Suchergebnisse

This article investigates media as 'borderscapers' that discursively shape state borders by representing human interactions with and at the borders and generating 'borderscapes' that imbue borders with social and political meaning. Empirically, the article focuses on a two-pronged border emergency in Poland, involving non-European irregularised migrants stranded at the frontier with Belarus and the arrival of millions of war refugees from Ukraine. It applies Foucauldian discourse analysis to the coverage by the pro-government wPolityce.pl and the watchdog OKO.press. The study uncovers four borderscapes: (1) the Polish–Belarusian 'borderscape of invisibility' (wPolityce.pl); (2) the Polish–Belarusian 'borderscape of rejection' (OKO.press); (3) the Polish–Ukrainian 'borderscape without borders' (wPolityce.pl); and (4) the Polish–Ukrainian 'borderscape of assimilation' (OKO.press). The article argues that these borderscapes are contingent on (1) who is seen to interact with a given border and how and why, and (2) each outlet's referential relation towards the state politics of belonging.

Polynczuk-Alenius's article contributes to a better understanding of the racist moment in Poland that began in the aftermath of the 'refugee crisis' in 2015. It does so by zooming in on Christian far-right discourse and reconstructing a cognitive map of the social world manufactured therein. To this end, it analyses the blog of the former Catholic priest Jacek Miedlar, now a far-right activist and one of the leaders of the anti-refugee movement. In doing so, the article relies on two compatible bodies of research that have rarely been used together. Theoretically, the article approaches Christian far-right discourse as an articulation of the paranoid style and concentrates on its conspiratorial aspect. Analytically, it uses the fourfold model of authoritarian communication developed by the Frankfurt School to dissect systematically the conspiratorial tale expounded on Miedlar's blog. Accordingly, the empirical analysis of 116 blog posts treats the following themes: 1) the discontent diagnosed by Miedlar (anti-Polonism, epitomized by the suppression of nationalist and Christian values in favour of European universalism); 2) the alleged operators of anti-Polonism (the Jewish-orchestrated conspiracy bent on dominating the world and its puppets); 3) the movement that will rise up against this cabal (namely, the Polish Catholic nationalists armed with conservative values); and 4) the leader of the struggle (Miedlar himself as a Christ-like martyr figure). The article concludes that the anti-Muslim discourse, premised on an appeal to racist sentiments, served as a gateway into the conspiratorial, deeply antisemitic world-view of the Christian far-right milieu. In Poland, as elsewhere, such a world-view, stored and transmitted through the fringe far-right discourse, usually seems to gain traction in wider society during times of crisis. ; Peer reviewed

This conceptual article proposes an approach to ethical consumption which is an alternative to "political consumerism". By illuminating the aspects typically overlooked in political consumerism research, it re-embeds individualized ethical consumption in (1) the broader movement, (2) the communicative process, and (3) the social context. By adopting the notion of "ethical trade" it decenters individualized consumption as the exclusive way of enacting ethics in the marketplace, and by focusing on communication, it turns the spotlight away from individual consumers and onto organizations. Drawing extensively on communication studies, it is proposed that the main function of ethical trade organizations is to mediate between the geographically separated consumers and producers. Furthermore, greater sensitivity to the social context is introduced by distinguishing between two modes of mediation: "mediated familiarity" (the transmission of factual knowledge and the construction of affinity) and "moral education" (the subjectification of consumers who consider their impact on "distant others") ; Peer reviewed

AbstractThis article contributes to a better understanding of the 'anti‐immigration' discourse that has prevailed in Poland following the electoral victory of the Law and Justice party in 2015 by theoretically engaging the category of 'race' in the examination of Polish nationalism. To do so, it employs the Foucauldian perspective on racism, understood as deployed in defence of one's own nation, which is imagined as "race". The article also contextualises this discourse by elaborating how three globally circulated racist themes (threat, unworthiness and otherness) are deployed to uphold three components of hegemonic Polish national self‐definition (vulnerability, deservingness and 'Westernness') against three aspects of the perceived liminality that destabilise this self‐definition (temporal, moral and spatial). The article concludes that in Poland, the 'anti‐immigration' discourse deploys racism as a device symbolically to 'protect' the imagined ethnically, religiously and culturally homogenous Polish nation from the belittlement and dilution of collective self‐definition under the conditions of globalisation.

This article is an empirical exploration of how ethical trade organisations draw on and appropriate in their communication the moral repertoire of ethical trade. Theoretically, it employs the notion of the "dialectics of care" to examine the tactics used in ethical trade communication to reconcile care for oneself and one's close ones with care for distant producers. Empirically, this article is based on the discourse-theoretical analysis of two interviews with the representatives of Polish ethical trade organisations: (1) a fair trade firm, Pizca del Mundo, and (2) an NGO, the Institute for Global Responsibility. The analysis finds that ethical trade organisations seek to harmonise care for distant producers with the interests of the Polish public through (1) embedding it into the discourse of product quality, or (2) linking it to care for oneself, one's family and society while raising awareness of the global interconnectedness.

Environmental degradation is one of the main challenges facing the modern world. Transition to sustainable development is often cited as a strategy to contain the situation. Arguably, nation-states cannot manage this shift alone. Therefore, individuals are urged to participate in the process of transition to sustainable development by acting sustainably in their capacity as consumers and citizens. Sustainable consumption is an essential way for consumers to contribute to sustainable development. This article examines the roles that the creative input of consumers in the zero-waste brand community on Facebook might play for consumers. The focus is placed on the two theoretical possibilities: manifestation of environmental citizenship and means of self-expression. Drawing on the ideas of individualisation of responsibility and political consumerism, the article explores the creative input of consumers in the zero-waste brand community as a potentially political form of advocacy for sustainable consumption and development. The article concludes that the creative input of consumers in the zero-waste brand community might be viewed as an impact-oriented pro-environmental behaviour, whose role is a combination of manifestation of environmental citizenship and means of self-expression. As such, it fits better with the framework of depoliticised alternative hedonism than political consumerism.

This editorial introduces the thematic issue of "Media and Communication between the Local and the Global". It does so first by presenting the origin of this thematic issue: the
Media, Globalization and Social Change division at the NordMedia 2017 conference. The thematic issue is then anchored theoretically through discussion of the widely conceived notion of mediation as a technological, symbolic and ethical process - highlighting the interest in how media actors and communication technologies, practices and artefacts mediate between global phenomena and local contexts, which is what unites the contributions to this thematic issue. Last, the final section of this editorial introduces the articles, which coalesce around three broad themes: migration, marginalised communities, and consumption.