Digital Commons Network^™

Political Commentary In Visual Communication: Kosovo-Serbia Relation, Delfina Ertanowska

UBT International Conference

Political commentary is usually associated with a lively discussion of experts in a TV studio, radio program or in the form of an article and opinion in a newspaper. However, it also appears in visual form in the form of a cartoon, meme or comic book, e.g. Countryball. The peculiarity of the visual form of commenting on the political situation is its versatility, where the recipient can also be the sender of information. Many cartoonist specialize in their chosen form, political or social, and comment on this field. They are professional political experts, but their tool is visual art, not …

Information Literacy: Facilitating Students’ Skills To Navigate Media Bias And Prejudice, Sheliah G. Durham, Noble E. Edmiston

National Youth Advocacy and Resilience Conference

The presenters will provide a brief overview of Information Literacy and the challenge of navigating media bias and propaganda. Hands on presentation will include sample lesson plans and step-by-step suggestions for facilitating students’ critical inquiry skills to evaluate sources and various forms of digital media as they navigate controversial issues.

Norm Diffusion Or Norm Backsliding? A Text Analysis Of Anti-Lgbtq Rhetoric, Christopher Patane, Marc S. Polizzi

Biennial Conference: The Social Practice of Human Rights

How are counter-norms manufactured, and what are their components? Current literature on norm diffusion largely views the process as linearly progressive. In other words, norms progress towards greater inclusion. However, notable cases such as Russian President Vladimir Putin’s controversial use of traditional values in the UN Human Rights Council demonstrates a potential backlash to this progression. Building on our previous case study work of Russian anti-LGBTQ rhetoric and its spread to the United States, in this paper we examine the timing and content of anti-LGBTQ rhetoric using text analysis. This allows us to model the sequencing of messaging and whether …

Portraiture, Patriotism, And Politicking: The Political Effect Of Visual Histories, Emma Williams

Phi Alpha Theta Pacific Northwest Regional Conference

The use of iconography to remember and honor military and political heroes has been in place since cave paintings. John Singleton Copley, Emanuel Leutze, Gilbert Stuart, and John Trumbull all used their talents to honor many of American Founding Fathers. Honored during and after their time, their work gives us a better understanding of what was valued and how these men were identified. The use of material culture allows for more portraiture, and the use of displaying socioeconomic standing. Copley, Leutze, Stuart, and Trumbull all had works used in political propaganda, and manipulation for years after. The images on today’s …

Murdoch Murdoch: A Case Study In Threats To Ontological Security In Far-Right Propaganda, Julian Morein

Capstone Showcase

Adapting the Ethnographic Discourse Analysis method developed by Stanton Wortham and Angela Reyes this thesis traces the language employed in the ethno-nationalist web series Murdoch Murdoch. While not as widely known as other examples of the burgeoning landscape of far-right internet content such as news sites like InfoWars or Brietbart, Murdoch Murdoch can still reveal crucial details about how far right propaganda seeks to radicalize its viewers. This thesis argues that Murdoch Murdoch uses its visual and discursive indexicals to present a near absolute dichotomy between a Positive Self that consists of white ethno-nationalism, and a Negative Other that …

"Your Enemy Is Anyone Who Opposes The Fourteen Words" Murdoch Murdoch: A Case Study In Presentations Of Threats To Ontological Security In Far Right Propaganda, Julian Morein

Capstone Showcase

Adapting the Ethnographic Discourse Analysis method developed by Stanton Wortham and Angela Reyes this thesis traces the language employed in the ethno-nationalist web series Murdoch Murdoch. While not as widely known as other examples of the burgeoning landscape of far-right internet content such as news sites like InfoWars or Brietbart, Murdoch Murdoch can still reveal crucial details about how far right propaganda seeks to radicalize its viewers. This thesis argues that Murdoch Murdoch uses its visual and discursive indexicals to present a near absolute dichotomy between a Positive Self that consists of white ethno-nationalism, and a Negative Other that …

Counter-Diffusion: Does Russian Propaganda Wind Up In America?, Christopher F. Patane, Marc S. Polizzi

Biennial Conference: The Social Practice of Human Rights

Does the norm diffusion process work in reverse? Specifically, does the success of the Russian government in building counternarratives and counternorms to reinforce its authoritarian government mean they have the ability to diminish successful human rights advocacy in the United States? This project examines whether the rhetoric used to justify anti-LGBT policies in Russia are broadcast and adopted by anti-LGBT groups in the United States. In the United States, public support for LGBT civil rights is often cited as a success story in the adoption and diffusion of human rights norms. Often, this is used as evidence of broadening norm …

Inoculating Students Against Digital Media Manipulation In The Algorithmic Age, Robert Berkman

Georgia International Conference on Information Literacy

Propaganda, media manipulation, and bias in the news is not, of course, a new issue. However, in today’s hyper accelerated digital and social information environment, there are novel and more powerful methods being intentionally employed to convince media consumers to place their attention on, click, read/watch and believe content that was created to serve a very specific pre-existing agenda. These actors who create this agenda based news—whether political, commercial, or otherwise—today leverage machine learning, big data, behavioral psychology, knowledge of algorithms, social media user behavior, and networking theory, to created what has come to be rather dramatically called “weaponized” information. …

The Methodology Of Teaching News Literacy For Different Audiences In Russia, Anna Kolchina

First Global News Literacy Conference

This report will review the introduction and adaptation of a news literacy course to the educational and scientific program of the National Research University Higher School of Economics in 2013-2017 as well as additional short-term news literacy workshops for students and teachers from other universities and schools in Russia. It is clear that News Literacy teaching must be tailored to different audiences. This report describes schedules of courses and workshops, examples of cases, trainings, games, and practical tasks developed together with media department professors Anna Kachkayeva and Svetlana Shomova. The issue of news literacy kindled additional interest in the professional …

Tackling ‘Bias’ And Fake Coverage In The Indian Media, Buroshiva Dasgupta

First Global News Literacy Conference

In India, there are a vast number of vernacular newspapers and TV channels in addition to the standard English newspapers and channels. Their strategies for covering news differ from place to place, language to language as well as their political or business “affiliations”. Unfortunately, in recent times most of the media platforms in India have moved away from their ‘objective’ standpoint. To understand or decipher fact from fiction the first method would be to go for a comparative study of the news items and then try to source out their ‘affiliations’ ! both political and business – to place the …

Integrated News Literacy Concepts And Skills In Teaching Mobile Journalism, Nguyet Nguyen, Phuong Hoang

First Global News Literacy Conference

Along with the rapid development of technology infrastructure, Vietnam is witnessing a powerful transformation in media activities. One of the significant changes is the advent of a new media form named mobile journalism. Collecting news from various sources is the most difficult task for journalists writing for the emerging mobile platform. Most of the news will be easily found on social media such as Facebook, Twitter, Zalo, etc. On the one hand, journalists can take advantage of the huge volume of information which is multidimensional and has consistent, timely coverage. However, these sources of news, that often lack transparency, clarity, …

Hollywood, The Media, And The Alteration Of Image In The 1940s, Sean M. Conrad

Seaver College Research And Scholarly Achievement Symposium

I am currently writing a feature-length screenplay entitled Klara based on true events and people surrounding the rise of Nazi Germany and the exile of Jewish-German intellectuals to America during 1933-1945. The narrative is grounded in the work of the European Film Fund (1938-1948), the Paul Kohner Talent Agency, and the various agents of propaganda at work both in Nazi Germany and America during this time period. Through my research I hope to explicate how Jewish-German exile in America influenced not only those exiled, but also the burgeoning American film industry and how the cross-cultural intersection of media propaganda, both …

Walt Disney And The Propaganda Complex: Government Funded Animation And Hollywood Complicity During Wwii, Amanda Cunningham

Graduate Research Symposium (2010 - 2017)

Walt Disney’s work as an animator during World War II had a measurable impact on culture and in the development of government produced messages. It is important to examine this understudied area of Disney’s life and his studio’s efforts to produce wartime training and propaganda films during WWII. Government agencies, including the U.S. Treasury, contracted Disney to produce 32 animated shorts between 1941 and 1945 (Gabler, 2007).

Employing a semiotic approach of cinema, this study focuses on the cartoons The New Spirit (1942), Der Fuehrer’s Face (1943) and Education for Death: The Making of the Nazi (1943). While American wartime …

Dialectic Of/Or Agitation? Rethinking Argumentative Virtues In Proletarian Elocution, Satoru Aonuma

OSSA Conference Archive

This paper explores the possible rapprochement between Marxism and argumentation attempted in Proletarian Elocution, a 1930 Japanese publication. Against a Western Marxist commonplace that “[a]s far as rhetoric is concerned,… a Marxist must be in a certain sense a Platonist” (Eagleton, 1981), the paper discusses how this work seeks to takes advantage of the inquiry and advocacy dimensions of argumentation for the Marxian strategy of “agitprop” and rearticulate it as part of civic virtues.

The Other September 11th: El Mercurio Media Coverage After The Chilean Coup Of 1973, Valeria A. Gurr‐Ovalle

Graduate Research Symposium (2010 - 2017)

This thesis provides an exploratory overview of the role the El Mercurio newspaper played along with the military after the Chilean coup of 1973. The study reviews the contents of the newspaper’s front pages, including their coverage of the events during the coup. The thesis will show how the paper revisited its coverage each year on the September 11th anniversary, beginning with the years dominated by the military government, from 1973 through 1990, and continuing through the transition to democracy, from 1991 through 2007. The primary method used in the course of this examination is a content analysis, which will …