Social Sciences

SSPGR Conference 2014

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SSPGR Conference 2014
Social Sciences Annual PGR Conference on Culture, Society and Media
Thursday 29th May 2014,
Venue: SMB 0.17, Stewart Mason, Loughborough University
Department of Social Sciences, Loughborough University
Time Agenda Speakers
9.00-9.20 Registration
9.20-9.30 Introduction
9.30-10.30 Keynote Speech
Surveillance and Secrecy in the Age of Big Data
Professor
Graham Murdock
10.30-10.50 Tea break
Session 1
10.50-11.10 The Dilemma of The Facebooks Surveillance and
the Possibility of the Users Cultural Practices
Hui-Ju, Tsai
11.10-11.30 The Power of Language and Culture in Community
Empowerment and Wellbeing: A Case Study of
Seven Communities in Thailand
Sunida
Siwapathomchai
11.30-11.50 Examining the Care and Treatment of Sex
Offenders within Lebanon
Shereen Baz
11.50-13.00 Lunch time
13.00-14.00 Keynote Speech
The Problems and Possibilities of Using Visual
Research Methods in Social Science Research
Professor
David Buckingham
Session 2
14.00-14.20 A Visual Ethnographic study on the Chinese
Skateboarding Industry
Austin Li
14.20-14.40 Sexual Intimacy Anxiety and Sexual Behaviour
Anxiety in Young People Who Harm Sexually
Deborah Eagle

14.40-15.00 The Re-offending Behaviour of Young Girls in the
Youth Justice System
Davina Kiran Patel

15.00-15.20 A Discursive and Visual Analysis of Online
Rhetoric about Far-right Political Parties
Shani Burke
15.20-15.40 Tea Break
Session 3
15.40-16.00 Debating the European Union Dynamics of
Ideological Conflict in Political Debates
Mirko A. Demasi
16.00-16.20 Personalization of Politics in Spanish General
Elections: An Analysis of Political Advertising in the
XXIst century
Marta Rebolledo
16.20-16.40 Self-serving National Ideologies: A CDA Analysis
of 13
th
Malaysian General Election (GE) Campaign
Nadilla Mohamad-
Jamil
16.40-17.00 Conclusion Dr.Dave Elder-Vass
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9.30-10.30 Keynote Speech
Surveillance and Secrecy in the Age of Big Data
Professor Graham Murdock

The roll out of broadband connectivity coupled with the exponential increase in
computer capacity has ushered in the age of Big Data. State agencies and
commercial companies are recording, aggregating and interrogating every aspect of
peoples on-line lives, constructing new economic, social, and political classifications
of dangerousness, credit worthiness, and compliance. But information flows remain
highly asymmetric. While the activities of citizens and consumers are increasingly
transparent to governments and major corporations their own intentions and actions
remain opaque, concealed behind walls erected to protect national security and
commercial privilege and misrepresented by concerted public relations activities
designed to promote carefully selected accounts. This produces radical asymmetries
in the ability ground strategies of action in informed analysis.
This present paper has three aims. Firstly, it sets out to map the emerging landscape
of Big Data and its core dynamics. Secondly, drawing on recent cases of
whistleblowing it argues that investigative journalism and critical scholarship are
more essential than ever as sources of informed challenge to the abuse of state and
corporate power. Thirdly, it explores how these interventions might be supported and
advanced in a context where economic and political pressures are combining to
undermine their viability.

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13.00-14.00 Keynote Speech
The Problems and Possibilities of Using Visual Research
Methods in Social Science Research
Professor David Buckingham

The use of visual methodologies has become increasingly popular in recent years,
both in social research generally and specifically in media research. In this
presentation, David will take a critical look at some of the methodological,
epistemological and political claims that are made by advocates of such approaches.
He will challenge the idea that they can be seen simply as a means of enabling
participants to express themselves or to tell their own stories or indeed of
enabling researchers to gain privileged access to what people really think or feel.
He will argue for a more reflexive and critical understanding of how research itself
establishes positions from which it becomes possible for participants to speak. The
talk will be illustrated with some examples drawn from Davids own research, and in
particular from three projects: on young peoples readings of sexual content in the
media, on the uses of video among migrant/refugee children across Europe, and on
domestic/amateur media-making.

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Session 1


10.50-11.10
The Dilemma of The Facebooks Surveillance and the Possibility of
the Users Cultural Practices
Hui-Ju, Tsai


11.10-11.30
The Power of Language and Culture in Community Empowerment
and Wellbeing: A Case Study of Seven Communities in Thailand
Sunida Siwapathomchai


11.30-11.50
Examining the Care and Treatment of Sex Offenders within
Lebanon
Shereen Baz

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10.50-11.10
The Dilemma of The Facebooks Surveillance and the Possibility of
the Users Cultural Practices: How does Taiwanese anti-nuke
campaign work on Facebook?
Hui-Ju, Tsai H.Tsai@lboro.ac.uk
Influencing everyday lives and changing social relationships online and offline,
Facebook, which has 1 billion active users, has become the most influential social
media channel. However, some critics have cautioned that, the more routine
communication is mediated through online social media software, the more
information technology companies oversee our digital trajectories.
Facebook, a commercialized system, is not the panacea for human emancipation.
Therefore, exposing Facebooks strategies and analysing users interactions could
help imagine a new, public Facebook that would solve the current dilemma.
Facebook performs comprehensive, complex and dynamic processes to facilitate
people-to-people and people-to-system interactions in various possible situations
which mean that not only few consortia influence Facebook but also the users/
producers/ participants have their strategic actions in the space. How does the
dynamic process work? How tension between the relationships?
It might be argued that, although peoples digital tracks are entirely under the
surveillance of Facebook, users could still engage in some different practices in the
environment.
In the research, I follow the approach of Political Economy of Communication to
analysis the Facebooks surveillance, then using the metaphor of city and walkers to
state the relationship of Facebook and its users. Also, a case of anti-nuclear
campaign in Taiwan on Facebook between 2012 and 2013 would be analysed in the
research, which presents that the dynamic struggle on Facebook.
The article presents an overview of the issues surrounding the relationship of
Facebooks surveillance and users cultural practices. First, it can be argued that
Facebook conducts invisible surveillance, which contradicts its claim to support
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democracy. Second, the metaphor of the city and the walkers can be applied to
Facebook and its users. The writings of Benjamin and Certeau on cities and agents
provide different ways to understand Facebooks characteristics and its users
strategies in different contexts. In addition, the critical debate on the contradiction
between the structural domination of Facebook and the potential of users cultural
practices is reviewed.
Keywords: social media, surveillance, Facebook, cultural practice, Benjamin,
Certeau


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11.10-11.30
The Power of Language and Culture in Community Empowerment
and Wellbeing: A Case Study of Seven Communities in Thailand
Sunida Siwapathomchai S.Siwapaathomchai@lboro.ac.uk
The Project The Power of Language and Culture in Community Empowerment and
Wellbeing aims to reinforce the use of language and culture for developing the
wisdom and health of communities in seven locations in Thailand. This project was
implemented using a participatory action research approach, applied by various
means including: selecting communities with capacities and qualifications to act and
develop the project collaboratively; studying and collecting data involving the local
wisdom of the target groups; brainstorming and selecting the wisdom that the
communities seek to revive; designing activities for reviving local wisdom; and, finally,
managing the session for refining the outcome and summarizing lessons learned
from each of the seven projects.
Implementation of the project yielded a process using language and culture to
develop local wisdom, consisting of conservation, continuity, and diffusion of wisdom.
The communities participated in supporting the implementation of activities, and
community leaders initiated and directed the activities. In addition to promoting
positive attitudes towards work involving language and culture, the project resulted in
community empowerment in many aspects. For example: the communities gained
knowledge about and skills in facilitating the process of local language and culture
revival; they developed skills for engaging and coordinating community participation;
and they gained the media skills needed for producing and broadcasting. Significant
results were realized for youth groups participating in the seven projects in that they
gained more confidence, decisiveness, and advanced their communication, planning,
and problem-solving skills. The most important thing, and the main goal of the
project, was that the communities employed the process of language and culture to
develop health, especially, from a mental perspective. True pride in their language
and culture was encouraged and restored, as was their determination to pursue for
the development for the community based on fully harnessing their unique ethnic
potential.
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Keywords: Language and culture, community, participatory, wellbeing, folk media

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11.30-11.50
Examining the Care and Treatment of Sex Offenders within
Lebanon
Shereen Baz S.S.Baz@lboro.ac.uk
This research is concerned with the care and treatment of sex offenders in the
Lebanon and examines how re-offending behavior is viewed and managed within the
Lebanese Criminal Justice System. Fifty interviews were conducted with prisoners
and criminal justice practitioners, lawyers, judges, police and prison staff. The
interviews aimed at capturing the criminal justice practitioners experiences of and
attitudes towards sex offenders and how they think reoffending behavior could be
addressed. It also aimed at examining sex offenders experiences and attitudes
towards the criminal justice system, as well as, their opinions surrounding how the
system can reduce reoffending behavior. Thematic analysis of the resulting data
highlighted the lack of treatment, the importance of religion and cultural, human
rights violation, and over all corruption as factors in the care of treatment of sex
offenders. Investigating the opinions of criminal justice agents towards legislation
surrounding sex offences, numerous participants highlighted religion and culture as
the main barrier in amending the outdated legislation. In relation to corruption, the
problem was highlighted throughout the criminal justice system with several
professionals admitting to accepting bribes, delaying court processes, and
sentencing influenced by political pressure. Finally, human rights violations were
highlighted when detainees reported cases of torture, degrading treatment and
unjust detention. Human rights violations were further extended to prisoners who are
threatened and tortured by head prisoners, and basic human needs were ignored.
The consequences of these findings are discussed in relation to current
developments in the treatment of sex offenders in western criminal justice systems
and international human rights legislation.
Keywords: Sex offences; religion and culture; corruption; human rights violations;
care and treatment
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Session 2
14.00-14.20
A Visual Ethnographic study on the Chinese Skateboarding
Industry
Austin Li

14.20-14.40
Sexual Intimacy Anxiety and Sexual Behaviour Anxiety in Young
People Who Harm Sexually
Deborah Eagle

14.40-15.00
The Re-offending Behaviour of Young Girls in the Youth Justice
System
Davina Kiran Patel

15.00-15.20
A Discursive and Visual Analysis of Online Rhetoric about Far-right
Political Parties
Shani Burke

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14.00-14.20
A Visual Ethnographic study on the Chinese Skateboarding
Industry
Austin Li C.Li@lboro.ac.uk
My research focuses on the skateboarding industry in China as both a subculture
and a culture industry. I am investigating the transition of the industry from a
subculture and the capitalist applications of such transition. More importantly, I am
examining how skateboarding industry works as a culture industry by looking at the
feelings, motivations and meanings of the youth culture participants and culture
workers in the skateboarding industry in China.
Although Skateboarding as long been seen as a subculture in The United States and
in Europe, the scape of the industry has been expanding rapidly. But seldom do the
public or the authorities see skateboarding as a culture industry and there are few
research about the skateboarding subculture compare to other music and street
subcultures such as Punk subculture and Graffiti subculture. However, the
skateboarding industry works essentially as very much as conventional culture
industries such as the music industry, film industries and fashion industries. The core
activity of the skateboarding industry is to produce visual contents through
sponsorship of professional skateboarders and videographers.
Because of the little research there is and as much as the misunderstandings there
are about the skateboarding industry, the determination of my research is to be an
insider ethnographic study about the very least understood industry. Also since the
industry is fundamentally a highly visual dense industry, this research will also
employ a visual methodology as a tool of data collection and interpretation and
eventually aid of the presentation of the knowledge about the skateboarding
community and the industry as a whole.
Keywords: Creative Industry, Culture Industry, Youth Culture, Ethnography,
Participant Observation, Public Space, China

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14.20-14.40
Dating Anxiety, Sexual Intimacy Anxiety and Sexual Behaviour
Anxiety in Young People Who Harm Sexually.
Deborah Eagle d.j.eagle2@lboro.ac.uk
The present research used a comparative method to address whether young people
who harmed sexually have higher levels of dating anxiety, potential sexual intimacy
anxiety and sexual behaviour anxiety than young people who report no harm,
nonsexual harm or sexual and non-sexual harm (generalists). Harmful behaviour
was measured in a relationship (harmful dating behaviour) and out of a dating
relationship (offence) separately.
A structured quantitative self-report questionnaire was designed to collect data. The
Dating Anxiety Scale for Adolescents (DAS-A) was used to measure overall dating
anxiety. Questions relating the DAS-A sub-factors, fear of negative and social
distress dating, were amended to measure sexual intimacy anxiety. A scale to
measure sexual behaviour anxiety (confidence to perform particular sexual
behaviours) was designed.
Participants were 77 young people ages 13-18 years (M = 15.4. SD = 1.14), 58.4%
female, 41.6% male. Exploratory analysis revealed a consistent pattern of rankings
between groups. Young people who reported a sexual offence and/or harmful sexual
dating behaviour (HDB) always had higher anxieties than young people who
reported a non-sexual offence and/or a non-sexual HDB. Young people who
reported a sexual offence had significantly higher sexual behaviour anxiety than
nonsexual offence (M = 15.82, SD = 6.23, p = .005) and generalist offence groups
(M = 21.77, SD = 6.53, p = .044). Young people who reported a generalist offence
and generalist HDB together and sexual HDB only were the only groups above
midpoint in all other dependent variables. Recommendations for further research,
social policy and the development of prevention, assessment, intervention and
treatment models are made.
Keywords: Adolescent harmful sexual behaviour; adolescent harmful dating
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SSPGR Conference 2014
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14.40-15.00
The Re-offending Behaviour of Young Girls in the Youth Justice
System
Davina Kiran Patel d.patel5@lboro.ac.uk
This research is focused on the re-offending behaviour of young girls in the Youth
Justice System. The motivation for this research emanates from a desire to
investigate an under researched contemporary area of Youth Justice and to link
academic and practice perspectives in order to contribute to wider Youth Justice
Policy and Practice. Most policy, research and programmes on female offending has
been primarily focused on adult women (18+) and interventions for young girls who
have committed a crime are centered around boys. It is key to say that young girls
are the forgotten group in the Criminal Justice System and therefore requires
research to understand and explain the differing needs of girls in the Youth Justice
System and why they continue re-offending. This Ph.D. focuses on giving these
young women a voice by using a narrative life story methodological approach. It is
important to hear the views of the young girls first hand as young people are rarely
heard in the Youth Justice Field. This research aims to promote this practice and will
use a progressive, integrated research methodology, where the validity and reliability
of inductively generated research findings is constantly checked throughout the data
collection and analysis process via a process of constant comparison and data
triangulation known as a grounded theory approach. Data analysis will deliberately
seek to disprove its developing understanding of the issue being analysed by
framing questions in such a way that informants use their own personal experience
to answer them in an either a positive, supporting, or negative, disproving, sense.
This helps ensure the validity, reliability and generalisation of research data. It also
ensures emergent themes are fully saturated and linked to an explanatory core
theme, or central storyline, which draws together the research findings into an
explanatory framework and to importantly link to existing criminological theory such
as Life-Course Criminology.
Keywords: Youth Justice System, Girls Offending, Life-Course Criminology,
Grounded Theory, Narrative Life Story
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15.00-15.20
A Discursive and Visual Analysis of Online Rhetoric about Far-right
Political Parties
Shani Burke S.Burke@lboro.ac.uk
My PhD examines how far-right political parties in the UK are represented on
Facebook. Using discourse analysis alongside visual analysis, I am investigating
how far-right parties debate online, and aim to demonstrate the benefits of visual
analysis.
Far-right parties in the UK have harsh immigration policies (Goodman & Speer,
2007), and are viewed negatively by voters (Rhodes, 2009). Early research
investigating far-right parties used methods such as content analysis, which failed to
offer a detailed exploration of their racist ideologies (e.g. Eckhardt, 1968). There is a
lack of research addressing far-right visual discourse, except from Richardson and
Wodak (2009), who examined leaflets.
This project will build upon my previous research about the function and nature of
online discourse about racism. Burke and Goodman (2012) identified extreme,
unguarded language in Facebook group discussions about asylum seekers,
including supporters issuing accusations of racism towards opponents of asylum,
and opponents showing support for Hitlers ideology. This demonstrates that people
engage easily in racist interactions online.
Data is collected from the official Facebook pages of; British National Party, United
Kingdom Independence Party, and English Defence League. I am also collecting
data from unofficial pro and anti far-right pages. I will use discourse analysis
alongside multi-modal analysis, in order to construct an integrated approach. Multi-
modal analysis involves analysing components and elements of images in relation to
text (Kress & Van Leeuwen 2006). Discussions will be subjected to discourse
analysis, focusing on the action orientation of text (Edwards & Potter 1992:2). This
means that I will be analysing strategies used by individuals to make accusations of
racism to far-right supporters, and how far-right supporters challenge accusations.
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This research applies discourse analysis and visual analysis to examine the
pervasiveness, form and extremity of far-right discourse on Facebook, and add to
existing research on racist interactions online.

Keywords: Far-right, Racism, Discourse analysis, Social Networking, Visual
analysis.


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Session 3

15.40-16.00
Debating the European Union Dynamics of Ideological Conflict in
Political Debates
Mirko A. Demasi

16.00-16.20
Personalization of Politics in Spanish General Elections: An
Analysis of Political Advertising in the XXIst century
Marta Rebolledo

16.20-16.40
Self-serving National Ideologies: A CDA Analysis of 13th Malaysian
General Election (GE) Campaign
Nadilla Mohamad-Jamil

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15.40-16.00
Debating the European Union Dynamics of Ideological
Conflict in Political Debates
Mirko A. Demasi M.A.Demasi@lboro.ac.uk
The focus of my research is in how ideological conflict functions in a political debate,
where one side is taking a pro-EU stance and the other, conversely, an anti-EU one.
Viewing ideology as rhetorical (e.g., Billig, 1991), I analyse the talk and interaction of
the politicians. The research uses a combined analytical approach between
Rhetorical Psychology (RP), Discursive Psychology (DP), and Conversation Analysis
(CA).
For my proposed presentation, I will be talking about the analytical section taking a
more CA oriented approach. The focus is on how, in political debates, escalation
from a debate to an argument is a joint action. I look at how this is done, in
interactional terms, in the use of overlapping talk and epistemics. Epistemics
focuses on the knowledge claims that interactants assert, contest and defend in and
through turns at talk and sequences of interaction (Heritage, 2013, p.1).
The aim is to demonstrate different strategies of overlap, context, and displays of
epistemic stance politicians use to advance their side of the debate. Another key
analytical point to make is that this escalation is a joint action. That is, one side may
initiate more hostile terms of talk but in order to these to turn the debate into an
argument the opposing speaker(s) need to attend to this and respond in a similar
manner.
To sum up, overlapping talk and display of ones epistemic domain are viewed as
social actions that play a role in voicing disagreement. How do speakers display their
knowledge of the states of affair in talk, and how do they use this, in conjunction with
overlapping talk, to challenge the opposing speaker and/or escalate into an
argument?
Keywords: ideology, rhetoric, debate, EU, UK
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16.00-16.20
Personalization of Politics in Spanish General Elections: An
Analysis of Political Advertising in the XXIst century
Marta Rebolledo M.Rebolledo@lboro.ac.uk
Personalization is a phenomenon increasingly spread out in the area of political
communication, and which concerns the three actors that interact within it: media,
politicians and citizens. However, it is not a new feature. In fact, the interest from
scholars towards personalization has been shown in numerous studies, especially in
the last decade. Overall, personalization implies a change of attention from topics to
people and from parties to politicians, and it has been considered as an aspect
inherent to presidential systems like the one present in the United States.
Mass media especially television, which has changed the rules in the political
ground and the weaker voter attachments to parties are considered as two of the
main causes that have stressed this phenomenon. Modernization, decline of partisan
attachments, the increasing of the volatility, voters who are more influenced by short-
term elements, professionalization and media-centered campaigns are all aspects
affecting campaigns and bringing out what is also called as candidate-centered
politics.
Taking this framework as the main reference, this paper carries out a content
analysis of Spanish political advertising in the last three general elections, that is,
2004, 2008 and 2011 elections. The purpose of this paper is to assess to what
extent the personalization of the candidate in electoral campaigns is taking place in a
context different from the presidential one, being Spain a parliamentary system. The
approach chosen is from the perspective of politician strategies through political
advertising: among other ways of communication, in political spots candidates and
parties can control their messages. This analysis focuses mainly on the two major
parties: Popular Party (PP) and Socialist Party (PS).

Keywords: political ads, elections, personalization, content analysis, Spain
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16.20-16.40
Self-serving National Ideologies: A CDA Analysis of 13th Malaysian
General Election (GE) Campaign
Nadilla Mohamad-Jamil S.N.B.Mohamad-Jamil@lboro.ac.uk
My PhD project is concerned with the social analysis of the 13th Malaysian General
Election (GE) campaign discourse. Although the Malaysias long-ruling coalition,
Barisan Nasional (National Front) has managed to hang on to power when they won
133 out of 22 seats in parliament; the 13 GE is still a manifestation of a maturing
democracy in the nation as the dormant two party-system to some extent were
brought back to life: the ruling coalition was seen fighting for his political survival in
the face of a reinforced Opposition and in the wake of huge electoral losses of the
2008 GE (Welsh, 2013, pp. 236-241).
However, the 13 GE also witnessed the racial contestation at its sharpest. Under the
headline Sedarlah Cina (Wake up Chinese), (Awang Selamat, 2013), Utusan
Malaysia claimed that the electoral setback was caused by a Chinese tsunami, a
race-tinged reference to ethnic Chinese Malaysians who voted overwhelmingly in
favour of the Opposition which led to some Malay ethno-nationalists calling for a
boycott of Chinese businesses, closing down Chinese-language schools and
expanding preferential policies for Malays and other natives (Ariffuddin Ishak, 2013;
Boo, 2013). That, however, was not surprising as the issue of nation building has
always been prominent in Malaysia since the racial bloodbath on May 13 1969
(Shuib et. al, 2010). And it has always been implemented at the expense of
Habermass (1989) notion of civil society in democracy and the paradox of the
overarching loyalty to the state.
My study therefore aims to reveal the discursive event produced by the political
parties and relate these events to socio-political and historical situations in Malaysia.
As well as a strong substantive and historical argument, there is also a
methodological argument about the way in which discursive practices have to be
analysed at both micro and (for example, grammar and word frequency) and macro
(for example, text constructions, modes of address) levels in order to be correlated
with discursive formations and shifts in the social order.
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Linguistic, content and sociostructural aspects are planned to be brought together
through Wodak and Meyers (2009) Discourse Historical Analysis framework where
the 15 days of election campaign discourse will be studied, from April 20 to May 5
2013. Analysis is intended to focus on many of the main texts produced during the
election campaign, including manifestos, party election broadcasts and newspapers
articles.
Keywords: Critical discourse analysis, Propaganda, Nation-building, electoral
campaign discourse