International Journal of Digital Television - Volume 8, Issue 3, 2017

This article considers how the technological changes have facilitated the establishment of a sense of ‘ressentiment’ in modern political cultures. This is the unease created when someone believes they have been injured by another but feel impotent to act. While technologies have developed at a startling rate, society’s ability to deal with them has not kept up. Consequently, neo-liberal economic principles and political narratives have distorted the culture practices as a range of agencies (political, economic, technology) have become elitist and self-serving. Individual forms of identity are undermined by a surfeit of information in which online gatekeepers (Google, Facebook, Twitter) use algorithms that synthesize real with virtual emotional values. These distortions are now being made tangible with the election of right-wing populists such as Donald Trump and the genuine sense of popular dislocation that contributed to the UK Brexit vote.

This article offers insights into how the storytelling aspects of the Donald Trump presidential campaign of 2016 contributed to the rise of the Trump movement and paved his way to the White House. With 50 Trump speeches being analysed, the study reconstructs the narrative Donald Trump communicated to the target audience on his way to the highest office. Exploring the idea of Donald Trump as a storyteller, the article discusses how the ideology of the Trump base was constructed and an eagerness to participate was ignited by the narrative. Methodologically, the article derives the seven principles of political storytelling from its theoretical framework and applies them as an analytical frame to the analysis of the narrative structure of the Trump campaign. The seven principles suggest that the political narrative benefits from being targeted, empathic, happy-ending, consistent, well delivered, well communicated and engaging.

Social media represents a space where the more politically engaged can commune around issues and events of importance and exchange views. Often the spaces created, especially when hosted by a partisan or campaign organization, tend to be ideologically homogenous eschewing debate or critique. The UK’s referendum on EU membership represents an opportunity to explore how citizens use social media, in this case Facebook, to express their political views in relation to a controversial and polarizing issue of significant national importance. The data extracted from the public pages of the four most important Leave and Remain campaigns are used to explore the strategies of Leave and Remain campaigns as well as the reactions of subscribers. The data show the Leave campaign the most proactive posters, creating more engaging content and, in turn, gaining an advantage in terms of visibility online. Leave supporters were also more prone to act as cheerleaders for the campaign applauding attacks on Remain leaders and spokespeople and promoting campaign slogans. Remain subscribers similarly endorsed negative messages but were keener to debate the detail behind slogans and critique the ­official campaign strategy and messaging. Endogenous factors relating to the demographic of the supporter groups and the campaign messages, as well as exogenous factors relating to the social norms of behaviour with the pages, are discussed as explanatory factors for the different dynamics observed. Notwithstanding the limitations of big data discourse analysis, we thus suggest the Facebook communities around each campaign page can be seen as microcosms of wider supporter groups and thus we propose that analysis of discourse within social media platforms such as Facebook allow better understanding of wider societal engagement with political communication and the dynamics of contestation that exist around political issues and events.

This article examines the role of the social network services (SNSs) in constructing an online public sphere during a period of political upheaval. From October 2016 to March 2017, Korean politics was scandalized by former President Park Geun-hye’s legal malfeasance. It was revealed in October 2016 that she had shared classified documents with her friend, Ms Choi Soon-Sil, who had used her relationship with the president for her own political gain. The public demanded the president’s resignation, and the SNSs such as Facebook, Twitter and YouTube played a significant role in delivering information about Park Geun-hye’s corruption. The article investigates the social networking sites’ roles in forming an online public sphere. It focuses its attention on the three South Korean television news channels’ Joongang Tongyang Broadcasting Company (JTBC), the Munhwa Broadcasting Corporation (MBC) and the Korean Broadcasting System (KBS) Facebook accounts. The article contends that only the JTBC provided a significant platform for online critical engagement during the scandal compared with MBC and KBS.

This article provides an analysis of the US-based Occupy Wall Street movement and its apparently more egalitarian deployment of the Internet. It considers how protest movements have been symbolically mediated through the social media tropes associated with the decentralization of power. However, it is necessary to review the complexities of horizontal social movements, the ambiguities of networked forms of communications and the more individualized types of political discourse that have been associated with ‘lifestyle’ anarchist or alternative groups. Therefore, the online protest paradigm does not simplistically equate with a mythologized equality. Instead, it is necessary to address a more complex series of cultural and material variables that have emerged in the wake of online activity.

Drawing on the approach suggesting that the analysis of social media in relation to democracy should be provided within its own social context, we outline the social media activities adopted by the ruling populist political party in Turkey, namely, the Justice and Development Party (AKP), aimed at reinforcing its political ideology. We also unpack the ‘political online trolling’ as a manifestation of online practices driving the post-truth politics in Turkey. Following the Gezi protests, when social media and, in particular, Twitter gained trust and popularity as a news source due to severe censorship and polarization in the traditional mass media, the AKP adopted an aggressive strategy to attack and destroy all opposition as well as to manipulate public opinion through their political trolling activities. Employing the approach of digital ethnography and drawing on the archive of mass media outputs about the trolling events, we discuss how the ruling party has adopted online political trolling as a strategy, one that is deeply embedded in the political system, politicians and mainstream media. We also explain how trolling practices are facilitated by the coordinated work of these institutions to silence all critical opposing voices, in particular journalists and how they stifle public debate that is grounded in truth and evidence. We have also concluded that the chilling effects of political trolling lead to quitting social media, self-censorship and less participation in public debate of unprotected citizens who are the most vulnerable targets for the trolls. The trolls have targeted the dissent voices not only for criticizing the government publicly, but also to brand them as terrorists and traitors through increasingly polarizing and discriminating language based on nationalist and religious perspectives, which peaked in the aftermath of the 15 July coup attempt and the debates on the presidential regime. Far from condemnation of the trolling activities along with their polarizing and hateful rhetoric, the mainstream culture and public discourse seem to have been taken over by an increasing trolling subculture, which inhibits public debate, discredits the sources of truth, fosters fanaticism and encourages a hate discourse and violence, all of which are undermining democracy.

The importance of the Internet and social media in politics has been demonstrated in previous years, when terms such as ‘Twitter revolution’ and ‘Facebook revolution’ were used repeatedly for several movements, and now new terms such as ‘digital threat’ and ‘digital Jihad’ are being used by many in similar fashion. In the age of the Internet, the advantages often associated with the democratizing effect of the Internet are creating an atmosphere for different users, such as Daesh. Global propaganda is an important part of Daesh’s activities, and radicalization is one of the realities of our era. Although the impact of the Internet and social media on processes of people’s radicalization remains a highly contested subject and has been one of the most controversial topics during the last decade, the main question is whether the Internet is the main factor in the radicalization of civilians, considering that some politicians and pundits have been discussing this issue over the past few years, or it is more of a communication tool, facilitator and catalyst, pushing people towards radicalization. In this article, I discuss two different approaches to the relationship between technology (online activities in different platforms) and radicalization. This article is part of an ongoing research project.

Global Media and National Policies: The Return of the State, Terry Flew, Petros Iosifidis and Jeanette Steemers (eds) (2016)

London: Palgrave Macmillan, 228 pp.,

ISBN: 9781137493941, h/bk, £100