As with many other people, I’ve been watching the events unfolding in Washington with a mixture of anxiety and concern. While the situation remains confused, I thought it would be worthwhile noting some initial thoughts and observations about what took place, and also making some suggestions as to what that means for civic educators like…
Category: Citizenship
The Public Sphere, Twitter, and Trump
One of the most interesting moments (and there have been a great many) over the last couple of weeks to arise out of the mess in the US has been the action by Twitter, and then other social media companies, to ban actors like the President from their sites. Predictably, such actions aroused the ire…
Some thoughts on The New Despotism by John Keane
This will be a series of blog posts that I am writing to assist me in the work of developing my understanding of civics and citizenship education. Basically, I want to engage in a critical analysis, as it pertains to my interest in civics and citizenship education, of some of the key scholars in a…
Social media, social movements and scraping (part two)
I’ve been doing some more work on social media scraping and data analysis. In particular, I’ve been thinking about what kind of measures we can put into place in order to examine the kind of learning that is taking place across the social media platforms. This also needs to be assessed based on the kind…
Social media, social movements and scraping (part one)
This is another post that will likely be part of a series. I’m really enjoying using my blog for this part of the research process, as a tool to unpack my thoughts and consider the direction of my research. So, as I’ve mentioned elsewhere (I think), I’m interested in exploring social media as site of…
Some reflections on Banal Nationalism by Michael Billig (1995)
Billig, M. (1995). Banal Nationalism. Springer. Introduction societies that maintain armies – belief that some things are more valuable than life itself. What is valued – changes in times. Sometimes, these causes, after time has passed, seem trivial. This reflects a shifting balance of priorities. Great causes today – different. So is the scale of…
The life cycle of social movements (part 3)
I think there are three major differences between ‘old’ and ‘new’ social movements. The mix of the physical real and the virtual real, and the ability to make use of affordances in different spaces. Early studies of the internet (in the first instance) and social media (in the decades following) often focused on who was…
The life cycle of social movements (part two)
The new However, it would be my argument that newer social movements do not have the same risks or costs associated with participation. Indeed that much is generally a given in terms of social movement organising theory (see Earls etc). Certainly, the use of mobile technology and social media has meant that organising – and…
The life cycle of social movements (part one)
The old Social movements – especially when broadly defined, which is generally how I choose to define them – are hardly new phenomena. I imagine they have been around as long as people have gathered in groups and organised to achieve specific goals. Of course, not all social movements are successful, widespread or share the…
The erasure of history
(Since I wrote this post, I have seen a number of academics and historians make this point more clearly and more succinctly than I have below. I suggest you reads their posts – especially Melitta Hogarth’s work on the AARE blog. I’m retaining my posting here merely as a reflection of my own thoughts, as…