest frame has been used constantly to create storylines and capture local colour in a bit to elicit interest in stories or concerns of marginalized and under-represented individuals, as part of an attempt to draw attention to the larger theme or issue under discussion.

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Figure 7. People fend for themselves during the floods

Ethical Frame This frame includes the news items of ethical messages that contain specific social prescriptions of right and wrong. It also includes news items that emphasized the intrinsic value of bio-diversity and aspects of sustainable development. Though many western studies had found least prevalence of the morality frame, this study observed that the ethical frame is used consistently. Nambiar (2014) study also revealed that the morality frame is used consistently in the Indian media to evoke reader on environmental and sustainability issues. Majority of the ethical frames was found in the biodiversity and conservation theme. Both English and the Tamil newspapers represented this frame reasonably. This frame identified the economic arguments with respect to sustainability. Also identified were economic growth, energy efficiency, low carbon tax, and green initiatives. Public and government responsibilities in mitigating climate change actions were identified. Individual action and increasing awareness on climate change were highlighted.

DISCUSSION The study helped find the prominent frames of climate change and sustainability news coverage in the Indian newspapers. The climate change stories had higher prominence only in the English newspaper. The Times of India focused more on the impact on climate change and species extinction and The Hindu focused more on ecosystem conservation and international negotiations. As argued by Sangeetha (2012), English media send their experts to cover international conferences and so their journalists have more exposure to and understanding of the issue. The regional newspapers covered statements by political leaders about climate change which show that emphasis is given to policymakers and the lack of journalistic capacity in understanding the environmental challenges. The obsession with policymakers with regard to climate stories is an easy way out to report climate news, but this has resulted in the further marginalization of the marginalized people. A very few news items on socioeconomic impacts on vulnerable groups

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were observed in this study. Impact on people and other climate actions were represented least in the newspapers. But climate change and sustainability issues have to be addressed immediately by the media at large to face the challenges ahead. Supplementary pages of English newspapers specializing in various themes carried more articles with detailed stories than main sections. The Hindu was more consistent in presenting the issues relevant to sustainability and climate change. The regional newspapers presented more international news and there were hardly any climate change information related to India. This was mainly because the newspaper could access quality climate change news from international news agencies. All the newspapers covered Lima and Paris Climate Summit (COP20 &COP21) news in which Scientific, International Perspective, and First world accountability were prominent. Senior journalists and their specialized areas gained more space in the English newspapers. This is because senior journalists bring unique knowledge and depth in coverage coming out of their expertise and experience. Climate change issues were found to be prominent in The Hindu. Senior journalist G. Anathakrishnan represented The Hindu in the climate change conference and as a result his articles were found prominently in the month of December, especially in 2015. As argued by Ostberg (2016), if there is a specific in charge for a specific issue, a certain bias could be created. In contrast, the regional newspapers depended on the public which allows them the direct experience of the public. All newspapers had effectively used the human interest frame. As Nambiar (2014) pointed out, the human interest can be used as a very dramatic and effective device to attract attention to significant issues. Also, it generates reader involvement and deepens their interest in the issue. Both the English and Tamil newspapers deliberately used this frame to attract the readers. The study also observed only a few investigative stories and a few follow-up stories were reported in both the English and Tamil newspapers. Environmental journalists must be proactive in reporting consistently. They report one-off stories, and there is no follow up after that. Sometimes they need to act as a bridge when the government comes out to make that essential change and provide positive coverage. But follow up is essential to ensure their commitment.

SOLUTIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS Environmental issues are reported based on the topicality i.e. current interest or relevance which may grab the attention of the readers. Day to-day political affairs and crime news that kindles the sensation gain more attention in the newspapers today. Environment issues are given prominence only if at all the issues create sensation such as disasters. This is due to the policies of the media houses. They are genuine reporters; especially enthusiastic youth reporters are ready to bring in environmental concepts. But the policy of the media houses is pro-government and pro-party, and if there is anything negative, that is also due to bias towards the opposition parties. Political pressure exists on media houses. When there is any environmental crisis such as oil spill they report the event. When a political crisis happens at the same time, that takes more preference and the environment gets sidelined. The media has the responsibility to highlight social issues. But reporters are not encouraged to write about social issues. Social issues, especially that of the environment, get only very little space. If there is froth in the river on a rare occasion, then the reporters take a picture and give a caption and if there is a protest against a project like a neutrino or a hydrocarbon they cover such an incident because they are sensational. While looking at ecological dimensions of a story, journalists should also probe the socioeconomic, political, and cultural aspects. Dr. Perry Mc Carty said in an interview, ―The press should strive more to help the public understand the scientific and technical aspects of a problem better, rather than just place a major empha202

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sis on the political aspects of a problem. Many of the environmental reporters do not keep themselves abreast about current environmental issues. There are a few reporters who write about environmental issues out of their personal interest. Only such reporters observe and approach the issue professionally and get the details in their coverage. Environmental reporters must have the passion towards the field and they must equip themselves regularly by reading environmental magazines, attending workshops and courses. This may help reporters write better stories. Environmental education has to be incorporated as indispensable part of the curriculum at every level of education in the academic programmes. Nowadays, the relationship with the environment has completely delinked, especially among children. Environmental education is provided through television and iPads which does not make any sense at all. Awareness comes only when you see them. Although the government makes policies on environmental education, implementation is very poor in schools and colleges. The syllabus should relate to the local environment and practical experience.

FUTURE RESEARCH Comparative research between climate change issues and other social issues is recommended for future research. This is especially important in connection with the mainstreaming of environmental concerns to other policy areas. Such comparative studies would be highly valuable in order to understand the functioning of socio-ecological systems. Longitudinal studies of climate change issues may be conducted to better understand the situation. Research on the public perception of environmental issues would give a clear understanding and further help journalists to reframe the issues.

CONCLUSION Though a wide variety of problems and damages related to nature and the ecosystems have been discussed, some of the important issues were neglected by the media. The media reports the events rather than indepth investigation, and analysis. The media must represent causes and solutions rather than political views and the media should improve its advocacy role by paying more attention to the reportage of developmental issues. The newspaper represented the gap between the developing vs. developed nations in carbon emissions; it discourages readers from mitigating climate change. India’s richest few are emitting high carbon, but they are hiding behind the low carbon emissions by the poor. The newspapers need to report the gap between the richest and the poorest in the country as well. Environmental degradations are happening in the name of development which is affecting the livelihood of marginalized groups. World leaders and their views were observed more in the regional newspaper which shows that emphasis was given to policymakers – which had simplified climate change news through political sources and failed to represent marginalized people. Though flood affected people gained more attention, in general local people and the local environmental challenges were under-reported. This shows that the newspapers are keen in stimulating the emotional feelings of the readers and the lack of journalistic capacity in understanding the local environmental challenges. Journalists must improve their knowledge and capacity, develop better thrive, and should have political sensitivity to report effectively on climate change as it is a cross-cutting issue spanning across politics and development. A very few stories suggested solutions to tackle climate change and sustainability issues which must be addressed immediately by the society at 203

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large to face the challenge ahead. Climate change communication in newspapers and local news stories, particularly in regional newspapers, may increase the public’s interest and knowledge level regarding climate change and sustainability issues. This research received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial, or notfor-profit sectors.

REFERENCES Al Foori, R. A. M. (2015). Patterns of environmental coverage in Omani newspapers: a constructionist study of news frames and production Influences (Unpublished doctoral dissertation). University of Leicester, UK. Ananthakrishnan, G. (2015). Historic Paris climate pact puts world on green path. The Hindu. Retrieved December 13, 2015, from https://www.thehindu.com/news/international/cop-21-historic-paris-climatepact-adopted/article7981450.ece Billette, S. (2010). Dividing climate change: Global warming in the Indian mass media. Climatic Change, 99(1-2), 1–16. Advance online publication. doi:10.100710584-009-9605-3 Boykoff, M. (2010). Indian media representations of climate change in a threatened journalistic ecosystem. Climatic Change, 99(1), 17–25. doi:10.100710584-010-9807-8 Boykoff, M. T., & Boykoff, J. M. (2007). Climate change and journalistic norms: A case study of US mass-media coverage. Geoforum, 38(6), 1190–1204. Advance online publication. doi:10.1016/j.geoforum.2007.01.008 Bruntland, G. H. (1987). Sustainable development: concept and action. Retrieved September 8, 2015, from http://www.unece.org/oes/nutshell/2004-2005/focus_sustainable_development.html Calderón, C. A., Mercado, M. T., Raigada, J. L., & Sucre, E. L. (2015). Media coverage of climate change in Spanish-speaking online media. Convergencia, 68, 71–95. Retrieved April 10, 2016, from http://eprints.ucm.es Chetty, K., Devadas, V., & Fleming, J. S. (2015). The framing of climate change in New Zealand newspapers from 2009 to June 2010. Journal of the Royal Society of New Zealand, 45(1), 1–20. doi:10.108 0/03036758.2014.996234 Dirikx, A., & Gelders, D. (2009). To frame is to explain: A deductive frame-analysis of Dutchland French climate change coverage during the annual UN conferences of the parties. Public Understanding of Science (Bristol, England), 19(9), 732–742. PMID:21560546 Djerf-Pierre, M., Cokley, J., & Kuchel, L. J. (2016). Framing renewable energy: A comparative study of newspapers in Australia and Sweden. Environmental Communication, 10(5), 634–655. doi:10.1080 /17524032.2015.1056542 Dryzek, J. S. (2005). The Politics of the Earth: Environmental Discourses (2nd ed.). Oxford University.

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Entman, R. M. (1993). Framing: Toward clarification of a paradigm. Journal of Communication, 43(4), 51–58. doi:10.1111/j.1460-2466.1993.tb01304.x Feldman, L., Hart, P. S., & Milosevic, T. (2015). Polarizing news? Representations of threat and efficacy in leading US newspapers’ coverage of climate change. Public Understanding of Science (Bristol, England), 26(4), 481–49. doi:10.1177/0963662515595348 PMID:26229010 Freeman, B. C. (2017). Claims, Frames, and Blame: Coverage of Climate Change in ASEAN’s EnglishLanguage Newspapers, 2002-2012. SAGE Open, 7(1), 1–12. doi:10.1177/2158244016675199 Habib, S., & Hinojosa, M. (2016). Representation of fracking in mainstream American newspapers. Environmental Practice, 18(2), 83–93. doi:10.1017/S1466046616000089 IPCC. (2007). Climate change 2007. Synthesis report: The dual relationship between climate change and sustainable development. Retrieved January 23, 2017, from https://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ ar4/wg3/en/ch2s2-1-3.html IPCC. (2014). Climate change 2014: synthesis report. Retrieved March 9, 2016, from http://ipcc wg2. gov/AR5/images/uploads/WGIIAR5-Chap8_FGDall.pdf Kostarella, I., Theodosiadou, S., & Stathopoulos, G. (2013). The coverage of Environmental issues by the Greek media from the editors’ perspective. Global Virtual Conference, 1(1), 399-407. Retrieved December 16, 2015, from http://www.gv-conference.com Krishnan, G. (2009). Quoted by Viswanathan, S. Science journalism has miles to go. The Hindu. Retrieved October 11, 2009, from https://www.thehindu.com/opinion/Readers-Editor/Science-journalismhas-miles-to-go/article16886529.ece Miller, D., & Daily, N. W. (2015). Resisting meaningful action on climate change: think Tanks, ‘merchants of doubt’ and the ‘corporate capture’ of sustainable development. In A. Hansen & R. Cox (Eds.), The Routledge Handbook of Environment and Communication (pp. 86-99). London: Routledge. Nambiar, P. (2014). Media construction of environment and sustainability in India. Sage. Neverla, I., Lüthje, C., & Mahmud, S. (2012). Challenges to climate change communication through mass media in Bangladesh: a developing country perspective. In P. H. Jespersen, S. Riis, & P. Almlund (Eds.), Rethinking Climate Change Research: Clean-Technology, Culture and Communication (pp. 224–245). Ashgate. Nisbet, M. C. (2009). Communicating climate change. Why frames matter to public engagement. Environment, 51(2), 73–87. doi:10.3200/ENVT.51.2.12-23 Nisbet, M. C., & Newman, T. P. (2015). Framing, the media, and environmental communication. In Hansen & Cox (Eds.), The Routledge Handbook of Environment and Communication (pp. 325-338). London: Routledge. Östberg, J., & Kleinschmit, D. (2016). Comparative study of local and national media reporting: Conflict around the TV Oak in Stockholm, Sweden. Forests, 7(12), 233. Advance online publication. doi:10.3390/ f7100233

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Pompper, D. (2004). At the 20th century’s close: Framing the public policy issue of environment risk. In S. L. Senecah (Ed.), The Environmental Communication Yearbook (pp. 99–134). Erlbaum Associates. Reza, S., & Haque, A. (2011). Campaign on local environmental issues in Bangladesh newspapers. Media Asia, 38(4), 225–231. Semetko, H. A., & Valkenburg, P. M. (2000). Framing European politics: A content analysis of press and television news. Journal of Communication, 50(2), 93–109. doi:10.1111/j.1460-2466.2000.tb02843.x Sustainable Development Goals. (n.d.). Retrieved January 29, 2016, from https://www.un.org/sustainabledevelopment/ Tong, J. (2014). Environmental risks in newspaper coverage: A framing analysis of investigative reports on environmental problems in 10 Chinese newspapers. Environmental Communication., 8(3), 345–367. doi:10.1080/17524032.2014.898675 Xie, X., Tang, S., & Shabbir, M. (2015). Biased or balanced? A study of British and Chinese newspaper coverage of climate change in the 2009 United Nations Climate Change Conference. New Media and Mass Communication, 38, 1–12. Yarchi, M., Cavari, A., & Pindyck, S. (2017). Covering foreign news – intensity and topics: The case of the American coverage of Israel 1981- 2013. Journal of International Communication, 23(1), 115–137. doi:10.1080/13216597.2017.1299776

KEY TERMS AND DEFINITIONS Conflict Frame: It included in a news story emphasizes the conflict between countries. COP20: It refers to 2014 United Nations Climate Change Conference in Lima, Peru. COP21: It refers to 2015 United Nations Climate Change Conference in Paris, France. Ethical Frame: This frame includes the news items of ethical messages that contain specific social prescriptions of right and wrong. First World Accountability Frame: Matters concerned of developed nations responsibilities. Framing: Climate change frames investigated in the newspapers. Human Interest Frame: Identified in a news story which presents an issue from a more emotional point of view and it personalizes a problem. Story/Stories: Climate change stories which deal with the issues or events in the newspapers.

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Chapter 13

Environmental Campaigns in Traditional and Social Media Sunitha Kuppuswamy Anna University, Chennai, India

ABSTRACT This chapter describes how the environment is a significant part of today’s world. The media has the responsibility of educating the audience about the prevailing environmental issues such as pollution, global warming, and climate change as they threaten humankind and sustainable development. Environmental campaigns play a major role in creating awareness about environmental issues and its adverse effects on people. This chapter examines the content of environmental campaigns in traditional and social media and its impact on the environmental awareness of different cross-cultural sections of people using a survey. The chapter is designed based on the theory of planned behaviour according to which human action is guided by a number of factors. The findings revealed that the campaigns had many positive benefits and a number of factors were influencing the promotion of environmental awareness. The study tested a few factors based on communication theories and discussions were drawn.

INTRODUCTION A few decades ago our environment was totally covered with greenery in the form of trees, grass, forest, etc. We depend on the environment for our basic needs such as food, shelter, clothing, and water. But now the environment is under threat due to various factors. For example, abundant groundwater was available a few decades ago but today most households buy water for their daily needs. Water may not be available even to buy after a few decades. Where are we heading to in terms of water resources which are essential for the survival of human beings? Here arises the concept of sustainable development. It is not the matter of water alone. Environment also constitutes the air we breathe, soil, the plants and animals around us and much more. The advent of urbanization and industrialization has contributed more to the present environmental conditions. Today, the priceless water is priced and the agricultural production is less. Rainfall is inadequate, and an increased state of deforestation and adverse change in climate is observed. Air, water, and soil pollution has increased rapidly which in turn has increased the DOI: 10.4018/978-1-7998-4796-0.ch013

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frequency of natural disasters such as floods and cyclones. It is high time that we wake up and save our environment. Over a period, people have become insensitive towards the environment without realizing that human activities are the major cause for environmental degradation. Hence creating awareness about the depletion of natural resources and its effects on environment is vital for achieving the Sustainable Development Goals.

MAJOR ENVIRONMENTAL ISSUES Globally, the alarming environment issues faced by most of the countries irrespective of its economic condition are global warming, ozone layer depletion, and various forms of pollution such as air, groundwater, and soil. Also, loss of bio-diversity, extinction of wildlife, nuclear wastes and radiation issues, being negative extractions of developmental activities, are threatening the environment. Developing countries like India are expecting an unprecedented drought as a result of destruction of forest and degradation of agricultural land, depletion of resources (water, mineral, forest, sand, rocks etc.), and environmental pollution. This has resulted in public health degradation, loss of biodiversity, increased number of disasters, climate change, etc. Environmental degradation occurs as a result of environmental down-throw through depletion of resources such as air, water, soil, elements and compounds leading to the destruction of ecosystem (Kapur, 2016). Environmental degradation can spoil the land, water and the air. The major factors that contribute to environmental degradation could be rapid growth of population in a country, which adversely affects the environment and resources (Anand, 2013). Due to an increase in the global population growth, there is an increasing pressure on the worldwide natural resources including air and water, arable land, and raw materials. There are a number of causes for environmental degradation the most of which are based on human activity such as urbanization, industrialization and deforestation (Daniel, 2011). Migration is yet another phenomenon as a result of deprived employment opportunities in rural areas. Movement of people from rural to urban paves the way for emerging mega cities and expansion of urban slums. Pollution is also a major factor in causing environmental degradation. When rubbish or trash from factories and households are dumped in the environment, it pollutes the land and the soil. The primary and secondary contributors to air pollution worldwide are industries and automobiles respectively (Kay, 1999). Globally, it was found that environmental degradation is the main cause for major health disorders (Donohoe, 2003). Due to environmental degradation there are lots of environmental effects on our surrounding. They are climate change, natural disasters like tsunami and earthquakes. Natural disasters constitute a very important environmental problem in today’s world. The adverse effects of disasters have got an intimidate effect on the growth and development of a nation. The tsunami or giant wave affected coastal areas in India, Malaysia, Myanmar, and Thailand, Bangladesh, Maldives and Sri Lanka on 26 December 2004. With a toll of 227 thousand and 1.8 million displaced people spread over a dozen countries, it is by far the worst natural disaster of its kind in recorded human history (Athukorala, 2012). The more frequent causes of tsunami are underwater disturbances: a volcanic collapse, a landslide or an earthquake. India was the third country severely battered after Indonesia and Sri Lanka. The State that severely affected by tsunami are Tamil Nadu, Puducherry, Kerala, Andhra Pradesh and the Andaman and Nicobar Islands. Tsunami caused huge destruction and loss of life and property in the Tamil Nadu state. Fisher 208

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folk were the worst affected as they lived along the shore and could hardly escape. Climate change has become a global burning issue of concern in recent years due to an increased severity and frequency of climatic trends and through some disastrous events (IPCC, 2012). The causes of Climate change are solar radiation, volcanic activity, continental drifts and the earth’s tilt (Filho, 2009) continued deforestation (Kapoor, 2011). The effect of global warming that everyone has heard about is a rise in sea levels (Thompson, 2010). The melting of glaciers on an increased pace provides the strongest evidence that a large-scale, pervasive, and, in some cases, rapid change in the earth’s climate system is underway (Thompson, 2010). Also, climate change is expected to have an impact on the number and intensity of heat waves (Nerlander, 2009) and the global average temperature. The drastic rise in temperature and the recent deadly heat waves that a metropolitan city like Chennai in South India had witnessed is an evidence for the same. Climate change will create additional pressures on India’s overall ecology and socio-economic system. If the current trend continues, it is alarming to note that the projected increase in global temperature by the end of the 21st century will result in significant impact on human and other species (Geographical Society of America, 2013). Mitigating environmental protection starts with changing people’s behavior towards our environment. Behaviour change is promoted by both Government, NGOs and volunteers by raising environmental awareness of the public. The advent of social media has paved way for greater reach of such awareness messages through campaigns. Though there are an increased number of such environmental campaigns, public engagement in such campaigns is relatively low when compared to their involvement in other subjects discussed in new media. Hence, there is a need to study the design and delivery of such messages that impacts its reach. The medium of communication also plays a major role in the reach and effective in bringing out a positive behavior change among the stakeholders. For instance, the European Commission’s successful 2010 campaign on biodiversity had a strong social media component (EECN, 2011). Also, Digital out-of-home (DOOH) strategy using mobile technology is predicted to account for 24% of revenues by 2021. It forges an emotional connection with consumers and positively impact the environment around them (JC Decaux, 2019).

ROLE OF MEDIA IN ENVIRONMENTAL ISSUES The mass media plays an important role in creating awareness of environmental issues among people. The media in multiple forms such as television, radio and print media carries information on several environmental issues that make people know about the problem and take actions to prevent it. Since television, radio, newspapers are widely used in India, using these medium for environment awareness is considered vital. Mass media campaigns using newspaper, radio and television are the commonly used tools for influencing the public opinion of particular social, environmental (Hoerisch, 2002), and health issues (Driedger, 2007). There are many success stories on social media, for instance, The five best digital campaings on the theme plastic pollution - a first for the UN that turned out highly successful during the World Environment Day was #BeatPlasticPollution, #OnePlasticFreeDay, #PassOnPlasticEmoji, Wastebuster & The Plastic Bucket Challenge, Keep cup’s #everdaychangemakers (Greenhousepr, 2018). Government of India’s campaign for promoting sanitation ‘Swachchha Bharat Abhiyan’ gains media attention and has been successful in terms of reach and effectiveness through traditional and social media. Radio Mirchi, BIG FM and Hello FM are popular radio stations in Chennai, South India. These stations allow 209

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the listeners to share their views about social and environmental problems. Especially in Hello FM, the morning show Hello Tamizha makes listeners to involve in the social problem related discussions. Radio is an effective medium that permits information/messages to be delivered to large audiences at very low cost. In poorest communities, radio ownership is high when compared to television. When radio broadcasting creates environment awareness through their programmes and on-ground activities, it can easily reach the people. Radio medium is a personal medium, so the environment messages can be conveyed directly to the audience. Popular Tamil newspapers are Daily Thanthi, Dinamalar, Dinamani and Dinakaran. All these newspapers cover environmental and social oriented issues like drinking water, health and medical services, road facilities, public distribution, electricity, agriculture and irrigation, education, youth empowerment, employment, and developmental projects etc. Newspapers play a major role in conveying environmental problems and solutions to people. The responsible use of printed communications is of utmost importance to our environment. Newspapers can reach millions, so the environmental message can easily be popularized to the people through newspapers. Tamil television channels such as Vijay TV, Podhigai, Puthuyugam and news channels such as Puthiyathalaimurai and Thanthi TV are doing social related programmes like Satyameva Jayate, Neeya Nana and Makkal Munnal. In these shows, they discuss about environmental and social related issues. Television is a most powerful medium with extraordinary reach. It acts as a catalyst of social change, so it can make people to know about the environmental problems. Television can create environmental awareness programmes in innovative ways to educate the vulnerable community. Environmental awareness in vulnerable communities in developing countries can be improved through both formaland non-formal education (Mondal, 2016). The review of available literature shows that messages promoted through media campaigns frequently with appropriate content is good in terms of quantity as well as quality, and they do have a positive impact on the society and is found to be successful in making environmentally conscious individuals (Dorji, 1999; Hoerisch, 2002; Lokhandwala et al., 2012; Miller & Pollak, 2012; Sampei & Usui, 2009; IPCC, 2012; Lytimaki, 2012; Bator, 2000; Kapoor, 2011). Also, with the advent of media convergence, social media is a powerful tool in taking the environmental messages to every individual successfully (Boykoff, 2009). Social media is an interactive medium where people can share their views. In social media, the news spreads like a wildfire. Hence online medium could be used as a vital tool for sharing information about environmental issues. Paperman is a social venture launched virtually with an objective to make the society environmentally conscious by promoting the concept of recycling. Paperman spreads awareness on the importance of recycling and re-using paper through Facebook. Facebook is most commonly used for sharing information. In Facebook, more than just sharing information, it encourages people to take action on / against the information communicated. It can be very effective when Facebook is used as a promotional tool for popularizing the environmental campaigns among people as it has got lots of followers worldwide, and hence the message reaches everyone. Environmental blogs help to convey environmental messages directly to the public. Through blogs one can convey their personal opinion related to a specific topic directly to people. Environmental blogs discuss about the environmental issues and the steps to be followed to prevent an environmental problem discussed. YouTube, world’s most popular online video community, where millions of people can discover, watch and share originally-created videos. YouTube provides a platform for people to connect, inform, educate, 210

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communicate and inspire others across the globe. Video delivered through social media like YouTube has a very good reach among people. Environmental campaign videos became noticeable and these videos are watched by people. Video campaigns contain environmental problems and how to approach different environmental issues. Environmental campaigns through videos convey the message through various formats such as animation, short film, and advertisement so as to reach all age groups of people. Since environmental degradation is in an unacceptable state and is vital to create environment conscious individuals, it is high time to promote environmental awareness through traditional as well as social media for sustainable development. Hence, this study aims to find out the environmental campaigns that are conducted through traditional and social media and analyze their content and efficacy in making environmentally conscious individuals. The objectives of the study are given below. • •

To analyze the content of the environmental campaigns in traditional and social media. To find out the efficacy of the environmental campaigns in traditional and social media.

METHODOLOGY The study has incorporated qualitative and quantitative methods to analyse the content and effectiveness of environmental campaigns disseminated through traditional and social media. Three mediums were taken under traditional as well as social media category. One popular campaign in Facebook, blog and YouTube (social media); and newspaper, radio and television (traditional media) were selected and analysed using the content analysis method. Content analysis is the systematic way of examining the patterns in communication. Also, the survey method was used to find the effectiveness of environmental campaign in traditional and social media. The sampling size was 200 respondents belonging to the 16-27 age group, and the target population was youngsters. The targeted sample was selected by the purposive sampling method. In the case of purposive sampling technique, researchers choose samples relying on their own judgment for participation in the study.

CONTENT ANALYSIS As part of the traditional media, The Hindu’s clean chennai campaign (newspaper), BIG FM’s green ganesha campaign (radio), and Podhigai TV’s plant trees to get rain (television) campaign were selected for the study. Earth hour campaign (Facebook), TreeHugger (Blog), and Think-eat-save campaign (YouTube) were taken for the study as part of social media. The units of measurement for analysing the campaign through different mediums are discussed below. For the analysis of campaign through newspaper, number of news stories per day during, topic, types of activities, news story, photographs, design, page placement of articles, number of words in the article, headlines and media convergence were considered. Key message, duration, frequency, celebrity presence, types of activities, media convergence, slot, content form and reach were considered for the analysis of radio campaign. In addition to these parameters, visual input was also used as a parameter for the content analysis of campaign through television medium. For the analysis of Earth hour campaign through Facebook, message, number of followers, number of likes, number of shares, number of comments, frequency of posts, celebrity presence, visual input and types of activities were used. Theme, number 211

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of followers, design, type of post, frequency, interaction component, user friendliness, videos, number of words, number of posts and headlines were the parameters used for analysing the campaign through blogs. For the campaign through YouTube, the parameters used for analysis are theme, duration, number of views, celebrity presence, music, visual input, reach, types of activities and promotional components.

The Hindu: Clean Chennai Campaign To address the adverse health impacts of garbage and solid pollutants, an environment awareness campaign was conducted with a focus to enhance the quality of life of the residents in Chennai, a metropolitan city of South India. The campaign was named as Clean Chennai campaign. Nearly 5,000 tonnes of solid waste are generated every day in Chennai. The Clean Chennai Campaign was *conducted by The Hindu (See Table 1). Mega dumping yards and complex power generation projects were the main focus of this campaign.

Table 1. Unit of measurement of newspaper Number of news stories per day

6-9 news stories

Topic of content

Recycle and manage waste

Types of activities

Workshops, discussion with experts in Facebook and contest.

Types of news story

Articles and interviews

Photographs

Colour photographs used in the articles and also in the “picture of the day” column.

Design

Page outline was green in colour

Page placement of articles

Page 2

Number of words in the article

350-500 words

Headlines

Simple, catchy and very effective headlines

Media Convergence

Radio ads and billboards

BIG Green Ganesha Campaign To make the festival of Ganesh Chaturthi environmental friendly, BIG Green Ganesha (totally made of paper) campaign is held every year. Its major aim is to promote the endeavour of creating a cleaner and greener environment and also to spread the adverse ecological impact of immersing non-eco-friendly Ganesha’s statues in rivers. Colours used in making of the idols make the water non-potable and also badly affect the flora and fauna of the waterbodies. BIG FM constituted ‘the BIG Green Ganesha’ on realizing this evil. To show the ill-effects of using a non-‘green’ idol and to encourage the people to use eco-friendly material are the major promises of this campaign (See Table 2).

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Table 2. Unit of measurement of radio Content/Message of the campaign

Make people to use eco-friendly Ganesha’s idol

Duration

15-20 seconds

Frequent of the ad

Every 15 minutes

Celebrity presence

Used sound bites of many Tamil actors and actress to promote the campaign

Types of activities

SMS contest and people donated papers to create eco-friendly Ganesha statue

Media convergence

Newspaper advertisement and article, Billboards

Different forms of content

Advertisement, RJ mentions, programmes and listener vox pops

Slot of playing the radio spot

Prime time slot

Reach of the campaign

Very well reached among the people

Maram Naduvom, Mazhai Peruvom (plant trees.. get rain..) ‘Maram naduvom, mazhai peruvom’ is an environment awareness advertisement, its motto is to create awareness about the importance of planting more trees and to save our environment from water scarcity. Tamil television channel Podhigai telecasts the advertisement (See Table 3).

Table 3. Unit of measurement of television Content/Message of the campaign

Plant more trees

Duration

20-25 seconds

Frequency of the ad

Once in a day

Celebrity presence

Nil

Content type

Text with background music

Slot of playing the advertisement

Prime time slot

Music

A very slow and pleasant music

Visual Input

Content of the ad displaying with voiceover

Reach of the campaign

Very well reached among the people

Earth Hour Campaign (Facebook Page) To raise awareness about climate change, millions of people across the globe were united in a spectacular show on the last Saturday of March every year for an event named “Earth Hour” which is a renowned celebration for our amazing planet (See Table 4). From 8:30 to 9:30 p.m., the lights which are not essential will be turned off worldwide which is the interesting aspect in this event. It symbolizes the commitment of people towards the planet. The event is organized by the World-Wide Fund for Nature (WWF).

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Table 4. Unit of measurement of facebook page Content/Message of the campaign

Promote earth hour

No of followers

117,633 likes

No of likes

2576 likes

No of shares

1227shares

No of comments

40 comments

Frequency of post

Everyday during the campaign

Celebrity presence

Music director Anirudh

Visual input

Post, photographs and videos

Types of activities

Signature campaigns, cyclothons, candlelit marches, walkathons and flash mobs

TreeHugger Environmental Blog TreeHugger is fondly called as the big daddy of environmental blogs and it is also the most readable blogs on any subject. It covers all environmental products, from green news to eco-design green products. It regularly makes its footprint in almost all the media through blogs posts, television and radio interviews, and regular Facebook and Twitter updates (See Table 5). Table 5. Unit of measurement of blog Blog post content theme

Eco-design and green products

No of followers

360,236

Design of the blog

Green and simple

Type of post

Post and photographs

Frequency of post

Daily

Ways of interactive with the people

Newsletter, Facebook and Twitter page

User friendly

People can search for stories and share with others

Videos

Videos add extra information about the blog post

Number of words in the post

250-450 words

Number of post per day

10-14 news stories

Headlines of the post

Catchy, attractive and make the people to read the post

World Environment Day 2013: Think-Eat-Save (YouTube Video) To reduce the ecological footprints, “Think-Eat-Save” is an anti-food waste and food loss campaign which makes a huge initiative (See Table 6). Food waste is a common practice in almost all the households, irrespective of agriculture based countries like India. According to the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), almost 1.3

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Table 6. Unit of measurement of Youtube video Content of the video

Think before you Eat and Save the environment

Duration

55 Seconds

No of views

22,603 views

Celebrity presence

Gisele Bündchen (Hollywood actress) and Don Cheadle (Hollywood actor)

Music

Slow and pleasant music

Visual Input

Animated text with celebrity promote, the campaign theme

Reach of the campaign

Very well reached among the people

Types of activities

Drawing, painting, films, essay competitions and debates on issues of food waste and online and social media activities

Types of promotion activities

Videos, logos, poster, infographics and merchandise like T-shirt and water bottles

billion tonnes of food is wasted every year. There are countries like those in the West which produce the quantity of food that is going as food waste but big enough to feed the whole of Africa. It is really pathetic to note that nearly 20 percent of people do not get enough food daily, which includes children who die at an early age due to hunger. With respect to design, the outline of the Clean Chennai campaign page in newspapers is green in colour. This campaign represents the concept, “Clean and make the surrounding green”. In the TreeHugger environmental blog the page and the post headlines are highlighted using green colour. The colour directly represents the blog theme. In the Earth Hour campaign Facebook page, the photographs and the posts were usually representing the green and the clean environment concepts. A picture can speak thousand words. In the Clean Chennai campaign article under the “picture of the day“ column, colour photographs were used. In the TreeHugger environmental blog photographs and illustration were used to represent the blog post. Earth Hour campaign Facebook page has many photographs that were posted by the users and volunteers to spread the campaign message. In the Clean Chennai campaign article, the headlines were very simple, catchy and attractive. It makes the readers to read the article. Both in the TreeHugger environmental blog and the Earth Hour campaign Facebook page have very creative and interesting headlines. They make the users to read the story and share it with their friends. When it comes to page allocation, Page 2 was specially allotted for covering the Clean Chennai campaign articles. Nearly 6-9 news stories that focus on recycle and waste management concepts were covered. In TreeHugger environmental blog nearly12-15 blog stories were posted by the bloggers every day. The blog posts cover all the themes related to the environmental issues. In a day, nearly 3-6 Facebook posts were posted in the Earth Hour campaign page. Also, there were nearly 300-500 words were used in the Clean Chennai campaign articles whereas the TreeHugger blog posts contain 250-450 words. In the Earth Hour campaign page, the posts mostly contain two to five sentences or pictures. When it comes to Likes, Comments, and Shares, in the Earth Hour campaign Facebook page, every post has got more number of likes, comments and shares. This page has got 117,633 likes. Totally, the posts have got 2,576 likes, 40comments and 1,227 shares in March and February months. Though likes and shares are maximum, several posts are commented by a minimum. In the TreeHugger environmental

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blog one can easily share the posts through any form of social media like Twitter, Facebook, GooglePlus and Pinterest and the blog posts got more number of likes and shares. Video can convey the content of the campaign very interestingly and it can easily spread the message to the people. Both in the Earth Hour campaign page and in TreeHugger blog, videos add extra information to the posts. The YouTube video Think-Eat-Save (World Environment Day 2013 theme) has got 22,603 views. As part of the Clean Chennai campaign, different types of activities were conducted. The Hindu newspaper organized a photography and article writing contest to promote the campaign. People have to send the pictures related to solid waste in their day-to-day life in Chennai and they organized a discussion on solving the garbage problem at the Chennai Central Facebook page. Here, people posted their queries and experts gave solutions to the queries. The Earth Hour campaign page conducted activities such as the pedal for the planet Cyclathon event, the Earth Hour ambassador, the Earth Hour contest alert, Promoting Earth Hour T-Shirt, My Earth Hour selfie contest, and setting up solar light project in the Sunderbans to protect tigers. The Think-Eat-Save campaign organized activities such as signature campaigns, cyclothons, candlelit marches, walkathons and flash mobs. BIG FM team collects the waste paper from households from its listeners. Then the waste paper is converted into a green Ganesha statue. The Clean Chennai campaign promoted the campaign in the form of radio advertisement and outdoor promotion. The Earth Hour campaign published an article in newspapers, which carried the messages of Earth Hour and asked the people to support the campaign. BIG FM team has promoted the campaign through newspaper advertisements, articles and billboards. The BIG FM’s Green Ganesha radio spots and the television advertisements about “Maram naduvom, mazhai peruvom” were telecast during the prime slot of the channel so that the message of the campaign could reach many. Music composer and singer Anirudh Ravichander promoted the Earth Hour campaign in Chennai. He popularized the usage of renewable energy and also motivated individuals, organizations, governments and groups to support for government policies and practices that balance the green development and environmental concerns. In BIG Green Ganesha campaign, the radio station broadcast sound bites of many Tamil actors and actresses to promote the campaign but in the television advertisement “Maram naduvom, mazhai peruvom” there was no famous personalities or characters. The UNEP goodwill ambassadors Gisele Bündchen and Don Cheadle promoted 2013 World Environment Day (WED) theme “Think-Eat-Save”. Gisele and Don were appointed Goodwill Ambassadors of the U.N. Environment Programme in 2009 and 2010 respectively. While the clean India campaign’s contents were in the form of articles and interviews, the BIG Green Ganesha campaign’s radio spot ranged between 15-20 seconds. The radio spot conveyed the campaign message and wanted the people to support the campaign. The “Maram naduvom, mazhai peruvom” television advertisement’s duration is 20-25 seconds. In this particular advertisement only the text (Maram naduvom, mazhai peruvom) with sound effects appeared and the advertisement did not have any characters or storyline. The duration of YouTube video Think-Eat-Save duration (on the World Environment Day 2013 theme) is 55 seconds. In March, the Earth Hour campaign page has posted nearly 32 posts regarding the Earth Hour promotion. But in February there were only three posts. In the TreeHugger environmental blog, nearly 12-15 blog stories were posted by the bloggers every day. Radio spot of BIG Green Ganesha was aired every 15 minutes during the campaign period but the frequency of telecasting “Maram naduvom, mazhai peruvom” environment ad in television was very less. Qualitative content analysis was done for the Facebook Earth Hour page and the TreeHugger blog. 216

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As mentioned earlier, the parameters like total number of likes, comments, shares, frequency of posts, celebrity presence, design of the page, media convergence, headlines of the posts, types of activities and visual inputs like photographs and videos were taken up. The content of the BIG FM’s BIG Green Ganesha campaign radio spot was analyzed (See Table 7). Table 7. BIG green ganesha campaign Radio

Parameters

Availability (Yes/No)

Percentage (%)

Frequent of promoting the audio

Yes

15%

Celebrity

Yes

15%

Types of activities

Yes

15%

Media convergence

Yes

10%

Different form of content

Yes

15%

Prime time slot

Yes

15%

Reach of the campaign

Yes

15%

Music

No

-

In a day, one-hour programme slot was taken for the analysis. In the one-hour programme, the frequency of ads played, the different forms of the radio campaign, celebrity presence, media convergence, and types of activities were analyzed. For the television environment advertisement “Maram naduvom, mazghai peruvom”, the content was analyzed for a period of one week, especially in the prime slot (See Table 8). Table 8. “Maram Naduvom, Mazhai Peruvom” Television

Parameter

Availability (Yes/No)

Percentage (%)

Frequent of promoting video

Yes

10%

Celebrity

No

-

Types of activities

No

-

Media convergence

Yes

10%

Different form of content

No

-

Prime time slot

Yes

30%

Reach of the campaign

Yes

40%

Music

Yes

10%

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The parameters are frequency of the ad, celebrity presence, content type and visual inputs. The Hindu’s Clean Chennai campaign was analyzed for a period of one week (See Table 9). In the newspaper, Page 2 was allotted for covering Clean Chennai campaign articles. The total number of stories, words, photographs, page placement of articles, design, media convergence, headlines, and types of activities were analyzed. For the YouTube video Think-Eat-Save the parameters analyzed were total number of views, likes, shares, types of activities, celebrity presence, media convergence and visual inputs (See Table 10). Table 9. Clean chennai campaign Newspaper Campaign

Parameter

Availability (Yes/No)

Percentage (%)

Activities in the campaign

Yes

10%

Photographs

Yes

10%

Design

Yes

10%

Media convergence

Yes

5%

Headlines

Yes

10%

Number of stories

Yes

30%

Different types of news story

Yes

5%

Number of words

Yes

20%

Table 10. Think -Eat-Save video YouTube Video

Parameter

Availability (Yes/No)

Percentage (%)

Celebrity

Yes

10%

Types of activities

Yes

5%

Media convergence

Yes

5%

Different form of content

Yes

5%

Reach of the campaign

Yes

15%

Number of views

Yes

40%

Maximum number of likes

Yes

10%

Maximum number of shares

Yes

10%

In the BIG Green Ganesha campaign, the radio spot was played 8 to 15 times in the one-hour programme slot. The sharing of radio spot was more than 15 percent. The usage of celebrity sound bites and activities that involved in promoting the campaign was totally 30 percent. The spot was played in various forms of content like RJ mentions, promos, ads and teasers. The spot was also broadcast in both the prime and non-prime time slot comprising 30 percent. The promotion of the campaign in other mediums like newspapers and outdoor promotion was 10 percent. Reach of the campaign is 15 percent.

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For television environment advertisement “Maram naduvom, mazghai peruvom”, the reach of the campaign was 40 percent, frequency of playing the ad, promoting the campaign in other medium and music was 30 percent, and the time of playing the slot was 30 percent. For the Clean Chennai campaign, the total number of stories covered was 30 percent, the total number of words used in the articles 20 percent, activities in the campaign 10 percent, photographs 10 percent, design 10 percent, media convergence 5 percent, headlines 10 percent, and different forms of content covered 5 percent. For the YouTube video Think-Eat-Save, the number of views was high at 40 percent and the total number of likes and shares was 20 percent, celebrity presence, promoting the campaign in other medium, types of activities and different form of content was 25 percent, and reach of the campaign 15 percent.

SURVEY ANALYSIS The survey methodology was used to find the effectiveness of environmental campaigns in traditional and social media. Questionnaires were administered, and the data analyzed and interpreted. Majority of the respondents (77 percent) belong to the age group 20-23 years, is a post-graduate and had varied media interests. With respect to the media usage pattern of respondents, as much as 84 percent of respondents read newspapers, 32 percent of respondents listen to radio, 98 percent of respondents watch television and 98 percent of respondents use social networking sites. Majority of the respondents spend more time in television, newspaper and social networking sites compared to radio. As much as 63 percent of respondents said that they take 16-30 minutes to read newspapers, 39 percent of the respondents listen to radio half an hour or less and 3 percent of the respondents listen to for four to five hours, 44 percent of the respondents spend 3-4 hours watching television, and 43 percent of the respondents spend more than 1 hour in social networking sites in a day. Most of the respondents have spent more than one hour in television and social networking sites compared to radio.

ENVIRONMENTAL CAMPAIGNS/ADS THROUGH MEDIA Majority of respondents said that they watch more environmental campaigns/ads in social media (41 percent) followed by newspapers (36 percent), television (16 percent), radio (5 percent), and other media (2percent). As much as 50 percent of respondents said that television medium is very effective for doing environmental campaigns, followed by social media 35 percent, newspapers 14 percent, and radio 1 percent. Thus, television proves to be more effective for undertaking environmental campaigns. As much as 86 percent of respondents correctly mentioned that The Hindu newspaper conducted the Clean Chennai initiative (see Figure 1). As much as 82 percent of respondents correctly mentioned that BIG FM has conducted the BIG Green Ganesha campaign. As much as 38 percent of respondents like 2-3 environment related pages on Facebook, 33 percent of respondents like 4-5 environment related pages on Facebook, 8 percent of respondents like more than 10 environment related pages on Facebook, 4 percent of respondents like only one environment related pages on Facebook, and 17 percent of respondents did not like any environment related pages on Facebook. Only a few people liked more than 10 environment related pages on Facebook (see Figure 2).

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With respect to environment related Non-Profit Organizations in Facebook, as much as 16 percent of respondents know about Paperman, 16 percent of respondents know about kuppathothi.com, 2 percent of respondents know about Suseum, and 66 percent of respondents did not know about any of these nonprofit organizations. Most of the respondents did not know about Paperman, Suseum and kuppathothi. com, which are environment-based non-profit organizations (NGOs). Majority of the respondents are not members/followers of any environment blog.

CONSERVATION EFFORTS TO PROTECT THE ENVIRONMENT As much as 9 percent of respondents said that they will do direct actions (plant trees), 11 percent of respondents said that they behave friendly to the environment (using recycled paper), 35 percent of respondents said that they will be wise in the management of natural resources, 35 percent of respondents said that they will conserve the environment, and 10 percent of respondents said that they will provide education and awareness on the environment. Most of the respondents will be very wise in the management of natural resources and conserve the environment. As much as 62 percent of respondents agree to do more to protect the environment, 58 percent of respondents agree that there is not much they can do personally which will help protect the environment, 66 percent of respondents agree that they are not sure what changes can they make in their lifestyle to help the environment, and 62 percent of respondents agree that industries are mainly to blame for harm to the environment rather than the general public. 63 percent of respondents said that air pollution from traffic is a serious problem, 67 percent of respondents said that pollution from industrial sites is a serious problem, 58 percent of respondents said that disposal of waste generally is a serious problem, 58 percent of respondents said that treatment and disposal of sewage is a serious problem and 69 percent of respondents said that global warming or climate change is a serious problem. Also, 49 percent of respondents said environment is very important to them personally, for 50 percent of respondents, it is quite important, 1 percent of respondents said it is not very important, and none respondents said it is not at all important. Majority of the respondents said they give much importance to environment issues personally. As much as 73 percent of respondents use car/ bike less, 89 percent of respondents use energy saving light bulbs at home, and 54 percent of respondents bought products made from recycled material. These are the environment friendly action taken by the respondents in a 12-month period. Also, 54 percent of respondents recycled household waste, but 26 percent of respondents do not recycle the household waste. As much as 76 percent of respondents have recycled paper, 3 percent of respondents have recycled glass, 20 percent of respondents have recycled plastic, and 1 percent of respondents have recycled other items. Most of the respondents have recycled their household waste especially paper. From the survey, it can be inferred that Majority of the respondent recently saw /heard about advertising or publicity on the subject of environmental issues. Most of the respondents saw / heard about advertising or publicity of environmental issues on the internet compared to other media. With respect to respondents’ intention towards participation in the environmental campaigns, most of the respondents have plans to participate in the environmental campaigns. About participation in the environmental campaigns, majority of them felt its enjoyable, beneficial and interesting. They showed interest to participate in the future campaigns too. The survey found that 82 percent of respondents followed the measures or showed their willingness to tackle the environmental problems after they know it. As much as 80 percent 220

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of respondents have shared information on environment measures to their neighbours. They agreed to influence others to ensure environmental protection. Majority of the respondents had higher reliability towards the environmental campaigns on social and traditional media.

DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSION It is concluded from the study that only a few environmental campaigns are being conducted through traditional and social media. However, the number the raising year after year, understanding the threat to our mankind and the need for environmental protection. Hence, the relationship between the strategy adopted for communication has to be tested with its reach and effectiveness for identifying the factors affecting the success of such campaigns. Also, the outlook, usage and interests of online users keep changing with the newcomers, hence communication strategies need to be formulated according to their interests at that point of time. As far as this study is concerned, majority of the people like to watch television and they are very likely to use Facebook. Facebook’s number of users and the time spent is increasing on a faster rate every year and hence when environmental campaigns/ads like ‘go green’ and ‘save water’ campaigns are promoted online, it will definitely create a great impact on the people. After getting appropriate awareness about the conservation of natural resources through environmental campaigns, people show interest to follow it up as well as share their knowledge and experience with neighbours. Post campaigns, they had decided to reduce the usage of two-wheelers, increased the usage of energy saving lights, and intend to buy recycled products. This decision-making and intention will pave way for their behavior change towards the environment. The environment enthusiasts need to create more online pages on various social media and popularize environmental messages as much as possible. By doing this, more number of online communities could be reached. People do find these messages reliable and hence are keen in showing their support by taking part in such campaigns. It is understood from this study that environmental campaigns through traditional and social media are successful when it is popularized to reach every citizen of the country. People, when educated and created awareness about the utter need to conserve/ preserve our environment/resources, do understand and extend full support and participation in the initiatives.

REFERENCES Anand, S. V. (2013). Global Environmental Issues. Open Access Scientific Reports., 2(2), 2–9. doi:10.4172/ scientificreports Athukorala, P. (2012). Disaster, Generosity and Recovery: Indian Ocean Tsunami. Academic Press. Bator, R. J., & Cialdini, R. B. (2000). The Application of Persuasion Theory to the Development of Effective Proenvironmental Public Service Announcements. The Journal of Social Issues, 56(3), 527–541. doi:10.1111/0022-4537.00182 Boykoff, M. T. (2009). We Speak for the Trees: Media Reporting on the Environment. Annual Review of Environment and Resources, 34(1), 431–457. doi:10.1146/annurev.environ.051308.084254

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Decaux, J. C. (2019). Creativity serving the environment: the best green OOH campaigns. Retrieved from https://www.jcdecaux.com/blog/creativity-serving-environment-best-green-ooh-campaigns Donohoe, M. (2003). Causes and health consequences of environmental degradation and social injustice. Social Science & Medicine, 56(3), 573–587. doi:10.1016/S0277-9536(02)00055-2 PMID:12570975 Dorji, T. (2009). Attitude towards Mass Media and its role in promoting Environmental Consciousness: An Empirical Investigation. In Media and Public Culture (pp. 416-439). Academic Press. Driedger, S. M. (2007). Risk and the media: A comparison of print and televised news stories of a Canadian drinking water risk event. Risk Analysis, 27(3), 775–786. doi:10.1111/j.1539-6924.2007.00922.x PMID:17640222 EECN. (2011). New tools for environmental campaigns. Bio Intelligence Service. Retrieved from https:// ec.europa.eu/environment/archives/networks/doc/newsflash/Newsflash_88.pdf on 25.01.2020 Filho, W. L. (2009). Communicating climate change: Challenges ahead and action needed. International Journal of Climate Change Strategies and Management, 1(1), 6–18. doi:10.1108/17568690910934363 Greenhousepr. (2018). 5 digital campaigns that made a splash on World Environment Day. Retrieved from https://www.greenhousepr.co.uk/5-digital-campaigns-that-made-a-splash-on-world-environmentday/ on 25.01.2020 Hoerisch, H. (2002). A Comparative Study on Environmental Awareness and Environmentally Beneficial Behavior in India. CMS ENVIS Centre. Retrieved from www.docplayer.net IPCC. (2012). Managing the Risks of Extreme Events and Disasters to Advance Climate Change Adaptation. Cambridge University Press. Kapoor, N. (2011). Role of mass media in promotion of environmental awareness along with skill development among the rural people of Shringverpur, Allahabad district, India. In Proceedings of the International Conference on Chemical, Biological and Environmental Sciences (pp. 266-267). Academic Press. Kapur, R. (2016). Natural Resources and Environmental Issues. Journal of Ecosystem Ecography, 6(196), 1–2. Kay, J. H. (1999). Car sick country. Sierra, 77, 50–53. Lokhandwala, I., Koshy, S., Varghese, V., Sharaf, S., & Sindhav, M. (2012). The environmental role of media can play in the Gulf. University of Wollongong. Lyytimäki, J. (2012). The environment in the headlines Newspaper coverage of climate change and eutrophication in Finland. In Monographs of the Boreal Environmental Research (pp. 27-37). Academic Press. Miller, T., & Pollak, T. (2012). Environmental Coverage in the Mainstream News: We Need More (Project for Improved Environmental Coverage). NSF SEE Innovation. Retrieved from http:// greeningthemedia. org/wp-content/uploads/Environmental-Coverage-in-the-Mainstream-News.pdf Mondal, P. (2016). Organizing environmental education system. Retrieved from www.Yourarticlelibrary. com

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Nerlander, L. (2009). Climate Change and Health. Commission on Climate Change and Development. Retrieved from www.pacificdisaster.net Sampei, Y., & Usui Midori, A. (2009). Mass media coverage, its influence on public awareness of climate change issues, and implications for Japan’s national campaign to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Global Environmental Change, 19(2), 210–211. doi:10.1016/j.gloenvcha.2008.10.005 Talero, G. (2004). Environmental Education and Public Awareness. Retrieved from www.worldfish.org Thompson, L. G. (2010). Climate Change: The Evidence and Our Options. The Behavior Analyst, 33(2), 153–170. doi:10.1007/BF03392211 PMID:22532707

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Chapter 14

Digital Activism:

Challenging Food Poverty in the UK Anita Howarth https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0102-6096 Brunel University, UK

ABSTRACT Austerity blogs emerged in the context of radical reform of welfare benefits and constrained household budgets. The blogs, written by those forced to live hand-to-mouth, are a hybrid form of digital culture that merge narratives of lived experience, food practices, and political commentary in ways that challenge the dominant views on poverty and hunger. A Girl Called Jack disrupted existing hegemonies by breaking the silence that the stigma of poverty imposes on the impoverished, drew attention to the corporeal vulnerability of hunger, and invited the pity of the reader. In the process, Jack refuted individual-failure accounts of the causes of and challenged notions of welfare dependency by detailing practices to survive and eat healthily on a £10-a-week food budget. This combination of narrative and survival practices resonated powerfully, yet also polarized opinion, drawing attention to social uneasiness over growing levels of poverty and deep divisions over who is responsible for addressing these, and more fundamentally, who the modern poor are and what modern poverty is.

INTRODUCTION The visionaries of the 1948 welfare state waged a ‘war on want’ in the belief that the state could banish hunger if not from the world, at least from Britain (Renwick, 2017). Yet on the eve of the 2019 General Election, Britain had more food banks handing out emergency parcels than McDonald’s outlets selling burgers (FullFact, 2019). A fifth of the population are living in poverty, 1.5 million are deemed destitute, Britain’s child poverty rate is expected to reach 40% by 2020 and hospital admission records have documented the return of ‘Dickensian diseases’ such as rickets, under-nutrition and malnutrition thought to have been eradicated with the welfare state (Fitzpatrick et al., 2018). The scourge of Victorian hunger and misery has returned with a vengeance, but for the better part of a decade right-wing politicians and ministers either denied the mounting evidence of hunger or dismissed claims of a link between welfare DOI: 10.4018/978-1-7998-4796-0.ch014

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 Digital Activism

policies and growing food poverty (Howarth, 2017). In 2010, on forming a new coalition government, the Conservative Party simultaneously launched an austerity agenda intended to cut sovereign debt and initiated the most radical reform of the welfare state since its inception, intended to make it more ‘affordable’ (Howarth, 2017). Ministers curbed payments to welfare claimants, introduced a punitive sanctions scheme for minor administrative errors when applying for benefits, and depersonalized the system by replacing human with algorithmic processing of claims (Alston, 2019). A 2019 report for the United Nations concluded that after a decade of change the ‘mentality’ informing welfare reform had ‘brought the most misery and wrought the most harm to the fabric of British society’ (Alston, 2019, p. 5). In the same year a High Court ruling drew attention to systemic inconsistencies and unfairness in the allocation of welfare when it found ‘dramatically fluctuating incomes’ between those on benefits in similar circumstances (Hughes, 2019). Later in the year ministers conceded that the system was not as ‘compassionate’ as hoped and that increased reliance on food banks may be linked to some of the government’s policies (Amber Rudd cited in Hughes, 2019). The Conservative Party manifesto published in November signaled further concessions with a pledge to end the benefit freeze and allow benefit payments to rise with the inflation rate for the first time since 2016 (BBC News, 2019). The move echoed a softening in public opinion captured in the most recent British Social Attitudes Survey, which found that 56% of respondents thought benefit cuts ‘would damage too many people’s lives’ and were concerned at the scale of poverty suggesting a ‘quiet revolution’ might be taking place in public sentiment. (The Economist, 2019). The shifting political and public sentiments and attitudes towards the hungry in the 19th century was transformative; in the 21st century thus far they have been at best subtle, at worst limited and begrudging. In both cases, the politicization and personalization of hunger was crucial, but attitudinal shifts were shaped less by the facts and figures, although those did add credence to the claims of growing suffering, and more from personal narratives of the lived experience of hunger. In the Victorian era, the narratives circulated in second-hand reports from the coroners’ courts, newspaper articles and fiction that chronicled the human suffering in personal stories, mainly of women and children, turning hunger into front-page news stories (Vernon, 2009). However, in the 19th century hungry people did not have access to platforms to give voice to their lived experience of hunger; instead they were primarily mediated through journalists, novelists and reformists. Today, the advent of Web 2.0 and the proliferation of social media have given platforms for anyone to speak, narrating bottom-up lived experiences of hunger in which corporeal vulnerability is laid bare in all its rawness for anyone to see. As the Victorians had discovered, the personal stories of individuals struggling to feed themselves and their children has an affective potential to move the reader to pity, even more so today when the narratives assume an aura of authenticity from those speaking directly from their lived experience of hunger. This chapter explores the corporeality of hunger captured in the eponymous blog A Girl Called Jack,1 launched in 2011 which recounted the experiences of an unemployed single mother’s rapid descent into, and rise out of, food poverty in austerity Britain. Faced with escalating poverty, Jack Monroe created and posted budget recipes for meals created from free emergency relief parcels from her local food bank and supermarket ‘value’ or ‘basic’ packs bought during her £10-a-week food shop because that was all she could afford. Her blog not only included recipes, it also detailed daily struggles to survive. After Monroe’s intensely personal account of the pain of poverty and hunger went viral, she attracted local, national, and international media attention to her blog and book commissions. At one level, this is an archetypical narrative of individual triumph over adversity, albeit with a social media angle. At another level, Jack challenged the ideology of austerity and the valorizing of cuts to welfare benefits, the ascrib225

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ing of the causes of poverty to individual failure, the legitimizing of food banks, and the stigmatizing of food bank users by relating the lived experiences of hunger. The raw corporeality of hunger related by Monroe resonated powerfully in ways that helped challenge the stigmas. Blogging gave her a platform to relay her lived experiences in ways that people could identify with and empathize. Austerity blogs like Monroe’s, written by those who by force of circumstance live hand to mouth (Wren, 2013), constitute a hybrid form of digital culture that combine narratives of the lived experience of poverty, practices developed to survive it, and political commentary. Thus, the blogs provide a bottom-up social history of food poverty at a critical juncture when welfare reform, austerity policies, and food aid converged. Austerity blogs are distinctive in being organized around a central motif of poverty and struggles to survive it; furthermore, their vantage point of the lived experience of poverty potentially disrupts the political and popular discourse, which stigmatizes the impoverished and blames them for their condition in life. Some of the blogs that emerged since 2012, when benefit cuts began to bite, have lapsed; new ones such as Skint Dad and Universal Credit Sufferer have emerged. Jack was not a lone voice. The various blogs and tweets offer different perspectives on hunger from conditions of precarity by some of the most vulnerable and marginalized in society; however, collectively they corroborate the posts on Jack as intensely personal, yet also common, experiences of hunger. The focus on Jack in this chapter is because in making private trauma public and in recounting going to bed without food and the shame of not being able to assuage her child’s hunger, Monroe offers a window into the corporeality of the lived experience of hunger, of the vulnerability of the unfed body. The visceral impact of some of her blogs and interventions disrupted the stigmas and silence imposed on the impoverished. In making visible her vulnerabilities as an individual and as a mother, she personalized poverty, inviting the pity of readers and their proximity to her subjectivities. In recounting the shame felt when queuing at a food bank she challenged the assumption that those who resorted to food aid were ‘scroungers.’ In detailing the practices she developed to survive, Monroe resisted the stigmatizing of benefit claimants as work-shy, irresponsible, and self-indulgent by ministers in order to legitimize austerity policies. Monroe grounded these practices in the grinding banality of a daily struggle to survive, while also providing a creative response to poverty in the form of budget yet healthy recipes circumscribed by the financial realities of a £10-a-week food shop and fluctuating food prices. Ultimately, Monroe challenged the ideology of austerity by personalizing the effects of government policies on an individual life and reasserting the role that structural change and systemic failures play in acute poverty, thus challenging the depoliticization of food poverty.

Context: Food Banks, the Age of Austerity and Stigmatizing the Poor Mounting hunger in the 21st century needs to be understood within the wider context of 30 years of rising ‘mass poverty’ in Britain, fueled by a range of factors from long-term structural changes in the economy to rising global food prices and falling or stagnating incomes (see Lansley & Mack, 2015). Important as such factors are, most notable has been the unravelling of the normative beliefs about the role and responsibility of the state in ameliorating poverty through an inclusive benefit system available to everybody at the point of need ‘from cradle to grave’ that have underpinned the welfare state since its inception in 1948 (see Clarke, Gewirtz, & McLaughlin, 2000, p. 2). The rise in mass poverty coincides with the ‘re-imagining and re-constructing’ of the post-war conception of welfare, most notably when the 1997 Labour government reconstituted welfare as ‘workfare’ and made receipt of benefit payments contingent on ‘evidence’ that claimants were seeking employment (2000, p. 2). The 2010 Conservative226

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led government developed these precepts further, drawing on a new moral mantle of austerity informed by a resurgent neoliberal agenda to reduce the public deficit, legitimize ‘the most radical reshaping of welfare policy since 1945’ and further cut benefits (Hamnett, 2014, p. 490). The Conservative government devolved responsibility for food poverty has been devolved from the state to individual households and the voluntary sector, thereby distancing ministers from responsibility for the vulnerable and from accountability for the consequences of their policies (see Ronson & Caraher, 2016). In this context, food banks have mushroomed. In 2004, Britain had one food bank but by 2019 had over 2000 at a conservative estimate (FullFact, 2019). There has also been a dramatic increase since 2012 in media coverage of the phenomenon, as bloggers recounted their recourse to food banks and the outlets became a naturalized part of the British social landscape, yet also intensely criticized particularly by the third sector and by public health experts (see Wells & Caraher, 2014; May, et. al. 2019; Loopstra, 2018). While charity-run food banks were critical to Monroe being able to feed herself and her child, they only provide short-term emergency food relief for three days rather than addressing the long-term issues of sustained hunger. Food aid is an ancient practice across all societies. In the west, though, its roots lie in the form of food tithes in early Judeo-Christian societies, alms for the poor in the Middle Ages, school dinners at the turn of the 20th century and the soup kitchens of the 1930s Depression (Caraher & Cavacchi, 2014; Vernon, 2009). During the twentieth century this fragmented provision was unified into a welfare system based on normative assumptions about the moral responsibilities of the state to its poor citizens, and the translation of this into benefit payments for housing, food and health (see Vernon, 2009). However, by the end of the twentieth century the dominant neoliberal agenda had eroded such normative assumptions, and governments legitimized the contraction of the welfare state on the grounds that it was unaffordable. In the twenty-first century, food banks emerged as new forms of charitable provision to fill the void left by the retreating welfare state and growing food poverty (Lambie-Mumford, Crossley, & Jensen, 2014). For the better part of a decade, ministers consistently contended that there was no statistical evidence of a link between growing use of food banks and their austerity policies, while food bank operators countered that systemic failure in the welfare system was the single biggest reason cited by people for recourse to food aid (Downing et al., 2014). By 2019, such a stance was no longer plausible or politically sustainable and ministers begrudgingly conceded that there may be issues with the implementation of welfare reform (Revie, 2019). The intensity of these debates draws attention to food banks as a contested symbol in the Global North and central to an increasingly polarized debate about poverty (Riches & Silvasti, 2014; Ronson & Caraher, 2016). Proponents of the Conservative ideology of ‘Big Society,’ which aims to encourage voluntarism and a healthy civil society, argue that food banks are manifestations of this (Caplan, 2016). Critics counter that food is a human right, that the government has a responsibility to ensure citizens are adequately fed, and that the proliferation of food banks signifies the institutionalization of food charity. The ‘gift’ of food in the form of aid or charity, it is argued, is replacing the entitlement to it in wealthy societies, and the presence of food banks focuses attention on the symptoms of the problem rather than the causes (Ronson & Caraher, 2016). Perhaps more significantly, food charity in countries such as Britain has become a moral safety valve that depoliticizes issues of food poverty (Poppendieck, 1998). Until recently, the ‘pivotal voter’ had supported the ‘logic’ of austerity policies provided that no one starved to death, but more recent surveys point to a growing public disquiet with food banks just as they became normalized and naturalized (Ronson & Caraher, 2016; The Economist, 2019). Monroe, in blogging about her personal experience of food poverty and food banks, has become a key voice in exposing 227

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the contradictions in political discourse and in challenging those who would insulate the government’s austerity policies from mounting hunger. The escalation of food poverty and increase in food banks in Britain coincides with the emergence of a ‘default’ response across the European Union to the 2008 debt crisis rooted in a neoliberal ideology of austerity premised on the notion of rebalancing the economy to improve competitiveness, and doing so by cutting state deficits through raising taxes, cutting spending, or both (Blyth, 2013a, 2013b). Austerity is based on a ‘narrative fiction’ that reduces the cause of the debt crisis to an ‘orgy of state spending,’ so that cutting public spending is the appropriate response (2013a, pp. 738–739). The ideology persisted because of an ‘intuitive’ or commonsense appeal that ‘you do not spend more than you have’ and that ‘you can’t cure debt with more debt’ (2013b, p. 2). The justification was used by the Conservative-led government after 2010 to cut benefits rather than raise taxes in ways that chimed with the party’s historic ideological commitment to shrinking the welfare state (see Thompson, 2013). Added to this, ministers legitimized the cuts through a moralistic argument that responsible government is prudent, and presented austerity policies that capped welfare as ‘getting people back to work’ and a manifestation of government rectitude in the face of poverty as individual failure rather than the consequence of structural change (see Howarth, 2017). The individual-failure view of poverty assumes that most benefit claimants including Monroe are out of work because of their own fault, have not done enough to find work, or do not want to work. Such stigmatization reconstructs the welfare system not as safety net against the vicissitudes of life as originally conceptualized, but as creating a dependency culture where the hardworking taxpayer is expected to fund an indolent lifestyle through benefit payments (see Lansley & Mack, 2015). Such stigmas were used not only to legitimize benefit cuts but also as technologies that compel people back into work, and in moralistic terms of acting in the individual’s best interest by weaning claimants off dependency. British popular culture reinforced this stereotyping by presenting claimants as unable to manage their own finances and pursuing self-indulgent lifestyles of large televisions, tattoos, and an unhealthy diet of cheese, chips and takeaways (Deans, 2013). Right-wing news organizations accentuated societal polarization in pejorative language that distinguished between the work-shy ‘skivers’ living off benefits and the hardworking ‘strivers’ whose taxes pay for benefits (Littlejohn, 2013). Research suggested that public attitudes shifted ‘into line’ with political rhetoric and popular culture in privileging an individual-failure explanation of poverty and skepticism about benefits as a ‘solution’ to poverty (Clery & Lee, 2013). Monroe’s blog challenges this individual-failure explanation, moralizing, and stigmatizing of the poor.

THE CORPOREALITY OF HUNGER While hunger is pervasive across space and time, communities and societies have shifting relationships to it. For much of western history it was naturalised, a taken-for-granted part of the natural order until the workhouse regime banished the destitute from sight and disciplined the hungry body (Foucault, 1977). The launch of the British welfare state in 1948 was driven in part by a revulsion at the excesses of the workhouse, which desperate people left more emaciated than when they had entered. The 1948 welfare state did push acute hunger back in that fewer died from starvation, and hunger-related diseases went into decline for 60 years, but the experience of poverty-induced hunger did not disappear; it merely became less acute and hidden in the private spaces of the home. Since the structural reforms of the economy in the 1980s, private hunger was rendered public and visible again as homeless beggars re-appeared, 228

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then surged after the financial crisis in the late 20th century manifested in a proliferation of overt signs of need in the expansion of food banks, in supermarket donation boxes and online blogs and tweets by the hungry. The sustained experience of hunger leaves a corporeal mark for others to read, not only in the listless figure of the child who has not eaten before going to school, but also in the hospital records which document the return of ‘Victorian diseases’ (Woodhouse, 2013). The visible signs of corporeal vulnerability posed by hunger evokes a visceral response of pity or revulsion, depending on how a society and individuals understand the hunger of another and its causes. Corporeality as a concept invites the consideration of humans as ‘creatures of the flesh’ that understand and feel, act and interact with environments through the body (Johnson, 1987, p. 59). We can imagine what it must be like to go to bed hungry because we have experienced hunger even if it is not as acute as that of those unable to afford food. An understanding of the world is therefore not only derived cognitively but also through the relatable lived experiences of the body, where the awareness of the corporeal draws attention to a ‘new bodily ontology’ (Butler, 2009, p. 2). The ontology takes a particular form, with hunger pangs and sounds that are the body’s reminders of a basic need that must be met, the need to eat in order to survive and where the inability or failure to do so poses an existential threat to the organism. Food bank queues in the west serve as reminders that the threat in the 21st century is real, that hunger cannot simply be relegated to the global south, and that it is a present reality for growing numbers of people living in Britain. Yet, there is also a de-personalizing of corporeality in queues that speak of imposing an order on how food is accessed through the handing over a voucher and the receipt of a three-day parcel of emergency rations. Blogs and tweets re-personalise the embodied experience of hunger, providing a different kind of reminder of the precarity of some lives, where social conditions circumscribe the ability to access food as a commodity and the corporeal vulnerability of the individual is cast into sharp relief. Corporeal vulnerability made visible elicits ambiguous and conflicted responses that invite social interventions to feed the hungry or that stigmatise hungry people and evoke nurture and care or violence and abuse (Butler, 2009; Cavarero, 2010). Such responses are also normative, in the case of hunger shaped by social and cultural understandings of what it is, what its causes are, and whether it arises from personal or societal failings. The exploration here of corporeal vulnerability through personal blogs that recount the lived experience of hunger offers an alternative to studies which privilege representations, objectifying the body and ‘treating it as a discursive, textual, iconographic and metaphorical reality’ while neglecting understandings derived from the embodied and the responses that visible vulnerabilities elicit (Hamilakis, 2002, p. 99). The argument made here calls for a critical reconsideration of classic political economy approaches that view hunger in terms of a class struggle against the material conditions that give rise to it, a resistance to it by the working class, and responses that ultimately led to the construction of the welfare state (Vernon, 2009). The chapter does not deny the importance of structural causes of hunger, but views political economy approaches as reductionist in over-emphasising structures in ways that are more closed than Butler’s notion of ambiguous and constantly changing social responses to corporeal vulnerability. This paper also challenges the dominant tradition of nutrition science, which medicalises hunger. While nutrition science usefully draws attention to the physiological experiences and existential threat posed by acute hunger, the scientific focus on the ‘anatomical functioning’ of the body and the optimising of survival problematically separates eating from the social contexts in which hunger is experienced (Lupton, 1996, p. 11, 12; Abbots & Lavis, 2013). The focus in this article on the corporeal vulnerability of hunger interweaves contested representations of, and ideas about, hunger with the physiological experience of 229

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it, the material conditions that shape it, and the lived experiences of deprivation. Food banks offer a lens into these experiences and their complexities.

BLOGS AS LIVED EXPERIENCE OF HUNGER The politics of food poverty is rooted in ideological struggle and often narrated in popular culture, where mainstream media have historically played a central role in circulating and legitimizing or de-legitimizing certain ideas and “realities” over others. However, in the 21st century, the media landscape has fractured as social media platforms assumed precedence and legacy news organizations lost both their position of dominance and control over the flow of public information. Personal blogs is one form of social media that has emerged partly fulfilling the role played by second-hand newspaper accounts of hunger in the 19th century. The blogs narrate the lived experiences of ordinary people, chronicling everyday happenings in the individual’s life and capturing their thoughts and emotions on how wider events impact their personal lives (see Tremayne, 2007). Some narrations open ‘families, feelings and intimate relations to public politics’ in which private trauma and pity made public become ‘cultivated ways of knowing’ that sit alongside reason rather than supplanting or displacing it (Jolly, 2011, p. vi). Such narratives offer catharsis for the individual blogger (Nardi, Schiano, Gumbrecht, & Swartz, 2004), or as Monroe expressed it, ‘blogging about £10 a week food shop helped me cope with life’ (Monroe, 2013a) and they invite strangers to share in the lived experiences and subjectivities of the blogger. Campaigning blogs, which Jack became, are often premised on the belief that extending and accepting such invitations has the potential to ‘serve as vehicles of social and political transformation’ (Lénárt-Cheng & Walker, 2011, p. 141). This belief in the transformative power of lived narratives dates back to the Enlightenment; what is new is a greater willingness and ability to share these lived narratives, an awareness of the ‘power of intimacy in individual life stories’ and a ‘belief in the potential communal effects’ of making the private public (Lénárt-Cheng & Walker, 2011, p. 141). Monroe echoes some of this when she says that in attempting to ‘explain again and again’ that people ‘can starve on benefits … [I] find myself a stuck record, plastering my personal circumstances across the media in an effort to make people understand’ (Monroe, 2013b). However, for blogs to be able to resonate in such ways they need to be widely circulated. Consumers now actively search out new information and, as Jack demonstrates, can find it in a multiplicity of ways by reading her recipes/articles on mainstream media or accidentally via a Google search, hypertext links from other blogs or hearing about her on the radio or television. Social media interact with rather than replace traditional media; the latter still play a critical role in raising the profile of bloggers such as Monroe and bringing their content to the attention of a wider audience (Tremayne, 2007). However, most personal blogs remain relatively obscure, with a limited circulation read by only a handful of friends and family; the exception being food blogs, some of which have become ‘online sensations turned print bestsellers’ with mainstream media constructing celebrities out of previously obscure bloggers (see Denveater, 2009). That food can attract such attention highlights its unique centrality in our lives and the potential for food-related issues to resonate. Food combines biological necessity, commodity, artifact and social relations; but each of these and the interactions between them are encoded with meanings that signify and can evoke powerful emotions that resonate so as to reinforce or disrupt existing ideas and beliefs. That is, food is both material and symbolic, but it is also ideological, political and contested. It is not only about buying and selling, creating and consuming the material; food as artifact is a ‘highly condensed social 230

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fact’ (Appadurai, 1988, p. 494) that ‘sums’ up the individual situation, societal context and the power relations in which it is produced and consumed, in this case food poverty and the corporeal reality of hunger. In signifying, food serves as ‘vehicles’ through which the political and cultural ideologies such as austerity are circulated, imposed and resisted (see LeBesco & Naccarato, 2008, p. 1). Decoding food thus draws attention to the hidden meanings and ideologies embedded in artifacts, practices and processes as well as the systems of domination and resistance, of access and of denial, of surfeit and of hunger. A Girl Called Jack is concerned with a particular set of meanings used to make sense of food poverty as a lived experience and of the corporeal vulnerability that emerges out of constantly negotiating the difficulty of accessing food as a commodity without any money. Humans must eat to survive, yet food as commodity draws attention to the ideological, political and market relations that circumscribe what individuals such as Monroe can afford, what choices are available to them, what they can create and, in extreme cases, whether they face a threat to survival. As Amartya Sen notes, food poverty is not only about supply; ‘people starve in front of shop windows full of food’ (1983), or as Monroe put it, ‘we went hungry in the world’s seventh richest nation’ (2013c). Food poverty, sometimes called food insecurity, refers to an individual’s inability to, or uncertainty about, consuming an ‘adequate quality or sufficient quantity’ of food to meet what a society deems to be the nutritional needs and norms of an adequate or healthy diet (see Dowler & O’Connor, 2012, p. 4). Studies estimate that as many as one in five Britons have gone to bed hungry (Lansley & Mack, 2015). The power in Monroe’s blogging lay in her narrations of such realities of hunger and her struggle to survive, bringing a proximity to the experience of food poverty with which others could relate. Monroe’s personal blog thus provided a platform for connecting at a human level, thereby challenging the depersonalizing of the poor accentuated in Britain’s age of austerity.

A GIRL CALLED JACK: DISRUPTING STIGMAS, CHALLENGING AUSTERITY Austerity blogs first emerged out of conditions of hardship and took as their raison d’être opposition to an ideology that translated into welfare cuts and the stigmatization of those struggling to survive. The emotional valence of stigmas lies in shame; a co-construction of ‘internally felt inadequacies and externally inflicted judgements’ (Chase & Bantebya-Kyomuhendo, 2014, p. 5) that lie at the ‘irreducible absolutist core’ of the idea of poverty (Sen, 1983, p. 159). External shame is imposed on the impoverished through norms around work in which people are defined and valued based on their job title and material possessions, while the unemployed are blamed for their own condition of poverty. Individual-failure explanations then stigmatize benefit claimants as ‘scroungers’ or ‘skivers’ sponging off the hardworking and thrifty, imposing a social shame that becomes internalized by the individual in a sense of powerlessness (Monroe, 2012). The ‘dynamic interaction’ in the co-construction of shame serves to silence the voice of the impoverished while the targeted individual hides behind an outward façade of normality (see Chase & Bantebya-Kyomuhendo, 2014, p. 5). The façade hides what in the age of austerity is an ‘epidemic of private despair … with no public spectacle to observe’ (Chakrabortty, 2015) where the corporeal vulnerability of hunger becomes obscured or hidden. Jack disrupted such co-constructions by making Monroe’s internalized shame of poverty public, breaking the silence that confines it in private spaces. Monroe’s posts narrated the physical experience of missing meals and going hungry, of being cold and wet, but it is in the relating of the trauma of poverty and the pervasive emotions of shame and fear that her blog resonated, inviting pity through the affective. She recounts her initial withdrawal behind 231

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the appearance of normality, reluctant to let family and friends know ‘how bad things’ were, of wanting to ‘sink into the ground’ when recognized at a food bank and the embarrassment in meeting someone’s eye when they know ‘you are desperate and not coping’, the guilt of having to ‘introduce’ her son to the pawnshop and the ‘gut-wrenching’ fear and humiliation of ‘failing as a parent’ because she was not able to feed him (Monroe, 2012, 2013a, 2014). Within the corporeal vulnerability of the hungry body was a cauldron of conflicting and deeply emotions. While the particularities of Monroe’s situation may have been unfamiliar to many of her readers, the affective dimensions are not; the emotion of shame in relation to poverty is universal (Walker, 2014). Yet, it is through evoking the physical and emotion pain of hunger that Monroe invites proximity where her anecdotes of personal shame and fear become the vehicle through which the reader can identify with and understand the ‘core’ of poverty that Sen (1983) identified, thereby enabling Jack to disrupt the co-construction of shame, in turn enabling Monroe to challenge the individual-failure accounts of poverty. The challenge is problematic. In resigning from a £27,000 a year job, Monroe was complicit in her impoverishment, a point her critics have seized upon (see Littlejohn, 2013), yet her narrative of the interweaving of mutually reinforcing factors in her rapid descent into poverty highlighted the reductionism in these criticisms and individual-failure explanations. Her counter-explanation of resigning because she could not get childcare cover for her night shifts drew attention to the changing nature of households and the lack of support for single mothers; in describing 300 job applications that were rejected because she was “too old” at 23, Monroe drew attention to the structural changes in the job market that are contributing to a 30-year rise in poverty (Monroe, 2012, 2015). In detailing the impact of ‘administrative backlogs’ and an 11-week wait for housing benefit on her spiraling debt and hunger, Monroe drew attention to the material consequences of the systemic chaos that has followed on from the welfare reforms (Monroe, 2012, 2015). In making her own trauma public, Monroe challenged reductionist explanations of poverty that decontextualize unemployment, assume people are unemployed because they choose not to work, and remain silent on the adverse consequences of austerity policies for those struggling to find a job. She thus challenged the government’s attempts to depoliticize poverty and distance themselves from it through vignettes of her own corporeal vulnerability. Monroe also explicitly challenged ministerial rhetoric and scapegoating of the vulnerable. When ministers claimed that food bank use was due to ‘financial mismanagement’ of household budgets, Monroe counter-claimed with a narrative of how delayed benefits payments meant those on very marginal budgets face the consequences in spiralling debt from arrears, charges and fees (Monroe, 2015). When they attributed child poverty to irresponsible parenting, she counter-claimed that ‘in cutting welfare lifelines’ the state was irresponsible in ‘sending its children to school, to bed, to work hungry’ (Monroe, 2013d). When senior politicians claimed that food bank users were undeserving of ‘sympathy’ because they were ‘just rational opportunists’ and growing demand was due to the availability of ‘free food’, Monroe highlighted factual inaccuracies in their comments and counter-claimed this demonstrated ‘a disconnect from reality’ (Edwina Currie cited in Monroe, 2013d). Monroe reconstructed the government as heartless in scapegoating food bank users and benefit claimants while ignoring the corporeal realities of food poverty in the UK, thereby inverting ministerial moralizing and accusing the government of irresponsibility. Similarly, she subverted the social shame ministers sought to impose on the impoverished, asking instead why members of parliament were ‘not ashamed’ when constituents could not afford to feed themselves and society not ashamed when people take back food bank parcels because they cannot afford to heat them (Monroe, 2013e; 2013f). However, the popularity of Jack was not only due to Monroe’s vivid and moving challenges to the dominant rhetoric of right wing news organizations 232

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and government; it is also due to her detailing practices she developed to survive, attesting to the very self-reliance ministers implied was lacking in benefit claimants and a dependency culture.

Grounded Practices: New Forms of Survival Techniques, Creative Resistance Austerity blogs are more than narratives of lived experiences and political commentaries censuring austerity policies; they capture, archive and circulate a particular grounded-practice type of knowledge derived from the grinding banality of the blogger’s daily struggles to survive on very tight household budgets, and built iteratively and reflexively around routines of grocery shopping, cooking and negotiating the benefit system. The knowledge distilled from these changes becomes new forms of survival techniques, captured and circulated online. Largely abandoned by the state, the circulation of these recipes and techniques became a key part of a counter-discourse of laziness and indolence. The need for such survival techniques has arisen from major social changes since the 1970s, when British households and the social norms of eating in the home were reshaped. The growth in singleparent families, working mothers, busier lives and the loss of the stigma attached to convenience food has seen a dramatic increase in ready meals, to the extent that ‘as a society we have lost our ability to cook’ (Baroness Anne Jenkin cited in Elgot, 2014). A cross-party parliamentary inquiry into ‘feeding Britain’ concluded that across the demographic spectrum there had been a loss of basic skills in how to shop on a tight budget, how to prepare and make a ‘meal from scratch,’ with the consequence that many households were ill-equipped to survive financial crisis (All-Party Parliamentary Inquiry, 2014). The transformation of Monroe’s diet from cheap processed ready meals and little fruit and vegetables to cooking ‘meals from scratch’ based on her £10-a-week shop and food bank parcels is a critical part of the survivalist narrative that emerged out of vulnerability and that became a communal resource, with her recipes posted on the blog and distributed in food banks (Monroe, 2013a). Monroe’s recipes detail a range of different techniques developed to maximize the benefits of what she could afford, where the weekly shop became a carefully planned operation of stocktaking and the online pricing of the cheapest and healthiest products (Monroe, 2015b). The survival techniques she designed for living on very small margins also drew attention to the grinding banality of decision-making, where a rise of six pence in the price of a jar of ham made it unaffordable. Her shopping practices were consistent with the intuitive appeal of austerity in which people do not spend more than they have, but in coming from a benefit claimant and food bank user it subverted the political premise of ministers that prudence is a Conservative value rather than a common one. The frugal recipes on Jack, with each ingredient carefully priced and chosen because it was a cheap but healthy option, was the antithesis of the unhealthy ‘chips and cheese’ diet of the poor stereotyped in popular culture, and the antithesis of associations with austere Victorian gruel. Monroe also tapped into the wider green food and environmental movement out of necessity, shopping at her local supermarket because she could walk there and, mindful of cooking on more expensive metered electricity, her recipes are fuel efficient, taking under 15 minutes to cook. Thus, the recipes emerged out of Monroe’s lived experiences and outline new forms of survival techniques shaped by the particular conditions of modern poverty, and became a form of creative resistance that ‘revolutionized’ budget cooking in austerity Britain. Not only are printed copies of her recipes handed out at food banks, they are also included in some of the free cooking classes the operators run (All-Party Parliamentary Inquiry, 2014) and led to Monroe winning a number of prestigious awards (Norton, 2015), bringing an institutional validation to her grounded practices if not to her resistance.

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Jack offered a counterpoint to stereotypes of benefit claimants as indolent and self-indulgent by detailing practices Monroe had developed to cope: based on thrift rather than profligacy and selfindulgence, individual responsibility rather ‘scrounging’, and tight financial management of household budgets rather than the mismanagement that ministers assumed to be behind the need for food banks. These grounded practices captured not only the grinding banality of a daily struggle to eat and survive, but also constitute a creative response to her situation, a portfolio of survival techniques honed through personal knowledge and experience.

RESONATING NARRATIVES, CONFLICTED SYMBOL The narratives on Jack resonated with many readers because they invited pity and offered a way to identify with Monroe’s subjectivities, while the recipes offered grounded practices and techniques to survive on very low budgets (see Butler, 2013). The power of Monroe’s grounded practices lies not only in the institutional validation afforded through awards, but also in their popular validation as widening circulation shifted the blog from relative obscurity on the margins of the blogosphere to center stage. Alerts about Monroe’s latest recipes include some of the ‘Guardian’s most viewed’ tweets; her social media following expanded from 10 in 2012 to over 60,000 on Twitter before she shut it down; 3,300 on Instagram; over 47,000 ‘likes’ on Facebook; and 3,000 email subscribers. Journalists have labeled her a ‘fledgling social media celebrity,’ ‘Britain’s austerity celebrity’ (Altman, 2014; Bennhold, 2014) and the ‘face of modern poverty in Britain’ (Butler, 2013), a representative of the impoverished or symbol of resistance to government policies of cutting benefits. However, in disrupting the silence that the stigma of poverty imposes, in making her vulnerabilities public and visible, and in challenging the depoliticization of food aid, Monroe became a conflicted symbol. Supporters and sympathizers constructed her as providing valuable insights into the realities of modern poverty; a voice for those who have similar experiences to Monroe’s but lack the eloquence or platform she has; or someone who could ‘be anybody’s daughter’ (Bennhold, 2014). Skeptics question whether someone whose experience of poverty, albeit acute, was limited to two years can speak for the long-term unemployed and impoverished (see Hinsliffe, 2014). Critics on the left view her as a ‘hero’ of the middle classes not the poor,’ representing the ‘unholy trinity of modern leftist values — thrift, subsistence and health’ rather than benefit claimants (Slater, 2014). On the other hand, critics on the right reiterate the individual-failure argument, suggesting she brought poverty on herself by giving up her job, and see her as emblematic of the benefit culture in which hardworking taxpayers are ‘forced to subsidize those for whom claiming benefits is a ‘lifestyle’ choice’ and which government is trying to dismantle (Littlejohn, 2013). They too see her as distant from ‘ordinary people,’ not because she is articulate, but because her recipes include kale, which is ‘too posh,’ and red wine, which is too extravagant for someone who is genuinely struggling (Littlejohn, 2013). As much as Monroe’s narratives and grounded practices resonated, resisting and disrupting the stereotypes, they also exposed quite profound deep ideological divides in Britain. As much as she is ‘loved’ by many, she is also ‘loathed’ by others (Adams, 2014). But that says more about the toxic politics of food poverty in Britain than it says about Monroe herself. It also says much about the elusive nature of a ‘new hunger’ that has emerged in the past decade (Caraher & Cavacchi, 2014).

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CONCLUSION This article has used A Girl Called Jack to explore a new type of hybrid blog that merges narratives, practices, and political commentary in ways that hold up to the public gaze the corporeal vulnerability of hunger and the struggle of Britain’s poorest to survive. Austerity blogs emerged in the context of the convergence of a shrinking welfare state and a dominant ideology of austerity, rising levels of food poverty, new forms of food charity or aid, and the distancing of the state from responsibility for dealing with those who are struggling to feed themselves and their families. The preoccupation with how to survive austerity has seen a proliferation of new cultural forms on mainstream and social media that privilege thrift and budget cooking. However, austerity blogs are distinctive in that they provide a bottom-up history of those forced to live hand to mouth, who take as their dominant motif poverty and the struggle to survive as the welfare system became more impersonal and punitive. They therefore provide valuable insights into the subjectivities of Britain’s modern poor and the ways in which they disrupt and challenge the dominant ideology of austerity and explanations that view poverty in moral terms of individual failure. Monroe disrupted these by breaking the silence that external stigma and internal shame impose on the individual; in making public her private trauma she personalized poverty, in holding her own corporeal vulnerability to the gaze of others she invited the pity of the reader and proximity to her subjectivities. Her personal narratives challenged the reductionism in dominant explanations of government by suggesting multiple factors contributing to spiralling poverty; her recipes were derived from grounded practices of learning to live healthily on a very tight budget to offer a new range of survival techniques and a creative resistance that defies stereotypes of what poor people eat. The response to Jack has been phenomenal in terms of her mainstream and social media profile generally, as well as in the opportunities given her to rise out of poverty, forging a new career—one she never anticipated when she started blogging. For researchers, austerity food blogs are a rich source of material. The narratives of living with food poverty, the practices developed to survive it, as well as the wider public response to the blog, offer social insights into the subjectivities of those experiencing food poverty. While Jack resonated powerfully, it also highlighted a fragmented public conversation about what the blog and recipes symbolize, as well as more fundamental questions as to who the modern poor are and what modern poverty is.

REFERENCES Abbots, E.-J., & Lavis, A. (Eds.). (2013). Why We Eat, How We Eat: Contemporary Encounters between Foods and Bodies. Ashgate. Adams, T. (2014, February 16). Jack Monroe — Loathed by the Daily Mail, loved by almost everyone else. Observer Food Monthly. Retrieved from https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2014/feb/16/ jack-monroe-cook-girl-called-jack-interview All-Party Parliamentary Inquiry. (2014). Feeding Britain. doi:10.1136/bmj.1.4348.621-a Alston, P. (2019). Visit to the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland Report of the Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights. UN Human Rights Council. Retrieved from A/HRC/41/39/Add.1. Accessed 05 December 2019. https://undocs.org/A/HRC/41/39/Add.1

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Altman, A. (2014, February 19). No-budget recipes. The New Yorker. Retrieved from https://www. newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/no-budget-recipes Appadurai, A. (1988). How to make a national cuisine: Cookbooks in contemporary India. Comparative Studies in Society and History, 30(1), 3–24. doi:10.1017/S0010417500015024 BBC News. (2019, November 3). Benefits freeze to end in 2020, government confirms. Retrieved from https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-50278634 Bennhold, K. (2014, January 14). From hunger to fame, with a shoestring budget: Jack Monroe has become Britain’s austerity celebrity. New York Times (Europe). Retrieved from https://www.nytimes. com/2014/01/15/world/europe/jack-monroe-has-become-britains-austerity-celebrity.html?_r=0 Blyth, M. (2013a). Austerity as ideology: A reply to my critics. Comparative European Politics, 11(6), 737–751. doi:10.1057/cep.2013.25 Blyth, M. (2013b, May). The austerity delusion: Why a bad idea won over the west. Foreign Affairs, 1–11. Butler, J. (2009). Frames of War: When Is Life Grievable? Verso. Butler, P. (2013, July 23). Jack Monroe: The face of modern poverty. The Guardian. Retrieved from https://www.theguardian.com/society/2013/jul/23/jack-monroe-face-modern-poverty Caplan, P. (2016). Big society or broken society? Anthropology Today, 32(1), 5–9. doi:10.1111/14678322.12223 Caraher, M., & Cavacchi, A. (2014). Old crises on new plates or old plates for a new crises? Food banks and food insecurity. British Food Journal, 116(9), 1426–1445. Cavarero, A. (2010). Horrorism: Naming Contemporary Violence. Columbia University Press. Chakrabortty, A. (2015, February 3). Britain’s epidemic of private despair makes this an economic crisis like no other. There is no public spectacle to observe. But behind closed doors an everyday wretchedness blights lives. The Guardian. Retrieved from https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/feb/03/ britain-economic-crisis-public Chase, E., & Bantebya-Kyomuhendo, G. (2014). Poverty and shame: Global experiences. Oxford University Press. Clarke, J., Gewirtz, S., & McLaughlin, E. (2000). Reinventing the welfare state. In New managerialism, new welfare (pp. 1–26). Sage. Clery, L., & Lee, L. (2013, April). Public attitudes to poverty and welfare 1983–2011. Joseph Rowntree Foundation Report. Retrieved from http://www.natcen.ac.uk/our-research/research/public-attitudes-topoverty-and-welfare Deans, J. (2013, August 27). Jamie Oliver bemoans chips, cheese and giant TVs of modern-day poverty. Guardian. Retrieved from https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2013/aug/27/jamie-oliver-chipscheese-modern-day-poverty

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Denveater. (2009). The virtual roundtable: Food blogging as citizen journalism. World Literature Today, 83(1), 42–46. Dowler, E., & O’Connor, D. (2012). Rights-based approaches to addressing food poverty. Social Science & Medicine, 74(1), 44–71. doi:10.1016/j.socscimed.2011.08.036 PMID:22000764 Downing, E., Kennedy, S., & Fell, M. (2014). Food banks and food poverty. London, UK: House of Commons. Retrieved from https://www.parliament.uk/briefing-papers/SN06657/food-banks-and-food-poverty Elgot, J. (2014, December 9). Feeding Britain: Poor people don’t know how to cook, says Tory Baroness Jenkin. Huffington Post (UK). Retrieved from https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2014/12/08/feedingbritain-tory-cook_n_6287454.html Fitzpatrick, S., Bramley, G., Sosenko, F., & Blenkinsopp, J. (2018). Destitution in the UK 2018, JRF. Accessed 17 May 2019. https://www.jrf.org.uk/report/destitution-uk-2018 Foucault, M. (1977). Discipline and Punishment. Allen Lane. Fullfact.org. (2019, December). Are there more food banks than McDonalds restaurants in the UK? Retrieved from https://fullfact.org/electionlive/2019/dec/9/food-banks-more-mcdonalds/ Hamilakis, Y. (2002). Experience And Corporeality: Introduction. In Thinking Through The Body: Archaeologies Of Corporeality (pp. 99–105). Kluwer Academic. doi:10.1007/978-1-4615-0693-5_1 Hamnett, C. (2014). Shrinking the welfare state: The structure, geography and impact of British government benefit cuts. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, 39(4), 490–503. doi:10.1111/ tran.12049 Hinsliffe, G. (2014, February 14). No sneering. Talking for other people is allowed. The Times. Retrieved from https://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/opinion/columnists/article4005134.ece Howarth, A. (2017). Challenging the de-politicization of food poverty: Austerity food blogs. In Y. Ibrahim (Ed.), Politics, Protest and Empowerment in Digital Spaces (pp. 124–142). IGI Global. doi:10.4018/9781-5225-1862-4.ch008 Hughes, L. (2019). Amber Rudd begins universal credit reforms amid High Court blow. Financial Times. Retrieved from. https://www.ft.com/content/ac211a78-158b-11e9-a581-4ff78404524e Johnson, M. (1987). Human Beings. The Journal Of Philosophy, 2(2), 59–83. doi:10.2307/2026626 Jolly, M. (2011). Life writing as intimate publics. Biography, 34(1), v–xi. Advance online publication. doi:10.1353/bio.2011.0007 Lambie-Mumford, H., Crossley, D., & Jensen, E. (2014). Household food security in the UK: A review of food aid final report. Retrieved from https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/283071/household-food-security-uk-140219.pdf Lansley, S., & Mack, J. (2015). Breadline Britain: The rise of mass poverty. Oneworld Publications. LeBesco, K., & Naccarato, P. (2008). Edible ideologies: Representing food and meaning. State University of New York.

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Lénárt-Cheng, H., & Walker, D. (2011). Recent trends in using life stories for social and political activism. Biography, 34(1), 141–179. doi:10.1353/bio.2011.0005 Littlejohn, R. (2013, November 8). Ah, Pesto! These poverty poster girls of Welfare Britain want the gravy too ... without having to pay for it. Daily Mail. Retrieved from http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/ article-2482111/RICHARD-LITTLEJOHN-Ah-Pesto-Meet-poverty-poster-girls.html Loopstra, R. (2018). Rising food bank use in the UK: Sign of a new public health emergency? Nutrition Bulletin, 43(1), 53–60. doi:10.1111/nbu.12306 Lupton, D. (1996). Food, the Body and the Self. Sage. May, J., Williams, A., Cloke, P., & Cherry, L. (2019). Welfare convergence, bureaucracy, and moral distancing at the food bank. Antipode, 51(4), 1251–1275. doi:10.1111/anti.12531 Monroe, J. (2012, July 30). Hunger hurts [Blog post]. Retrieved from http://agirlcalledjack.com/2012/07/30/ hunger-hurts/ Monroe, J. (2013a, September 10). The government are feckless, neglectful and abusive. HuffPost (UK). Retrieved from http://www.huffingtonpost Monroe, J. (2013b, September 18). Austerity bites: You can starve on benefits in this country. The Guardian. Retrieved from https://www.theguardian.com/society/2013/sep/18/jack-monroe-starve-benefits-england Monroe, J. (2013c, October 29). Some British people can’t afford to heat their food. Aren’t we ashamed? The Guardian. Retrieved from https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/oct/29/british-cantafford-heat-food-big-six-energy-jack-monroe Monroe, J. (2013d, October 16). We need an inquiry into food banks: My column in today’s Guardian [Blog post]. Retrieved from http://agirlcalledjack.com/2013/10/16/we-need-an-inquiry-into-food-banksmy-column-in-todays-guardian/ Monroe, J. (2013e, October 16). Food banks are testimony to the Tories’ massacre of hope and dignity. The Guardian. Retrieved from https://www.theguardian.com/society/2013/oct/16/food-banks-tories-policies Monroe, J. (2013f, October 29). Some British people can’t afford to heat their food. Aren’t we ashamed? The Guardian. Retrieved from https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/oct/29/british-cantafford-heat-food-big-six-energy-jack-monroe Monroe, J. (2014, February 18). Poverty can happen to anyone [Blog post]. Retrieved from http://agirlcalledjack.com/2014/02/18/poverty-can-happen-to-anyone-guardian-column-feb-2013/ Monroe, J. (2015, February 19). I can’t even answer my own front door [Blog post]. Retrieved from http://agirlcalledjack.com/2015/02/19/i-cant-even-open-my-own-front-door/ Nardi, B., Schiano, D., Gumbrecht, M., & Swartz, L. (2004). Why we blog. Communications of the ACM, 47(12), 41–46. doi:10.1145/1035134.1035163 Norton, S. (2015, January 20). How a Girl Called Jack revolutionised budget cooking. The Independent. Retrieved from https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-families/features/a-girl-called-jackhow-jack-monroe-revolutionised-budget-cooking-9989853.html?origin=internalSearch

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Poppendieck, J. (1998). Sweet charity: Emergency food and the end of entitlement. Viking Penguin. Renwick, C. (2017). Bread for All: The Origins of the Welfare State. Penguin. Revie, E. (2019) What do party manifestos tell us about the way forwards after today’s election? The Trussell Trust. Retrieved from https://www.trusselltrust.org/2019/12/12/election-2019/ Riches, G., & Silvasti, T. (2014). Hunger in the rich world: Food aid and right to food perspectives. In G. Riches (Ed.), First world hunger. Palgrave Macmillan. Ronson, D., & Caraher, M. (2016). Food banks: Big society or shunting yards? Successful failures. In M. Caraher & J. Coveney (Eds.), Food poverty and insecurity: International food inequalities (pp. 79–88). Springer. doi:10.1007/978-3-319-23859-3_8 Sen, A. (1983). Poor, relatively speaking. Oxford Economic Papers, 35(2), 153–169. doi:10.1093/oxfordjournals.oep.a041587 Slater, T. (2014, February 7). “Recessionista” Jack Monroe is a hero of the thrift-obsessed middle classes, not the poor. Spiked. Retrieved from https://www.spiked-online.com/newsite/article/jack-monroe-pleblite-for-guardianistas/14622 The Economist. (2019, July 11). Moving out of Benefits Street: British attitudes to welfare have undergone a quiet revolution. Retrieved from. https://www.economist.com/britain/2019/07/11/british-attitudes-towelfare-have-undergone-a-quiet-revolution Thompson, H. (2013). Austerity as ideology: The bait and switch of the banking crisis. Comparative European Politics, 11(6), 729–736. doi:10.1057/cep.2013.24 Tremayne, M. (2007). Blogging, citizenship and the future of media. Routledge. Vernon, J. (2009). Hunger: A modern history. Harvard University Press. doi:10.1080/03071020902778634 Walker, R. (2014). The shame of poverty. Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/acprof:o so/9780199684823.001.0001 Wells, R., & Caraher, M. (2014). UK print media coverage of the food bank phenomenon: From food welfare to food charity? British Food Journal, 116(9), 1426–1445. doi:10.1108/BFJ-03-2014-0123 Woodhouse, C. (2013). Victorian diseases hit starving poor, The Sun. Retrieved from https://www. thesun.co.uk/living/3074330/diseases-once-associated-with-the-victorian-era-are-rocketing-in-britainoday-figures-show/ Wren, A. (2013, July 7). The rise and rise of austerity blogs. The Guardian. Retrieved from http://www. theguardian.com/media/shortcuts/2013/jul/07/rise-and-rise-of-austerity-blog#comments

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ENDNOTE 1



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A Girl Called Jack was renamed Cooking on a Bootstrap in 2015 to reflect the blogger’s changed personal circumstances and in this sense it typifies the morphing of blogs; however, the original posts have a historical significance in adding bottom-up voices to concerns about mounting hunger hence the focus in this chapter on Jack.

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Chapter 15

Use of Mobiles for Promoting Agriculture in Puducherry, India I. Arul Aram https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8130-461X Anna University, Chennai, India Sakthivel Murugan G. Independent Researcher, India

ABSTRACT This research work is based on an empirical investigation into mobile advisory services co-created by the National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development (NABARD), M.S. Swaminathan Research Foundation (MSSRF), and the agriculture farmers’ community of the Union Territory of Puducherry, India. This research work investigates the effectiveness of the agricultural extension tool of mobile phone audio messages among farmers in areas of rural in Puducherry, during the years 2010-2013. The research work analysed farmers’ benefits, gaps in mobile advisory services (MAS), perception of mobile messages, socio-demographic, and socio-economic data. As a result, farmers were able to acquire knowledge and skills relating to their livelihoods and make timely decisions to cope with emerging issues and trends in agriculture to an extent of diversifying their cropping patterns. These messages enhanced their knowledge in crop management, latest farming technologies, and agriculture-related government schemes and entitlements, and post-harvest techniques along with care and management of livestock.

INTRODUCTION Agriculture comprises crops, dairy, fishery, horticulture, floriculture, animal husbandry and agro-forestry along with small enterprises such as beekeeping and mushroom growing which needs the use of modern communication technologies to achieve the target growth. Agriculture in India has come a long way from the start of green revolution in the 1960s. Green revolution has resulted in chemical agriculture, with the introduction of chemical fertilizers and chemical pesticides. Although the production increased up to five-folds in the early stages of green revolution, later the production dipped. This has led to the DOI: 10.4018/978-1-7998-4796-0.ch015

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revival of traditional practices in agriculture such as organic farming. Of late, agriculture production is very much vulnerable to losses caused by unfavourable weather events and climatic conditions (Parry, 2019; FAO, 2015; Rosenberg, 1992). Many researchers have reported the adverse climate change effects on crops, pests, soil and livestock (Aggarwal, 2008; Suryavanshi, 2012; Nelson et al., 2009; Khan et al., 2009; Rosegrant et al., 2008). These changes affect the livelihoods of a large number of the rural poor farmers in the developing countries such as India, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Brazil, South Africa and China. The rural sector has agriculture and animal husbandry as major livelihood options, and this paper concentrates on these with focus on mobile advisory services (MAS). Information and communication technologies (ICTs) in developing countries over the past decade offer a unique opportunity to transfer knowledge via private and public information systems (Baardewijk, 2017, Aker, 2010; Sulaiman et al., 2003; Richardson et al., 2006; Digital Review of Asia Pacific, 2008). ICTs directly support farmers’ access to timely and relevant information, as well as empower the creation and sharing of knowledge of the farming community (Aker, 2010). Information and Communication Technology (ICT) is universally acknowledged as an important catalyst for social transformation and national progress, especially in the field of agriculture where farmers’ training is of utmost importance. The dissemination of useful information and advice on sustainable agricultural practices can be improved, and can help achieve better organisation of farmers. Such an initiative to train them on the best practices will empower farmers with the ability to respond appropriately to environmental challenges and will increase their resilience to environmental shocks, which in turn will ultimately lead to enhanced production and minimisation of crop loss. A robust information dissemination system can help farmers in various ways such as making decisions about choice of crops and seed varieties, using efficient irrigation techniques, alternative pest management techniques, land management strategies, being aware of weather conditions and potential threats, identify viable transport and storage facilities, and being better informed about available technology and its utilisation. But disparities in the levels of ICT readiness and use could translate into disparities in level of productivities and hence could influence a country’s rate of economic growth. Understanding and leveraging ICT is, therefore, critical for countries striving for continued social and economic progress. ICTs include technologies and media that capture, store and disseminate data and information, and they include tools such as video, tele-text, voice information systems, radio, mobile telephony, fax and computer-mediated networks among others. ICTs are considered drivers of change for rural and agricultural development. They are efficient tools for reaching rural and remote communities and improving agricultural productivity (Richardson, 1997; Warren, 2002; Harris, 2004; May et al., 2007). Mobile phones reduce communication and information costs for the rural poor in developing countries. This not only provides new opportunities for farmers to obtain access to information on agricultural technologies but also to use ICTs in agricultural extension systems (Aker, 2010). The increasing penetration of mobile phones and mobile-enabled information services in rural India can reduce information asymmetry and complement the role of extension services (Mittal et al., 2010). Adhigurua and Birthalb (2009) found that agricultural public extension services in India have been accessed only by 5.7 percent households proving the need for strengthening the extension services. The public agriculture department’s extension service has clearly not reached all farmers in need for information. The public agricultural extension systems often fail due to inadequate consultation of farmers about their information needs and poor understanding of their information search strategies (Babu et al., 2012). Impact of KVK training on development of tribal farmers were studied in Odisha and resulted that improvement was not observed on economical, infrastructural, material possession and farm activities so 242

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KVK has to strengthen its activities on training (Bar et al., 2014). However, the impact of KVK training on scientific method of goat rearing and feeding management of Azola was studied in Namakkal and the overall adoption percentage by the farmers indicated that the traditional training had a significant impact in the uptake of new technologies (Senthilkumar et al., 2014).

MOBILE EXTENSION PROJECT In India, the existing public agricultural extension system is traditionally providing extension services to meet with the farmers’ requirements related to agricultural production. But it has become less effective, more time consuming and hence unsuccessful and there is a gap between the extension agent and the farmers (Mruthunjaya & Adhiguru, 2005). IFFCO Kissan Sanchar Limited (IKSL), BSNL, Reuters Market Light (RML), Nokia Life Tools, Fisher Friend Project, Rubber Board and the Department of Agriculture, Haryana State are providing services through SMS and Voice messages about agriculture related information (ICTFSECBP, 2009; Fafchamps & Minten, 2012; Saravanan, 2010). The farmers still face a lot of difficulties in getting timely, reliable and relevant information. This is mainly because the technologies developed for farmers were not suited to the farmers’ capacity to take risk according to Glendenning et al. (2010) who have reviewed some ICT based agricultural EJISDC. Agriculture is one of the most important occupations for the people of the Union Territory of Puducherry, India. Puducherry was a French territory during the colonial India, and it became a unionadministrated territory within Independent India. It lies in the southern part of India. Most of the people in Puducherry are Tamil speaking. About 45% of the total population of the Union Territory depends directly or indirectly on farming. The main crop of Puducherry is paddy. The agriculture sector contributes to less than 2% of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP). During the last five decades, Puducherry has made significant strides in the field of agriculture by increasing the productivity of agricultural land, achieving crop diversification, exploiting irrigation potential, building infrastructure, creating a marketing network, etc. Situated in the coastal area, Puducherry is frequently affected by natural calamities. The increasing cost of agricultural inputs such as seeds, fertilizers, pesticides, and the non-remunerative prices for the agricultural produce are other bottlenecks the farmers face. The National Bank of Agriculture and Rural Development (NABARD) and the M.S. Swaminathan Research Foundation (MSSRF) jointly launched a pilot project to disseminate agricultural knowledge through mobile audio advisory messages to the farmers of Puducherry in 2010. Since this service is enabled by all telecom service providers, all the farmers could receive this information. Samples for this project were selected from four blocks, namely Bahour, Mannadipet, Nettapakkam and Villianur of Puducherry.

MSSRF AS AN INSTITUTIONAL INTERMEDIARY Village centres are computer-based information network set up in villages to supply locally-needed information and to empower the villagers. They are called by different names: telecentres; village information centres; village resource centres and their subunits village knowledge centres; and information kiosks. They are particularly effective in 1,000-odd km coastline of Tamil Nadu prone to disasters and

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are widely acclaimed as successful ICT ventures. Puducherry is a union territory area which lies cutting across the coastal border of the Tamil Nadu state. Such village knowledge centre (VKC) initiatives of the M.S. Swaminathan Research Foundation (MSSRF), Chennai, are an effort to present workable models of providing information and communication technology (ICT) for development. VKCs are workable models which are diverse in nature, and when put in place by MSSRF could be scaled up by other NGOs. The idea is that MSSRF intends to device multiple workable models, and it does not take up the task of scaling up any one model. Such VKCs strive to offer services that closely suit community needs. The idea is that a well-placed computer linked with other ICT tools like an irrigation pump or a community well may become another tool for development. To start with, the mobile advisories were tried out with coastal population and the fisheries sector. Each day, the project’s staff downloaded a map from a global metrological website that showed the wave heights and wind directions at sea. This not only increased the catch of fisher folk but also contributed to their safety. Later, MSSRF took to farmers’ advisories taking advantage of the strength of agricultural expertise the foundation has. When the tsunami struck in December 2004 at Veerampattinam fishing village in the southeast coast of India, a mysterious spring showed up in the temple tank drawing crowds. So, when the tsunami hit the beach initially, most of the villagers were seen around the tank. Mani, a fisherman, saw the waters rising when he was working on his boat motor and raised an alarm. He first alerted six women, who were on the beach, hurrying them into a boat, which was then swept into the village. He rushed to the public address system, which was found locked, broke it open and alerted the village. Veerampattinam, which has more than 6,200 people, lost only one life that day (Muthalaly, 2004). Thus goes a news report in The Hindu. Formerly called “information shops”, the village knowledge centres provide information to the rural population on relevant issues such as: health (vaccine/medicine availability in the nearest health centre); relief information (loans, availability of officials); agriculture (local market prices for rural produce); transportation information; micro-meteorological information (relating to the local area); surface and groundwater-related data; and translating English-based internet content into Tamil and contextualizing it. MSSRF has demonstrated that village resource centres (VRCs) and its subsidiaries village knowledge centres (VKCs) are a workable model, and the National Alliance for Mission 2007 took the uphill task of making every village a knowledge centre by taking ICT there, before the country celebrated the 60th anniversary of Independence in 2007. That was not to be. Now many other NGOs have adapted the ICT initiatives at the grassroots level. The VKCs were operated by individuals on a semi-voluntary basis. Such individuals were identified on the basis of the following criteria: education (at least high school); socio-economic status (marginal farmers were given preference); gender (other things being equal, women were given preference); and age (preferably in the 20-25 age group). They were given two days of training by MSSRF. The training session consists of demonstrations of the wireless instruments, and use of personal computer (PC) keyboard and mouse. And one person per village was selected from among the trainees for each of the centres. For MSSRF to move into a village and help set up a knowledge centre, the village community has to provide a room in a building which has easy access and provide volunteers as well as pay for electricity and upkeep of the centre. The village volunteers are trained in the operation of computers and maintenance of the communication equipment as well as to gather and input information. The emphasis is on overall development. The project is society-centric rather than technology-centric. This means, the project focused on people rather than on the technology which is put in place.

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The ICT projects continue to experiment with a range of technologies, but it is people-centred, focusing on people and their contexts. Both connectivity and content were given concurrent attention. The work in each village starts with social scientists / social workers getting to know the people and making a study of their needs and current level of familiarity with sources of information and the technological means to gather information. Rural families need both dynamic and generic information. Dynamic information includes managing and market factors as related to crops, animal husbandry, fisheries, agro-forestry and agro-processing, whereas generic information includes local news, employment news and government schemes. Information provided should be demand-driven. The ICT projects are bottom up and they recognize the local people’s right to know from the very beginning. Information needs of the community and the people’s familiarity with different technologies and communication channels should be assessed. Fostering a sense of local ownership has been an important feature of this programme. Information is a necessary but not a sufficient condition for empowerment. Information has to be linked to the means of using the information. For example, if old people are empowered with knowledge relating to cataract, they should know where the cataract eye surgery can be performed at a low or no cost (in Puducherry, the Aravind Eye Hospital provides this facility). In fact, increased health expenditure due to serious ailments is an important reason for farmers’ indebtedness and even suicides. Hence it is not only necessary to discuss health-related problems in the language understandable by the people, but it is vital to offer economic solutions in terms of treatments to ailments. ICTs are tried out to bridge gender, social, economic and technological divides. The resource centre is at the core of the ICT for rural development movement. Particularly under the circumstances of climate change when crops fail and fish yield decreases, people indulging in these as primary occupations are left with less money, and any sort of support including that promoting good health is really a great relief. Several other initiatives such as self-help groups, skill building, micro-credit, literacy, agriculture, health, governance and education are built around ICT. Poverty will persist so long as a large proportion of the rural population is engaged only in unskilled work. Here ICT is being used to bring about a paradigm shift from unskilled to skilled work and from routine on-farm to value-added non-farm activities. Having experimented with ICTs in a dozen villages in Puducherry, MSSRF takes the concept of VRCs to other regions and other parts of the country. The secret behind the success is not just technology but that the information provided is authentic and useful in the specific context. Staff of village knowledge centres work closely with partner organizations such as agricultural universities, Krishi Vigyan Kendras (KVKs), human and animal health institutions, research laboratories, field stations and marketing organizations. Since May 2009 in the MSSRF–IKSL collaboration offers audio advisories related to need-based seasonal crop agriculture advisories, animal husbandry, micro-enterprises, health, education, government schemes and entitlements. All these information and advisories are provided in local language. These applications cover more than 200,000 farmers/ fishermen/ self-help groups on a daily basis in Tamil Nadu. In all these cases, MSSRF is maintaining a dedicated helpdesk and conducts phone-in programme with experts. The five voice messages disseminated daily to the farmers by Airtel service provider through a specially-launched Green SIMcard to all the farmers in the initial one year period in Tamil Nadu was later divided into four zones namely Coimbatore, Vellore, Tiruchirappalli and Madurai by which the two voice messages out of the five were pertained to region / zone and crop specific according to the seasons. The three common messages contained general practices, advisories in agriculture, and animal husbandry. 245

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This experience of knowledge dissemination and providing advisories to the farmers through mobile phones in Tamil Nadu enabled MSSRF to approach NABARD, Puducherry, with a project to pilot it in the Union Territory of Puducherry for the selected 150 farmers. The advantage of the project is that the farmers can use the same mobile number for getting the audio advisories without buying a new SIM card or mobile phone so it is independent of the service provider platform system where all those farmers who might have various mobile service users would get audio in their mobile phones. This made the communication component easy and effective. The mobile audio advisory project contents were collected regularly from the scientists / experts / agriculture consultants in research institutions around Puducherry (see Figure 1). As many as 541 audio advisories were disseminated to farmers from 2011-2012. Voice messages were recorded using a handheld recorder or a computer system. Recorded message were of 50 to 55 seconds for dissemination. These messages were sent in the regional Tamil language only. Two voice messages were sent to farmers, one on agriculture and the other on animal husbandry. The crop advisories were provided to the major crops such as paddy, sugarcane, groundnut, sesame, vegetables, banana and coconut. In the animal husbandry advisories, livestock-related contents were disseminated extensively. Figure 1. Audio advisories dissemination process chart

All 541 advisories were classified under different categories. Figure 2 shows that about 43% (n=230) of the contents are disseminated in agriculture, animal husbandry 27% (n=147), horticulture information 8% (n=43), health information 7% (n=39), government schemes 4% (n=21), and own announcement regarding phone-in programmes and feedback meeting announcement 11% (n=61).

OBJECTIVES OF THE STUDY The objectives of the study on mobile advisories to Puducherry farmers are: •

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To examine the impact of mobile audio agricultural advisory services on agriculture production in Puducherry

 Use of Mobiles for Promoting Agriculture in Puducherry, India

Figure 2. Thematic categorization of advisories

• •

To identify Puducherry farmers’ information needs to improve their agricultural productivity To know the challenges the Puducherry farmers’ mobile advisories faced.

MATERIAL AND METHODS The target population for this study was farmers who used mobile advisories in Puducherry. Out of 150 farmers who received the advisory messages, 88 farmers were randomly selected based on their availability to respond. In those, 83 farmers are male and five are female aged from 21 to 70. First, the usefulness of the advisory was posed as a question to the farmers asking with a simple “yes” or “no”. If the response was “yes”, we further investigate about the benefits of audio advisories. The categories were further classified as economic benefits, improving knowledge, and further improvement. These categories were further developed from the farmers’ response to more units within the categories (Table 1).

RESULTS AND DISCUSSIONS This section presents discussion of results. •

Economically Benefited: As much as 81.8% of farmers have been economically benefited through the advisories. These advisories were related to agriculture, livestock, health, government schemes, etc. The rest of the farmers were not economically benefited because they did not practise the received information. Information received by farmers when put to use yielded good results, and it contributed to economic and social well-being.

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Table 1. Overall effects of mobile advisories on the users S. No. 1.

Benefits of the Usage Usefulness of the mobile advisories and knowledge level improved

(%) Response 96.5

2.

Overall benefited with all kinds of information

81.8

3.

Economically benefited in agriculture

63.6

4.

Livestock information

43.2

5.

Health and food information

15.9

6.

Pest control information

46.6

7.

Using fertilizers

43.2

8.

Seed availability and selection of crops

21.6

9.

Crop management

37.5

10.

Production and post-harvesting information benefits

21.6

11.

Weather information

6.8

12.

Information about the government schemes

5.3

13.

Knowledge sharing among the peer group

31.8

14.

Need a change in the content of information

62.5

More than 63% of farmers received a good harvest by using the agriculture information such as pest control, fertilizer management, crop management, seed selection and seed treatment, weather information, harvesting time, and marketing messages. This information played a vital role in increasing the production level as never before. As much as 46.6% of users were benefited in controlling the pest by adopting the mobile audio advisories. Because of the knowledge dissemination through the advisories, each crop vulnerable to pest attack at various growing levels could be tackled. Farmers largely benefited by using appropriate pesticides at the right time. But for such right messages at the right time, farmers tend to overuse pesticides or use pesticides at the wrong time. Since the farmers were told how and when to use pesticides and what sort of pesticides for which crop, the farmers could use pesticides properly, and this contributed much to the crop yield. Awareness was also raised among the farmers against the excessive use of pesticides which leaves a residue not only in the soil but also on the agricultural produce. The thump rule is that at least 80 percent of the fertilizers and pesticides used should be absorbed by the plants, and less than 20 percent should remain as residue in the soil. The importance of integrated pest management strategies was explained to them. Fertilizer usage information enhanced the basic knowledge of the users (43.2%) in using the appropriate fertilizer at the right time, with the exact quantity required for a particular soil and crop. One of the users stated that the information of mixing urea with neem cake as a fertilizer actually allowed the plants to bloom and increased the production in large quantities. And this information reduced their fertilizer demand and helped them to save several thousands of rupees. Among the respondents, 21.6% benefited in spotting the seeds for the current season, by knowing the government agricultural department outlets which distributed subsidized seeds. The fact that the information on subsidised seeds provided to farmers should go alongside with the outlets ready at hand to sell the seeds. Weather events information empowered farmers to decide whether or not to spray pesticides or apply manures on a particular day. These decisions have led to optimal use of the labour, pesticides and fertilizers. Information about rains helped farmers’ timely agricultural operations. At some point of

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time, the farmers would desperately need rain but at some other point of time excessive outpour would spoil the crop and make it rot. With the timely forecasting of rains, farmers will be in a better position to plan their agricultural operations. Puducherry is a coastal area and farmers are prone to cyclone and heavy rains. Hence, they are interested in receiving reliable weather-related information from the meteorological department. During the rainy season (October to December), livestock is affected by diseases. ‘Mastitis’ is a frequently occurring disease for cows which can be easily cured by adopting traditional method like applying the mixer of neem leaves, turmeric and salt. Non-pregnancy of milch cows is still an issue in several villages. Farmers were told about the proper insemination methods which increased milk production. Dissemination of such information on cow rearing and upkeep strengthens income generation. •

Improving Knowledge: As much as 7.95% of mobile advisory users have been benefited by the System of Rice Intensification (SRI) method for paddy cultivation which is an innovative farming practice. SRI uses bare minimum seeds and water for paddy cultivation. Only two kilograms of seeds per acre is sufficient instead of 25 kilograms by the regular method. SRI method reduces water wastage by using only 50% of the water compared to traditional method. This method has doubled paddy production from 20 to 40 bags per acre (with per bag capacity of 75 kg). This also reduces methane (greenhouse gas) emissions from rice fields resulting out of flooding of the field with water. In the SRI method, weeding is done at 10th, 20th, 30th and even 40th day to optimize the use of manure by better nitrogen fixation in soil with the help of cono weeder, also the weed decomposes into soil as manure.

As much as 14.8% of the mobile advisory users benefited from drip irrigation and found it as a new effective method for sugarcane cultivation. Drip irrigation reduces water usage as water is directly supplied onto the roots of plants through a network of narrow tubes. Basically, sugarcane cultivators can save a large quantum of water. In addition, fertilizers can also be administered directly to the crops. Vegetable farmers are also aware of precision farming, drip irrigation in particular, since it increases production. The Government provides subsidy for drip irrigation. When the audio messages spread the details about the subsidy, several farmers took advantage of it and changed to a drip irrigation method. The concept of the sugarcane plate method was unknown to farmers before. After exposure to mobile advisories, farmers adopted this technology and it has increased proliferation of stems, i.e. 15 stems of sugarcane grew in place of three stems from a single seedling plant. This was a boon to the sugarcane cultivators of Puducherry. Most users of audio advisories have studied up to secondary level only and have landholdings below six acres. The four blocks selected for the study has good water resources, paddy, sugarcane and casuarina which are the major crops cultivated. Among the users, 53.4% livestock owners maintain cow, goat and chicken. Their paddy production has increased compared to the last few seasons. Some of the farmers attributed the increase to effective pest control and it prevented crops from many diseases and they say it has increased the crop production. Timely information of season-based crops made available in their own local language through mobile advisories played an important role.

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•

Expectation of Farmers: Among the respondents, 62.5% are expecting more and frequent audio advisories; 36.4% of farmers say that the advisories received were satisfactory, and they did not want any change in the future. As much as 50% of farmers wanted changes in agricultural messages and expected information on latest machineries, new horticulture crops and hybrid varieties, nutrients and new cost-cutting methods and techniques. Farmers are expecting specific information on the basis of the crops they cultivate. Some farmers are cultivating paddy throughout the year, so they want only information related to paddy, while others cultivating sugarcane required information on sugarcane.

Only 5.7% of farmers want changes in the veterinary information delivered. Farmers who do not have livestock did not want to hear livestock advisories. Animal husbandry, a specialised information allied to agriculture, will be useful to those concerned with it. The government schemes, health messages, and weather information recorded the least response as the dissemination of these messages were too low, and also the farmers are expecting more than 30% of information on health, education and weather sectors. The advisories have facilitated to comprehend the existing scope to strengthen and scale up initiatives, and to provide a strategic approach to address livelihood issues as well as to sustain the interest of farming community, thereby improving agricultural productivity. To sustain the efforts and maintain the interest of farmers it is imperative to continue the knowledge support. Continuing support for these advisories would definitely reach a larger number of farmers and the impact is also likely to increase. Audio messages follow top-down communication approach in disseminating information and helpline services play a supportive role. Helpline is a bottom-up approach and paved the way for two-way communication. The helplines provide answers to the queries of the farmers specific to the problems which arise from time to time. Hence, the information provided is not thrust from above but the information is tailor-made to address the felt-need of the farmers. Information provided to farmers is immediately shared with the local community (31.8% farmers volunteered to share mobile advisories). Hence, mobile audio advisory service created a new knowledge platform for farmers. Most of the pilot projects are disseminating only the market information, but farmers require this information only at the time of harvesting. Many of them are in need of basic information related to crop management, fertilizer management, and pest control management. By providing these details the project may be made more relevant to farmers.

CAPABILITY APPROACH Future studies on the effect of mobile advisories on farmers could take up capabilities approach of Amartya Sen as the theoretical framework. The capability approach is a widely influential theory in contemporary political philosophy, social justice, development studies, studies on poverty and inequality, and in public policy. It was formulated by Amartya Sen in 1980s and further developed by Martha Nussbaum. Sen (1993) defines the capability of a person as that which “reflects the alternative combinations of functionings the person achieves and from which he/she can choose one collection”. The distinguishing characteristic of the capability approach is its focus on what people are effectively “able to do and to be”, that is, their ‘capabilities’. This leads to two important themes for human development as developed by Sen namely, capabilities and functioning. The attempt is to find the capacity 250

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of the farmers’ well-being by studying their capabilities and the functioning impact in their reach and creating model communication strategies to improve their livelihood. Sen has developed a novel conceptual framework. Key concepts include functionings, capabilities, agency, and freedom. •

• •

•

Functionings - The concept of functionings is fundamental. Sen aims to broaden the concerns of development policy beyond wealth, whether wealth is measured as a proportion of household incomes below a poverty line, as gross national product, or as any other single measure of economic well-being. Capabilities - Capabilities refer to real opportunities citizens have to enjoy a functioning rather than to the actual enjoyment of the functioning. Agency - Agency is a concept that builds on the idea of capabilities. A citizen with agency is, “… someone who acts and brings about change, and whose achievements can be judged in terms of her own values and objectives, whether or not we assess them in terms of some external criteria as well” (Sen, 1999, p. 17). Freedom - In combination, the ideas of functionings, capabilities, and agency comprise the conceptual basis for Sen’s approach to development as freedom.

CONCLUSION The mobile audio advisories helped farmers with timely information on agriculture and related fields. These messages enhanced the knowledge of farmers in crop management, the latest farming technologies, soil health management, organic farming, integrated nutrient management, plant protection measures, crop insurance, agriculture-related government schemes and entitlements, post-harvest techniques along with care, horticulture, animal husbandry, and management of livestock. The advisories played a vital role in bridging the knowledge gap and scientific solutions between the scientific and farming communities through the use of mobile phones. With almost all farmers having access to mobile phones, communication for development (C4D) through mobile phones is now a reality. As a result, the farmers were able to acquire knowledge and skills related to their livelihoods, by identifying the change in the environment by new methods, practices and technology which produce best results. And this enables timely decisions to cope with the emerging issues and trends in agriculture to an extent of diversifying their cropping patterns and application of fertilizers based on soil test results. This has brought significant changes in their capacity in terms of (a) confidence due to the new knowledge and skills from village knowledge centres (VKC), Krishi Vigyan Kendras (KVKs) and other sources, (b) updating existing knowledge and skills in their agriculture practice and (c) blending scientific knowledge with traditional knowledge, resulting in improved farming practices and economic status to some extent and thereby generating interest among farmers to continue agriculture as a profession. The major shift has also taken place in directly interacting with the experts and scientific community using the digital platform to discuss their livelihood-related issues and learning the latest technologies in agriculture and animal husbandry practices. Climate change has affected the cropping system. Most of the farmers changed to single or mono crop cultivation due to erratic rainfall and as a fallout of green revolution. The situation has put them at a great risk that they even sell their livestock as they are unable to maintain it or not able to bear the 251

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occasional total loss in agricultural output. Audio advisories prepared farmers to adapt to climate change and livelihood options in a better way by promoting crop rotation and also reviving certain traditional varieties of crops which were inadvertently given up during the green revolution phase. These kinds of projects will not succeed either at national or state level in India. This is because every district or block has different soil type, climatic zone, crop preference, water resources, and cultivation practices. Hence, the information should be delivered at block level, focusing on the soil type, water level and source, identifying the native crops, and the crops that are being cultivated at present in that particular area. The block level dissemination and bringing back the native knowledge about the past and present scenario will give right solution to check climate change to the local agricultural issues. When the messages are delivered at the block level, it will draw the farmers’ attention and it will have the high impact on agricultural practices and livelihood options. But before planning any such programmes, the government or NGOs should conduct the need assessment and identify the knowledge gap that exists among the farmers. The public Agriculture Department’s extension service has clearly not reached all the farmers whose need for information is ever growing. Bubu et al. (2012) mentioned that public agricultural extension systems often fail due to inadequate consultation with farmers about their information needs and poor understanding of their search strategies to gain information. In future, the government should give more importance to mobile phones to reach out to the farmers. Literacy rate among the small or medium level farmers is not very high so this kind of audio advisories will deliver the information to less educated or even illiterate farmers. The study of Anabel et al. (2013) found variations in landholdings, and the differing economic values among small, marginal and big farmers. Small farmers receive lesser economic value compared to big farmers. The data shows the power of information in enhancing the direct economic benefit while minimizing risk components. Technology is distributed equal in the society, but extension services usage differs based on socio-economic conditions. Like in most development projects, the intervention of the M.S. Swaminathan Research Foundation (MSSRF) is project-driven and hence the question of sustainability beyond the project period is left unanswered. The roles of private sector – both large- and small-scale social entrepreneurship-based models – are sought to be the solutions. But such commercialisation of a development initiative may result in loss of social commitment and thrive to bring about equity. Communication for development interventions such as mobile advisory services (MAS) supported by intermediary institutions raises a question of financial sustainability. Can MAS survive beyond the current project period? Will MAS be able to generate enough momentum and resources to become self-sustainable? There are many factors that determine the sustainability of development interventions, particularly in the agrarian sector.

FOR FURTHER STUDY The non-users of the advisories were not taken into the study, so the next phase of the study should be on comparing the effect of mobile advisories between the users and non-users. The study has been conducted in only one region of Puducherry, which has a stable climate, but the effectiveness of mobile advisories will be evidenced only if it is tested in many regions with multi-climate conditions. This study is made only with the short messaging service (SMS), voice call and pre-recorded voice messages; hence the study needs to be done with the creation of mobile applications such as user interface 252

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(UI) and user experience (UX). The rapid changes in new spectrum allocation and increase in digital divide indicate a paradigm shift in mobile usage, which was left out in this study. The changing scenario will result in a change in usage of the technology that needs to be analyzed for future contribution to the area of using mobile phones for agricultural progress.

ACKNOWLEDGMENT Special thanks to the University Grants Commission for funding this under a UGC major research project. Sincere thanks to M.S. Swaminathan Research Foundation, Chennai, for allowing access to their village resource centre outreach activities. We also like to extend our thanks to village resource centre coordinators and farmers who gave in-depth interviews.

REFERENCES Adhiguru, P., Birthal, P. S., & Kumar, B. G. (2009). Strengthening pluralistic agricultural information delivery systems in India. Agricultural Economics Research Review, 22(1), 71–79. Aggarwal, P. K. (2008). Global climate change and Indian agriculture: Impacts, adaptation and mitigation. Indian Journal of Agricultural Sciences, 78(10), 911–919. Aker, J. C. (2010). Dial “A” for agriculture: Using information and communication technologies for agricultural extension in developing countries. Agricultural Economics, 42(6), 631–647. doi:10.1111/ j.1574-0862.2011.00545.x Aker, J. C. (2011). Dial A for Agriculture: A Review of Information and Communication Technologies for Agricultural Extension in Developing Countries. CGD Working Paper 269. Center for Global Development. https://www.cgdev.org/content/publications/detail/1425497 Anabel, N. J., Malarvannan, S., & Karuppaiah, J. (2013). Enhancing lives and livelihoods of fisher folk through innovative technology applications. Pan-Commonwealth Forum, 7(PCF7), 1-7. Babu, S. C., Joshi, P. K., Glendenning, J. C., Asenso-Okyere, K., & Sulaiman, V. R. (2012). The State of Agricultural Extension Reforms in India: Policy Options and Investment Priorities, Draft. International Food Policy Research Institute. Bar, N., Dash, S. R., Mishra, P., & Prusty, S. (2014). Impact of KVK Training on Development of Tribal Farmers – A study in Odisha. Journal of Environment and Ecology., 5(2), 249–257. doi:10.5296/jee. v5i2.6598 Digital Review of Asia Pacific 2007-2008. (2008). Orbicom and the International Development Research Centre. New Delhi: Sage. Fafchamps, M., & Minten, B. (2012). Impact of SMS-Based Agricultural Information on Indian Farmers. The World Bank Economic Review. http://wber.oxfordjournals.org/content/early/2012/02/27/wber. lhr056.full.pdf+html

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FAO. (2015). Climate Change. http://www.fao.org/climate-change Glendenning, C. J., Babu, S., & Asenso-Okyere, K. (2010). Review of Agricultural Extension in India, Are Farmers’ Information Needs Being Met? IFPRI Discussion Paper 01048. https://www.ifpri.org/sites/ default/files/publications/ifpridp01048.pdf Khan, A. S., Kumar, S., Hussain, Z. M., & Kalra, N. (2009). Climate change, climate variability and Indian agriculture: Impacts vulnerability and adaptation strategies. In S. N. Singh (Ed.), Climate Change and Crops, Environmental Science and Engineering (pp. 19–38). Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg. May, J., Karugia, J., & Ndokweni, M. (2007). Information and Communication Technologies and Agricultural Development in Sub-Saharan Africa: Transformation and Employment Generation. Final Framework Paper prepared for the African Economic Research Consortium (AERC). http://www. aercafrica.org/documents/ict_project_working_papers/ mayet_al_ictagriculturaldevelopmentinssa.pdf Mittal, S., Gandhi, S., & Tripathi, G. (2010). Socio-economic impact of mobile phones on Indian agriculture.Working Paper 246. Indian Council for Research on International Economic Relations. http:// www.colombiadigital.net/newcd/dmdocuments/89.Socioimpact agriculture.pdf Mruthunjaya & Adhiguru, A. (2005). ICT for Livelihood Security: A Reality Check. Mainstreaming ICTs, 2(2), 14-18. Muthalaly, S. (2004, Dec. 31). A phone call saved an entire village. The Hindu. Nelson, C. G., Rosegrant, W. M., Koo, J. Robertson, R., Sulser, T., Zhu, T., Ringler, C., Msangi, S., Palazzo, A., Batka, M., Magalhaes M., Santos, V.R., Ewing, M., & Lee D. (2009). Climate change impact on agriculture and costs of adaptation. International Food Policy Research Institute. Parry, M. L. (2019). Climate Change and World Agriculture. Routledge. doi:10.4324/9780429345104 Richardson, D. (1997). The Internet and Rural and Agricultural Development – An Integrated Approach. FAO Corporate Document Repository. http://www.fao.org/docrep/w6840e/w6840e00.htm Richardson, D. (2006). ICTs: Transforming agricultural extension? Report of the 6th consultative expert meeting of CTA’s observatory on ICTs. CTA Working Document Number 8034. Wageningen, The Netherlands: ACP-EU Technical Centre for Agricultural and Rural Cooperation. Rosenberg, N. J. (1992). Adaptation of agriculture to climate change. Climatic Change, 21(4), 385–405. doi:10.1007/BF00141378 Saravanan, R. (2010). India. In ICTs for Agricultural Extension: Global Experiments, Innovations and Experiences. New India Publishing Agency (NIPA). Sen, A. (1999). Development as Freedom. Oxford University Press. Sen, A. K. (1993). Capability and Well-being. In The Quality of Life. Oxford, UK: Clarendon Press. Senthilkumar, K., Daisy, M., Kumaravel, V., & Mohan, B. (2014). Impact of KVK training on scientific method of goat rearing and feeding management of Azolla. International Journal of Science. Environmental Technology, 3(6), 2287–2292.

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Sulaiman, R. V., & van den Ban, A. W. (2003). Funding and delivering agricultural extension. Journal of International Agricultural and Extension Education, 10(1), 21–29. doi:10.5191/jiaee.2003.10103 Suryavanshi, P., Babu, S., Baghel, J. K., & Suryavanshi, G. (2012). Impact of Climate Change on Agriculture and their Mitigation Strategies for Food Security in Agriculture: A Review. International Research Journal of Biological Sciences, 1(3), 72–77. van Baardewijk, M. (2017). The Impact of Mobile Phone Use and IKSL’S Audio Messages on the Asset Base of Poor Farmers in Lucknow, India. The Electronic Journal on Information Systems in Developing Countries, 79(1), 1–17. doi:10.1002/j.1681-4835.2017.tb00584.x Warren, M. F. (2002). Adoption of ICT in Agricultural Management in the United Kingdom: The IntraRural Digital Divide. Agricultural Economics, 48(1), 1–8. https://www.cazv.cz/2003/2002/ekon1_02/ warren.pdf

KEY TERMS AND DEFINITIONS Agricultural Extension: The practice of using research-based know-how and modern technology in agriculture. Agricultural Productivity: It is measured as the ratio of agricultural outputs to agricultural inputs. It can be defined as a measure of efficiency in an agricultural production system which employs land, labour, capital and other related resources. Capabilities Approach: Propounded by Amartya Sen and Martha Nussbaum, it is an alternative to welfare economics, and it focuses on people’s abilities to do things. Communication for Development (C4D): This involves using communication strategies for promotion development. Knowledge Gap: A theory which assumes that the distribution of knowledge in society is unequal with lower socio-economic categories lagging behind. KVK: Krishi Vigyan Kendra (KVK) is an agricultural extension center in India. The name means “farm science center”. Usually associated with a local agricultural university, these centers serve as the ultimate link between the Indian Council of Agricultural Research and farmers, and aim to apply agricultural research in a practical, localized setting. Livelihood: A person’s livelihood refers to their means of securing the basic necessities (food, water, shelter and clothing) of life. Livelihood is defined as a set of activities essential to everyday life that are conducted over one’s life span. Such activities could include securing water, food, fodder, medicine, shelter, and clothing. An individual’s livelihood involves the capacity to acquire aforementioned necessities to satisfy the basic needs of themselves and their household. Mobile Advisory Services: Services using mobile technology to provide guidance with wide implications in the field of agriculture. MSSRF: Acronym for the M.S. Swaminathan Research Foundation, which is a non-governmental organisation formed in the name of the agricultural scientist Dr. M.S. Swaminathan, who led green revolution in India.

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NABARD: The National Bank for Agricultural and Rural Development (NABARD) promotes sustainable and equitable agriculture and rural development through participative financial and non-financial interventions, innovations, technology and institutional development for securing prosperity. System of Rice Intensification: A technique of increasing rice yield by alternating wetting and drying, thus reducing the flooding of paddy fields with water. VKC: Village knowledge centres (VKCs) serve as information dissemination centre providing instant access to farmers to latest information/ knowledge available in the field of agriculture, starting from crop production to marketing. VRC: The village resource centres (VRCs) programme launched by ISRO/ DOS disseminates a portfolio of services emanating from space systems directly to the rural communities. The programme is executed in association with NGOs/ Trusts and State/ Central agencies. A village resource centre has a set of VKCs under it.

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Section 6

Corporations, Elections, and Politics

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Chapter 16

The Role of ‘Delegated Transferable Vote’ for Supporting Tactical Voting in First-Past-the-Post Elections: An Anthropological Study of Local, Regional, and National Elections in the United Kingdom

Jonathan Bishop https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9919-7602 Congress of Researchers and Organisations for Cybercommunity, E-Learning and Socialnomics, UK Mark Beech Independent Researcher, UK

ABSTRACT This chapter investigates a method of counting votes called ‘Delegated Transferable Vote’ (DTV) as a means to ensure that every vote counts by enabling voters to be able to vote for the candidate they want in the knowledge that their vote will be tactically allocated by the candidate they vote for if they get less than 50% of the vote. The theory is that if a voter trusts someone enough to vote for them then they should trust them to allocate their vote to a candidate with similar policies or political philosophies to them. The chapter finds that in elections where the candidates want to keep out a particular candidate or party, such as because they have a hegemony, then DTV can be effective in changing the outcome. However, in election where tactical voting has already taken place, such as where people vote on issues instead of party lines, then the outcome of counting votes using DTV is on the whole not different from the one presently used in the United Kingdom, which is First-Past-the-Post (FPTP).

DOI: 10.4018/978-1-7998-4796-0.ch016

Copyright © 2020, IGI Global. Copying or distributing in print or electronic forms without written permission of IGI Global is prohibited.

 The Role of ‘Delegated Transferable Vote’ for Supporting Tactical Voting in First-Past-the-Post Elections

INTRODUCTION The 2015 and 2019 general elections to the United Kingdom’s House of Commons had something in common – the voting public believed they could actually change things. In both elections minor parties, like the Green Party, saw its share of the vote increase, but this was not automatically translated into new seats because the voting system in the UK is based on first-past-the-post (FPTP), but the fact the 2017 and 2019 general elections followed the 2015 one so soon has brought this system into question (Cowper, 2019).

Existing Electoral Systems Many current voting systems are imperfect, encouraging voters to not vote how they would wish to vote, but based on selecting who they think would most stop the person they do not want to vote for from getting elected (Zhang, Bouadi, & Martin, 2017). The First-Past-The-Post (FPTP) method of election is one of the oldest and simplest that voters have been able to access to elect their representatives (Blais, 2008). FPTP operates by the candidate with the most votes winning the seat being contested, with the votes for other parties being cast aside and being considered a “wasted vote.” The outcome of the 2015 and 2019 general elections were essentially the same – a majority for the Conservative and Union Party representing the right and centre-right as the vote for socialist party was split. Criticisms of FPTP have included that it does not allow multi-member wards (Kelly, 2008), but in fact there are many multi-member council wards in England & Wales that are based on FPTP. The actual problem with FPTP is that some people might not get the candidate they vote for, even if that candidate does not command a strong share of the number of votes cast. Most political scientist experts would agree that FPTP is not a very good method for ensuring that elections are fair in terms of voters getting who they want and avoiding who they do not want (Blais, 2013). A number of alternatives to First-Past-The-Post have already been tried and tested, with various levels of success. There have been proposed alternatives to this system, such as Single Transferable Vote (STV), where people vote in order of preference and alternative vote (AV) where they vote for their first preferred candidate and their second preferred candidate. The former is used in Scotland and Northern Ireland and the latter was rejected in a referendum. In Wales for elections to the Welsh Parliament (Senedd Cymru) are partly first-past-the-post and partly the D’Hondt system, which in the case of the latter penalises parties successful under FPTP by giving a greater share of the seats to parties underrepresented in FPTP.

Electoral Reform Electoral reform is a popular area of debate in political science and comes about for different reasons (Leyenaar & Hazan, 2011). This means there are varying notions as to what electoral reform is (Jacobs & Leyenaar, 2011). Electoral reform is often a battle between those who want to stick to the status quo and those who want to try to make the voting system fairer (Rahat, 2011). Electoral reform is often opposed by the establishment as a result, not wanting to see their share of political power reduced (Nikolenyi, 2011). Those holding political power are thus often reluctant to introduce electoral reform (Hooghe & Deschouwer, 2011). However, in some cases voters can be persuaded that electoral reform is in their best interests (Renwick, Lamb, & Numan, 2011). However, the politics of electoral reform is a complex matter, and may not be automatically a relevant issue for everyone (Norris, 1995). Indeed, electoral 259

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reform is often regarded as an elite issue, which is dominated by partisan interests and where the public are excluded (Norris, 2011). Which ever form of electoral reform is chosen, it is likely to have an impact on the party political system (Ward, 2019). This chapter proposes a form of electoral reform that is an alternative to the pure first-past-the-post system called delegated transferable vote (DTV). The principle is that people cast their votes by voting for as many candidates as there are vacancies, as with FPTP, but the candidates participating in the election have the option to transfer their votes to other candidates if they are unsuccessful. The result could be in the case of election where the candidate who would normally win under FPTP who has less than 50% of the vote could be usurped by a candidate more popular among the other candidates. Using case studies from actual elections contested by the authors, this chapter shows how DTV might work in practice, with a number of elections being considered, including Welsh local government elections, elections to the Welsh Parliament (including when it was an Assembly) and elections to the UK House of Commons.

BACKGROUND In a simple plurality-based elections, it is possible, and often common, for a candidate to win with much less than 50% of the popular vote. In these circumstances the unsuccessful candidates hold between them over 50% of the vote. A concept of ‘Delegated Transferrable Voting’ (DTV) is therefore possible. With DTV, after the counting of the votes if no candidate won more than 50% of the popular vote all candidates would be empowered to transfer their votes to another candidate of their choosing within a limited amount of time. This allows people to vote for small political parties or those persons representing single issues without fear of their vote not counting, and thus allows the true wishes of the electorate to be recorded and observed. As discussed earlier, this reduces the impact of Downs paradox as any vote can be pivotal, not just those for 1st of 2nd place.Where there are several candidates with similar manifestos it empowers the electorate to select their preferred candidate knowing that even if they don’t win their policy might still be enacted. DTV encourages horse-trading between candidates and parties, with candidates able to offer their votes in return for policy commitments. The limited amount of time for the candidates to transfer votes would encourage candidates to engage in constructive conversation before the elections, by publicizing these discussions the electorate would have the opportunity to be better informed. DTV would give the unsuccessful candidates the ability to exercise the powers entrusted to them by the electorate, future election results maybe a judgement on how well or popularly they do this. It would enable parties to field more candidates that vacancies giving the public greater choice in that party’s candidate selection process. It could be argued that DTV should, like single transferable voting, involve the candidate with the lowest votes distributing their votes, but this is not necessary. For the reason that DTV is a gentleman’s agreement, then the person that gets the most votes decides to give them to the person who came second, then one might argue that should not be prohibited. It may be that all the candidates agree among themselves that for instance the person that came third should be elected, because those with votes to delegate trust them most, then they might feel it would be better to give their votes to the person that came third, rather than to the person that came second.

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Different Voting Systems and the Advantages of DTV If one considers the system of primaries in the US, it ensures that each party has put a dozen or so candidates to the electorate, in order to create a form of choice (Bartels, 1988), and the more candidates in an election, then the more likely the outcome will be different (Wright & Riker, 1989). Over the course of two years and then at the end, there is only two candidates put to the electorate, meaning there is a better chance of one of them getting a majority. With DTV, all candidates in an election can be presented to the public at exactly the same time (Bishop & Beech, 2016; Bishop & Beech, 2017). For example, this would prevent several candidates for the Republicans who have their own primaries from deciding who will represent the Republicans. Neither would the Democratic candidates who also have their own primaries decide who represents them, which means that each party could give the public about an option of candidates and the public a simply vote to decide who is elected. With regard to European systems outside the United Kingdom, these are usually based on a proportional representation, be it “single transferable votes” (STV) or “the party list” (PL) system (Carstairs, 2013). The former affects voters who express their preference by numbering the candidates on the ballot paper, and these are then systematically transferred from the person with the lowest votes to the next person chosen by the voters. The latter affects people who vote for a party that has set up a number of candidates, and the more votes that party receives, the more candidates are selected. In the case of STV, the improvement of DTV is that it is the candidate that a person prefers who decides who the person who votes for them wants to vote most (Bishop & Beech, 2016; Bishop & Beech, 2017). In the case of the PL system, the parties could put all the candidates on the list at the same time and then split the votes to ensure that as many of them as possible were elected. If there were five vacancies, people could vote for five candidates from the same party or spread their votes. Since DTV is indeed another method of counting votes after posting, people can vote for the candidate they actually want, and that candidate would have a better chance of being elected, with the voter knowing the candidate they are unlikely to take advantage of not voting for the second worst option, as their candidate could, in the worst case, give them their votes (Bishop & Beech, 2016; Bishop & Beech, 2017). The DTV could restore confidence in the political process, but it would not necessarily be popular with established parties who might argue that it would encourage distrust. It could be argued that if someone is voting for someone to be their Member of Parliament, or indeed any other officer, then they should trust them enough to make at least one decision on their behalf, namely who would best represent them if they lost. It cannot be said that the public will not trust the person with whom they can share their votes if the public has chosen to trust them to pass laws for the next five years, or until an election is next called, even though distrust in politicians and the media is a measure of choice (Bishop, 2014; Bishop, 2017). The advantage of DTV is therefore that a person is more likely to be representative of them than the one who received the most votes and may not be representative of them, which is where DTV comes in if one of the candidates does not reach 50 percent of the vote (Bishop & Beech, 2016; Bishop & Beech, 2017).

261

 The Role of ‘Delegated Transferable Vote’ for Supporting Tactical Voting in First-Past-the-Post Elections

EMPIRICAL INVESTIGATIONS INTO THE IMPACT OF DELEGATED TRANSFERABLE VOTING A study was conducted in order to determine the effectiveness of DTV for ensuring the public get their votes distributed to keep out candidates they do not want. To do this an ethnographic study, using both quantitative and qualitative data collection was used. Through the use of numerical observations it is possible to understand the situation more objectively as ethnography is less dependent on what people say they do, have done, or will do, as the observer can discover this for themselves objectively (von Koskull & Strandvik, 2014). Its origins lie in research by sociocultural anthropologists in the first decades of the twentieth century, and particularly in the “participatory observation” method (Levon, 2014). The approach taken by the authors might be seen as unusual for science, because it was seeking to understand a theoretical approach to counting votes, through one of the authors directly participating in elections and by-elections to generate data.

Participants The two authors were the participants in the election at the same time as being the researchers. Other participants included the other candidates and the voters. The political party that the first author contested the local council elections and General Election in the name of – The Pluralist Party – was a newly established minor party. In the 2016 Welsh Assembly Election the first author contested it as an Independent. The second author contested both the 2015 General Election and the 2016 Welsh Assembly Election in the name of the Official Loony Party (OMRLP). Both the Pluralist Party and the OMRLP could be considered small parties and it would not be inappropriate for the title of “Independent” to be considered the same.

Procedure The procedure used to collect and analyse the data varied for the local council elections as compared to the national elections, as set out in this section. The approach an be seen to amount to a form of autoethnography (Bochner, 2012; Cunningham & Jones, 2005) using anecdotal evidence as an approach to research (Takemura et al., 2006). Autoethnography is usually grounded in qualitative research (Chang & Bilgen, 2020), but in the case of this study a quantitative approach is taken. Autoethnography recognises the ways in which personal experience influences the research study (Zavattaro, 2020), which in the case of this study is the elections contested by the authors. The consisted of local elections as well as national elections.

Local Council Elections In terms of votes, these were collected after the election based on the official results. Either the candidates themselves, or a willing member of the party concerned, were asked who they would have given their votes to in the given election. The votes were then distributed accordingly. In terms of data related to the different methods of campaigning the data was collected by the author that took part as a candidate in the elections, as well as making use of the published election date. The interviews with the members of political parties who was asked to say how they would transfer their votes was done after the final 262

 The Role of ‘Delegated Transferable Vote’ for Supporting Tactical Voting in First-Past-the-Post Elections

Table 1. Chosen allocation of delegated transferable votes for the UK General Election in 2015 Party

1st Author

2nd Author

Conservative

5

4

Green

6

2

Independent

3

7

Labour Party

7

6

Lib-Dem

4

5

Loony

2

1

Pluralist

1

8

UKIP

8

3

election. This was so that the full implications of the transferring of votes would be able to be explained to them. Whilst it was possible in most cases to get the candidate or their agent to say how they would delegate their votes, in some cases due to the nature of politics this was not always possible, so a member of the party was consulted. The reasons given were consistent among all interviewees, namely to “keep Labour out” overall and because they “liked” their preferred candidate.

National Elections In the case of the UK General Election and Welsh Assembly/Parliament Elections the approach used was for each of the researchers to indicated through a preferential voting system whom they would prefer their votes to go to. In the case of the Welsh Assembly Election this was used to determine which votes should go to which author on the basis that the more likely a researcher was to give a vote to that party then the more likely that party would be to give their vote to that researcher. This was done because unlike with the local council elections it would not be practical to contact each party or candidate to ask who they would give their votes to under DTV. Table 1 therefore shows the preferential voting for the first author and second author for the 2015 UK General Election and Table 2 shows their preferences for the 2016 Welsh Assembly Election. In the case of Table 1, whilst not all the parties contested the seats that the first and second author contested, the authors gave their preferences for the total combined parties from both seats. In the case of Table 2, as the first author and second author contested the same seat then the parties listed were the same for both.

RESULTS The results of the study have be presented in terms of the potential impact of DTV on election outcomes, campaigning methods and voting outcomes, as well as considering geo-demographic factors and voting patterns.

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 The Role of ‘Delegated Transferable Vote’ for Supporting Tactical Voting in First-Past-the-Post Elections

Table 2. Chosen allocation of delegated transferable votes for the Welsh Assembly Election in 2016 Party

1st Author

2nd Author

Abolish the Welsh Assembly

11

7

Freedom to Choose

10

5

Independent

1

12

Plaid Cymru

4

11

The Official Monster Raving Loony Party

2

1

UKIP Wales

12

8

Wales Green Party

7

4

Welsh Communist Party

8

3

Welsh Conservatives

5

10

Welsh Labour

3

13

Welsh Liberal Democrats

6

9

Welsh Trade Unionist & Socialist Coalition

9

2

Women’s Equality Party

13

6

Pontypridd Constituency Local Council Elections (2012-2019) This section looks at how delegated transferable voting might have worked had it been in place for the local council elections and by-elections contested by the first author between 2012 and 2019. Historically, the Labour Party has dominated South Wales politics (Jones, 1982), so the investigation of a voting system that might upset such an apple cart is a worthwhile exercise. Even though the Conservative Party made some gains in the 2019 general election, the nearest to Pontypridd being Bridgend, which they did not secure in the 2017 general election despite intervention from Conservative Party Headquarters, it has been difficult for the Conservatives to break the mould due to the Labour Party winning big under First-Past-The-Post for decades (Thomas, 2013).

Table 3. Chosen allocation of delegated transferable votes for the UK general election in 2017 Party

1st Author

2nd Author

Conservative

7

6

Green

5

2

Independent

6

7

Labour Party

3

3

Lib-Dem

4

4

Loony

2

1

Non-Party

1

8

UKIP

8

5

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 The Role of ‘Delegated Transferable Vote’ for Supporting Tactical Voting in First-Past-the-Post Elections

Table 4. Chosen allocation of delegated transferable votes for the church village by-election and UK general election in 2019 1st Author

2nd Author

Brexit Party

Party

6

6

Conservative

7

7

Green

5

2

Independent

4

8

Labour Party

3

3

Lib-Dem

9

4

Loony

2

1

Non-Party

1

9

Plaid Cymru

8

5

Impact of Delegated Transferrable Voting on Election Outcomes It is anticipated that as a result of delegated transferable voting that rotten constituencies, where there is a hegemony as a result of people not being able to agree on a candidate to oust the status quo, will become more democratic. Table 5 shows the outcomes of these elections in terms of the votes assigned to each party at the respective local election contested by the first author. Those numbers in bold reflect the party that was elected. Table 5. Votes cast at election prior to delegated transferable voting Election

Lib Dem

Labour

Tory

Plaid

Author 1

Independent

Beddau

0

173

0

41

3

186

Church Village

0

227

223

197

8

80

Efail Isaf

0

131

0

0

33

253

Llantrisant Town

0

693

619

0

367

674

Rhondda

137

220

25

61

3

111

Treforest

86

138

0

33

8

0

Tynant

0

207

0

38

20

0

As can be seen from Table 5, which does not take account of delegated transferable voting, the Labour Party won five of the seven elections in the Taf Ely area (i.e. Beddau, Church Village, Efail Isaf, Llantrisant Town, Rhondda, Treforest, Tynant) in Wales with the independent candidates securing the majority of the votes Efail Isaf within the Llantwit Fardre community in the Garth View district and Beddau within the Llantrisant community in the Ely Valley district of Taf Ely. Labour and Independents were elected in Table 6 on the other hand shows how the votes would have been distributed under delegated transferrable voting.

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 The Role of ‘Delegated Transferable Vote’ for Supporting Tactical Voting in First-Past-the-Post Elections

Table 6. Final voting after votes have been transferred Electoral Division

Lib Dem

Labour

Tory

Plaid

Author 1

Independent

Beddau

0

0

0

0

0

230

Church Village

0

0

0

277

0

0

Efail Isaf

0

0

0

0

0

253

Llantrisant Town

0

693

0

0

0

674

Rhondda

0

0

0

0

0

337

Treforest

0

138

0

0

0

0

Tynant

0

207

0

0

0

0

The outcome presented in Table 6 was formed after a number of rounds of redistributing where the candidate with the least votes hypothetically got to transfer their votes to another candidate using DTV. The first author, who contested each election, decided on all occasions that Plaid Cymru were suitable to give his vote to them – because he trusted the people involved with their campaign. This was with the exception of Church Village where he trusted the Labour candidate more and Efail Isaf, where they trusted the Independent more. The only exception was in the Efail Isaf election where they would have given the votes to the independent and Church Village where they supported the Labour candidate. In the case of all those other parties asked to transfer the reason given was to “keep Labour out,” probably because there is a hegemony in the Pontypridd area in relation to the Labour Party.

The United Kingdom General Election in 2015 This section looks at how delegated transferable voting might have worked in the 2015 United Kingdom General Election in which the first author contested on behalf of The Pluralist Party and the second author contested on behalf of the Official Monster Raving Loony Party. Table 7 shows what would have happened in the UK General Election in the case of the first author’s election on the assumption that the other parties agreed with his choice of how to allocate votes. As can be seen in this case, the Green Party, whom are often seen as the ‘soft left’ with many liking Table 7. Distribution of votes after both authors are eliminated from the election using DTV (Liverpool Walton) 5th DTV

Party

4th DTV

3rd DTV

2nd DTV

1st DTV

Votes Cast

DTV Position

FPTP Position

Labour Party

31222

31222

31222

31222

31222

31222

1

1

Green Party

7181

3736

1934

1035

979

956

2

4

UK Independence Party

0

3445

3445

3445

3445

3445

3

2

Conservative Party

0

0

1802

1802

1802

1802

4

3

Liberal Democrat

0

0

0

899

899

899

5

5

Independent

0

0

0

0

56

56

6

6

The Pluralist Party

0

0

0

0

0

23

7

7

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 The Role of ‘Delegated Transferable Vote’ for Supporting Tactical Voting in First-Past-the-Post Elections

their policies with the exception of those on nuclear power and nuclear deterrents, they benefited from this by going from fourth place to second place. Unintended by the first author, the United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP) came above the Conservative Party which went from third place to fourth place, even though they were last on their list of preferences. The remaining parties, namely the Liberal Democrats, the Independent and The Pluralist Party maintained their positions of fifth, sixth and seventh respectively. Because the Labour Party got over 50% of the vote from the outset it would not have been possible for DTV to have changed who was elected. Table 8. Distribution of votes after both authors are eliminated from the election using DTV (Aldridge & Brownhills) Party

Votes Cast

DTV Position

FPTP Position

4th DTV

3rd DTV

2nd DTV

1st DTV

Conservative

20558

20558

20558

20558

20558

1

1

UKIP

18939

10104

8774

7751

7751

2

3

Labour

0

8835

8835

8835

8835

3

2

Lib-Dem

0

0

1330

1330

1330

4

4

Green

0

0

0

1023

826

5

5

Loony

0

0

0

0

197

6

6

Table 8 shows what would have happened in the United Kingdom General Election in the case of the second author’s election. The outcome, which might be perceived as disappointing, resulted in only two changes in position with the United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP), which supported Brexit (Britain exiting the European Union) moving from third place to second place and as a result the Labour Party moving from second place to third place. Because the Conservative Party had over 50% of the vote the result would not have changed with DTV, but the outcome might have been politically interesting at the election because it would have put UKIP, which is a party of eurosceptics, only around 1.5k votes behind the Conservatives whom were seen as their nearest rivals.

The Welsh Assembly Elections in 2016 This section looks at how delegated transferable voting might have worked at the 2016 Welsh Assembly Elections in the case of the regional seat of South Wales Central. Both the first author and the second author contested this election, meaning the potential effects of DTV were much easier to measure. In the Welsh Assembly regional seat elections there is a process called “Additional Member” whereby the parties with the most seats are penalised with each round of counting. This was taken into account with the administering of DTV with one seat allocated to the party with the most votes at each DTV round, by taking into account the penalties by having the most seats. Table 9 shows the outcome in terms of number of votes when each of the two authors were eliminated from the results. Like in the General Election insofar as the first author, the Greens went into second place compared to their seventh place under the additional member approach. Looking at Table 10, this would have meant they would have got 1 seat in the Welsh Assembly, compared to the 0 they had under

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 The Role of ‘Delegated Transferable Vote’ for Supporting Tactical Voting in First-Past-the-Post Elections

Table 9. Distribution of votes after both authors are eliminated from the election using DTV (South Wales Central) 5th DTV

Party

4th DTV

3rd DTV

2nd DTV

1st DTV

Votes Cast

DTV Position

AM Position

Labour

78366

78366

78366

78366

78366

78366

1

1

Green Party

56306

7949

7949

7949

7949

7949

2

7

Plaid Cymru

48357

48357

48357

48357

48357

48357

3

2

Conservatives

42185

42185

42185

42185

42185

42185

4

3

UKIP

23958

23958

23958

23958

23958

23958

5

4

Liberal Democrats

14875

14875

14875

14875

14875

14875

6

5

Abolish the Welsh Assembly

9163

9163

9163

9163

9163

9163

7

6

Loony

0

25134

25134

25134

15971

1096

8

9

Women’s Equality Party

0

0

2807

2807

2807

2807

9

8

TUSC

0

0

0

736

736

736

10

10

Independent

0

0

0

0

651

651

11

11

Welsh Communist Party

0

0

0

0

520

520

12

12

Freedom to Choose

0

0

0

0

0

470

13

13

Additional Members. The Labour Party, who was first under both systems, would not have got more than the 7 seats they had as a result of the AM system, even with DTV as their votes were unchanged. Under this section Plaid Cymru would have got 1 fewer seats, going from second place to third place and the Conservatives would have got 1 fewer seat, going from third place to fourth place. The Liberal Democrats went from fifth place to sixth place, but would have got an additional seat as can be seen from Table 10. The United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP) went from fourth place to fifth place under DTV, but would have kept the one seat they had under the AM system.

The United Kingdom General Election in 2017 This section looks at whether DTV would have changed the outcome of the 2017 General Election in the United Kingdom to the House of Commons in the two constituencies contested by the two authors. Table 11 presents the distribution of votes according to the DTV method for the Aldrisge-Brownhills constituency in the 2017 General election. As can be seen, despite the second author giving their votes to the second place candidate, because the first place candidate already had over 50 percent of the vote, DTV made little difference in this election. Table 12 shows how the votes would be distributed according to DTV in the first author’s election contest in Exeter. Like with the second author’s election it shows that there would be no change in the outcome because the winning candidate was strong – even stronger because the first author would have given their votes to them.

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 The Role of ‘Delegated Transferable Vote’ for Supporting Tactical Voting in First-Past-the-Post Elections

Table 10. Difference between number of seats allocated under FPTP+DTV and number allocated under FPTP+AM (South Wales Central) Party

FPTP/DTV Seats

DTV Votes

Welsh Labour

78366

Votes

7

FPTP/AM Seats

Difference

7

0

78366

Wales Green Party

56306

1

7949

0

+1

Plaid Cymru

48357

1

48357

2

-1

Welsh Conservatives

42185

1

42185

2

-1

UKIP Wales

23958

1

23958

1

0

Welsh Liberal Democrats

14875

1

14875

0

+1

Abolish the Welsh Assembly

9163

0

9163

0

0

Women’s Equality Party

0

0

2807

0

0

The Official Monster Raving Loony Party

0

0

1096

0

0

Welsh Trade Unionist & Socialist Coalition

0

0

736

0

0

Independent

0

0

651

0

0

Welsh Communist Party

0

0

520

0

0

Freedom to Choose

0

0

470

0

0

Table 11. Distribution of votes after candidates are eliminated using DTV in second author’s constituency (Aldridge-Brownhills) Party Conservatives

3rd DTV 26317

Labour

2nd DTV

1st DTV

Votes Cast

DTV Position

FPTP Position

26317

26317

26317

1

1

13918

12575

12010

2

2

1343

1343

3

3

565

4

4

Liberal Democrat Loony

Table 12. Distribution of votes after candidates are eliminated using DTV in first author’s constituency (Exeter) Party Labour

4th DTV

2nd DTV

1st DTV

Votes Cast

FPTP Position

DTV Position

34403

34403

34403

34336

1

1

19993

18431

18219

18219

2

2

Liberal Democrat

1562

1562

1562

3

3

Green

1027

1027

1027

4

4

Conservative

Independent Non-Party

34403

3rd DTV

212

212

5

5

67

6

6

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 The Role of ‘Delegated Transferable Vote’ for Supporting Tactical Voting in First-Past-the-Post Elections

The United Kingdom General Election in 2019 The 2019 General Election was called the “Brexit Election” so other than using the preferences of the authors for whom they would allocate their votes to, the remaining votes were allocated on the basis of which of the remaining parties after a DTV transfer most represents the Brexit position of the party being eliminated. In the cases of both authors in this 2019 general election, there was no difference between where a party would end up with FPTP compared to DTV. Table 13. Distribution of votes after candidates are eliminated using DTV in second author’s constituency (Aldridge-Brownhills) Party Conservative Labour Liberal Democrat Green Party Loony

4th DTV 27850

3rd DTV 27850 11492

2nd DTV 27850

1st DTV 27850

Votes Cast 27850

FPTP Position

DTV Position 1

1

8014

8014

8014

2

2

3478

2371

2371

3

3

1107

771

4

4

336

5

5

The Brexit-factor would have made a difference in the 2019 election. For instance, whilst Plaid Cymru would not have dreamed of giving its votes to Labour in the local elections discussed in this chapter, they would have transferred them in the 2019 General Election, where like them the Labour candidate more closely shared their views on Brexit. What was also noticeable about the 2017 and 2019 General Elections, where the Leader of the Labour Party was a left-wing politician called Jeremy Corbyn, was that other left-wing parties did not contest them like they did when centre-left politicians led the party. If the voting system in place was DTV then it would mean other left-wing parties could stand, knowing they could transfer their vote to the Labour Party to ensure the left stood a better chance of winning. Equally, the Brexit Party would likely have given its votes to the Conservative Party, which supported leaving the European Union.

IMPLICATIONS AND FUTURE RESEARCH DIRECTIONS This research chapter has involved two political anthropologists taking part in elections, resulting in data to test the effectiveness of a proposed new method for counting votes at such elections – Delegated Transferable Vote (DTV). DTV does not replace the most common form of election in the United Kingdom – First Past The Post (FPTP) – but instead empowers the candidates with the least votes in those elections to decide who they think would be best trusted with the votes the public cast for them. The theory is that if the public trust that person enough to vote for them then they should trust them enough to give it to someone who most closely represents them. The study found that in elections where the aim was to oust a given party which held a hegemony that DTV would enable that to happen. However, it found that in elections where there was a strong opinion on a given issue – such as Britain’s exit from

270

 The Role of ‘Delegated Transferable Vote’ for Supporting Tactical Voting in First-Past-the-Post Elections

Table 14. Distribution of votes after candidates are eliminated using DTV in first author’s constituency (Pontypridd) Party

5th DTV

4th DTV

3rd DTV

2nd DTV

1st DTV

Votes Cast

DTV Position

FPTP Position

Labour

24649

17530

17530

17530

17530

17381

1

1

Conservatives

14408

14408

11491

11491

11491

11491

2

2

7119

7119

4990

4990

4990

3

3

2917

2917

2917

2917

4

4

2129

1792

1792

5

5

337

337

6

6

149

7

7

Plaid Cymru Brexit Party Liberal Democrats* Independent Non-party

* Mike Powell standing as an Independent following Lib Dem pact with Plaid Cymru

the European Union – that DTV made little difference to the outcome, likely because people had already voted tactically. Future research could look beyond the first hand data collected by authors and look at how DTV would change the outcome of national elections.

DISCUSSION This chapter discusses an approach to counting ballot papers called ‘Delegated Transferable Vote’ (DTV). Instead of replacing the system mostly used in the United Kingdom, called First-Past-The-Post (FPTP), this new system allows votes to be cast in exactly the same way – usually by placing a mark in the box next to the candidate one wants to win – but instead of the one with the most votes getting elected if they have less than 50 percent of the vote, the other candidates can reallocate their votes to the candidate that they think would most represent the will of the people who voted for them. This paper has shown that whether DTV changes the outcome of the election depends on the motive for transferring the vote. In elections where the aim was to keep out the party that held a hegemony in a given locality then DTV can result in a change of candidate elected. However, where an election is based on whether candidates support a specific cause – such as Britain’s exit from the European Union (Brexit) – there was little change in the outcome because people had already voted tactically, even if it was for a party they would not normally support. This may suggest that changing to Delegated Transferable Vote might not be a priority for the political establishment, as they may want existing hegemonies to stay in place rather than the public be empowered to vote for the candidate they actually want to vote for, in the safe knowledge that even if that candidate loses that their vote will be safely invested in a candidate closer politically to their preferred candidate.

ACKNOWLEDGMENT The authors would like to thank all those who provided feedback on earlier versions of this chapter. In particular the second author would like to acknowledge the reasonable adjustments made by the Crocels

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Community Media Group to enable him to participate in the elections that form part of the chapters’s findings. The involvement of former Pontypridd Town councillor Paul Simmonds was helpful in clarifying DTV in a means understandable to those outside political science. Thanks are also due to those from various political parties who helped determine how the votes would likely be delegated if DTV were to be implemented.

REFERENCES Bartels, L. M. (1988). Presidential primaries and the dynamics of public choice. Princeton University Press. Bishop, J. (2014). Dealing with internet trolling in political online communities: Towards the this is why we can’t have nice things scale. International Journal of E-Politics, 5(4), 1–20. doi:10.4018/ijep.2014100101 Bishop, J. (2017). Developing and validating the “This is why we can’t have nice things scale”: Optimising political online communities for internet trolling. In Y. Ibrahim (Ed.), Politics, protest, and empowerment in digital spaces (pp. 153–177). IGI Global. doi:10.4018/978-1-5225-1862-4.ch010 Bishop, J., & Beech, M. (2016). Embodying trust in the electoral system: The role of delegated transferable voting for increasing voter choice in the digital age. International Journal of E-Politics, 7(2), 37–50. doi:10.4018/IJEP.2016040103 Bishop, J., & Beech, M. (2017). Exploring the counting of ballot papers using “delegated transferable vote”: Implications for local and national elections in the united kingdom. In Y. Ibrahim (Ed.), Politics, protest, and empowerment in digital spaces. IGI Global. doi:10.4018/978-1-5225-1862-4.ch014 Blais, A. (2008). To keep or to change first past the post?: The politics of electoral reform. OUP Oxford. doi:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199539390.001.0001 Blais, A. (2013). Evaluating US electoral institutions in comparative perspective. Representation: Elections and Beyond, 15-25. Bochner, A. P. (2012). On first-person narrative scholarship: Autoethnography as acts of meaning. Narrative Inquiry, 22(1), 155–164. doi:10.1075/ni.22.1.10boc Carstairs, A. M. (2013). A short history of electoral systems in western europe. Routledge. Chang, H., & Bilgen, W. (2020). Autoethnography in leadership studies: Past, present, and future. Journal of Autoethnography, 1(1), 93–98. doi:10.1525/joae.2020.1.1.93 Cowper, A. (2019). What a johnson or corbyn government might mean for the NHS. BMJ (Clinical Research Ed.), 367, l6557. doi:10.1136/bmj.l6557 PMID:31748242 Cunningham, S. J., & Jones, M. (2005). Autoethnography: A tool for practice and education. Proceedings of the 6th ACM SIGCHI New Zealand Chapter’s International Conference on Computer-Human Interaction: Making CHI Natural, 8. 10.1145/1073943.1073944

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Hooghe, M., & Deschouwer, K. (2011). Veto players and electoral reform in belgium. West European Politics, 34(3), 626–643. doi:10.1080/01402382.2011.555987 Jacobs, K., & Leyenaar, M. (2011). A conceptual framework for major, minor, and technical electoral reform. West European Politics, 34(3), 495–513. doi:10.1080/01402382.2011.555977 Jones, J. G. (1982). Wales and the ‘new socialism’, 1926-1929. Welsh History Review= Cylchgrawn Hanes Cymru, 11, 173. Kelly, R. (2008). It’s only made things worse: A critique of electoral reform in britain. The Political Quarterly, 79(2), 260–268. doi:10.1111/j.1467-923X.2008.00915.x Levon, E. (2014). 10 ethnography and recording interaction. Research Methods in Linguistics, 195. Leyenaar, M., & Hazan, R. Y. (2011). Reconceptualising electoral reform. West European Politics, 34(3), 437–455. doi:10.1080/01402382.2011.555974 Nikolenyi, C. (2011). When electoral reform fails: The stability of proportional representation in postcommunist democracies. West European Politics, 34(3), 607–625. doi:10.1080/01402382.2011.555986 Norris, P. (2011). Cultural explanations of electoral reform: A policy cycle model. West European Politics, 34(3), 531–550. doi:10.1080/01402382.2011.555982 Rahat, G. (2011). The politics of electoral reform: The state of research. Journal of Elections, Public Opinion, and Parties, 21(4), 523–543. doi:10.1080/17457289.2011.609618 Renwick, A., Lamb, M., & Numan, B. (2011). The expenses scandal and the politics of electoral reform. The Political Quarterly, 82(1), 32–41. doi:10.1111/j.1467-923X.2011.02168.x Takemura, T., Ashida, N., Okamoto, K., Ishida, T., Kuroda, T., & Makimoto, K. (2006). Development of information retrieval and web information integration system for nosocomial infection anecdotal research papers. HEALTHCOM 2006 8th International Conference on E-Health Networking, Applications and Services, pp. 157-159. Thomas, G. (2013). The conservative party and welsh politics in the inter-war years. The English Historical Review, 128(533), 877–913. doi:10.1093/ehr/cet127 von Koskull, C., & Strandvik, T. (2014). Discovering the unfolding of service innovations. Journal of Business and Industrial Marketing, 29(2), 6. doi:10.1108/JBIM-05-2012-0084 Ward, D. G. (2019). Dynamic effects of electoral laws. Journal of Elections, Public Opinion, and Parties, 29(3), 402–419. doi:10.1080/17457289.2018.1537279 Wright, S. G., & Riker, W. H. (1989). Plurality and runoff systems and numbers of candidates. Public Choice, 60(2), 155–175. doi:10.1007/BF00149243 Zavattaro, S. M. (2020). Why is this so hard? An autoethnography of qualitative interviewing. Public Performance & Management Review, 1–23. doi:10.1080/15309576.2020.1734035 Zhang, Y., Bouadi, T., & Martin, A. (2017). Preference fusion and condorcet’s paradox under uncertainty. 2017 20th International Conference on Information Fusion (Fusion), 1-8. 10.23919/ICIF.2017.8009636

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KEY TERMS AND DEFINITIONS Additional Member System: A form of proportional representation where the parties with the most seats under first past the post are penalised so as to have fewer seats under the system. Assembly Member: Someone who is elected to the National Assembly for Wales. Delegated Transferable Voting: A method of counting votes where the candidate with the least votes allocates their votes to the candidate they think those that voted for them would most want to see elected. First Past the Post: A method of counting votes where the candidate with the most votes is elected, even if they have less than 50% of the vote. Member of Parliament: Someone who is elected to the House of Commons within the UK Parliament. Member of the House of Lords: Someone whom becomes a peer of the House of Lords by appointment or election from a pool of hereditary peers. Proportional Representation: A method of counting votes where the number of seats a party gets its proportionate to the number of votes they get. UK Parliament: The legislative institution for the United Kingdom made up of Members of Parliament and Members of the House of Lords. Welsh Assembly: The National Assembly for Wales is the legislative institution in Wales that is made up of Assembly Members who are elected by both first past the post and a form of proportional representation called the Additional Member System.

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Website-Feature Analysis of Irish Parliamentarians’ Performance in Web 2.0 Technologies Julie Yuwen Chen https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7708-9627 University of Helsinki, Finland Neil Collins University College Cork, Ireland

ABSTRACT This chapter explores the engagement of Teachta Dála (TDs), members of the Irish lower parliamentary chamber, with Web 2.0 technologies. While conducting the website-feature analysis, the authors looked at three dimensions of each TD’s website: information content, interaction tools, and politicians’ activities on the web. They found that Irish parliamentarians’ usage of the internet is still primarily based on the paradigm of Web 1.0. Perhaps more accurately, Irish politicians’ internet usage is in the mode of Web 1.5, in which some interactive and participatory space is generated with the idea that the cyberspace should encourage citizen participation. As conventional variables such as party affiliation and geographic variation still influence TD’s website performance, one can conclude that information and communication technologies do not really change the way Irish politics are played. The Irish experience is in line with various other studies, such as in Italy and Finland.

DOI: 10.4018/978-1-7998-4796-0.ch017

Copyright © 2020, IGI Global. Copying or distributing in print or electronic forms without written permission of IGI Global is prohibited.

 Website-Feature Analysis of Irish Parliamentarians’ Performance in Web 2.0 Technologies

INTRODUCTION In 2010, Lilleker and Jackson evaluated the impact of Web 2.0 on the UK General Election of that year. They found that British political parties are underachieving with regard to maximising the interactive potential of Web 2.0 to encourage participation by the electorate. This is in contrast to Obama’s campaign in which citizen participation “in the forms of sharing and acting as an advocate online” through offering feedback to the campaign was encouraged (Lilleker & Jackson, 2010, p. 71). Lilleker and Jackson’s finding is in line with the broader debate on the impact of social media on the pattern of political competition. In the literature much is made of the contrast between candidate-focused election systems (e.g. the US), which are assumed to encourage campaign innovation, and those with strong parties (e.g. UK), which are presented as lagging behind in adopting new methodologies (see also Strandberg, 2013). In this article, the use of Web 2.0 by politicians in a system which is both candidate-centric but with strong party orchestration is analysed in the context of the mid-point in the electoral cycle (Williamson, 2009, p. 514), taken here to mean a period of politics considered as ‘normal’ (Abney et al., 2013), or, in other words, a non-election period.1 The research locale is the Republic of Ireland,2 where the electoral system and political culture foster both strong intra- and inter-party competition (Collins, 2004). The question to be answered is whether Web 2.0 is a game-changer in the Irish context, facilitating quintessentially new political interaction between politicians and their electorate, or merely a means of expediting established patterns of behaviour (Schlozman, Verba, & Brady, 2010, p. 489). It is, of course, essential to note that Web 2.0 denotes cumulative modifications to the Internet since Web 1.0. Primarily, Web 2.0 includes services, platforms and applications such as chat rooms, discussion forums, facilitates, podcasts, and blogs that encourage dynamic interactions between users rather than one-way information flows (Poblet, Casanovas, & Rodríguez-Doncel, 2019, pp. 61; Wamuyu, 2018). It is hoped that this case study of Ireland can contribute empirical evidence to the current debate over whether Web 2.0 can change the fundamental ways of how politics are played in this cyber age. If information and communication technologies (ICTs) have offered a new way for Irish politicians to interact with constituents, this would imply that the discussion, negotiation and formation of policies could take place online as well. Although online conversations are not about hard policymaking, the ideas generated in online debates could help representatives to garner constituents’ views over specific issues and policies and this might affect the agenda-setting, formation, interpretation and implementation of policies later. In Ireland, as elsewhere, the core imperative for most politicians is re-election, and this tutors their behaviour in a direct way, even allowing for assumed inclinations towards public service and ideological conviction. Obviously, those whom Barber (1965) termed the ‘advertisers’ and the ‘reluctant’ may stand outside the larger group, but even their conduct may need to meet the mainstream public expectation. Striking ideological differences do not mark political competition between the parties in the Irish parliament. The left-right cleavage is not pronounced and the traditionally large parties can be characterised as centre/right (Marsh, Farrell, & McElroy, 2017). Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael, the two largest parties, trace their roots to the Civil War of 1922-3 (Collins, 2004). Although the economic crisis of 2008 was particularly damaging to Fianna Fáil, traditionally the largest Irish party, it has since practically recovered its position, according to the opinion polls.3 All Irish governments since 1989 have been coalitions. For the individual parliamentarian, the major electoral very often comes from candidates of the same party or, occasionally, ‘independents’ campaigning on particularly contentious local issues. Each constituency returns three to five TDs. Irish politicians, therefore, spend a lot of time and resources on managing 276

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constituency affairs in order to cultivate votes (Butler & Collins, 2001), sometimes even at the expense of their role as national lawmakers (McGraw, 2016; Martin, 2013; O’Leary, 2011). It may be assumed that this is particularly the case for deputies whose seats are less secure, but in the Dáil, which is the lower but principal chamber of the Irish legislature, electorally safe incumbents are few.4 Although recent elections have been marked by changes in parliamentary personnel, in many ways, the essentials of how Irish politics operates has not altered much (Marsh et al., 2017; Marsh & Mikhaylov, 2014). In 1976, the role of the members of the Dáil, the TDs, was described by two scholars as being centred on influencing the decisions of civil servants, ‘pulling strings’, and acting as confidantes for their constituents (‘hearing confessions’). Bax (1976) and Sacks (1976) ascribed differing impacts to these functions, but the brokerage style they described was accepted as reasonably accurate. Both authors confirmed Chubb’s (1963) famous description of the TD’s role as ‘persecuting civil servants’ (Butler & Collins, 2001). The patterns have changed little, as revealed by recent publications: “the demand for constituency service runs deep in Irish society runs deep in Irish society” (Marsh et al., 2017, p. 161). With regards the interest of this study, Murphy (2013) reports that Irish parliamentarians appear to be willing to be engaged with Web 2.0, but she did not examine further TDs’ exact Web 2.0 usage. The next section will begin by exploring how Web 2.0 is believed and empirically found to have affected politics in the international context. This will be followed by an introduction to the research method and data. Section four presents a website feature analysis of TDs to see how they have actually explored and made use of the potentials of Web 2.0. The data enables the examination of 88 TDs’ personal websites. This is followed by section five in which a comparison between TDs’ performance across websites, Twitter and Facebook is made.

LITERATURE REVIEW: NEW TECHNOLOGIES AND POLITICS Web 2.0 technologies have allowed a more interactive, networked and conversational way of communication that transcends borders and cultures (Poblet, Casanovas, & Rodríguez-Doncel, 2019, pp. 61; Wamuyu, 2018; Lilleker & Jackson, 2010). With Web 2.0 technologies becoming more influential, it is no surprise that more and more politicians are using this new form of media to gain election support. A plethora of studies has been conducted to address the innovations and new campaign techniques that US politicians have used to promote themselves in “an individualized and candidate-cantered political system” (Hermans & Vergeer, 2013, p. 74). A quintessential example in point is Obama’s presidential campaign, which has generated much academic inquiry because it was seen as innovative and being able to alter the relationship between the mass media and political campaigns in a way which had not been seen to any real effective extent in America before. The 2016 presidential election also afforded a prominent role to social media (Scacco & Coe, 2017). The social media allowed a campaigner to interact one-on-one with potential voters without knocking on every door in the country. To convey his message unedited by any media giants, Obama has personal accounts on Web 2.0 platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, MySpace, podcasts, as well as YouTube (Harfoush, 2009, p. xiii). In other words, Obama not only advanced the position of his campaign but also blasted the use of Web 2.0 into the forefront of political campaigning worldwide. In fact, not only Obama but also most members of the US Senate and Congresses now maintain an official Twitter account. President Trump is an avid user of Twitter (Ott, 2017). To add to the phenomenon of Web 2.0, the birth of the smartphone industry had made social media mobile. Candidates were now expected to interact with the online community on a 277

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twenty-four-hour basis. Broadcast news stations (old media) now regularly refer to how a candidate’s actions or speeches are received on Web 2.0 platforms (Schmidbauer, Rösch, & Fabian, 2018). On the other side of the Atlantic, politicians are also picking up this trend, but there are variations of Web 2.0 usage among politicians in European countries (Weaver et al., 2019; Hoffmann & Suphan, 2017; Albrecht, Lübcke, & Hartig-Perschke, 2007). Weblogs, for instance, have been used by major parties and many candidates in Germany for the Bundestag elections, although they do not seem to have caught the attention of most citizens (Hoffmann & Suphan, 2017; Albrecht, Lübcke, & Hartig-Perschke, 2007). In the comparative cross-country analysis of Vergeer, Hermans, and Cunha (2013) and Hermans and Vergeer (2013), Ireland stood out as one of the few European countries where parties and politicians use websites extensively (Vergeer et al., 2013, p. 138) and most of the e-campaigns manifest the politicians’ efforts to ‘personalize’ themselves professionally and/or privately (Hermans & Vergeer, 2013, p. 81). The details of how Irish websites are structured for these purposes, however, remain to be explored. It is crucial to note the extent to which previous ‘new’ technologies were expected to change politicians’ behaviour (Farrell & Webb, 2000; Liston et al., 2013). Farrell and Webb (2000) were clear that: The ‘Television Age’ ushered in nationalized campaigning, with an emphasis on the broadcasting of single, coordinated nationwide messages. In sharp contrast, the ‘Digital Age’ looks like causing something of a reversion in the culture of campaigning back towards more focused, localized, targeted communication… [T]he potential of these new technologies to impact significantly on the future of political campaigns cannot be overlooked. (p. 114) In relation to the nature of the changing pattern of communication brought about by social media, Standage (2013) argues that in historical terms, it is top-down, centralised mass distribution of information that is the deviation. Until the Industrial Revolution, individual opinion circulated from person to person; today’s social media marks the return to a historically dominant pattern (Standage, 2013). Although Standage might be right to contend that social media enables the return to past models of horizontal diffusion of messages, it is vital to acknowledge that there are differences between the patterns of diffusion between those in the past and today. Historical patterns were more confined geographically, while today’s distribution can move beyond wider territorial boundaries and sometimes even become transnational. A study of parliamentarians’ use of social media in Britain asserts: … there is a tangible shift in the balance of power as constituents, single-issue groups and other interested external parties are able to create new channels of engagement quickly and cheaply, providing considerable reach and demonstrably influencing public and political opinion. (Williamson, 2009, p. 514) The voters, however, are much more inclined to use social media for conversations on sport or entertainment (Fuchs, 2017). As Jensen (2017) says, about UK voters in general, the “empowering uses of Twitter are fairly marginal” (p. 23). Overall, a common theme in the examples and commentary cited here is that Web 2.0 tools do not change the fundamental ways in which politics is conducted, although it is increasingly used by professionals in politics. This also appears to be observable in non-democracies, as noted by Chen (2012 and 2013), where the Internet does not effectively alter the relationship between the state and the society in China. What the Internet does change, however, is the cost and benefits of the actors’ calculations for their behaviours (Collins & Cottey, 2012; Chen, 2013). Some state and societal actors in China see the 278

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benefits of using Web 2.0 technologies for their social and political aims. In such a context, Web 2.0 tools are used as a kind of extended means for them to achieve their goals. The fundamental structures of how the Chinese state and society interact with each other, nonetheless, remain largely unaltered (Chen, 2012). In democracies as well as in non-democracies, for those with access to it, it has lowered some of the barriers to political activity by reducing the costs and by removing any constraints on when and where it takes place. In Western liberal democracies like the one under investigation in this paper, campaign donations, contacts with public officials, accessing information and forming political groups are all now very much easier, cheaper and less spatially bound. The question remains, however, if and how the experience of politics has fundamentally changed for either politicians or citizens. Strandberg (2013), in his study of the Finnish 2011 General Election, suggests that those who avail of it make little impact (p. 1329). This lack of impact may dismay advocates of greater democratic engagement (Schlozman et al., 2010, p. 489), but it does also point to the atypical nature of political discourse during formal election campaigns when the resistance to new data may be most significant (Vromen, 2017; Hall et al., 2013; Wicklund & Brehm, 1976). It is also interesting to note that one generalisation stands out: where online access is available, the young are more knowledgeable about and have a higher propensity to use Web 2.0 tools. Examining ‘Generation Z’5in Indonesia, for example, Samodra and Mariani (2013) conclude that users’ ‘perceived usefulness’ of Web 2.0 tools with an indirect influence of their ‘perceived ease-of-use’ of these tools could facilitate the diffusion of these technologies (p. 127). In Ireland, outcomes of in-depth interviews and focus group studies interestingly suggest that while Generation Z thinks it is good for political parties to utilise online social networking tools to have contact with their age group, they still prefer to see public representatives at their doorstep (Lynch & Hogan, 2012, pp. 95-96). Previous studies have discussed the perceptions and preferences of constituents in Ireland in this regard. This study, however, focuses on understanding Irish TDs’ engagement with Web 2.0 technologies. Data will be presented on how Irish parliamentarians exploit the functions and potentials of Web 2.0 by mainly looking at the content and design of their websites. The research method and design are clarified in the next section.

METHOD AND DATA Content analysis is employed to evaluate the websites of members of the Dáil. Data from TDs’ personal websites were compiled from July 15 to 25, 2013. This period was taken to epitomise ‘normal’ time with the Dáil taking its summer break on July 18. In the period immediately before the adjournment, the most controversial issues in politics had been a bill to adjust the existing abortion legislation in the light of a contentious court case; a proposal for a referendum to abolish the upper parliamentary chamber, Seanad Éireann; and, a few instances of ‘unparliamentary behaviour’ in the Dáil. While each of these issues caused some controversy, none looked capable of precipitating an election, ministerial resignation or significant shifts in public opinion. In the same period, ministers were able to point to signs of economic recovery and give assurances regarding the level of social welfare provision. The authors initially surveyed all 166 Irish TDs. This includes the websites of Michael McGrath and Eamon O’Cuiv, which were under construction during the period when the researchers were collecting the data. From the total TDs, 76 do not have personal websites. Hence, in total, the authors concentrate on the remaining 88 TDs’ personal websites. 279

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While conducting the website-feature analysis, the authors look at three dimensions of the TD’s websites: information content (IC), interaction tools (IT) and politician’s activities on the web (PAW) (Lilleker & Jackson, 2013; Vaccari, 2008). These contents were assigned scores, and the average score that each website obtained was calculated afterwards. IC was measured by examining how many of the following ten features exist on each TD’s website: general issues, information on specific topic areas (e.g. immigration and agriculture), speeches, newsletters, newsletter archives, FAQs, events calendar, videos, media release, and candidate profiles. Each TD’s website was given a score on a scale of 0 to 5. Websites that contain at least nine of the ten aforementioned features were coded 5. Websites that contain seven to eight of the ten features were coded 4. The same logic applies to the rest of the coding scheme. IT features the following variables: search tool, subscription, volunteering, donation, online contact, comments, link with social media (e.g. YouTube), ability to share content with other social media platforms, online membership, and site map. The coding for this variable is the same as the coding for IC. PAW was measured by two variables. The authors first assigned a score for each variable, and then they calculated the average score for the two variables. The first variable is the number of updates between March 1 and July 31, 2013, over five months in total. Also, the authors observed the latest month in which the website had been updated. For the first variable (number of updates in five months starting from March 1, 2013), the authors assigned a score on a scale of 0 to 5 (0 = zero updates, 1 = 1-20 updates, 2 = 21-40 updates, 3 = 41-60 updates, 4 = 61-80 updates, 5 = 81-100 updates). For the second variable (latest month of update), the authors also assigned a score on a scale of 0 to 5. Scores were given based on the month in which the update was made, but the authors assigned the highest score in cases where the update had been made in the week of the data collection (July 22 to 25, 2013). The coding scheme is as follows: latest update before March 2013, zero; update in April and March, 1; update in May, 2; update in June, 3; update in July, 4; and update between July 22 and 25, 5. The authors calculated the total scores for each TD’s website as described above and ranked them. They used these scores to conduct the website-feature analysis in the next section.

WEBSITE-FEATURE ANALYSIS Looking at the sitting TDs of the four main political parties—i.e. Fianna Fáil (FF), Fine Gael (FG), Labour (Lab), and Sinn Féin (SF)—as a whole, the authors can see that one in six members, 17%, are female. For this study, the authors have defined the main political parties as those with three or more TDs currently sitting in the Dáil. Further, the total scores from across all the data follow roughly similar figures: female TDs contribute to 14% of the total scores, with their male counterparts being responsible for the remaining 86%. Due to the vast disparity in the number of male and female TDs, this figure is of little surprise. By examining the IC of the 90 TDs’ websites, the authors can determine whether each website contains at least one of the ten features included in the study. In addition, the authors can also determine whether any of the TD’s websites contain all ten features. At the bottom end of the scale are eight websites that contain one to two features, while at the top end are ten websites that contain seven to eight features. With reference to the data relating to IC, the authors found that those TDs at the top end of the scale communicate 25% more frequently than the average TD. These ten TDs whose websites contain seven to eight features are responsible for 17.2% of the total amount of online content of all TDs. In other words, 280

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10 out of the 90 TDs studied are responsible for almost one-fifth of the total amount of IC contained in the data presented here. It is also worth noting that those TDs who are responsible for five to six features—what one may call closer to the average or representing the middle ground—are 46 in number and are responsible for 59.5% of the total IC. This means that just over 50% of TDs are responsible for fewer than 60% of the total IC. With regard to the data relating to IT, the authors found that two TDs’ websites do not contain any of these features while only one contains nine to ten features. Three TDs—Joan Burton (Lab),6 Alex White (Lab), and Joe Higgins (Socialist Party, SP)—have websites that contain IT far and above their counterparts and are responsible for 7.3% of the total figures relating to this section of data. In another interpretation, these three TDs’ websites contain 150% more IT than the average TD. With regard to PAW, the authors measured the number of updates that take place on each website over the five-month period during which the data were gathered. Information for five websites could not be accessed. Eleven websites out of the remaining 85 were not updated in the five months within which the data set was collected. Two websites had between 81-100 updates, and 74 websites had recently been updated, i.e. within the fifth month covered by the data set. The authors found that 21.1% of the TDs have websites that have no activity at all, which is a significantly high number. These are termed ‘dormants’ in this paper. Those TDs performing at the top end are 100% more active than the average TD when these dormant TDs are included. When dormant websites are excluded, the top-performing TDs—Seán Crowe (SF) and Mattie McGrath (Independent, ID)—are 66.7% more active than the average TD. Close behind Crowe and McGrath are Andrew Doyle (FG), Simon Harris (FG), Frank Feighan (FG), and Seán Kenny (Lab). Altogether, these six TDs are responsible for 13.2% of the total TDs’ activities. This finding lends the researchers some valuable insights when it comes to interpreting TDs’ online profiles as a whole. With regards to IC, top performers have 33.33% more content than average TDs. There is hence room for improvement in terms of IC for average and below-average TDs. Regarding IT, Burton (Lab), White (Lab), and Higgins (SP) significantly outperformed those just below them, suggesting that average and below-average TDs can vastly improve how their constituents interact with them online. Finally, with regards PAW, there is cause for concern given the level of dormant TDs. Joan Burton (Lab), a top-performing TD in other areas, for example, contributes just 1.17% of the total amount of website activity of the TDs studied. This is interesting because 1.17% also happens to be the average contribution of each non-dormant TD to the overall data for website activities. While she is in the top TDs’ cluster in other areas, she falls significantly short when it comes to website activities and can be best described as ‘less than average’ in this area. This, in turn, shows the researchers that most TDs’ websites are used only for one-way traffic; however, it is worth noting that as the findings of Hoffmann and Suphan (2017); Hermans and Vergeer (2013); Kluver, Jankowski, Foot, and Schneider (2007); and Gulati and Williams (2007) have suggested, this is in keeping with political figures worldwide. From the above data, one can make some interesting initial observations. Firstly, it is possible to describe certain politicians on the ‘left’ as performing significantly better than a large number of their counterparts on the ‘right’. This is shown by the fact that Joe Higgins (SP) and Clare Daly (SP),7 the Socialist Party’s two sitting members; Richard Boyd Barrett (PBP), the People Before Profit’s only sitting TD;8 and Labour’s Burton (Lab) and White (Lab), all occupy positions in the top ten performing TDs. This finding is significant because 95 of the Republic’s total of 166 TDs are members of the two largest centre-right parties, Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil. It suggests that left-wing parties, with significantly fewer members in the Dáil, perform better than their opposite numbers in other parties. 281

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This pattern echoes the findings of other studies. For instance, Vergeer, Hermans, and Sams (2013) looked at politicians running for the European Parliament (EP) elections and discovered that left parties are more prone to adopt new and advanced technologies than conservative parties. In the Irish context, centre-right politics is far more entrenched than the left-wing equivalent. One apparent reason is the impact of rural and nationalist values on Irish society in the past. Fine Gael Youth is the largest youth movement in the state, and Fianna Fáil is not too far behind. This level of organisation among the two largest right-wing parties, in turn, forces those on the left to adopt new methods of getting their message across, in this case compensating by performing far and above the right in Web 2.0 usage. Secondly, in recent years, there has been a move away from the traditional use of websites to disseminate information and interact with constituents due to the advent of other Internet-based methods of communication. For instance, Barack Obama’s 2008 election was described at the time as the first ‘YouTube election’, given the non-traditional means of interaction employed by his election team for reaching voters (Kenski, Hardy, & Jamieson, 2010). Similarly, given that even a high performer like Joan Burton (Lab) drops significantly when her website activity is observed, it may be possible for the researchers to assume that this was due to the development of social media outlets such as Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter. It is thus imperative that the authors also examine and compare TDs’ website activities with their other social media activities. This will be dealt with in the next section. Finally, there seems to be a direct correlation between geographical location and the overall data employed in this study. For example, with IC, as seen in the previous section, ten TDs received a score of 4/5 in this area: Richard Boyd Barrett (PBP), Joan Burton (Lab), Joan Collins (United Left Alliance, ULA), Lucinda Creighton (FG),9 Alan Farrell (FG), Brian Hayes (FG), Anthony Lawlor (FG), Nicky McFadden (FG),10 Catherine Murphy (Ind), and Alex White (Lab). Similarly, eight TDs received a score of 1/5: John Browne (FF), Eric Byrne (Lab), Michael Colreavy (SF), Jimmy Dennihan (FG), Heather Humphreys (FG), SeánKenny (Lab), Michael Moynihan (FF), and Ruairi Quinn (Lab). What is most interesting about this is that all the top performers for IC represent either constituencies in Dublin or constituencies in the surrounding counties that can be considered ‘commuter’ areas for the capital. These areas traditionally have some of the highest rates of Internet usage in the state. Similarly, five of the eight worst performing TDs in this section are from rural areas, or areas that are traditionally associated with low levels of Internet usage. Surprisingly enough, it is worth noting that two of the TDs that are not from rural areas, Kenny (Lab) and Quinn (Lab), represent constituencies in Dublin and are members of the Labour Party.

DISCUSSION The empirical analysis leads the researchers to suspect that some of the TDs’ online activities have been transformed from websites to other Internet-based methods of communication; it is, therefore, essential to compare TDs’ performance across websites, Twitter, Facebook, and other social media platforms. In an interview with the Fianna Fáil press officer, Eoin Weldon commented that most of his party’s TDs have set up Twitter and Facebook accounts for elections. But the party also encourages their politicians to use these platforms after elections. For public policies, TDs must follow the party line in their online expression. This kind of information is also accessible already in the party’s press releases. TDs themselves know that they should not veer away from the party line. For issues that are not yet policies, such as the heated debate over abortion, TDs may express personal opinions. In addition, TDs are en282

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couraged to tweet less political messages, such as wishing people success for sporting events. This kind of message is also essential as it is a link to the public and shows politicians’ human side.11 Due to limited resources, however, the authors do not have a complete dataset of the TDs’ Twitter and Facebook activities for a comprehensive comparison. The authors have hence only selected some TDs for further observation. Based on the scores given and considering each criterion for evaluating websites individually, the authors chose the best and the worst webpages and created the following list of 30 TDs (see Table 1). The Twitter activities of these 30 TDs were observed, and data were collected from August 19 to 23, 2013. Facebook data were collected from August 26 to 30, 2013. Some initial observations can be made from these data. The authors found a mixed picture of TDs’ usage across websites, Twitter, and Facebook. Ruairi Quinn (Lab), for instance, has one of the poorest websites, with 0.5 as his average score for IC, IT, and PAW. He has no Facebook account and no tweets from his Twitter account. Web 2.0 apparently is not his platform. Alan Farrell (FG), in contrast, has an excellent overall score of 3.5 and seems to be the most active on Twitter with 11,805 tweets (as of August 30, 2013). His Facebook friends, however, are not many: 57 as of August 30, 2013. Another example is Heather Humphreys (FG). She performed well in terms of activities on her website as well as her Facebook activities—she updates her Facebook account frequently. But she does not use Twitter. Another compelling case is that of Joan Burton (FG). She uses Facebook, and she has a commanding mass of Twitter followers at 9,067, but she does not seem to be active in any actual tweeting. The same pattern can be observed in her usage of her personal website: it is over-tooled, but she has less than average engagement on her website. Most selected TDs under observation do not exploit all the functions and potentials of social media. TDs use Facebook fan pages, but not personal pages. This makes it easier for the page to be managed by staff. Also, they mostly merely replicate the information already posted on Twitter and websites. This pattern is similar to what the researchers have observed in their website performance. The interactive and participatory features of Web 2.0 are not fully exploited. This is also in line with findings in other countries such as the US and Israel where politicians actually prefer to give introductory information of themselves but not to further conduct a meaningful conversation in fear of stirring confrontations on Facebook (Congressional Management Foundation, 2011). Hence, while it is true that Web 2.0 technologies have given politicians more means to conduct dialogues with citizens and journalists and that politicians do emulate each other in setting up social media accounts to keep up with the times (Avery & Graham, 2013; Enli & Skogerbø, 2013), there are factors that would limit the actual exploitation of Web 2.0 technologies. Lack of time, resources as well as the fear that online dialogues could go into negative direction actually prevent politicians to fully embrace Web 2.0 technologies (Lev-On, Porat, & Lehman-Wilzig, 2017). It is vital to note, however, that the authors only compared 30 selected TDs: this can give the researchers some indication but is undoubtedly not a holistic picture of Irish parliamentarians’ Twitter and Facebook activities. If the resources allowed, the authors could have had a comprehensive dataset to check if some TDs have directly adopted a social media platform, such as Twitter or Facebook or other platforms, to replace their websites. One politician who is well-known in Ireland for his heavy reliance on the power of the Internet to garner visibility, popularity and electoral support is independent TD Luke Flanagan (Ind) of Roscommon. He does not extensively use posters or other expensive offline campaign methods that other competing candidates would have done. He does not have a website at all, either. Rather, he 283

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Table 1. Features of Irish Parliamentarians’ websites The Best Websites

The Worst Websites

Information content (IC)

10 TDs’ websites have a score of 4 out of 5: Richard Boyd Barret (PBP), Joan Burton (Lab), Joan Collins (ULA), Lucinda Creighton (FG), Alan Farrell (FG), Brian Hayes (FG), Antony Lawlor (FG), Nicky McFadden (FG), Catherine Murphy (Ind), and Alex White (Lab).

8 TDs’ websites have a score of 1 out of 5: John Browne (FF), Eric Byrne (Lab), Michael Colreavy (SF), Jimmy Deenihan (FG), Heather Humphreys (FG), Seán Kenny (SF), Michael Moynihan (FF). and Ruairi Quinn (Lab).

Interaction tool (IT)

1 TD, Joan Burton (Lab), has a score of 5 out of 5.

2 TDs have a score of zero: Frank Feighan (FG) and Pat Deering (FG).

2 TDs have a score of 5 out of 5: Seán Crowe (SF) and Mattie McGrath (Ind).

11 TDs received a score of zero: Niall Collins (FF), Michael Colreavy (SF), Simon Coveney (FG), Paschal Donohoe (FG), Phil Hogan (FG), Michael Moynihan (FF), Aengus Ó Snodaigh (SF), Ruari Quinn (Lab), Brendan Ryan (Lab), Alan Shatter (FG), and Brian Walsh (FG).

Political activity on the website (PAW)

uses Twitter and Facebook to shape the image that he is supportive of radical ideas and fresh policies on drugs. The media fed off the styling of his beard and shaving of his head along with the illustrations of cannabis plants in his campaigns to portray him as being a maverick. However, despite this negative coverage, he was able to use it to gain the attention of the press and media, and he played well the role of an outsider in the political sphere of Ireland. In 2014, he was elected to the European Parliament.

CONCLUSION Irish parliamentarians embed themselves online mainly to catch up with trends in the cyber age. Websites allow them to market themselves and increase visibility. But given that the offering of information is the prime aim, their usage of the Internet is still primarily based on the paradigm of Web 1.0. This pattern is similar to what Lilleker and Jackson (2010, 2013) have found in the UK and, more recently, by Hoffmann and Suphan (2017) in Germany where “despite potential benefits, empirical analyses show that politicians tend to shy away from an active engagement of online audiences” (p. 1468). A more accurate way to depict this phenomenon is that Irish politicians’ Internet usage is actually in the mode of Web 1.5 in which some interactive and participatory space is generated with the idea that the cyberspace should encourage citizen participation. But actual practice shows that improvements can still be made. Also, as conventional variables such as party affiliation (i.e. left/ right cleavage) and geographic variation still have an influence on TDs’ website performance, one can conclude that ICTs do not really change the way Irish politics are played traditionally. Politics in the mode of Web 1.5 is primarily affected by pre-Internet structures and forces. The Irish experience is in line with various other studies around the world, such as in Portugal (Cunha & Seiceira, 2017), New Zealand (Ross, Fountaine, & Comrie, 2015), Italy (Vaccari, 2008), and Finland (Strandberg, 2013). The lesson of Denmark (Sørensen, 2016) may point to a different future but, for the moment, the primary realm of Irish politicians’ interaction with the public is still outside the cyberspace.

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ACKNOWLEDGMENT The authors would like to thank Christopher Bacani, Luca Caruso, Lara Fote, Valentine Kearney, and Aiman Temirova for their research assistance.

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Referred to in some election studies as ‘between-election’. See, for example, Esaiasson and Narud (2013). The term Ireland will be used here to refer to the jurisdiction of the Republic of Ireland unless stated otherwise. Fine Gael 28% and Fianna Fáil 27%, in Sunday Times Behaviour and Attitudes opinion poll, published May 14, 2017. Retrieved from https://www.rte.ie/news/2017/0513/874951-opinion-poll/ In 2011, the year in which the parliamentarians studied here were elected, 45 sitting TDs lost their seats and 39 incumbents decided not run again. Taken here as born between 1990 and 2004, though definitions in the social media literature differ. Joan Burton was Minister for Social Protection at the time of the research and on July 4, 2014 became leader of the Labour Party. Clare Daly was elected as a Socialist Party TD in 2011. She resigned from the party on August 31, 2012, re-designating herself as a United Left Alliance TD. A number of the left-leaning TDs in the Dáil are part of the United Left Alliance (ULA), which is made up of PBP and others. Joan Collins was an Independent but contested in the 2011 General Election as PBP. She left PBP in 2013 and now operates under the ULA. Hence, Richard Boyd Barret is the PBP’s only sitting TD in the data. No longer FG. Died on March 25, 2014. Interview with Eoin Weldon, Fianna Fáil press officer, August 6, 2013.

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Chapter 18

CIO Power Influences the Social Alignment and IT-Business Strategic Alignment Relationship Jennifer E. Gerow Virginia Military Institute, USA

ABSTRACT To give information technology (IT) a more central role in an organization and avoid disrupting the existing executive team power balance, chief information officers (CIOs) should only leverage their power in certain situations. The authors propose CIOs can leverage their expert, prestige, and structural power attributes to influence the social-intellectual alignment relationship versus the social-operational alignment relationship in unique ways. Analyzing data collected from 140 CIOs, the results suggest IT knowledge strengthens the social-strategic alignment relationship, business knowledge, and structural power weaken the social-intellectual alignment relationship, and prestige power has no impact on the social-strategic alignment relationship.

INTRODUCTION There is no doubt aligning business and IT strategies and processes is valuable (Gerow, Grover, Thatcher, & Roth, 2014) and continues to be IT management’s top concern (Kappelman et al., 2019). Despite this, researchers and practitioners still struggle to understand how to create and sustain IT-business strategic alignment (Kappelman et al., 2019; Preston & Karahanna, 2009) which will be referred to as strategic alignment throughout this paper and is defined as “the degree of fit and integration among business strategy, IT strategy, business infrastructure, and IT infrastructure” (Chan & Reich, 2007, p. 300). To better understand strategic alignment, researchers have considered multiple antecedents such as governance structure, IT investments, social alignment, and strategy (Gerow et al., 2014). Of these, social alignment is considered key to facilitating strategic alignment (Preston & Karahanna, 2009) where social alignment DOI: 10.4018/978-1-7998-4796-0.ch018

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 CIO Power Influences the Social Alignment and IT-Business Strategic Alignment Relationship

is defined as “the state in which business and IT executives within an organizational unit understand and are committed to the business and IT mission, objectives, and plans” (Reich & Benbasat, 2000 p. 82)1. While research shows a positive relationship between social and strategic alignment, it is still unclear how social alignment impacts different strategic alignment types (Gerow et al., 2014) or how social alignment can be facilitated given its many components (Ullah & Lai, 2013). The authors discuss these research opportunities and how this paper contributes to this literature stream in the following paragraphs. Social alignment may impact different strategic alignment types in unique ways (Gerow et al., 2014). To explore these nuances, organizations must first identify whether they are pursuing the alignment of their IT and business strategies and/or their IT and business processes2. The alignment of business and IT strategies is referred to as intellectual alignment (Chan & Reich, 2007; Reich & Benbasat, 1996; 2000) and is defined as “the degree to which the mission, objectives, and plans contained in the business strategy are shared and supported by the IS strategy” (Chan, Sabherwal, & Thatcher, 2006, p. 27). The alignment of business and IT processes is referred to as operational alignment and is defined as “the link between organizational infrastructure and processes and I/S infrastructure and processes” (Henderson & Venkatraman, 1999, p. 476). These three dimensions are commonly studied by IS alignment researchers (Benbya, Leidner, & Preston, 2019). While some studies have considered social alignment in a model with these different strategic alignment types (e.g. Fink & Neumann, 2009; Tiwana & Konsynski, 2010), the authors could not find any study that considered the individual impact of social alignment on both strategic alignment types simultaneously. While individual studies on intellectual and operational alignment may provide evidence for positive relationships with social alignment, it is also important to understand the relative strength of social alignment on the strategic alignment types since some strategic alignment types could be more strongly affected by social issues than others (Dulipovici & Robey, 2013; Gerow et al., 2014). Power may also have an impact on the social-strategic alignment relationship because executive-level employees tend to be more involved in strategic decisions which can be unstructured and ambiguous in nature such that power-seeking behavior is frequently demonstrated by executive team members (Finkelstein, 1992; Jasperson et al., 2002). While any changes at the executive level are difficult due to these power balances, technology offers a unique set of challenges in that IT resources are often restricted due to lower IT budgets and uncertainty is often associated with IT solutions and payoffs (Banker, Hu, Pavlou, & Luftman, 2011; Pettey & Stevens, 2010). IT issues such as security have become increasingly high-profile in recent years; this means Chief Executive Officers (CEOs) tend to oversee and get directly involved in decisions (Feng & Wang, 2019). CIOs usually do not have the ability to control executive team members since they are typically equal or subordinate members of the executive team (Banker et al., 2011; Enns, Huff, & Golden, 2001). To ensure the executive team’s power balance is not adversely impacted when attempting to align IT and business interests, CIOs may need to consider which and how power attributes are used when aligning with executive team members. These power attributes include leveraging the type of skills and knowledge the CIO possesses (expert power), the CIO’s role within the existing social network (prestige power), and the CIO’s position in the hierarchy (structural power) (Bassellier & Benbasat, 2004; Day, 2007). While the social-intellectual alignment relationship has been well-established in the literature (Chan et al., 2006; Chen, 2010; Gerow, Grover, & Thatcher, 2016; Kearns & Lederer, 2003; Kearns & Sabherwal, 2006; Lai, Lee, & Hsu, 2009; Preston & Karahanna, 2009), the social-operational alignment relationship has received no attention to the authors’ knowledge. Regarding the power attributes, researchers have considered knowledge and structure in models with social or strategic alignment (Fink & Neumann, 291

 CIO Power Influences the Social Alignment and IT-Business Strategic Alignment Relationship

2009; Preston & Karahanna, 2009; Tiwana & Konsynski, 2010) but have not examined all the power types within the same study or as moderators of the social-strategic alignment relationship to the authors’ knowledge. Taken together, the contribution to the alignment literature is to identify how social alignment influences intellectual and operational alignment and how power facilitates social alignment. Thus, the authors focus on the following research question: Should CIOs leverage their power attributes to enhance the relationship between social alignment and intellectual and operational alignment? The authors organize the remainder of this paper as follows. In the next section, the authors present their research model and develop their hypotheses. The authors then describe their research method. The authors conclude with a discussion of their results including key findings, implications for theory and practice, and suggestions for future research along with the limitations of their study.

RESEARCH MODEL AND HYPOTHESIS DEVELOPMENT The authors present their model in Figure 1. In the following paragraphs, the authors argue that through social alignment, organizations have the ability to share an understanding and commitment between business and IT such that the two can align their strategies and/or processes with each other (Bassellier & Benbasat, 2004). The authors also argue power can strengthen the relationships between social alignment and intellectual and operational alignment.

Social, Intellectual, and Operational Alignment Social alignment occurs when executive team members share an understanding of and commitment to IT and business objectives; in other words, social alignment is an alignment of vision (Preston & Karahanna, 2009). While this may sound simple, it is difficult for IT to understand formal business strategy and for business to understand why IT should drive business strategy in some situations (Ullah & Lai, 2013). This is further complicated by today’s dynamic and uncertain environments, where integrating perspectives from many different actors is difficult due to the constantly shifting needs and limited resources at both the strategic- and process-levels (Benlian & Haffke, 2016; Dulipovici & Robey, 2013; Leonard & Seddon, 2012; Sabegh & Motlagh, 2012). Since previous research indicates sharing more information leads to better understanding and, ultimately, to better decision-making (Daft & Lengel, 1986), achieving strategic alignment is only possible when business and IT top managers communicate and make connections between their respective strategies and processes (Benlian & Haffke, 2016; Peak, Guynes, Prybutok, & Xu, 2011; Preston & Karahanna, 2009). At the strategic-level, business and IT executive team members should clearly communicate their respective needs so they can reciprocally impact each other’s strategies such that the two strategies are almost indistinguishable (Grant, Hakney, & Edgar, 2012; Teo & King, 1996). At the process-level, business and IT executive team members need to skillfully negotiate over the solutions that will best meet their respective needs and should pool their resources (both tangible and intangible) to foster a mutual support that improves the organization’s internal capabilities (Bergman, Lyytinen, & Mark, 2007; Ravichandran & Lertwongsatien, 2005). Hence, the authors propose: 292

 CIO Power Influences the Social Alignment and IT-Business Strategic Alignment Relationship

Figure 1. ­

H1a: Social alignment will be positively related to intellectual alignment. H1b: Social alignment will be positively related to operational alignment.

Expert Power Expert power refers to CIOs’ “ability to deal with strategic contingencies of the firm” through the development of their technical and business knowledge (Finkelstein, 1992; Medcof, 2008 p. 412). Technical knowledge is the CIO’s understanding of technology (in general, within the organization, and for emerging technologies), how technology can be used strategically (for competitive advantage and alignment purposes), and the problems associated with technology (e.g. cost) (Amoako-Gyampah & Salam, 2004; Kearns & Sabherwal, 2007; Preston & Karahanna, 2009). Business knowledge is the CIO’s understanding of how the organization functions (McNulty, Pettigrew, Jobome, & Morris, 2011). This includes knowing what the organization sells, how the organization markets its products or services, who the organization’s competitors are, and how the industry as a whole functions (Preston & Karahanna, 2009). The authors suggest expert power will enhance social alignment since many executive teams lack knowledge about technology and, therefore, need CIOs’ expertise when trying to integrate IT into the business (Preston & Karahanna, 2009). As such, CIOs need to understand technology and the business as well as how technology fits in with the strategy and how it can be used to support the organization’s

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 CIO Power Influences the Social Alignment and IT-Business Strategic Alignment Relationship

business processes. In turn, CIOs should be able to communicate how IT can be used to facilitate business goals, strategies, and processes in a language the executive team understands (Coughlan, Lycett, & Macredie, 2005; Preston & Karahanna, 2009; Willcoxson & Chatham, 2004). The authors propose expert power will have greater impact on the social-intellectual alignment relationship compared to the social-operational alignment relationship since a combination of business and IT knowledge is more critical at the strategic level whereas a focus on IT knowledge with only some basic business knowledge is needed at the process level (e.g. automation of business processes is IT-focused rather than businessfocused) (Onita & Dhaliwal, 2011; Wagner, Beimborn, & Weitzel, 2014). Hence: H2a: Expert power will have a positive influence on both social-strategic alignment relationships but will have a stronger influence on the social-intellectual alignment relationship than on the socialoperational alignment relationship.

Prestige Power Prestige power refers to the “managers’ reputation in the institutional environment and among stakeholders” (Finkelstein, 1992 p. 510). CIOs can develop their prestige power by establishing relationships with important people inside and outside the organization and then leveraging their reputation (public image) to achieve and maintain status within the organization (Mehra, Dixon, Brass, & Robertson, 2006; Wasko & Faraj, 2005). External connections are necessary because they make it possible for CIOs to leverage their connections with early technology adopters who can reduce uncertainty associated with technology and enable those CIOs to gain prestige power (Burkhardt & Brass, 1990). Additionally, it helps CIOs develop a stronger employee base, gather information about new technologies, establish business contacts, develop a strong social support system, and obtain competitor/industry information (Finkelstein, 1992; Medcof, 2008; Perrewe & Nelson, 2004). Similarly, CIOs with connections already established inside the organization are more likely to easily socialize, integrate into the organization’s environment, obtain pertinent company information, and influence strategic decisions (McNulty et al., 2011; Perrewe & Nelson, 2004; Preston & Karahanna, 2009). The authors suggest prestige power will enhance social alignment since many executive teams recognize IT project risks and uncertainties are often detrimental to project performance (Jenkin & Chan, 2010) and coworkers familiar with technology can be important resources for overcoming technological knowledge barriers that inhibit adoption (Sykes, Venkatesh, & Gosain, 2009). CIOs with connections to external partners with prior IT experience can mitigate these risks and enhance benefits associated with new IT resources (e.g. installing an Enterprise Resource Planning system is expensive but can help with inter-department integration) such that the uncertainty associated with those new resources is reduced (e.g. other similar companies can illustrate how they used the system for integration so the organization doesn’t have to “reinvent the wheel”) (Burkhardt & Brass, 1990; Jasperson et al., 2002; Lee, DeLone, & Espinosa, 2010). Internal connections are equally important because the executive team is more likely to accept CIOs who are part of the organization’s “good old boy network” (Perrewe & Nelson, 2004 p. 369). In turn, CIOs who are integrated into and accepted by the executive team are more likely to understand their organizations’ issues, actions, and attitudes (Johnson & Lederer, 2010; Preston & Karahanna, 2009). Therefore, prestige power reflects how CIOs can use their connections to reduce project risks/ uncertainties and strengthen internal relationships. In summary, CIOs with both external and internal

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 CIO Power Influences the Social Alignment and IT-Business Strategic Alignment Relationship

connections are more likely to gain the executive team’s trust and reduce uncertainties associated with IT investments (Medcof, 2008; Stam & Elfring, 2008). Hence: H2b: Prestige power will have a positive influence on both social-strategic alignment relationships.

Structural Power Structural power is the “CIO’s level of legitimate power due to his or her formal position within the hierarchy of the organization” (Chen, Preston, & Xia, 2010 p. 245). This type of power focuses on the position rather than the person (Finkelstein, 1992; Greve & Mitsuhashi, 2007). Specifically, CIOs with a formal position on the executive team (and who may report directly to the CEO) have direct access to conversations with the executive team (Chen et al., 2010; Medcof, 2007) and therefore have the authority to carry out the executive team’s decisions through the management of IT resources such as purchasing technology, directing IT subordinates, and providing data analysis reports (Lines, 2007; Yukl & Falbe, 1991). The authors suggest structural power creates an environment conducive to social alignment since it gives CIOs access to the individuals with whom they are trying to share a commitment and understanding (Enns, Huff, & Higgins, 2003; Preston & Karahanna, 2009). In turn, this impacts intellectual alignment since CIOs are the ones who are best qualified to mobilize IT resources to support the organization’s strategies (Carter, Grover, & Thatcher, 2011; Enns, Huff, & Higgins, 2003; Jasperson et al., 2002). Since supporting the organization’s processes (operational alignment) doesn’t necessarily require the same level of executive team authority as supporting the organization’s strategies (Wagner et al., 2014), the authors propose: H2c: Structural power will have a positive influence on both social-strategic alignment relationships but will have a stronger influence on the social-intellectual alignment relationship than on the socialoperational alignment relationship.

RESEARCH METHOD The authors administered a Survey Monkey questionnaire to the most senior IT professional with titles such as CIO, Vice President of IT, and Director of IT (this procedure is similar to that of Banker et al., 2011; Preston & Karahanna, 2009). If the respondent answered “no” to the following question, that individual was not allowed to complete the survey: “Are you currently the head of your IT department (in other words, a CIO, VP of IT, or Director of IT)?”. The survey was developed using the three broad instrument development stages developed by Moore and Benbasat (1991) including identifying existing scales and using q-sorts for new scales, pre-testing, and pilot testing; the full survey is available in the Appendix3. Research Now, a third-party national market research firm, contacted respondents utilizing a CIO panel of almost 2,500 members. Of the 1,077 CIOs who received the survey via e-mail, 218 panelists clicked on the survey link page that sent them to the survey. Of these, only 140 responses were useable, where the other 78 were either incomplete or the respondent did not answer “yes” to the screening question. This yields a response rate of 13%, which is consistent with other CIO studies (e.g. Preston & Karahanna, 2009 had a CIO response rate of 10%). The authors report respondent demographic statistics in Table 1.

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 CIO Power Influences the Social Alignment and IT-Business Strategic Alignment Relationship

Non-Response Bias The authors used wave analysis to assess the potential non‐respondent bias in their survey. In wave analyses, the late respondents are treated as a proxy for non-respondents (Armstrong & Overton, 1977). For their analysis, the authors grouped the responding CIOs into early respondents, those CIOs who responded within 24 hours of the e-mail request from Research Now, and respondents who took two to five days to respond (late respondents). The authors then compared these two groups by firm size and Table 1. Demographic statistics (n=140) Characteristic Gender College Education

Frequency

Male

112

Female

20

Unreported

8

Average = 5.42 years Industry

Experience

Status

Title

Age Firm Type

Firm Size (revenue in $millions)

Industry

296

CIO

IT

25% = 8). As shown in Table 3, only IT use had a significant impact on the social-intellectual alignment relationship, and only CIO location and IT use had a significant impact on the social-operational alignment relationship. The authors discuss these significant findings in their discussion section Table 3. Control variable results Beta Coefficient Alignment Type

CIO Location

Firm Size

Governance Structure

Firm Age

Industry Certainty

IT Use

IT Investment

Intellectual

-1.47

0.000

0.02

0.001

-0.03

0.03*

-0.004

Operational

-1.72*

0.000

-0.02

-0.01

-0.01

0.02*

0.02

*significant at 0.05

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 CIO Power Influences the Social Alignment and IT-Business Strategic Alignment Relationship

RESULTS Construct Testing The authors analyzed the data using IBM SPSS Statistics Version 22. Construct properties were assessed in terms of reliability (internal consistency), normality (skewness and kurtosis), and validity (convergent and discriminant). While Cronbach’s alpha is one of many ways to perform a reliability analysis (Cronbach & Shavelson, 2004), it is standard in most reliability discussions where a range of 0.70 to 0.80 is considered acceptable (Moore & Benbasat, 1991). The authors assessed the constructs for severe nonnormality issues, where skewness > 2 and kurtosis > 7 indicates nonnormality (Fabrigar, Wegener, MacCallum, & Strahan, 1999). The authors used the Principal Component Analysis extraction method and Varimax with Kaiser Normalization rotation method to analyze convergent and discriminant validity (Hair, Anderson, Tatham, & Black, 1995), where correlations should be smaller than the square root of the Average Variance Extracted (AVE). As shown in Table 4, the results provide evidence of the reliability, normality, and validity of the measures. Table 4. Descriptive statistics and inter-construct correlation matrix Correlation of Constructs

Cron α

Mean

STD

Skewness (error)

Kurtosis (error)

1

(1) Intellectual Alignment

.91

31.29

4.97

-1.61 (.21)

6.3 (.41)

.86

(2) Operational Alignment

.90

23.56

3.50

-.54 (.21)

1.6 (.41)

.62

.87

(3) Social Alignment

.89

15.40

2.78

-.54 (.21)

.40 (.41)

.46

.59

.88

(4) Business Knowledge

.93

40.98

5.79

-.15 (.21)

-.64 (.41)

.34

.44

.40

.84

(5) IT Knowledge

.92

42.23

5.48

-.56 (.21)

.13 (.41)

.34

.39

.42

.69

.87

(6) Prestige Power

.89

87.54

11.64

-.37 (.21)

.16 (.41)

.43

.59

.60

.54

.53

.89

(7) Structural Power

.90

26.07

5.42

-.68 (.21)

.19 (.41)

.25

.36

.46

.43

.41

.57

2

3

4

5

6

7

.86

n = 140; Cron α = Cronbach’s alpha; STD = Standard Deviation; bold diagonal = square root of the Average Variance Extracted (AVE)

Hypothesis Testing The authors used General Linear Modeling (GLM) in SPSS to analyze their model’s main effects (H1a-b) and moderators (H2a-c) using procedures and test statistics recommended in prior research (e.g. Carte & Russell, 2003). The GLM results indicate social alignment is significantly related to intellectual alignment (H1a: β=0.81, p