Exploring Social Realities and Identity Struggles through Content Analysis of Dialogues in La Désintégration by Philippe Faucon

This paper delves into the intricate social realities and identity struggles depicted in the film La Désintégration by Philippe Faucon through a meticulous content analysis of dialogues. This study aims to unveil the underlying sociopolitical themes embedded within the characters' dialogues by employing content analysis as the primary methodology. La Désintégration offers a poignant exploration of issues such as cultural and religious identity, socioeconomic marginalisation, and the process of radicalisation. Through a detailed analysis of selected dialogue excerpts, this paper sheds light on the characters' nuanced interactions and internal conflicts. By engaging with the dialogues as narrative devices, this research contributes to a deeper understanding of how banlieue cinema captures and reflects broader societal concerns. The findings extend the existing discourse on banlieue cinema and highlight the significance of dialogue in conveying the intricate web of social complexities in contemporary societies

Combating extremism in a public sphere at risk: platforms' affordances, dilemmas and opportunities of social media campaigns

The spread of social media highlights controversial changes in the public sphere: new opportunities of access and expression in fact go alongside aberrant phenomena of extremist propaganda. In recent years, civil society institutions and bodies have responded to the wave of hatred and violence on social media through online awareness-raising campaigns aimed at combating ideological propaganda and offering alternative narratives to vulnerable individuals. The essay develops a critical reflection on some of these initiatives in view of social media affordances and the communication strategies adopted by promoters. What is the role of social media campaigns in consideration of the public sphere at risk? What are the limits and criticalities for issuers? What are the potential effects on audiences? Starting with a number of case histories, the contribution highlights that issuers often find themselves facing the conservative dilemma between the possibility of using social media strategically and the risk of legitimising extremist organisations that use the same media channels. The study also reveals that awareness-raising messages, developed in the form of a counter-narrative or alternative narrative, can trigger counterproductive actions such as the backfire effect which reinforce, rather than mitigate, the polarisation between individuals, particularly online, and which thereby invalidate the arguments and critical intentions of the campaigns

Combating extremism in a public sphere at risk: platforms' affordances, dilemmas and opportunities of social media campaigns

The spread of social media highlights controversial changes in the public sphere: new opportunities of access and expression in fact go alongside aberrant phenomena of extremist propaganda. In recent years, civil society institutions and bodies have responded to the wave of hatred and violence on social media through online awareness-raising campaigns aimed at combating ideological propaganda and offering alternative narratives to vulnerable individuals. The essay develops a critical reflection on some of these initiatives in view of social media affordances and the communication strategies adopted by promoters. What is the role of social media campaigns in consideration of the public sphere at risk? What are the limits and criticalities for issuers? What are the potential effects on audiences? Starting with a number of case histories, the contribution highlights that issuers often find themselves facing the conservative dilemma between the possibility of using social media strategically and the risk of legitimising extremist organisations that use the same media channels. The study also reveals that awareness-raising messages, developed in the form of a counter-narrative or alternative narrative, can trigger counterproductive actions such as the backfire effect which reinforce, rather than mitigate, the polarisation between individuals, particularly online, and which thereby invalidate the arguments and critical intentions of the campaigns

Interpreting text and image relations in violent extremist discourse: A mixed methods approach for big data analytics

This article presents a mixed methods approach for analysing text and image relations in violent extremist discourse. The approach involves integrating multimodal discourse analysis with data mining and information visualisation, resulting in theoretically informed empirical techniques for automated analysis of text and image relations in large datasets. The approach is illustrated by a study which aims to analyse how violent extremist groups use language and images to legitimise their views, incite violence, and influence recruits in online propaganda materials, and how the images from these materials are re-used in different media platforms in ways that support and resist violent extremism. The approach developed in this article contributes to what promises to be one of the key areas of research in the coming decades: namely the interdisciplinary study of big (digital) datasets of human discourse, and the implications of this for terrorism analysis and research

Lament, Poetic Prayer, Petition, and Protest: Community Choirs and Environmental Activism in Australia

Many community choirs sing simply for the love of music or for fun. Others sing as an expression of identity or are driven by philosophical and political constructs. Some choirs follow the tradition of utilizing singing and song as protest. Within this latter cohort, choirs have emerged that are committed to sustaining environmental activism. This article will broadly consider the context for the alliance of community music and political activism and its expression in Australia. A comparative analysis of two community choirs that engage in environmental activism will then be provided, followed by some concluding remarks on that confluence.De nombreux choeurs communautaires chantent simplement pour l’amour de la musique ou pour le plaisir. D’autres chantent pour exprimer leur identité ou sont mus par des motifs philosophiques ou politiques. Certains choeurs suivent la tradition qui consiste à utiliser la chanson et le chant comme moyen de protester. Parmi ces derniers sont apparus certains choeurs qui se vouent à soutenir l’activisme environnemental. Cet article examine sous un angle large le contexte de l’alliance de la musique communautaire et de l’activisme politique, ainsi que son expression en Australie. Nous présentons une analyse comparée de deux choeurs communautaires qui se sont engagés dans l’activisme environnemental, analyse suivie en conclusion de quelques remarques au sujet de cette convergence

Report on the Second International Workshop on Narrative Extraction from Texts (Text2Story 2019)

The Second International Workshop on Narrative Extraction from Texts (Text2Story’19 [http://text2story19.inesctec.pt/]) was held on the 14th of April 2019, in conjunction with the 41st European Conference on Information Retrieval (ECIR 2019) in Cologne, Germany. The workshop provided a platform for researchers in IR, NLP, and design and visualization to come together and share the recent advances in extraction and formal representation of narratives. The workshop consisted of two invited talks, ten research paper presentations, and a poster and demo session. The proceedings of the workshop are available online at http://ceur-ws.org/Vol-2342/info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

The dark side of narrative empathy : a narrative persuasion perspective on whether fiction reading can lead to antisocial beliefs and attitudes.

Studies about the narrative impact of fiction reading often focus on the benefits of this entertainment experience. These accounts of benefits often involve a mostly positive association of fiction reading with the ethical development of readers through the cultivation of their empathic skills (Nussbaum, 1990). However, the history of novel reading offers a contrary view that emphasises the ‘corrupting powers’ of narrative engagement. While the proposal of benefits has attracted empirical attention, the second is not as equally and systematically assessed. Thereby, the question of whether fiction reading can influence antisocial outcomes on readers remains weakly investigated (Igartua & Barrios, 2012). It is therefore the objective of this dissertation to identify the working mechanisms that may influence beliefs and attitudes such as prejudicial radicalisation and cynicism in readers. By drawing on recent evidence and theories from media psychology and narrative persuasion research, a qualitative analysis based on close reading of three novels was applied. This application offers a new method that is based on literary analysis, new because most studies assess narrative persuasion following quantitative measures. The approach involves applying theories of narrative transportation (Green & Brock, 2000), empathic identification (Keen, 2007; Cohen, 2001), and moral disengagement (Raney, 2004) to demonstrate how the selected novels can reduce readers’ critical and moral scrutiny to minimise resistance to their persuasiveness (Moyer-Gusé, 2008; Ratcliff & Sun, 2020). The main finding that may facilitate the occurrence of antisocial attitudes via these mechanism involves directing readers’ empathy towards immoral protagonists who internally focalize their narratives, obscuring their moral transgressions, and depersonalizing their victims. This also involves the manipulation of textual techniques such as point of view, imagery, and foregrounding style. With these findings, the thesis contributes to the scholarly literature on narrative impact by foregrounding the negative aspects of empathic identification and narrative transportation that are sometimes acknowledged, but not as extensively examined.Studies about the narrative impact of fiction reading often focus on the benefits of this entertainment experience. These accounts of benefits often involve a mostly positive association of fiction reading with the ethical development of readers through the cultivation of their empathic skills (Nussbaum, 1990). However, the history of novel reading offers a contrary view that emphasises the ‘corrupting powers’ of narrative engagement. While the proposal of benefits has attracted empirical attention, the second is not as equally and systematically assessed. Thereby, the question of whether fiction reading can influence antisocial outcomes on readers remains weakly investigated (Igartua & Barrios, 2012). It is therefore the objective of this dissertation to identify the working mechanisms that may influence beliefs and attitudes such as prejudicial radicalisation and cynicism in readers. By drawing on recent evidence and theories from media psychology and narrative persuasion research, a qualitative analysis based on close reading of three novels was applied. This application offers a new method that is based on literary analysis, new because most studies assess narrative persuasion following quantitative measures. The approach involves applying theories of narrative transportation (Green & Brock, 2000), empathic identification (Keen, 2007; Cohen, 2001), and moral disengagement (Raney, 2004) to demonstrate how the selected novels can reduce readers’ critical and moral scrutiny to minimise resistance to their persuasiveness (Moyer-Gusé, 2008; Ratcliff & Sun, 2020). The main finding that may facilitate the occurrence of antisocial attitudes via these mechanism involves directing readers’ empathy towards immoral protagonists who internally focalize their narratives, obscuring their moral transgressions, and depersonalizing their victims. This also involves the manipulation of textual techniques such as point of view, imagery, and foregrounding style. With these findings, the thesis contributes to the scholarly literature on narrative impact by foregrounding the negative aspects of empathic identification and narrative transportation that are sometimes acknowledged, but not as extensively examined