The open constructed public sphere: Aeschylus’ The Suppliant Women in a version by David Greig

This article looks at the ‘public’ ‘place’ of drama in Britain at present by offering an analysis of a contemporary version of an ancient Greek play by Aeschylus, entitled The Suppliant Women, written by David Greig, directed by Ramin Gray, and first performed at the Royal Lyceum Theatre Edinburgh in 2016. Following an agonistic (Chantal Mouffe), rather than a consensual (Jürgen Habermas) model of the public sphere, it argues that under globalisation, three cumulative and interwoven senses of the public sphere, the discursive, the spatial, and the individual and his/her/their relation to a larger form of organisation, despite persisting hegemonic structures that perpetuate their containment, have become undone. This is the kind of unbounded model of public sphere Greig’s version of Aeschylus’ The Suppliant Women seems to suggest by precisely offering undoings of discourses, spaces, and individualisations. In order to frame the first kind of undoing, that is, the unmarking of theatre as contained, the article uses Christopher Balme’s notion of ‘open theatrical public sphere’, and in order to frame the second, that is, the undoing of elements ‘in’ Greig’s version, the article utilises Greig’s concept of ‘constructed space’. The article arrives then at the notion of the open constructed public sphere in relation to The Suppliant Women. By engaging with this porous model of the public sphere, The Suppliant Women enacts a protest against exclusionary, reductive models of exchange and organisation, political engagement, and belonging under globalisation

\u201cI Can Share Politics But I Don\u2019t Discuss It\u201d: Everyday Practices of Political Talk on Facebook

The article explores how a group of young people in Germany, Italy, and the United Kingdom experience and manage informal political talk on Facebook. Based on 60 interviews with 14- to 25-year-olds with diverse interest and participation in politics, it understands political talk as a social achievement dependent on the situational definition, shaped by the perceived imagined audiences, shared expectations, and technological affordances. Results show that young people construct different interactional contexts on Facebook depending on their political experiences, but also on their understanding of the affordances of networked publics as shaped by the social norms of their peer groups. Many youth define Facebook as an unsafe social setting for informal political discussions, thus adhering to a form of \u201cpublicness\u201d aimed at neutralizing conflicts. Others, instead, develop different forms of \u201cpublicness\u201d based on emergent communicative skills that help them manage the uncertainty of social media as interactional contexts

Towards an analytical framework of science communication models

This chapter reviews the discussion in science communication circles of models for public communication of science and technology (PCST). It questions the claim that there has been a large-scale shift from a ‘deficit model’ of communication to a ‘dialogue model’, and it demonstrates the survival of the deficit model along with the ambiguities of that model. Similar discussions in related fields of communication, including the critique of dialogue, are briefly sketched. Outlining the complex circumstances governing approaches to PCST, the author argues that communications models often perceived to be opposed can, in fact, coexist when the choices are made explicit. To aid this process, the author proposes an analytical framework of communication models based on deficit, dialogue and participation, including variations on each

Languages, nations and identities

This article reviews a range of ways in which issues of national identity have been shown to be linked with the topic of language. We suggest that there is scope for development both of the theoretical underpinning to claims made about the nature of these links, and also, in consequence, to the methodological approaches appropriate to empirical investigations of them. Here, we explore the ways in which aspects of the social world such as those summarised above are understood theoretically. The first part of the paper argues that debates about the relationship of languages to forms of social identity, particularly those associated with nationalisms, often make a number of assumptions - about languages, about collectivities and about social agency. The second part interrogates these assumptions and proposes the utility of realist theory in evaluating claims in this area. In the final part of the paper, we outline the methodological implications of our argument

Internet media and the public sphere: The 2007 Australian e-electioneering experience

Internet media have come under increasing examination since the early 1990s within a number of theoretical frameworks, including their use and potential influence in the public sphere of political discourse. Increasing use of internet media was identified in the 2000 and 2004 US presidential elections, with the latter being described as 'a critical turning point'. However, the development of what some call 'new media' or 'social media' based on Web 2.0 internet technology has overtaken many findings of previous research. Some of the most popular Web 2.0-based media currently in use were developed after 2004. These technological changes, coinciding with declining television viewing and newspaper readership, suggest that new forms of internet media need ongoing critical review. This paper analyses findings from a study of internet media use in the 2007 Australian federal election and explores their implications in relation to the public sphere

‘Wannabe Toxic-Free?’ From Precautionary Consumption to Corporeal Citizenship

Ecological citizens are increasingly encouraged to adopt ‘precautionary consumption’ – a set of practices aimed at shielding them from the potential health harms of exposures to everyday toxics. The utility and the effects of precautionary consumption in relation to common chemical exposures are investigated. Precautionary consumption is not only of questionable utility, but is fundamentally misguided as an approach for inspiring antitoxics organizing. The failure of this approach is in part due to its assumption of a naturally bounded, autonomous individual who is able to maintain an impermeable boundary between herself and the environment. Drawing on the work of material feminist theorists, it is argued that Gabrielson and Parady’s notion of corporeal citizenship, an approach that places bodies into a complex web of material, ecological relations entangled with the social, offers several strategic advantages for framing resistance strategies

Political participation in transition: internet memes as a form of political expression in social media

Internet memes have become a popular format for expressing individual political opinions in social media. Based on a quantitative online survey of political Internet meme users from fringe web communities and sharing platforms (n = 482), this study examines the factors related to political expression in Internet memes. The analysis reveals that political Internet meme usage depends on users’ political interest and the intensity of social media prosumption. Political Internet meme usage is also positively related to users’ motivations for political engagement and internal political efficacy. Moreover, the use of Internet memes for the expression of political opinions is related to users’ online and offline political participation. This study represents the first empirical exploration of users who create and share political Internet memes. The results contribute to the body of knowledge on changing and elusive participatory practices in social media and shift the focus from general social media usage to a specific type of content

Digital Civic Engagement and Youth Participation: Hungarian LIS Students’ Perspective of Political Information

Objective. The research seeks to understand, how Hungarian LIS students use social media as an avenue to express their democratic actions and how social media political information affects the youth’s trust and judgement when interacting with their close family and friends online. Methods. The study employed a quantitative approach to determine the social media engagement of the participants with close family and friends. Convenience sampling was applied in this study (Students of Library and Information Science, University, Hungary), and an online questionnaire was sent to all the potential participants (to 197 students). Results. A total of 43% participated in this research. The youth give a high level of trust to their family members and close friends even if they share, post, like, or comment on something that is different from their point-of-view in social media. Moreover, the youth have a low level of judgement towards family and close friends. Conclusions. Political participation among youth is voluntary and engagement with political information in social media is rare/low