The Attention Apparatus: Conditions and Affordances of News Reporting in Hybrid Media Events of Terrorist Violence

Uusitalo, Niina; Valaskivi, Katja

doi:10.1080/17512786.2020.1854052

Cited by 11 publications

(10 citation statements)

References 46 publications

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“…Following Latour (2005: 71), we consider that "anything that does modify a state of affairs by making a difference, is an actor". In hybrid, violent media events, this includes not only human actors but also non-human agents, ranging from technologies, such as algorithms of digital platforms, to elements of institutional practices, such as the production routines of news on terrorism (see Uusitalo & Valaskivi, 2020). The formation of rituals of belonging through interactions that cut across platforms and geographical locations, and the involvement of a multiplicity of actors -both human and non-human -means that hybrid, violent media events are highly complex phenomena.…”

Section: Actorsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Historically, this type of manipulation has typically been documented regarding the relationship between terrorism and journalism. In fact, journalist organisations and newsrooms have developed practices to identify and manage such manipulation attempts (see, e.g., Uusitalo & Valaskivi, 2020;Uusitalo et al, 2021). However, in contemporary hybrid, violent media events, the manufacturing of these types of apparently random and irrelevant connections between an act of violence and an extremely popular phenomenon has become increasingly common (Vainikka, 2020).…”

Section: Attention and Amplificationmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Ambivalent rituals of belonging: (Re)theorising hybrid, violent media events

Valaskivi

Sumiala

Tikka

2022

Nordic Journal of Media Studies

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The updating of media event theory for the digital age has been underway for some time, and several researchers have pointed out that the complexity of the hybrid media environment poses a challenge when it comes to understanding how media events in the present digital context ritually create belonging. In this article, we examine violent media events as hybrid phenomena and discuss their ritual workings in the present digital media environment. We apply what we call the 5 A’s – actors, affordances, attention, affect, and acceleration – as key analytical tools to empirically study such events. We also develop the concept of hybridity in relation to media events by proposing three auxiliary A’s: assemblage, amplification, and accumulation. Building on our earlier work, we call for more analytical consideration of the ambivalences in the ritual constructions of belonging (and non-belonging) in such violent events. We use the Christchurch massacre of 2019 as a case study to illustrate these conceptual developments.

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Section: Actorsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Attention and Amplificationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Ambivalent rituals of belonging: (Re)theorising hybrid, violent media events

Valaskivi

Sumiala

Tikka

2022

Nordic Journal of Media Studies

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“…Extremism and terrorism receive amplified media attention in Finland as elsewhere in the Western world [39], which shows, for example, in young people's increased worry about terrorism [40,41] and the government's emphasis of the role of the educational sector in the national action plan for prevention of radicalisation and violent extremism [4,42]. Although studies show that the majority of young people in Finland are doing well [43,44] and that violent crime among young people has decreased [45], the suggested responsibilities for educational institutions to partake in the national prevention of radicalisation and extremism is well grounded: societal polarization, various extremist movements, and attacks are in the rise [46,47] and young people's exposure to propaganda, disinformation, racism, and hate speech has increased.…”

Section: Prevention Of Radicalization In Finnish Educationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Safe Space, Dangerous Territory: Young People’s Views on Preventing Radicalization through Education—Perspectives for Pre-Service Teacher Education

et al. 2021

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Initiatives for preventing radicalization and violent extremism through education (PVE-E) have become a feature of global educational policy and educational institutions across all phases, from early childhood to universities, also in Finland. If schools may be regarded as safe spaces here for identity and worldview construction and experiences of belonging, the specific subject matter of PVE-E is also dangerous territory. Not least because of PVE-E’s focus on radicalization, but above all because of perceptions of schools being used as an adjunct of governmental counter-terrorism policy. We argue that understanding young people’s views on issues related to radicalization and violent extremism is critical in order to develop ethical, sustainable, contextualized, and pedagogical approaches to prevent hostilities and foster peaceful co-existence. After providing some critical framing of the Finnish educational context in a broader international setting, we thus examine young people’s views (n = 3617) in relation to the safe spaces through online survey data gathered as a part of our larger 4-year research project Growing up radical? The role of educational institutions in guiding young people’s worldview construction. Specifically focused on Finland but with potentially wider international implications, more understanding about the topic of PVE-E is needed to inform teacher education and training, to which our empirical data makes some innovative contribution.

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“…The attention that Erdogan's tweet ('Selam kardeşim … ') gained places him in a prestigious position in the interaction network. Other prestigious actors include Twitter handles jacindaardern, trtworld, mansuryavas06, and YouTube (see Table 1), each surrounded by a flock of actors agreeing, disagreeing, or otherwise interacting with them, increasing attention (Valaskivi & Uusitalo, 2020). The outdegree values among the most mentioned actors are zero, indicating they are not active participants in the discussions.…”

Section: Exploring the Emergent Patterns Of Interactionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The Christchurch massacre instantly turned into a hybrid media event , and while terrorist violence seeks media attention (Cui & Rothenbuhler, 2018), newsrooms play a significant role in generating this attention (Valaskivi & Uusitalo, 2020) and in framing and recognising singular moments of violence as exceptional (Nossek, 2008). The formulaic representation of terror utilises established mnemonic schemes, situating these events within a larger temporal flow; these representations of terror contribute to the collective memory of how we understand terror (Zelizer, 2018).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

‘#hellobrother needs to trend’: methodological reflections on the digital and emotional afterlife of mediated violence

Harju

Huhtamäki

2021

International Review of Sociology

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In March 2019, the first ever act of terrorist violence in New Zealand was live-streamed on social media, making many social media users unwitting witnesses to the massacre on their devices. The Christchurch mosque attacks revealed a particular digital and emotional vulnerability embedded in the digital media infrastructure. The last words of the first victim soon transmorphed into #hellobrother that, as a digital artefact, participated in shaping the emotional landscape. Combining realtime digital media ethnography on Twitter with data science and computational tools, this multi-method study has two aims: first and foremost, to develop and apply new methodology for the study of unexpected, mediated events as they unfold in real time; second, to explore post-death digital artefacts through the concept of digital afterlife that we approach through two complementary perspectives, data afterlife (the technological) and data as afterlife (the emotional). Adopting a relational perspective, we further develop the concept, and highlight the constitutive role of data in the emotional dimension of digital afterlife arising from its capacity to enter affective arrangements. The methodological contributions include development of a conceptual and technological framework for conducting data science as ethnography and the introduction of Tweetboard, a novel artefact for investigating digital afterlife.

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The Attention Apparatus: Conditions and Affordances of News Reporting in Hybrid Media Events of Terrorist Violence

Cited by 11 publications

References 46 publications

Ambivalent rituals of belonging: (Re)theorising hybrid, violent media events

Ambivalent rituals of belonging: (Re)theorising hybrid, violent media events

Safe Space, Dangerous Territory: Young People’s Views on Preventing Radicalization through Education—Perspectives for Pre-Service Teacher Education

‘#hellobrother needs to trend’: methodological reflections on the digital and emotional afterlife of mediated violence

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