This study examines the material, spatial, and temporal implications of mobility discourses in the viral #deleteuber hashtag and the affective public that emerged in response to the Trump administration’s so-called ‘Muslim ban’ in January 2017. A thematic analysis of 3611 tweets suggested that the hashtag produced various mobility discourses debated among an affective public disgusted at the company’s actions or the call to action implied by the hashtag. These discourses were framed by the spatial qualities of mobility discourses and this moment of halted movement, the timing of this hashtag and hashtivism generally, and #deleteuber’s material, real-world implications. Our research reveals how mobility discourses can be used to understand mobility topics beyond transportation, and it provides a glimpse into the consciousness of some social media users reeling from significant political change.
In a developing economy it is important for organizations from the Global South to stake claim on their unique positions in the international marketplace. India's handicrafts industry is an integral part of the national economy and claims a place of pride as a marker of regional culture and heritage. For localized handicraft nonprofit organizations (NPOs) that want to reach global consumers, branding their products is critical to their long-term sustainability and success. Today, the most common way for organizations to reach aesthetically eclectic, global-not to mention, urban-consumers is through the Internet. How an NPO creates and negotiates its digital identity and product branding are important considerations within the domains of technical, professional, and intercultural communication, particularly when establishing a digital presence to reach desired consumers. Creating an aura of authenticity around the products, their representations, and their artisans is an important element of digital branding of handicrafts. Heightened global-local encounters (Wherry, 2006) and intercultural technical communication research adopting a cross-cultural focus on social justice, economic inequities and globalization (Agboka, 2014) provide the context of this research. We performed a thematic analysis of two Bengal (Indian) handicraft NPOs' websites focusing on handicraft authenticity, global-local tensions, and digital presentation. Three themes organize our findings: authenticity of place and production, desire for global reach, and socioeconomic consciousness. Our analysis highlights the 92 key role of digital technology in marketing authenticity, contemporizing traditional arts, while balancing organizational commitment to social justice. As our analysis indicates, visually and textually establishing handicraft authenticity is easily accomplished in an online environment, but taking advantage of online marketing to achieve global reach still seems a struggle for these NPOs.
What makes alternative digital media ‘alternative’ is critical content and being a ‘prosumer’ platform that champions social justice and change. An Indian digital zine, and our present case study for critical alternative media, is Feminism in India (FII) and its news coverage of the #MeTooIndia movement from 2017 to 2021. In this article, we adopt the critical theory of alternative media and transnational intersectionality frameworks to perform a critical-cultural review of the theoretical, sociopolitical, and change-making implications of FII . We aim to explore its role as alternative media that presents intersectional perspectives and advocacy opportunities in relation to India and its transnational #MeToo mobilizations against sexual harassment. As ‘critical content’ is what defines alternative media, we argue that FII is a critical news site that democratizes gender-diverse narratives and introduces a rupture within India's politically-pandered and patriarchally-primed mainstream media.
The displacement of cultures and re-imagination of place-bound identities is a common thread that binds most of the films of Mira Nair. Nair is an Indian-born, US-based director whose cinematic and documentary creations are both processes and products of a globalized culture. Her films operate on multiple levels of crossover cinematic philosophies, comprise cosmopolitan visual displays and grow out of transnational socio-political contexts, making her repertoire an ideal case study for the processes of modern globalism. In this article, my purpose is to critically analyse how Nair reconceptualizes the notions of ‘place’ and ‘displacement’ in her films, particularly in Mississippi Masala (1991) and The Namesake (2006). By tracing the transnational migration of two Indian families, Nair tries to cinematically capture their struggle to culturally reconfigure their identities within constantly mutating spatial contexts. The purpose of this article is to investigate the global–local implications of these two films, primarily from the theoretical perspective of deterritorialization, which can be understood as ‘the loss of the “natural” relation of culture to geographical and social territories’. I argue that Nair’s complex film narratives put forth an alternative visual framework for shifting notions of place and identity within the current context of ‘globalization [which] fundamentally transforms the relationship between the places we inhabit and our cultural practices, experiences and identities’.
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