Slideshow activism on Instagram: Constructing the political activist subject

An emerging activist tactic on visual-based social media such as Instagram, slideshow activism adapts the production and consumption of political information to the logic of the platform. In so doing, slideshow activism provides followers with an ideal subject position for civic engagement. By examining a popular slideshow activist Instagram account, we outline the features of this activist tactic and its mobilizing appeal. The qualitative content analysis of a sample of 50 posts reveals that slideshow activism addresses its followers as individuals who are actively staying well-informed on the social justice dimension of a wide range of political issues and are constantly engaged in self-transformation in order to become better citizens. This ideal, we argue, entrenches social justice as a core political value for civic engagement, and recommends a mix of argumentation and personal transformation as the everyday means for individuals to bring about political change. We further explore the consequences of this subject position for citizen engagement with politics

Mediated Grassroots Collective Action: Negotiating Barriers of Digital Activism

While so far social media have been largely constructed as the quintessential tools of collective action and praised for their potential to empower individuals to act as civic agents, this paper foregrounds the tension between expectations created by public discourse and citizens’ own involvement with digital activism. This study adds to an understanding of barriers by examining how they are experienced by participants in mobilizations at the individual level. Looking at how obstacles of digital activism are experienced by citizens reveals the processes through which the structures of digital mediation impose limits over those who depend on them for their organization. By examining three regional Canadian cases, this research discusses the significant barriers mobilizers experience and finds that many of the obstacles organizers face point to an enduring need for a wellorganized, tech-savvy, collaborative network as an organizing body to reflectively handle the challenges posed by digital grassroots civic mobilization

The personalization of engagement: the symbolic construction of social media and grassroots mobilization in Canadian newspapers

This article explores the symbolic construction of civic engagement mediated by social media in Canadian newspapers. The integration of social media in politics has created a discursive opening for reimagining engagement, partly as a result of enthusiastic accounts of the impact of digital technologies upon democracy. By means of a qualitative content analysis of Canadian newspaper articles between 2005 and 2014, we identify several discursive articulations of engagement: First, the articles offer the picture of a wide range of objects of engagement, suggesting a civic body actively involved in governance processes. Second, engagement appears to take place only reactively, after decisions are made. Finally, social media become the new social glue, bringing isolated individuals together and thus enabling them to pressure decision-making institutions. We argue that, collectively, these stories construct engagement as a deeply personal gesture that is nevertheless turned into a communal experience by the affordances of technology. The conclusion unpacks what we deem as the ambiguity at the heart of this discourse, considering its implications for democratic politics and suggesting avenues for the further monitoring of the technologically enabled personalization of engagement

The ideological work of the daily visual representations of nations

This paper explores the ideological work performed by the inconspicuous flagging of the nation across four locations: Bucharest (Romania), Rotterdam (the Netherlands), Calgary (Canada) and Madrid (Spain). Using data collected between 2012 and 2016, the paper maps the use of the nation in outdoor signage across different urban landscapes. This mundane flagging of diverse nations performs a triple function: it reproduces the nation as a universal epistemic category, it entrenches mobility within the imaginary of contemporary urban life and it sanitises select mobilities and the power dynamics producing them. The ongoing use of the nation by differe

Selling brands while staying “Authentic”: The professionalization of Instagram influencers

While Instagram influencers may have started out as ordinary people documenting their everyday life through a stream of photographs, they are increasingly emerging as an intermediary between advertisers and consumers. This study examines the professionalization of Instagram influencers, combining data from 11 interviews with travel influencers with a visual and textual content analysis of their 12 most recent Instagram posts (N = 132). We show how the increasing professionalization of the influencer steers their relationship with their audience, the advertisers they work with, and the platform Instagram. We argue that, for the Instagram influencer to be perceived as successful, they need to negotiate a tension: they need to appear authentic, yet also approach their followers in a strategic way to remain appealing to advertisers. Although Instagram influencers are seen as more trustworthy than traditional forms of advertising, this tension ultimately leads to a standardization of the content shared by influencers

Voice and Listening in Social Media Facilitated Activist Collectives

This paper examines the articulation of Canadian civic culture from below. Focusing on digitally mediated grassroots mobilizations, it asks how citizens construct and discursively deploy voice and listening as civic values. The paper draws from three empirical cases: the 2014 mobilization of parents during the teachers’ strike in British Columbia; the 2015 citizen mobilizations in support of Syrian refugees; and the 2016 sit-in protest outside the Toronto Police headquarters. Citizens participating in these initiatives were keen to “speak up,” establishing voice as a civic value. Yet, this is not accompanied by equal attention to the role of listening. This invites simplistic takes to citizen participation, leaving it vulnerable to populist hijackings

Developing the ‘Control Imaginary’: TIME Magazine’s Symbolic Construction of Digital Technologies

This article discusses the shifting representations of control over and via ICTs on the cover of TIME magazine (1950‒2017). We focus on the subject positions and forms of agency the magazine ascribes to different social actors and on the solutions advanced for remaining in control of technological change. Informed by discourse analysis methodology, our analysis of the corpus (N = 81 covers) identifies four central themes: the configuration of the relationship between humanity and technology; the construction of youth as both potentially powerful and vulnerable “others”; the identification of technocapitalists and creative visionaries as the ultimately powerful drivers of innovation and progress; and the disruptive effects of virtuality. Through these discourses, the magazine legitimizes an entrepreneurial approach to ICTs as the means to retain agency against the “inevitable” technological development, while also positioning the technocapitalist elite as the drivers of our common future

Dislocations and Grain Boundaries in Two-Dimensional Boron Nitride

A new dislocation structure-square-octagon pair (4|8) is discovered in two-dimensional boron nitride (h-BN), via first-principles calculations. It has lower energy than corresponding pentagon-heptagon pairs (5|7), which contain unfavorable homo-elemental bonds. Based on the structures of dislocations, grain boundaries (GB) in BN are investigated. Depending on the tilt angle of grains, GB can be either polar (B-rich or N-rich), constituted by 5|7s, or un-polar, composed of 4|8s. The polar GBs carry net charges, positive at B-rich and negative at N-rich ones. In contrast to GBs in graphene which generally impede the electronic transport, polar GBs have smaller bandgap compared to perfect BN, which may suggest interesting electronic and optic applications

The influence of size effect on the electronic and elastic properties of diamond films with nanometer thickness

The atomic structure and physical properties of few-layered oriented diamond nanocrystals (diamanes), covered by hydrogen atoms from both sides are studied using electronic band structure calculations. It was shown that energy stability linear increases upon increasing of the thickness of proposed structures. All 2D carbon films display direct dielectric band gaps with nonlinear quantum confinement response upon the thickness. Elastic properties of diamanes reveal complex dependence upon increasing of the number of layers. All theoretical results were compared with available experimental data.Comment: 16 pages, 5 figures, 3 table