FCJManager
FCJ-161 Productive Provocations: Vitriolic Media, Spaces of Protest and Agonistic Outrage in the 2011 England Riots
Anthony McCosker Swinburne University, Faculty of Life and Social Sciences Amelia Johns Deakin University, Centre for Citizenship and Globalisation [Abstract] To act, then, is neither arriving at a scene nor fleeing from it, but actually engaging in its creation. (Isin, 2008: 27) Introduction The intense social upheaval that spread through a number of UK cities in what became known variously as the ‘London riots’, ‘England’s summer of disorder’, or more generally the ‘2011 England riots’, signalled the terrifying speed with which passionate disaffection can turn to uncontained violence. In the aftermath, much investment was made in searches for causes, as governments, scholars and the general public wondered how normally peaceful city streets across the country could come to resemble a war zone. Much of the commentary in the mainstream media reflected traditional ideological debates between the left and right of the political spectrum. Conservative politicians blaming the events on the…
FCJ-155 EVEN WITH CRUISE CONTROL YOU STILL HAVE TO STEER: defining trolling to get things done
Andrew Whelan University of Wollongong [Abstract] This is an article investigating trolling as an observable and reportable phenomenon, and how it comes to be sensible as such to those who describe interactional or discursive forms as trolling. The interest is not so much in what trolling ‘really is’ or what trolling ‘really means’ or what trolling ‘really says about where we are now’. Rather, it is an exploration of what might be the best means by which we can understand how trolling is identified, and what the intertwined moral, cognitive, and intersubjective processes at work in this identification are. What are we even talking about when we’re talking about trolling, and how do we come to understand this? The argument is structured as follows. The first part of the article considers a particular representation of trolling in detail, a famous TV news segment, in terms of relevant literature on deliberative…
FCJ-158 Tits or GTFO: The logics of misogyny on 4chan’s Random – /b/
Vyshali Manivannan Rutgers University [Abstract] Introduction: The adoption of ‘cumdumpster’ On June 15, 2008, a 4channer identified as female using the colloquial portmanteau ‘femanon’, posted an erotic photograph of herself on the Random – /b/ board, and requested advice regarding a recent breakup, a marriage proposal, and whether she could easily commit marital infidelity. She asserted that the marriage would be for love but simultaneously stressed the money and government insurance she would receive by marrying an Air Force man. [1] Six minutes into the thread, moderators began editing the post, transforming the original poster’s (OP) request into an ad hominem self-assassination and banning her for authoring it. Wordfilters specifically tailored to the June 15 post in question altered this seemingly benign request for advice into a paraphilic interest in excrement, animal anthropomorphism, and transsexuals, in addition to demeaning the OP’s potential husband and insurance concerns. Wordfilters are an automated…
FCJ-157 Still ‘Searching for Safety Online’: collective strategies and discursive resistance to trolling and harassment in a feminist network
Frances Shaw University of Sydney [Abstract] ‘Trolling in a feminist forum’ redux The issues of trolling and cyberbullying are often linked in the media (see for example Brockie, 2012, which is emblematic of these discourses). Although both harassers and trolls are present as a problem for feminist blogs, I see trolling and harassment as separate issues. I take a more ambivalent approach to trolling, not assuming that trolling is always harassing, and indeed demarcating harassment as a slightly different issue. In what follows I review both the academic literature on trolling and strategies to deal with the trolls (particularly in feminist discursive contexts), and then review discourses on trolling and moderation in my interviews with participants from Australian feminist blogging networks. My research on feminist blogs in Australia comprised interviews with 20 bloggers from around Australia between the period November 2009 and March 2010. The network that I studied was…
FCJ-160 Politics is Serious Business: Jacques Rancière, Griefing, and the Re-Partitioning of the (Non)Sensical
Steve Holmes. Department of English, George Mason University. [Abstract] Lulzpolitik ‘We do not sleep, we do not eat, and we do not feel remorse. We will tear you apart from outside and in, we have all the time in the world.’ (Anonymous) Trolling is a difficult phenomenon to classify in terms of its political orientation. Some researchers such as John Kelley (2011) suggest that groups like Anonymous can be situated within the anarchist political tradition. Anarchists tend to privilege bottom-up, decentralized, and horizontal networks over top-down state or corporate control (Graeber 2004), and a similar attitude and organizational structure are evident in many of Anonymous’ past activities. Others are more skeptical. E. Gabriella Coleman (2011) notes that trolls’ cyberactivism lacks a singular agenda and a sustained commitment to political coordination with other actors and institutions. Along different lines, Lincoln Dahlberg (2001) has questioned whether trolls can be considered as valid…
FCJ-165 Obama Trolling: Memes, Salutes and an Agonistic Politics in the 2012 Presidential Election
Benjamin Burroughs University of Iowa [Abstract] If the 2008 American Presidential election is known for being the first modern Internet campaign, then perhaps the 2012 American election should be known as the first real social media campaign. While social networking was a major part of the 2008 campaign, with users enacting socio-technical linkages primarily between Youtube and Facebook walls (Robertson, 2010); the increasing pervasiveness of mimetic communication melded with social networking has once again impacted the political landscape. From ‘Big Bird’ to ‘binders full of women’ (and the made-for-meme Obama ‘Bayonets’ line) memes riff in real-time on contemporary politics. What is different about 2012 is the intersection between the technology, the architectural affordances of social networking platforms, and the penetration of a larger trolling culture. Trolling is colloquially understood as a negative behaviour, particularly amongst traditional media, that desires to bully and vilify unsuspecting netizens, all in the name of…
FCJ-156 Hacking the Social: Internet Memes, Identity Antagonism, and the Logic of Lulz.
Ryan M. Milner College of Charleston [Abstract] Violentacrez and the Antagonistic Internet ‘A troll exploits social dynamics like computer hackers exploit security loopholes…’ (Adrian Chen, 2012 October 12) In October 2012, reddit – a popular link aggregation service and public discussion forum – was embroiled in a prominent controversy. Adrian Chen, a journalist for the news site Gawker, had just revealed the ‘offline’ identity of Violentacrez, one of reddit’s ‘most reviled characters but also one if its most beloved users’ (Chen, 2012 October 12). Violentacrez, who Chen calls ‘the biggest troll on the web’, was responsible for reddit pages (called ‘subreddits’) like ‘r/Jailbait’ (sexualised photos of young girls) and ‘r/Creepshots’ (sexualised photos of women taken in public without their consent). Chen accuses Violentacrez of releasing ‘an unending fountain of racism, porn, gore, misogyny, incest, and exotic abominations yet unnamed’ to reddit. To Chen, Violentacrez ‘hacked’ social dynamics with his posts,…
FCJ-153 Multimedia Mixing and Real-time Collaboration: Interview with Sher Doruff about the development and use of KeyWorx, the Translocal and Polyrhythmic Diagrams
Sher Doruff Amsterdam School for the Arts. Andrew Murphie University of New South Wales. Video: Interfacing/Radiotopia/KeyWorx (DEAF03) Andrew Murphie: I am interested in your background, in how you see your own movement through the use of media. Something I find really interesting is your work with the translocal and the collaborative. I’m also interested in why you are thinking about moving this towards a more directly material practice. [1] Sher Doruff: Yes! (laughs) Caught in a transitional vacuum! Would you want a little bit of a history? Is that helpful? Andrew: Yes, that would be fantastic. Sher: I went to art school from ’68 to ’72. I was attracted to what was then emerging, which was conceptual art. But I was unhappy with my art department. So I switched to the philosophy department. In my junior year a new faculty was hired in the art department and they…
FCJ-152 Entertaining the environment: a conversation
Andrew Goodman. Monash University, Melbourne. Erin Manning. Concordia University, Montréal. Andrew: Erin, before we discuss the implications of ‘Entertaining the environment’ [1] with an artwork or event, I thought we could perhaps start with a brief outline of how you arrived at the concept? Erin: I think the concept has been lurking in the sidelines of my practice for some time. It began to take form around questions of interactivity, particularly around technologically innovative art projects that themselves question how art tackles notions of participation. Two issues seemed most salient for me in this turn toward the technological: 1. How do we not become too entranced by the technology itself, bending to its needs—how, as artists, do we not fall prey to feeling as though it is technology that provides the experience. Or, put differently, how do we not fall prey to the idea that it is technology that supplies…
FCJ-150 AffeXity: Performing Affect with Augmented Reality
Susan Kozel. MEDEA and the School of Arts and Communication, Malmö University, Sweden. AffeXity AffeXity is an enquiry into affect in cities, and a-fixity as an urban condition. It is an artistic research project, but really it is a set of overlapping practices: artistic practices of dance improvisation, video shooting, digital image editing and sound composition, combined with the daily practices of moving through a city and using mobile devices. Add to this bundle the applied technical research of developing applications for mobile devices and the practices of writing and reflecting on all of the processes, and you have an unwieldy assemblage. The entire project is animated by explorations of affect. It is in constant motion, exceeding both the artistic direction or conceptual coherence that attempt to structure it. [1] This project opens implications for interaction design: designing affectively and designing for affect are two different things. It is possible…
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