The electoral success of the Danish People’s party: Something rotten in the state of Denmark?

Recently the Danes voted in a centre-right coalition led by the liberal party Venstre. Opinions polls had indicated a close race, with a slim majority for the centre-right government (52.3 %). And that was indeed how it turned out. Not too many surprises there. What did come as a surprise to the Danes and, not least, the Danish media was the success of the populist Danish People’s party (DPP) who increased their share of the vote to 21%, up from 12% in the previous general election four years ago. With more than one fifth of the vote, this makes them the largest party in the right-wing bloc and the second largest party overall in Parliament. Even the leader of the Danish People’s party Kristian Thulesen Dahl seemed a little stunned by this enormous success

Fickle Commitment. Fostering political engagement in ‘the flighty world of online activism’

In the wake of increasing disillusion with the potential of alternative online media for providing social movements with a virtual space for self-representation and visibility (Atton, 2002; Downing, 2001; Rodriguez, 2001) activists have been adopting online social media into their media practices. With their popular appeal and multimodal affordances social media such as YouTube and Facebook have reinvigorated hopes for the potential of the internet for providing social movements such as the Global Justice Movement, which is often misrepresented as a homogeneous and in a negative light in the mass media (Gamson and Wolfsfeld, 1993; Juris, 2008), with new possibilities for promoting self-representations to wider publics – beyond the echo chambers of alternative media (Cammaerts, 2007; Sunstein, 2001). In the mediation of institutional politics the increasing use of popular online spaces has brought about the term ’YouTube‐ification of Politics’ (Turnsek and Jankowski, 2008). However, two challenges remain: the first relates to fragmentation – the internet’s properties as a ‘pull-medium’ is argued to merely connect likeminded users (Cammaerts, 2007: 138). The second relates to ’lazy politics’ – the internet’s ephemeral properties are argued to facilitate brief participation in single-issue campaigns that fails to foster political engagement (Fenton, 2008a: 52). This thesis focuses on the latter. It addresses the possibilities of popular online spaces for fostering collective solidarity and political engagement in social movement organisations. It explores how these possibilities are played out in the online arena of popular sites employed by the two London-based social movement organisations: the World Development Movement (WDM) and War on Want. Drawing on the cases of WDM and War on Want, the thesis addresses three dimensions of these practices, exploring (1) rationales for using popular online spaces to promote the SMO agenda; (2) the social movement organisations’ online campaigns; and (3) members’ identifications with the campaigns through discourse analysis and interviews with SMO directors, campaign, outreach and web officers as well as SMO members. It is by analysing how SMOs use different online spaces as locations for strategic framing and the formation of political identities that we can begin to study how the internet may contribute to an agonistic public sphere where also voices of dissent are heard. The thesis is based on Mouffe’s understanding of politics and the political as grounded in discourse but also based on a view of political engagement as conflictual, affective and sometimes irrational (Cammaerts, 2007; Fenton, 2009; Mouffe, 2005). Even though this does not mean that SMOs do not apply rational considerations in planning their strategic agendas for public visibility and legitimacy, it does mean that the study of these considerations need to take into account this dual character of political discourse as both rational and affective (Hajer and Versteeg, 2005). Therefore, we need to consider instrumental and affective issues to understand the relationship between strategic protest and the underlying dynamics of intragroup commitment (Griggs and Howarth, 2002; Snow et al., 1986) – the interconnections between strategy and identity, external resonance and internal commitment. In this way, the democratic potentialities of the internet can be seen as not only related to the ways in which SMOs communicate their agenda but also to potentialities for forging political identities and commitment (Fenton, 2008a)

Political Agency at the Digital Crossroads?

This thematic issue presents the outcome of the 2015 ECREA Communication and Democracy Section Conference “Political Agency in the Digital Age” that was held at the Copenhagen Business School in Denmark. It problematizes changes in the configurations of political agency in the context of digital media. The articles represent a shift from an exclusive focus on political elites to the interrelation between institutionalised politics and political processes in other societal spheres in the field of media and politics research. Political agency as the main notion of the thematic issue draws attention at the (media) practices through which social actors reproduce, reorganise and challenge politics. At the same time, the issue poses questions about the structures—economic, political and social—that allow for, define and also limit these practices. The contributions gathered here suggest an understanding of agency as constituted through the use of knowledge and resources, themselves embedded within structural contexts; at the same time, agency is transformative of the structures within which it is embedded by making use of knowledge and resources in creative and often radical ways. In that context the development of digital media marks a rupture or critical juncture that allows and requires a rethinking of conditions of political agency. Accordingly the contributions critically scrutinize the role of digital media moving beyond celebratory accounts of democratizing potential of digital media. The rethinking of the grammar of political agency is at the heart of this thematic issue

Staging and engaging with media events: A study of the 2014 Eurovision Song Contest

Recent work on media events has questioned their integrative function, arguing that they operate as sites of symbolic struggle between different interest groups. However, relatively few studies have examined the experiences of those who design, organize, and attend such events. This article addresses this lacuna with reference to the biggest nonsporting live TV event in the world, the Eurovision Song Contest. Drawing on data from the 2014 competition in Copenhagen, Denmark, it examines the varying levels of commitment to the event among organizers, fans, broadcasters, and journalists and, in particular, notes how this shaped responses to a controversial incident involving the Russian entry. While those with an ongoing interest, including organizers and fans, tended to emphasize personal narratives and individual freedom of expression, mainstream media and audiences adopted a far more cynical standpoint, privileging geopolitical issues to make the event seem more relevant and compelling

Staging and engaging with media events: A study of the 2014 Eurovision Song Contest

Recent work on media events has questioned their integrative function, arguing that they operate as sites of symbolic struggle between different interest groups. However, relatively few studies have examined the experiences of those who design, organize, and attend such events. This article addresses this lacuna with reference to the biggest nonsporting live TV event in the world, the Eurovision Song Contest. Drawing on data from the 2014 competition in Copenhagen, Denmark, it examines the varying levels of commitment to the event among organizers, fans, broadcasters, and journalists and, in particular, notes how this shaped responses to a controversial incident involving the Russian entry. While those with an ongoing interest, including organizers and fans, tended to emphasize personal narratives and individual freedom of expression, mainstream media and audiences adopted a far more cynical standpoint, privileging geopolitical issues to make the event seem more relevant and compelling

Digital activism: After the hype

Research on digital activism has gained traction in recent years. At the same time, it remains a diverse and open field that lacks a coherent mode of inquiry. For the better or worse, digital activism remains a fuzzy term. In this introduction to a special issue on digital activism, we review current attempts to periodize and historicize digital activism. Although there is growing body of research on digitial activism, many contributions remain limited through their ahistorical approach and the digital universalism that they imply. Based on the contributions to the special issue, we argue for studying digital activisms in a way that traverses a two-dimensional axis of digital technologies and activist practices, striking the balance between context and media-specificity

Media events and cosmopolitan fandom:"Playful nationalism' in the Eurovision Song Contest

Academic literature on media events is increasingly concerned with their global dimensions and the applicability of Dayan and Katz's (1992) theoretical concept in a post-national context. This paper contributes to this debate by exploring the Eurovision Song Contest as a global media event. In particular, we employ a perspective from 'inside the media event', drawing upon empirical material collected during the 2014 Eurovision final in Copenhagen and focusing on the experiences of fans attending the contest. We argue that the ESC as a media event is experienced by its fans as a cosmopolitan space, open and diverse, whereas national belonging is expressed in a playful way tied to the overall visual aesthetics of the contest. However, the bounded and narrow character of participation render this cosmopolitan space rather limited