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Counter-Discourse Activism on Social Media: The Case of Challenging “Poverty Porn” Television

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In this paper we investigate how online counter-discourse is designed, deployed and orchestrated by activists to challenge dominant narratives around socio-political issues. We focus on activism related to the UK broadcast media’s negative portrayal of welfare benefit claimants; portrayals characterised as “poverty porn” by critics. Using critical discourse analysis, we explore two activist campaigns countering the TV programme Benefits Street . Through content analysis of social media, associated traditional media texts, and interviews with activists, our analysis highlights the way activists leverage the specific technological affordances of different social media and other online platforms in order to manage and configure counter-discourse activities. We reveal how activists use different platforms to carefully control and contest discursive spaces, and the ways in which they utilise both online and offline activities in combination with new and broadcast media to build an audience for their work. We discuss the challenges associated with measuring the success of counter-discourse, and how activists rely on combinations of social media analytics and anecdotal feedback in order to ascertain that their campaigns are successful. We also discuss the often hidden power-relationships in such campaigns, especially where there is ambiguity regarding the grassroots legitimacy of activism, and where effort is placed into controlling and owning the propagation of counter-discourse. We conclude by highlighting a number of areas for further work around the blurred distinctions between corporate advocacy, digilantism and grassroots activism.

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Feltwell, Tom; Vines, John; Salt, Karen; Blythe, Mark; Kirman, Ben; Barnett, Julie; Brooker, Phillip; Lawson, Shaun (2017): Counter-Discourse Activism on Social Media: The Case of Challenging “Poverty Porn” Television. Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW): Vol. 26, No. 3. DOI: 10.1007/s10606-017-9275-z. Springer. PISSN: 1573-7551. pp. 345-385

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Counter-discourse, Critical discourse analysis, socio-political issues, Grassroots activism, Social media activism

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Number of citations to item: 34

  • Shuo Niu, Cat Mai, Katherine G. McKim, Scott McCrickard (2021): #TeamTrees: Investigating How YouTubers Participate in a Social Media Campaign, In: Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction CSCW2(5), doi:10.1145/3479593
  • Kunle Oparinde, Rachel Matteau Matsha (2021): Powerful Discourse: Gender-Based Violence and Counter-Discourses in South Africa, In: Cogent Arts & Humanities 1(8), doi:10.1080/23311983.2021.1911035
  • Constanze Letsch (2023): Chapter one: Looking for Resistance in all the Wrong Places, In: Kultur und soziale Praxis, doi:10.14361/9783839466889-003
  • Constanze Letsch (2023): References, In: Kultur und soziale Praxis, doi:10.14361/9783839466889-013
  • Constanze Letsch (2023): Introduction, In: Kultur und soziale Praxis, doi:10.14361/9783839466889-002
  • Constanze Letsch (2023): Chapter nine: Speaking back, In: Kultur und soziale Praxis, doi:10.14361/9783839466889-011
  • Saul Karnovsky, Brad Gobby (2024): How teacher wellbeing can be cruel: refusing discourses of wellbeing in an online Reddit forum, In: British Journal of Sociology of Education 2(45), doi:10.1080/01425692.2024.2312805
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  • Constanze Letsch (2023): Displaced, In: Kultur und soziale Praxis, doi:10.14361/9783839466889-012
  • Constanze Letsch (2023): Chapter eight: Giving in to stigma, In: Kultur und soziale Praxis, doi:10.14361/9783839466889-010
  • Laura Parson (2018): Digital media responses to a feminist scholarly article: a critical discourse analysis, In: Feminist Media Studies 4(19), doi:10.1080/14680777.2018.1468348
  • Kahryn Hughes, Anna Tarrant (2023): Conclusion: Trajectories of Families Through Poverty, In: Palgrave Macmillan Studies in Family and Intimate Life, doi:10.1007/978-3-031-24922-8_8
  • Jonathon Hutchinson, Fiona Suwana, Cameron McTernan (2024): Social Media and Politics, In: Social Media in Society, doi:10.1007/978-3-031-66360-4_7
  • Constanze Letsch (2023): Frontmatter, In: Kultur und soziale Praxis, doi:10.14361/9783839466889-fm
  • Holly Meese, Tom Baker, Alistair Sisson (2020): #WeAreBeneficiaries: Contesting Poverty Stigma Through Social Media, In: Antipode 4(52), doi:10.1111/anti.12617
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  • Lia Bozarth, Anmol Panda, Ceren Budak, Joyojeet Pal (2020): From Greetings to Corruption, In: Proceedings of the 2020 International Conference on Information and Communication Technologies and Development, doi:10.1145/3392561.3394636
  • Carmen Lee (2020): Doxxing as discursive action in a social movement, In: Critical Discourse Studies 3(19), doi:10.1080/17405904.2020.1852093
  • Reilly Anne Dempsey Willis (2020): Habermasian utopia or Sunstein's echo chamber? The ‘dark side’ of hashtag hijacking and feminist activism, In: Legal Studies 3(40), doi:10.1017/lst.2020.16
  • Constanze Letsch (2023): Contents, In: Kultur und soziale Praxis, doi:10.14361/9783839466889-toc
  • Constanze Letsch (2023): Chapter three: Judging Books by Their Covers, In: Kultur und soziale Praxis, doi:10.14361/9783839466889-005
  • Constanze Letsch (2023): Chapter five: Belonging, In: Kultur und soziale Praxis, doi:10.14361/9783839466889-007
  • Phillip Brooker (2019): My unexpectedly militant bots: A case for Programming-as-Social-Science, In: The Sociological Review 6(67), doi:10.1177/0038026119840988
  • Constanze Letsch (2023): Chapter six: Have you heard?, In: Kultur und soziale Praxis, doi:10.14361/9783839466889-008
  • Fiona Suwana (2020): Digital Activism in Bali: The ForBALI Movement, In: Security, Democracy, and Society in Bali, doi:10.1007/978-981-15-5848-1_11
  • Constanze Letsch (2023): Acknowledgements, In: Kultur und soziale Praxis, doi:10.14361/9783839466889-001
  • Constanze Letsch (2023): Chapter seven: In the eye of the beholder, In: Kultur und soziale Praxis, doi:10.14361/9783839466889-009
  • Réka Tamássy, Zsuzsanna Géring (2021): Rich variety of DA approaches applied in social media research: A systematic scoping review, In: Discourse & Communication 1(16), doi:10.1177/17504813211043722
  • Constanze Letsch (2023): Chapter four: Experiencing territorial stigma in Tarlabaşı, In: Kultur und soziale Praxis, doi:10.14361/9783839466889-006
  • Constanze Letsch (2023): Chapter two: Waking the Poisoned Princess, In: Kultur und soziale Praxis, doi:10.14361/9783839466889-004
  • Monique Huysamen, Julie Barnett, Danae Stanton Fraser (2020): Slums of hope: Sanitising silences within township tour reviews, In: Geoforum, doi:10.1016/j.geoforum.2020.01.006
  • Philippa Carr (2020): Extending the Boundaries of Political Communication: How Ideology Can Be Examined in Super-Rich Television Documentaries Using Discursive Psychology, In: Political Communication, doi:10.1007/978-3-030-60223-9_4
  • Constanze Letsch (2023): Territorial Stigmatisation, In: Kultur und soziale Praxis, doi:10.14361/9783839466889
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