The contemporary faith of innovationism

Peer reviewe

Circulation of conspiracy theories in the attention factory

The article argues that the hybrid media environment contributes to contemporary epistemic contestations. Framing the argument with the historical and social scientific contexts of our present media landscape it discusses the logic governing the content confusion that permeates this landscape in relation to the construction of world views and social reality. Then, it examines the notion of an attention factory. By way of an example of how the attention factory works and how conspiracy theories are circulated, the QAnon phenomenon is presented. Finally, the article considers whether and how aspects of today’s media environment can be considered responsible or a contributory factor to the high public exposure and visibility of conspiracy theories. The article concludes with a brief discussion of some factors that are deterring the spread of conspiracy theories.Peer reviewe

The Attention Apparatus : Conditions and Affordances of News Reporting in Hybrid Media Events of Terrorist Violence

Acts of terrorist violence become repeatedly the focus of amplified attention in Western media. These acts spur hybrid media events where both news media and media users create and share information and interpretations of the event. Large news organizations play an integral role in attracting, steering and regulating attention in hybrid media events of terrorist violence. This article develops a theoretical conceptualization of the news organization as an attention apparatus. We argue that the apparatus consists of two dimensions: First, three conditions constrain the workings of the attention apparatus: perceived audience expectations, professional conditions of journalism and societal responsibilities of journalism. Secondly, there are three temporal affordances through which attention is managed: immediacy, liveness and interruption. We come to these conclusions through empirical research on newsroom practices in terrorism news production at the Finnish Broadcasting Company (Yle). Our data consist of thematic interviews (N = 33) with Yle journalists, producers and content managers as well as newsroom observations (14 days) conducted at Yle News and Current Affairs departments. The data is interpreted through a grounded theory approach. The article highlights how the temporal affordances enable reporting in hybrid media events but also clash with established conditions of news reporting.Peer reviewe

Introduction : epistemic contestations in the hybrid media environment

“Post-truth era” and “fake news” have been the talk of the day for around 10 years now. In our understanding, these terms are used to refer to the contestations of epistemic hierarchies in Western liberal democracies experiencing political shifts toward populist political style and polarization. The contestation takes many forms but is mainly expressed through digital media technologies and related social practices that contribute to the epistemic instability. In this introductory article for the special issue of Epistemic contestations in the hybrid media environment, we argue that the experienced “epistemic crisis” is not only a crisis of epistemic hierarchies and worldviews but also a crisis of knowledge production within epistemic institutions, including the academia. The aim of the special issue is to explore how a multiplicity of competing epistemologies interact and compete in the “post-truth” marketplace of ideas in online popular communication.Peer reviewe

“You Will Never Hear Me Mention His Name” : The (Im)possibility of the Politics of Recognition in Disruptive Hybrid Media Events

This article explores how the present-day disruptive hybrid media events shape the conditions for the politics of recognition in political communication. The article sets off with the premise that disruptive hybrid media events provide a substantial context for the activation of the politics of recognition as a communicative response to violations of the value of human life enforced by terrorist mass violence. The article uses the media coverage and the communication of New Zealand’s prime minister Jacinda Ardern in the aftermath of the Christchurch terrorist attacks as an empirical case study and examines, in particular, how Ardern’s political communication is intertwined with the attention economy and the related communicative capitalism, and how these essentials of hybrid media events weakened her possibilities for the realization of the politics of recognition as a communicative response to the violence, and threatened to reduce her political communication to a battle over attention, reputation, and identity politics with the perpetrator.Peer reviewe

Introduction : Toward Hybrid Media Events of Terrorist Violence

This is an introdcution to a special section in the journal in which we examine terrorism as a media event. The introduction reviews the classic works by Elihu Katz and Daniel and adds our own contemporary extension of their theories. It acknowledges the significance of temporality and related mnemonic patterns (Zelizer, Kraidy, in this introduction); networked, relational territorialities (Kraidy, in this introduction); and the discursive politics applied to categorize the violence in question (Hervik; Cui and Rothenbuhler; Price, in this introduction), but it also suggests a more detailed focus on the hybrid dynamics between actors, platforms, and messages which circulate during violent media events. The authors continue the debate on the complex relationship between media, event, and terror by introducing hybridity as yet another angle to this topical discussion.Peer reviewe