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SoSe 21: Negotiations of Race and Gender in a Networked Public Sphere

Anna Antonakis

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This course provides an introduction to intersectional theory exploring questions of power and interactivity in digital media environments. Intersectional perspectives help to analyze unequal power structures: When it comes to bringing this debate into journalism studies and practices, it is clear that multidimensional issues are touched. Intersectional inquires need to include “everything from representation to hardware” (Noble, Safyia U. .& Tynes, Brendesha M. 2016, p.6) in order to analyze complex inequlities and uprisings for justice. Hegemonic ideas and their material manifestations limit, censor and define how gender, class, race and other structures of oppression are (re-) negotiated in the public sphere. We regard (re-)negotiation as a communicative and participatory act aiming to add or challenge ideas manifested in institutional settings, social relations or everyday practices defining the public sphere (Antonakis, 2019). In this course we engage with two dimensions of negotiation: first, analysis of race and gender on the level of activist mobilization and reporting and second we want to engage with patterns of economic and political exploitations inscribed into (new) global information economies. It has been argued that the specific communicative dispositions of hashtags have opened up new possibilities for political participation and contestation, especially to those who feel underrepresented in a traditional media public. For instance, we want to empirically explore connections between #blacklivesmatter mouvement and its reflections on reporting in the US and Germany and trace feminist hashtags from #aufschrei, to #metoo. In light of recent mobilizations for justice in a globalized and digitalized world, the course prepares students to critically investigate (re)-negotiations of gender and race in networked public sphere and to inquire “translation” processes or “spill overs” from activist media to mainstream media. What gets lost in the process? How does the logic of media events, attention economies and sensationalism interfere into negotiatons of race and gender? Second, we examine the reciprocal constitutions of relations of power and technologies and provide introductory readings to analyze how “racism and sexism are part of the architecture and language of technology” itself (Noble, S. 2018). close