Conspiracy in the Time of Corona: Automatic detection of Emerging Covid-19 Conspiracy Theories in Social Media and the News

Abstract Rumors and conspiracy theories thrive in environments of low confi- dence and low trust. Consequently, it is not surprising that ones related to the Covid-19 pandemic are proliferating given the lack of scientific consensus on the virus’s spread and containment, or on the long term social and economic ramifications of the pandemic. Among the stories currently circulating are ones suggesting that the 5G telecommunication network activates the virus, that the pandemic is a hoax perpetrated by a global cabal, that the virus is a bio-weapon released deliberately by the Chinese, or that Bill Gates is using it as cover to launch a broad vaccination program to facilitate a global surveillance regime. While some may be quick to dismiss these stories as having little impact on real-world behavior, recent events including the destruction of cell phone towers, racially fueled attacks against Asian Americans, demonstrations espousing resistance to public health orders, and wide-scale defiance of scientifically sound public mandates such as those to wear masks and practice social distancing, countermand such conclusions. Inspired by narrative theory, we crawl social media sites and news reports and, through the application of automated machine-learning methods, discover the underlying narrative frame- works supporting the generation of rumors and conspiracy theories. We show how the various narrative frameworks fueling these stories rely on the alignment of otherwise disparate domains of knowledge, and consider how they attach to the broader reporting on the pandemic. These alignments and attachments, which can be monitored in near real-time, may be useful for identifying areas in the news that are particularly vulnerable to reinterpretation by conspiracy theorists. Understanding the dynamics of storytelling on social media and the narrative frameworks that provide the generative basis for these stories may also be helpful for devising methods to disrupt their spread

Becoming oneself through trials: a framework for identity work research.

This paper aims to offer a new way to think and to study identity work in relation with organizational identity regulation attempts and a deeper understanding of both the several facets of materiality of identity work and the agency/structure interplays in this process. The current growing body of studies about identity work is useful to understand how the self become. However, these studies encounter some limits, especially the lack of contextualization of individuals‘ identity work vis-à-vis broader cultural and social structures and their organizational diffraction or the overemphasis on discourses at the expense of other identity resources, whereof material artefacts and embodied practices. To overcome these limits, this paper intends to offer a framework based on the concept of trials designed by the French sociologist Danilo Martuccelli, which are ‗historical challenges, socially produced, culturally represented, unequally distributed, that individuals must face‘ (Araujo and Martuccelli, 2010:8). I argue that when facing an identity trial, an organizational member measure himself and this can be a useful framework to think identity work and to overtake the limits underlined above. Methodological implications of this perspective – identity trials as analytical lens to study identity work – are further discussed.Identity regulation; Trials; Identity work;

Asian American Feminism’s Alliances with Men: Reading Hisaye Yamamoto’s ‘Seventeen Syllables’ as an Antidraft Tract

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Forging a space for dialogue and negotiation in modern picture books by Melanie Florence

Canadian children’s literature has a relatively short history, which is not surprising because Canadian literature itself is a recent and problematic category, struggling for a definition and identity of its own. The lack of national homogeneity is reflected in both CanLit and its counterpart for children, and rather than being a weakness, the multitude of voices that inhabit the Canadian territory has become its essence and strength. Lately, we have noticed a growing interest and market demand for picture books by Indigenous voices. Melanie Florence is one such voice, and she honours her past by bringing to the fore the inescapable dark weight of collective tragedies such as the residential school system and the disappearance and murder of Aboriginal women and girls, a hidden national crisis. In this article, we aim at getting to know and help readers discover Missing Nimâmâ and Stolen Words by this new picture book writer, who is speaking up and voicing First Nations’ concerns, bringing back memories, but also forging a space for dialogue and negotiation, a space where text and illustration are combined and provide a harmonious whole. In this space, difference and binarisms do not result in dualism, but in highly synergistic relationships.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Permeable borders, possible worlds: history and identity in the novels of Michèle Roberts

Since the publication of her first novel, A Piece of the Night, in 1978, Michele Roberts’ fiction has continually returned to epiphanic moments which elide divisions in time and space. Roberts uses her own experience as a woman of two cultures (English and French), as well as fictionalised histories of other women, to inform narratives in which the borders of history, culture and identity are figured as complex palimpsests. From the quasi-autobiographical narratives in A Piece of the Night and The Visitation (1983), Roberts moved on to rewrite biblical biographies of Mrs Noah (The Book of Mrs Noah, 1987) and Mary Magdalene (The Wild Girl, 1984). In In the Red Kitchen (1990) five female narrators ‘speak’ to each other, creating a textual dialogue in which conclusions are not fixed and time never stands still. Flesh and Blood (1994) offers a series of dovetailed narratives and withholds any sense of closure. With reference to feminist work on time and space, this essay examines the extent to which Roberts’ fiction engages with contemporary debates about the fragmentation and reconstruction of feminine identity. White argues that siting such discussion within narrative fiction offers a logical and accessible location for theorizing the (im)possible

Becoming oneself through trials: a framework for identity work research.

This paper aims to offer a new way to think and to study identity work in relation with organizational identity regulation attempts and a deeper understanding of both the several facets of materiality of identity work and the agency/structure interplays in this process. The current growing body of studies about identity work is useful to understand how the self become. However, these studies encounter some limits, especially the lack of contextualization of individuals' identity work vis-à-vis broader cultural and social structures and their organizational diffraction or the overemphasis on discourses at the expense of other identity resources, whereof material artefacts and embodied practices. To overcome these limits, this paper intends to offer a framework based on the concept of trials designed by the French sociologist Danilo Martuccelli, which are ‗historical challenges, socially produced, culturally represented, unequally distributed, that individuals must face' (Araujo and Martuccelli, 2010:8). I argue that when facing an identity trial, an organizational member measure himself and this can be a useful framework to think identity work and to overtake the limits underlined above. Methodological implications of this perspective - identity trials as analytical lens to study identity work - are further discussed.

Dignity in Decision-Making: Modernity and Social Navigation among Rural French Polynesian Youth

This research examines critical questions about the experiences of youth through the lenses of modernity, subjectivity, and the lifecourse. Growing up in a (post)colonial context of shifting definitions of adulthood, youth from the rural island of Rurutu, French Polynesia must navigate various decisions and transformations with little information to base their future aspirations on. This dissertation identifies dignity as the main motivating factor in youth decision-making, one that is constantly redefined as youth navigate shifting social fields. Dignity, as used here, is a target youth strive for in order to contest feelings of social precarity stemming from unaccommodating education systems and an unstable economic and political situation. Conceptually, the research is framed by Johnson-Hanks’ theory of vital conjunctures, which she defines as ‘the zone of possibility that emerges around specific periods of potential transformation in a life or lives’ (2002, 866). This research expands the examination of vital conjunctures through the use of what I will refer to as “vital conjuncture narratives.” These narratives allow young people to reflect on the turning points they find most important, instead of relying on those established by the anthropologist, thus revealing the frequency and flow of decisions as well as the experiences of transformation. This way of examining youth allows for narrative agency and problematizes the historically linear lifecourse concept of transitioning into adulthood. These narratives show that youth seek dignity through connections to tradition, land, and family, upholding their ties to Rurutu as a foundation upon which to build their lives