Programme: accepted abstracts

Abstract ID: 1428

Part of Session 141: Taking over the squares (Other abstracts in this session)

Re-Occupy the Squares: Mediatized Protest Against Right-Wing Movements in the City

Authors: Dang-Anh, Mark; Eble, Michael
Submitted by: Dang-Anh, Mark (Universität Bonn, Germany)

Based on the concept of Mediatization, it is assumed that discursive practices change by the use of particular media (Frank-Job 2010). Especially digital media is regarded as facilitating political participation (Van Aelst/Walgrave 2004) by increasing speed, access and mobility. Our assumption is, that the mobile use of Twitter within protests enables the organization of collective action leading to the occupation of public places by the use of specific media-inherent functions (Twitter-practices) in combination with linguistic practices, most notably geo-referencing. The study thus aims at emphasizing specific mediatized political discourse practices by means of medial and linguistic evidence.

The corpus researched consists of tweets that are collected within the context of demonstrations in Dresden/Germany in February 2012 on occasion of the annual commemoration of the Dresden bombardment in 1944. Since about ten years, extreme right-wingers march through the city at this date and counter-demonstrations occur as forms of protest against this occupation of civic space. While the researched movements are not genuinely new ones, participant numbers have risen to thousands recently and communication strategies have changed significantly by the use of mobile media.

As pre-study data from 2011 demonstrations indicates, both groups use specific hashtags as contextualization clues (Cook-Gumperz/Gumperz 1976), thus create intertextuality and consequently use Twitter as a tool for the practices of coherent spatial organizing and mobilizing, especially in confusing street protest situations. Empirical analysis is based on a mixed-methods-approach. Tweets are analyzed in a qualitative content analysis in order to identify patterns of strategies of mediatized protest communication, with special regards to the construction of place. In addition, we quantitatively code Twitter-practices: hashtagging, retweeting, hyperlinking, and addressing/mentioning. By annotating linguistic geo-references and mapping them, it is possible to (visually) highlight the intersection between the virtual public space created by ad-hoc-publics in the Twittersphere (Bruns/Burgess 2011) and the occupation of physical space in the city. Triangulating linguistic spatial information with Twitter-practices sheds light on both interpersonal and discursive references in order to spontaneously organize change of locations.

The study focuses on the innovative use of language in mobile media in the context of local movements clashing in the city. It thus might enrich the discussion about new discursive protest practices opening up an interdisciplinary perspective at the intersection of linguistics and media studies.

References:

Bruns, A./Burgess, J. (2011): The Use of Twitter Hashtags in the Formation of Ad Hoc Publics. Paper presented at the ECPR conference, Reykjavik, 25-27 August 2011.

Cook-Gumperz, J./Gumperz, J. (1976): Context in Children's Speech. In: Papers on Language and Context (Working Paper 46). Berkeley: Univ. of California.

Frank-Job, B. (2010): Medienwandel und der Wandel von Diskurstraditionen. In: Sutter, T./Mehler, A. (eds.): Medienwandel als Wandel von Interaktionsformen. Wiesbaden: VS Verlag, pp. 27–45.

Van Aelst,P./Walgrave,S. (2004): New media, new movements? The role of the internet in shaping the 'anti-globalization' movement. In: Van De Donk,W./Loader,B.D./Nixon,B.D./Rucht,D. (eds.): Cyberprotest. New Media, Citizens and Social Movements. London/New York: Routledge, pp. 97–122.

Sociolinguistics Symposium 19

Programme: accepted abstracts

Re-Occupy the Squares: Mediatized Protest Against Right-Wing Movements in the City