Digital Death and Spectacular Death Sumiala, Johanna; Jacobsen, Michael Hviid
Social sciences,
02/2024, Letnik:
13, Številka:
2
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Odprti dostop
Throughout human history, individuals, communities and societies have always had to confront and tackle the problem of death. Consequently, death remains a topic of social scientific relevance, ...highlighting the need for its study and for theorising around it. This article analyses the development of the social scientific study of death and dying, taking inspiration from Philippe Ariès’s historical stages to discuss the recent developments in the field, namely the study of digital death. The article begins with a discussion of the visibility of death in modern society in the context of spectacular death. The analysis emphasises its four dimensions: mediatisation, commercialisation, re-ritualisation and the revolution in end-of-life care. The article moves on to discuss the emergence of digital death as the current stage and reflects on its similarities to spectacular death and its transformation of public imaginaries around death in contemporary society. The article concludes with a reflection on future developments in the field, specifically the emergence and study of artificial intelligence (AI) in digitalised death culture.
This article investigates the ritual work in terrorist news events, using the Berlin truck attack as a case in point. The article connects with the larger cluster of anthropologically inspired ...communication research on media events as public rituals in news media and applies digital media ethnography as its method. Fieldwork is conducted in 15 online news sites. The article identifies three key phases through which the ritual work was carried out: the rupture in the news event (ritualised as the strike), the liminal phase (ritualised as the manhunt) and the reconstitution of order following the attack (ritualised as the mourning). The article concludes with an interpretation of the broader social implications of the ritual work and related naturalisation of ‘friends’ and ‘foes’ and suggests that this type of ritual work contributes to a collective mythologisation of terrorism in news media and society at large.
Artikkeli analysoi salaliittoteorioita populistisena kuvitteluna suomenkielisen sosiaalisen median keskusteluissa pandemiavuonna 2020–2021. Artikkelissa populismia tarkastellaan poliittisena ...genrenä, joka tuottaa ja ylläpitää tietynlaista poliittista kuvittelua ja tunnestruktuuria sekä perustuu eräänlaiseen ideologiseen maailmankuvaan, uskomuksiin sekä käsitykseen todellisuudesta. Tutkimusote on monimenetelmällinen ja yhdistää verkkoetnografista havainnointia ja laskennallisia menetelmiä. Aineisto on koottu Telegramista, Twitteristä sekä kahdelta herätyskristilliseltä verkkosivustolta neljästä uutistapahtumasta maaliskuun 2020 ja maaliskuun 2021 välillä.
Artikkeli analysoi salaliittoteorioita populistisena kuvitteluna suomenkielisen sosiaalisen median keskusteluissa pandemiavuonna 2020–2021. Artikkelissa populismia tarkastellaan poliittisena ...genrenä, joka tuottaa ja ylläpitää tietynlaista poliittista kuvittelua ja tunnestruktuuria sekä perustuu eräänlaiseen ideologiseen maailmankuvaan, uskomuksiin sekä käsitykseen todellisuudesta. Tutkimusote on monimenetelmällinen ja yhdistää verkkoetnografista havainnointia ja laskennallisia menetelmiä. Aineisto on koottu Telegramista, Twitteristä sekä kahdelta herätyskristilliseltä verkkosivustolta neljästä uutistapahtumasta maaliskuun 2020 ja maaliskuun 2021 välillä.
The updating of media event theory for the digital age has been underway for some time, and several researchers have pointed out that the complexity of the hybrid media environment poses a challenge ...when it comes to understanding how media events in the present digital context ritually create belonging. In this article, we examine violent media events as hybrid phenomena and discuss their ritual workings in the present digital media environment. We apply what we call the 5 A’s – actors, affordances, attention, affect, and acceleration – as key analytical tools to empirically study such events. We also develop the concept of hybridity in relation to media events by proposing three auxiliary A’s: assemblage, amplification, and accumulation. Building on our earlier work, we call for more analytical consideration of the ambivalences in the ritual constructions of belonging (and non-belonging) in such violent events. We use the Christchurch massacre of 2019 as a case study to illustrate these conceptual developments.
Charlie Hebdo, 2015 Sumiala, Johanna; Tikka, Minttu; Valaskivi, Katja
Media, war & conflict,
06/2019, Letnik:
12, Številka:
2
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Odprti dostop
In this article, the authors examine the intensification of liveness and its effects in the Charlie Hebdo attacks that took place in Paris in January 2015. In their investigation they first re-visit ...the existing theoretical literature on media, event and time, and discuss in particular the relationship between media events and the idea of liveness. They then move on to the empirical analysis of the Charlie Hebdo attacks and demonstrate the aspects of intensified liveness in the circulation of selected tweets. The analysis is based on a multi-method approach developed for the empirical study of hybrid media events. In conclusion, the authors argue that the liveness, experienced and carried out simultaneously on multiple platforms, favours stereotypical and immediate interpretations when it comes to making sense of the incidents unfolding before the eyes of global audiences. In this condition, incidents are interpreted 'en direct', but within the framework of older mnemonic schemes and mythologization of certain positions (e.g. victims, villains, heroes) in the narrative. This condition, they claim, further accelerates the conflict between the different participants that took part in the event.
This article suggests a new methodological model for the study of hybrid media events with global appeal. This model, developed in the project on the 2015 Charlie Hebdo attacks in Paris, was created ...specifically for researching digital media—and in particular, Twitter. The article is structured as follows. Firstly, the methodological scope is discussed against the theoretical context, e.g. the theory of media events. In the theoretical discussion, special emphasis is given to i) disruptive, upsetting, or disintegrative media events and hybrid media events and ii) the conditions of today’s heterogeneous and globalised media communication landscape. Secondly, the article introduces a multi-method approach developed for the analysis of hybrid media events. In this model, computational social science—namely, automated content analysis (ACA) and social network analytics (SNA)—are combined with a qualitative approach—specifically, digital ethnography. The article outlines three key phases for research in which the interplay between quantitative and qualitative approaches is played out. In the first phase, preliminary digital ethnography is applied to provide the outline of the event. In the second phase, quantitative social network analytics are applied to construct the digital field for research. In this phase, it is necessary to map a) what is circulating on the websites and b) where this circulation takes place. The third and final phase applies a qualitative approach and digital ethnography to provide a more nuanced, in-depth interpretation of what (substance/content) is circulating and how this material connects with the ‘where’ in the digital landscape, hence constituting links and connections in the hybrid media landscape. In conclusion, the article reflects on how this multi-method approach contributes to understanding the workings of today’s hybrid media events: how they create and maintain symbolic battles over certain imagined constructs of social imaginaries of solidarity, belonging, contestation, and exclusion, a topic of core value for the theory of media events.
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