IJEG, a fully refereed journal, publishes articles that present current research and practice in all areas of electronic governance. Contents: IJEG publishes high quality original and review research papers, technical reports, conference reports, book reviews, notes, commentaries and news to keep readers at the forefront of the latest thinking and research in electronic governance, as well as case studies, management reports, practical applications, best practice reports and success stories to illustrate the design, implementation, development and management of electronic governance projects. IJEG publishes regular and special issues with themes that can alternate between different domains of electronic governance practice. Contribution to the journal may be by submission or invitation, and suggestions for special issues and publications are welcome.
This article is based on a case study of the online media practices of the militant neo-Nazi organization the Nordic Resistance Movement, currently the biggest and most active extreme-right actor in Scandinavia. I trace a recent turn to humor, irony, and ambiguity in their online communication and the increasing adaptation of stylistic strategies and visual aesthetics of the Alt-Right inspired by online communities such as 4chan, 8chan, Reddit, and Imgur. Drawing on a visual content analysis of memes ( N = 634) created and circulated by the organization, the analysis explores the place of humor, irony, and ambiguity across these cultural expressions of neo-Nazism and how ideas, symbols, and layers of meaning travel back and forth between neo-Nazi and Alt-right groups within Sweden today.
This article situates contemporary forms of video activism in online environments within a historical trajectory of radical film recruited for Left thinking and action. Focusing on the remix ethos and aesthetics of political mash-up videos, the article suggests how revisiting the analogue precursors of digital video may help contextualise and understand new forms of video activism, and politically committed media practices more generally. In the first part of the analysis, I engage with some of the principal conceptual themes and aesthetics that shape the various hybrid genres of the kind of visual activism we see emerging in YouTube and similar video platforms today. For these purposes, I propose a typology for understanding the motley array of video documentary and documentation available online as a hybrid and diverse range of media forms for political investigation and portrayal. The second part of the analysis demonstrates how such mash-up practices play out on three distinct levels when digital videos are put in circulation online. First, political mash-up is understood as a set of material practices in which online content is mixed and repurposed, second, in terms of a convergence between different styles, genres and modes of address, and finally, the concept of mash-up opens up for an understanding of the blurring of boundaries between different political actors and motives in online media environments.
This commentary provides critical reflections on a number of challenges related to research methodology and ethics when studying organized racism in online environments. Based on ongoing fieldwork of the Nordic Resistance Movement (NMR) in Sweden, I ask three critical questions about researching the neo-Nazi organization and organized racism more generally: (1) How do we produce valid knowledge of these ‘closed’ groups in their ‘open’ online spaces? What are the limitations of our research on hidden social life when we only have access to what they want us to know? (2) Why and for whom are we producing research on these groups? Or, put another way, what ethical considerations and problems related to intent and research agendas arise in studies of neo-Nazism and other forms of organized racism? (3) What is the emotional labour involved in studying these groups for the researcher and how might it be used in a productive manner?
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.