Dr Akil Awan will be speaking at the United Nations Global Meeting on Preventing Violent Extremism, 14-16 March, in Oslo, Norway. The high level global meeting of 200 government ministers, policymakers, practitioners and civil society partners, will also include speeches from key academics who will lend expert voices to the debate. Akil, as one of the expert voices will focus on Youth radicalization and political violence in the digital era, accounting for the nexus between social media technologies and the emergence of new forms of violent extremism, but also focussing on the positive role youth demographics may contribute to conflict resolution and peace initiatives. He will also discuss his experiences in the development of UN Security Council Resolution 2250, and how the International community might effectively recognise, support and promote youth-led efforts in supporting the implementation of the resolution.
NPCU @ #ISA2016 Atlanta: Russia and Ukraine on the agenda
Research from the New Political Communication Unit will be presented at this year's International Studies Association (ISA) Annual Convention in Atlanta, Georgia, 15-20 March 2016. At a pre-conference workshop on Peace, Conflict & Security on the 15th, Joanna Szostek will present a paper entitled, Universal distrust amidst information overload: News navigation strategies of students in Russia. At the main convention, Ben O'Loughlin is on a roundtable of leading policy practitioners and scholars that follows up last year’s roundtable debate about ‘rapid response public diplomacy’. Ben is also convening a panel on communication and conflict in Ukraine, with a great line-up of presenters:
Strategic Narratives and Ukraine
Thursday, March 17, 8:15 AM - 10:00 AM
Panel TA61: Strategic Narratives and Ukraine
Room 210, Hilton Atlanta
* Chair: Ben O'Loughlin (Royal Holloway, University of London)
* Discussant: Michael McFaul (Stanford University)
Abstract: There is a paradox in strategic narratives of war today. Political actors must try to set out narratives that represent a chain of cause-effect relationships. However, creating consensus around such relationships is becoming more difficult. Leaders must constantly respond to competing voices narrating conflict, making their efforts to shape the narrative both more complex and more necessary. Strategic narratives are partly an exercise in achieving a narrative structure of meaning for events in a context when, because of digital technologies and emergent dynamics, those events are not reducible to a narrative structure of meaning. In addition, any meaning is susceptible to revision when old, hidden images newly emerge. Put plainly, even for Great Powers, producing a compelling strategic narrative of war has never been more difficult. This panel takes the Ukraine crisis as a crucible to examine the role of narratives in meaning-making amid conflict and diplomatic standstill. The papers build a multi-dimensional image of how NATO, Ukrainian and Russian leaders seek to build understandings of the past, present and future of Ukraine for audiences inside Ukraine and beyond. It brings together foreign policy, conflict and insecurity, and communications.
Valentina Feklyunina (Newcastle University): Kyiv's Public Diplomacy: Strategic Narratives of and for Ukraine
Sarah Oates (University of Maryland): Russia's New War of the Words: How the Invasion of Ukraine Redefines Strategic Narrative
Alister Miskimmon and Ben O'Loughlin (Royal Holloway, University of London): Weaponising information: Putin, the West and Competing Strategic Narratives of Ukraine
Laura Roselle (Elon University): Strategic Narratives and Alliances: NATO Responses to Ukraine
Joanna Szostek (Royal Holloway, University of London): News media choice and views of the West in Russia: a study of narrative reception among university students
We hope anyone at the convention can join for these events.
Nick Anstead and Andrew Chadwick to present on new research project on social media and think tank authority at UK Political Studies Association Annual Conference
At the UK PSA Annual Conference on March 23 at Brighton Nick Anstead and Andrew Chadwick will present material from a new research project examining how the authority of think tanks is constructed in social media environments.
More information on the project, which is funded by a grant to Andrew from the British Academy and the Leverhulme Trust can be found here.
More details of the panel at which Andrew and Nick are presenting can be found on the PSA's website here.
Room: (The Grand) Napoleon
Time: Wednesday 23rd March 11:00 - 12:30
March 15, 2016: Phil Howard speaking @newpolcom on Will the “Internet of Things” set us free or lock us up?
Should we fear or welcome the internet’s evolution? The “internet of things” is the rapidly growing network of everyday objects—eyeglasses, cars, thermostats—made smart with sensors and internet addresses. Soon we will live in a pervasive yet invisible network of everyday objects that communicate with one another. In this original and provocative book, Philip N. Howard envisions a new world order emerging from this great transformation in the technologies around us.
Howard calls this new era a Pax Technica. He looks to a future of global stability built upon device networks with immense potential for empowering citizens, making government transparent, and broadening information access. Howard cautions, however, that privacy threats are enormous, as is the potential for social control and political manipulation. Drawing on evidence from around the world, he illustrates how the internet of things can be used to repress and control people. Yet he also demonstrates that if we actively engage with the governments and businesses building the internet of things, we have a chance to build a new kind of internet—and a more open society.
Philip N. Howard is a professor and author of seven books, including Democracy’s Fourth Wave? and The Digital Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy. He is a frequent commentator on the impact of technology on political life, contributing to Slate.com, TheAtlantic.com and other media outlets.
PLACE: FOUNDERS FW101
TIME: 5.15PM
ALL WELCOME!
3 March 2016 Media, Peace & Security workshop @GIGA_Institute Hamburg
On Thursday 3 March 2016 Ben O'Loughlin will lead a workshop on "New and Innovative Methods in Peace and Conflict Research" at the German Institute of Global and Area Studies, Hamburg. The goal of the workshop is to share with GIGA researchers an idea of how O'Loughlin and colleagues have been researching the media-security nexus through a series of funded projects since 2004. Analysing at this nexus has involved integrating ethnographic audience research, media text analysis, interviews with news producers, government security policymakers and military leaders, and various forms of digital and big data analysis. O'Loughlin will talk about the opportunities and pitfalls of piecing together such a holistic understanding of how media and security have become intertwined since the 2003 Iraq War, the war on terror and the more recent rise of ISIS. Practically, how do you research across a global multilingual media ecology? And politically, how can such research help show how media can be used to promote peace and dialogue rather than inflame anxiety and anger?
March 1, 2016: Just brainwashed? Domestic reception of Russia’s strategic narrative about the West—Joanna Szostek
On March 1, 2016 Joanna Szostek will present findings from her research in Moscow exploring how Russians interpret the strategic narratives about their country's role in the world offered by Putin, Lavrov and other leaders, and how interpretation is mediated by their presentation in Russian media. Are Russians being brainwashed or are things slightly more complicated? Below are full details of the talk and Joanna's project.
Time: 5.15pm
Place: FW101
Full abstract:
Over recent years the Russian state media have become notorious for their emotive and partisan coverage of international news. Russian TV channels convey a narrative originating from the Kremlin, which angrily attributes most global problems to Western ‘interference’, ‘aggression’ and ‘double standards’. Negative views of the USA and Europe have meanwhile intensified among the Russian public, a trend widely blamed on the ‘brainwashing’ effect of Kremlin propaganda. Yet the ‘magic bullet’ theory of media messages being wholly and automatically absorbed by a homogeneous audience has long been discredited by communication scholars. Moreover, the majority of Russians now have internet access and are not obliged to rely on state-controlled media for news – alternative sources are only a click away. How, then, should the relationship between news consumption and views of the West in Russia be understood?
This talk will examine the association between news media ‘repertoires’ and support for the Kremlin’s negative narrative about the West, presenting findings from a survey and interviews conducted among Moscow university students. It will demonstrate that research subjects who used at least one state-aligned news source tended to agree more strongly with the Kremlin’s narrative than those who did not use any state-aligned news sources. However, even students who neither used nor trusted the leading Russian state media expressed agreement with much of the Kremlin’s narrative. It will therefore be argued that direct exposure and blind faith in state propaganda are insufficient explanations for sentiments about the West in Russia.
Joanna is currently in the first phase of research in her new Marie-Sklodowska Curie Global Fellowship examining how narratives from Russia are understood and interpreted in Ukraine. Her project website is here. She was previously a postdoctoral research at University College London and completed her PhD at the University of Oxford.
New article in the Journal of Communication by Cristian Vaccari, Andrew Chadwick, and Ben O'Loughlin
Cristian Vaccari, Andrew Chadwick and Ben O'Loughlin have a new article in the Journal of Communication
Cristian Vaccari, Andrew Chadwick, and Ben O'Loughlin have a new article in the Journal of Communication. Titled "Dual Screening the Political: Media Events, Social Media, and Citizen Engagement," the piece is the first from an ongoing project on dual screening and political media events.
This article recently featured in the Washington Post's Monkey Cage section.
Abstract
Dual screening—the complex bundle of practices that involve integrating, and switching across and between, live broadcast media and social media—is now routine for many citizens during important political media events. But do these practices shape political engagement, and if so, why? We devised a unique research design combining a large-scale Twitter dataset and a custom-built panel survey focusing on the broadcast party leaders' debates held during the 2014 European Parliament elections in the United Kingdom. We find that relatively active, “lean-forward” practices, such as commenting live on social media as the debate unfolded, and engaging with conversations via Twitter hashtags, have the strongest and most consistent positive associations with political engagement.
Read the article on the Journal of Communication website.
New article in the Routledge Companion to Social Media and Politics by Andrew Chadwick, James Dennis, and Amy Smith
Andrew Chadwick, James Dennis and Amy Smith have a new article in the new Routledge Companion to Social Media and Politics, edited by Axel Bruns, Gunn Enli, Eli Skogerbo, Anders Olof Larsson, and Christian Christensen.
The chapter is entitled "Politics in the Age of Hybrid Media: Power, Systems, and Media Logics."
Andrew Chadwick writes: "With this piece we wanted to write an accessible overview of the hybrid media system approach and introduce readers to some of the very recent research in this area. So if you’re looking for a chapter-length piece for use in your teaching, this might fit the bill."
"In our chapter we discuss how the hybrid media system approach sheds light on recent developments in three centrally important fields of political communication: news and journalism, election campaigning, and engagement and mobilization. We briefly set out some key themes and empirical developments in these three areas. We then review a range of examples from the emerging body of research that draws upon the hybrid media system approach to make sense of today’s increasingly dynamic and volatile political communication environment."
Learn more about the book here.
Download a final pre-typeset version of the chapter here.
Andrew Chadwick is Professor of Political Science and Co-Director of the New Political Communication Unit at Royal Holloway, University of London. James Dennis is a Postdoctoral Research Assistant and Amy Smith is a PhD candidate in the New Political Communication Unit.
February 24, 2016. O'Loughlin on narratives as a route to global order @SOAS
Ben O'Loughlin presented some of his latest research with Alister Miskimmon on strategic narratives at the Centre for Media Studies research seminar at SOAS on February 24, 2016. Please find the title and details of the talk below.
Strategic Narratives and Power Transition: Communicating our Way to a Peaceful Order?
Historically, the transition of power from one hegemon to another has involved an all-out war in the international system. Britain acquired primacy, challenged then by Germany, who in turn was overcome by the US, and now there is a surge in speculation about a post-US order; power transition theory, that underpins conventionalist realist IR and therefore Western foreign policy, suggests that when the challenger reaches parity in material power, a war to define the rules of the international system takes place before a new order is institutionalized (Organski, 1958; Gilpin, 1981). But the rise of China, the rise of ‘the rest’, and the emergence of digital and network power all suggest we are entering a new kind of power transition. While the economic (GDP) power of China and the EU surpass the US, neither is challenging the US in a systemic war or seeking to assume hegemony. Instead, international order is increasingly based on competition for recognition in the context of plural narratives. This places communication central to how international order is constituted. Every country and city has a soft power and branding strategy. Price writes of a ‘marketplace for loyalties’. Each country that seeks recognition as a major power has an international broadcaster. In short, public and cultural diplomacy have become integral to the negotiation of identity and recognition in this new kind of power transition. The stakes again are high. Previous power transitions resulted in total war. Can the strategic narratives of the major players align today? Will a communication-based competition cultivate the conditions for a conflict-free power transition?
Iconoclash - new article on images and Islamic State
As part of its Iconoclash season of debate, the European Union's National Institute for Cultures has published a commentary by Ben O'Loughlin about Islamic State's use of visual media.
Iconoclash: It's the Clash, Stupid
From 9/11 to the most treasured temple in Palmyra, Islamist destruction reminds us that we have objects and values we hold as untouchable and inviolable. It also makes us question whether we have a strategy to save them. This iconoclash has cycled through the angry pointing cleric clip, the beheading video, the burning man in a cage gif, the vandalism montage, the full-on terrorist attack. It is a clash through the exchange of icons and images, and each ‘side’ in the war on terror has shown trophies of valuable dead people, objects, targets destroyed or being destroyed, a tit-for-tat of shock and awe. We will match your orange Guantanamo jumpsuit with our orange hostage jumpsuit. Yet if we are to properly respond to this iconoclasm, we must understand why it is happening. It is happening in part because of Islamists’ drive to restore pride and dignity and avenge historical humiliation by creating a game of equals. However, this iconoclash is ultimately driven by geopolitical strategy. For Islamic State, the clash is about winning that game on Islamic State’s terms.