DigiPol Seminars
Semester 2
“Me.No.Pause.”: Anxieties and fantasies of ageing and femininity in contemporary advertising.
Dr Kate Gilchrist (UCL)
The seminar will take place in the School of the Arts Library, 19 Abercromby Square, University of Liverpool, 4.00-5.30pm, Wednesday 23rd, April 2025.
In the context of heightened cultural visibility of menopause, and a burgeoning market of menopause-related products (authors), this article considers how menopause is being imagined in contemporary advertising. Informed by Janice Winship’s (2000) understanding of adverts as fantasy texts which operate through the mobilisation of psychic desires, identifications, and conflicts, we ask what fantasies do contemporary menopause-related ads incite and how do they play on and reveal larger psychic and social tensions pertinent to women and feminism today? A thematic and multimodal analysis of 20 US-UK outdoors, print, TV and online adverts, reveals that advertising exhorts women to relate to menopause in three central ways: defy, disavow and embrace. Such exhortations attempt to discharge wider contemporary anxieties around ageing women’s loss of social, economic, and sexual power, and control over women’s bodies. However, in doing so, the adverts resecure traditional patriarchal heteronormative notions of femininity, desirability and economic productivity; place responsibility of ‘managing’ menopause solely on women; and maintain – rather than challenge – the status quo. Our study is the first to examine current advertising as a central site where tensions pertinent to women and feminism are evoked and modulated, and where fantasies about the menopausal subject are conjured up, then resolved.
University ‘Going beyond the State: a collaborative model’.
Professor Xiaoling Zhang, Head of Media and Communication Head of Media and Communication in Xi’an Jiaotong-Liverpool University (XJTLU)
4.00-5.30pm, Wednesday 5th February 2025. School of the Arts Library, 19 Abercromby Square, University of Liverpool.
This presentation proposes a collaborative model between state and non-state actors in our study of China rather than the typical "state versus society" dichotomy common in Western analyses through the study of China’s evolving public diplomacy practices. While traditional studies often emphasize China’s state-led initiatives, such as Confucius Institutes and the multi-lingual China Global Television Network (CGTN), this collaborative approach challenges the notion that authoritarian systems inherently exclude non-state actors from soft power practices. The presentation shows the importance of looking beyond state-sponsored soft power efforts to recognize the dynamic interactions that shape China’s global influence. By engaging in the "de-Westernizing" of public diplomacy scholarship, this presentation offers a nuanced perspective that respects China’s distinct political and cultural system. While providing insights into diverse models of public diplomacy and offering lessons that can inform soft power practices globally, it offers scholars and policy makers a deeper understanding of China’s resilience and adaptation on the world stage.
A large language model for classifying contrarian claims about climate change in US Congressional speech.
Dr Travis Coan, Associate Professor in Computational Social Science at the University of Exeter
Wednesday 12th February 2025. School of the Arts Library, 19 Abercromby Square, University of Liverpool
A growing body of scholarship explores the role of climate contrarians in delaying meaningful action on climate change. In the United States, sceptical voices reach the highest levels of government: the US Congress has long been a focal point for climate obstruction and has played an important role not only in impeding US climate action, but also for stymieing global climate negotiations. This study takes a closer look at these voices by examining all Congressional speeches from 1994 to 2023, a period containing important moments in the history of climate (in)action in the US. We contribute to the literature in three ways. First, we outline a flexible, LLM-based approach for classifying specific claims which cast doubt on climate science or seek to delay climate action, demonstrating how the proposed approach improves on past research. Second, we deploy our model to offer the first (to our knowledge) comprehensive empirical description of climate obstruction in Congressional speech, providing insight into both the prevalence and dynamics of specific types of contrarian discourse. Lastly, we examine the influence of key factors such as political party, campaign contributions, and district level covariates (e.g., employment in oil and gas industries) on the prevalence of contrarian speech. Our results suggest that a range of factors beyond political party influence whether a representative chooses to promote climate obstruction.
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
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.