Snurb's blog

And we end this very diverse and, given the weather, frankly very draining IAMCR 2023 with a closing keynote by Annika Egan Sjölander. She begins by reminding us of the theme of this conference, ‘Inhabiting the Planet’: how does media and communication scholarship contribute to this aim, especially in what we, and future generations of scholars, do next? How do we work towards the common good?

Annika is a scholar from Sweden, but also works in the Global South; she is based in a marginal region, in the Arctic Circle, and on Sápmi land, in a region which climate change is already transforming – all this provides context and positionality to her talk. The focus of her work is on the role that communication has in transforming our societies to become more sustainable. But ‘communication’ itself is an empty signifier: it has multiple unfixed meanings, just like ‘justice’ or ‘democracy’ and, indeed, ‘sustainability’.

And the final speaker in this IAMCR 2023 session is Liang Lan, whose focus is on the use of moral language in climate change debate on Twitter. Such debates have long been politicised and polarised in countries like the US; the present study is interested in the different roles that participants in these debates in Twitter may assume.

The next speaker in this IAMCR 2023 session is Marko M. Skoric, whose interest is in incidental exposure to political information on social media. The present study is especially interested in exposure to people of different religions, from the perspective of Pakistani users. Such exposure is also critical to the avoidance of ‘echo chambers’, of course – but the context of such exposure also matters, of course: for instance with respect to the (in)civility of the content that is encountered.

The next speaker in this IAMCR 2023 session is Justin Martin, whose interest is in news junkies – or people with a ‘need for orientation’ (NFO), which has traditionally been measured in a simplistic, US-centric way as interest in and uncertainty about the choices in US presidential elections. The present study replaces this with a new NFO scale that better explores news junkies’ intrinsic need for orientation (INFO).

The next speaker in this IAMCR 2023 session is Sara Monteiro Machado, whose focus is on social media use and youth political participation in Portugal. She notes that political science has failed to keep up with emerging forms of political participation in the current environment; such forms traditionally include institutionalised participation, protests, and volunteering, but now also consumerist participation, digital political participation, and lifestyle politics.

The final paper session at IAMCR 2023 starts with Julia Gabriella Nogueira Munhoz, whose focus is on the culture of sexism directed at women in politics in Mato Grosso, Brazil, which is also part of a broader pattern in Brazilian politics. Mato Grosso has a conservative profile and the highest femicide rate in Brazil.

The final paper in this short session at IAMCR 2023 is Sofia P. Caldeira, who is exploring the imaginaries of feminist activism on Instagram. Digital and social media platforms are essential for everyday encounters with feminism, which exists on these platforms side-by-side with interpersonal and entertainment uses. Instagram is one of the most popular social media platforms, with a particular emphasis on visual aesthetics and its own cultures of use – what feminist imaginaries does it enable and support?

The second presenter in this session at IAMCR 2023 is Runxuan Tua, and her focus is on gender and body metaphors in digital fitness platforms in China. Such platforms have become immensely popular in China in recent times, but also contribute to the disciplining of beauty standards and the commodification of fitness. This can be read through a Foucauldian paradigm of discipline.

The second session this morning at IAMCR 2023 is on cyberactivism, and starts with Dongwook Song. His interest is in the financialisation of daily life through stock market apps. He notes that Korean young adults were in a stressed social situation before the pandemic, and after COVID-19 there was a boom in investments, cryptocurrency and stock market speculation, and other financial activities in order to get ahead – everyday life has been financialised.

And the final speaker in this IAMCR 2023 session is Madhavi Ravikumar, whose interest is in the way the Indian press frames environmental issues. This is against the backdrop of the severe air pollution crisis in New Delhi, and the present study builds on interviews with Indian journalists.