DigiPol Seminars – Semester 2
How did the Trump administration capture one of the world’s most important public service news networks?
Dr Kate Wright, University of Edinburgh
Wednesday 21st February 2024
G01, 19 Abercromby Square at 4pm.
Capturing News, Capturing Democracy (OUP, in print) by Kate Wright, Martin Scott and Mel Bunce uses rare interviews and an analysis of private correspondence and internal documents, to explain why and how Voice of America (VOA) became intensely politicized from 2020–2021. It analyzes how political appointees, White House officials and right-wing media influenced VOA—changing its reporting of the Black Lives Matter movement, the presidential election, and its contested aftermath. Trump allies took control of the network’s financial and human resources, dominated its governance structures, and instigated intimidating investigations into journalistic “bias.” Some journalists tried to resist, but others were too exhausted and fearful, particularly those in the organization’s language services. The book puts these events in historical and international context—and develops a new analytical framework for understanding government capture and its connection to broader processes of democratic backsliding. It argues that there is currently too little to prevent a future US administration with authoritarian tendencies from capturing VOA and converting it into a major domestic news organization. For this reason, it uses empirical research to recommend practical ways of protecting the network and other international public service media better in future.
About the author: Kate Wright is an Associate Professor of Media and Communications at the University of Edinburgh, and the Academic Lead of its 50-member Media and Communications Research Cluster. She researches the moral economies of international news, focusing on the ways in which journalists negotiate tensions between notions of “the good” and the changing political and economic contexts of their work. This has included publishing on state-funded media, foundation-funded media, and NGO-supported media. She sits on the expert research assessment panel on "Media in the Digital Age" for the international Forum on Information and Democracy, as well as on the editorial boards of two top-ranking communications journals, Digital Journalism and the International Journal of Press/Politics.
LGBTQ+ young people’s digital citizenship in the Asia Pacific
Dr Niki Cheong, King’s College London
Wednesday 6th March 2024
G01, 19 Abercromby Square at 4pm.
How do young LGBTQ+ young people in the Asia Pacific navigate online spaces and what are some of their needs around issues related to misinformation, harassment and controlling political environments? In this talk, I will share findings from a study which informed a report on the digital resourcing for this demographic of online citizens and recommendations informed in consultation with research participations. I will also include some reflections on the project by the research team, in the context of flows of ‘knowledge’, ‘expertise’ and funds from Global North institutions in relation to predominantly Global South countries as sites of research and ‘beneficiaries’ of resourcing.
About the author: Dr. Niki Cheong is Lecturer in Digital Culture and Society at King’s College London. His research interest sits at the intersection of media, politics and digital culture, with a focus on misinformation and the navigation of problematic (political) information in everyday digital life in Southeast Asia. For his doctoral study on cybertroopers and the online manipulation of political information in Malaysia, Niki was awarded the 2021 Best Dissertation Award by the Association of Internet Researchers. Prior to his academic career, Niki was an editor of the international award-winning digital journalism platform R.AGE, part of Malaysia’s largest English-language newspaper The Star. His newspaper column, The Bangsar Boy, featuring socio-cultural commentary about Malaysia, ran for 11 years, selections from which were published as a book in 2017.
Popular feminism takes the pink pill: the manosphere, the femosphere, and the rise of reactionary feminism.
Dr Jilly Kay, Loughborough University
Wednesday 17th April 2024
G01, 19 Abercromby Square at 4pm.
In recent years, a rich body of scholarship has focussed on the "manosphere": a loose ecology of anti-feminist online communities underpinned by the "red-pill" philosophy. The red-pill worldview is driven by a deep fatalism, even nihilism, about human nature and the "hardwired" basis of inequality; scholars have noted how it has been a propulsive force in the rise of the alt-right, popular misogyny, and the election of Trump and other neoliberal authoritarians. In this talk, I suggest that these reactionary impulses are no longer unique to the manosphere, and that many female-centric communities are now mirroring and reproducing these logics of political fatalism, bio-essentialism, and genetic determinism. I point to the emergence, since 2018, of what I term the "femosphere" - a loose ecology of female-centric online communities which view women as a distinct "sex class" with their own "material interests". Here, the "red pill" philosophy - with its focus on "waking up" to the "brutal truths" of human nature and inequality - is adapted and resignified as the "pink pill". Analysing key case studies, including the 'Female Dating Strategy' community and femcels, I suggest that we can understand the femosphere as part of a reactionary turn in popular feminism. This troubling mutation is also evident in the rise of "dark feminine" influencers on TikTok and YouTube, as well as the rise of "post-liberal" political commentators who self-define as "reactionary feminists". I argue that, like the manosphere, the femosphere contributes to an anti-hope structure of feeling which undermines the possibility for collective feminism, even as it speaks in its name.
About the author: Dr Jilly Kay is Senior Lecturer in Communication and Media at Loughborough University. She has published widely on feminism and popular culture, the gender politics of 'voice', feminism and television, and feminism and anger. Her monograph Gender, Media and Voice: Communicative Injustice and Public Speech was published in 2020. Her current research focuses on the turn to ‘reactionary’, ‘pink-pilled’ and 'post-liberal' feminisms within popular and political culture. She is co-investigator on the project ‘Re-CARE TV: Reality Television, Working Practices and Duties of Care’ (2023-26), within which she leads the work package on reality television participation. She is co-lead of the Media, Memory and History research theme at Loughborough University, co-convenor of the Media and Gender research group, and co-editor of the European Journal of Cultural Studies.
Previous Seminars
- “The Costs of Press Freedom” - Ivor Shapiro, Senior Fellow of the Centre for Free Expression at Toronto Metropolitan University, Canada, Tuesday 3 October 2023, 4pm, Room G09, 19 Abercromby Square
- Conceptual and methodological issues in researching Eastern European media and migration politics - Ruxandra Trandafoiu, Edge Hill University, Wednesday 18 October 2023 4pm SoTA Library
- A tsunami brewing: media capture and media coercion - Guy Berger, former Director for Freedom of Expression and Media Development at UNESCO, Wednesday 8 November 4pm SoTA Library
- Believability, Digital Culture, and the Post-Truth of Rape - Kathryn Higgins, Goldsmiths (University of London), Wednesday 6 December 2023, 4pm SoTA Library