Digital Fashion Engagement Through Affect,Personal Investments and Remix

ABSTRACT

As the fashion scene becomes progressively digitalised, new dynamics emerge between consumers, content, and fashion professionals. Reflecting on forms of online interaction, this article explores contemporary audience engagement in the context of mainstream androgynous fashion. First, I consider the effects of the digitalisation of fashion communication in terms of the particular role played by sentiments and emotions. Due to the brevity, immediacy and informality of online communication, I argue, affect emerges as an increasingly crucial component of the fashion discourse. I then turn to an assessment of both the dangerous implications and the positive potential of such phenomenon. On the one hand, I explore cases where members of the public interact directly with fashion intermediaries on social media and highlight how direct engagement leads audiences to internalise the scrutiny of professionals and make emotional investments in their implicit promises. On the other, I examine Tumblr blogs as an example of forms of indirect audience engagement with fashion. In this context, acquiring a distance from fashion mediation, consumers are able to engage in practices of creativity and semantic alterations of the dominant aesthetics.     

Making citizenship public: identities,practices, and rights at Woodsquat

The common conception of citizenship is that of belonging to a political community, with the ensuing rights and responsibilities of membership. This community tends to be naturalized as the nation-state. However, this location of citizenship needs to be decentred in order to investigate current modes of democratic participation. This paper investigates current sites and practices of citizenship through reflection on a tactical housing squat of an empty department store staged by an urban social movement in Vancouver in 2002, known as ‘Woodsquat’. It uses a social movement perspective to look at citizenship, emphasizing the identities, practices, and locations of democratic engagement over the collective question of how we will live together in these places. From this point of view Woodsquat shows current limits of national citizenship, conceptually and practically, and suggests alternative possibilities for future citizenship practices located in multiple identifications with (political) communities. Moving from this analysis of political participation at Woodsquat attention is brought to the importance of spaces of democratic communication for possibilities of citizenship, where there seems to be a reinforcing relationship between public spheres, social movements, and democracy. Ultimately, then, actions at Woodsquat are argued to be a form of citizenship that emerged within a democratic public.     

在异域与本土之间——中国西双版纳打洛镇傣族与缅甸掸族的跨境宗教文化交往

本文以云南西双版纳打洛镇傣族与缅甸北部掸族的跨境宗教交往为切入点,分析由这一交往结构所引发的跨境民族在经济、文化方面的相互联系,以及在此基础上产生的文化认同和文化互动,以此来判断打洛边境傣族在社会转型时期的文化价值取向。     

Covid-19 communication in emerging markets—Not viral enough?

Public health communication acts as a social vaccine in case of pandemics. Prior research has identified that such initiatives often fail to reach vulnerable sections of society. In India, while the first wave of infections mainly hit the urban areas, rural areas witnessed a surge in the second wave. Using the World Bank data, we attempt to understand the effectiveness of public awareness campaigns in rural areas. We use the Ecological Model for public health and find how the various factors relate to public health outcomes. The ecological factors are found to be related to awareness of Covid-19. We find inadequate awareness about the symptoms and preventive measures associated with Covid-19 among the rural population. We also find significant differences in communication and awareness along dimensions such as education and access to media. The role played by SHGs and hospitals in dealing with pandemics is also evident in this study. We conclude that the disparity in public health communication needs to be bridged to ensure equitable access to health information in society during public health crises.     

Elite communication and affective polarization among voters

How does elite communication influence affective polarization between partisan groups? Drawing on the literature on partisan source cues, we expect that communication from in- or outgroup party representatives will increase affective polarization. We argue that polarized social identities are reinforced by partisan source cues, which bias perceptions of elite communication and result in increased intergroup differentiation. Further, we expect that the effect of such source cues is greater for voters with stronger partisan affinities. To evaluate our hypotheses, we performed a survey experiment among about 1300 voters in Sweden. Our analyses show that individuals who received a factual political message with a source cue from an in- or outgroup representative exhibited higher affective polarization, especially when they already held strong partisan affinities. This suggests that political elites can increase affective polarization by reinforcing existing group identities, and that this occurs in conjunction with biased interpretation of elite communication. The results improve our understanding of how political elites can influence affective polarization and add to previous research on party cues and attitude formation by demonstrating that such source cues can also increase intergroup differentiation.     

Going on the offensive: Negative messaging in British general elections

What drives British parliamentary candidates to attack their opponents? Using an original dataset of approximately 7500 general election leaflets from four elections between 2010 and 2019, we offer the first study into the conditions under which British parliamentary candidates use negative messaging. We find that leaflets from opposition candidates and candidates contesting marginal (i.e., competitive) seats are more likely to include messages about their opponent(s), which suggests that candidates respond to the incentives and pressures that come from both their local and national environment when determining whether to include negative messaging in their leaflets. Moreover, we find that, as seats become more marginal, candidates from government parties become just as likely as opposition parties to engage in negative messaging, and therefore, voters in marginal seats are likely to experience more negative campaigns than those residing in seats where the outcome is a foregone conclusion. Taken together, our findings make an important contribution to the growing body of literature that explores how candidates use negative messaging in party-centred systems.     

Reputational impact of Covid-19 pandemic management on World Health Organization among Indian public health professionals

Organizational reputation is critical for successful stakeholder engagement. A crisis can affect the organizational reputation and alter stakeholder perception about organizations. The current study investigates the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic and its management on the World Health Organization's (WHO's) reputation among Indian public health professionals (PHPs). The study applies the situational crisis communication theory (SCCT) model to investigate the reputational impact of the pandemic on WHO among the study subjects. The study results indicate that most Indian PHPs attribute the current Pandemic to WHO. Their current reputation has dropped compared to their earlier reputation among Indian PHPs. The same is reflected in their behavioral intent, with the PHP's willingness to follow WHO guidelines on public health issues significantly reduced. The study also finds empirical support for the SCCT Model.     

Verbal Aggression Among Male Alcoholic Patients and Their Wives in the Year Before and Two Years After Alcoholism Treatment

Our earlier reports on 88 male alcoholics and their wives showed that domestic violence decreased significantly in the first and second year following a behavioral marital therapy (BMT) alcoholism treatment program. The present study examined verbal aggression in this same sample. In the year before BMT, verbal aggression was significantly greater—being five to seven times more prevalent for clinically elevated aggression and substantially more frequent—for the alcoholic husbands and their wives than for a demographically matched, nonalcoholic comparison sample. In the two years after BMT, both alcoholic men and their wives showed significant and substantial reductions in verbal aggression as compared with the year before BMT. Despite these significant reductions from the year before BMT, verbal aggression in the two years after BMT remained significantly elevated relative to demographically similar nonalcoholic controls. As predicted, relapsed alcoholics and their wives showed more verbal aggression in the 2 years after BMT than both couples with a remitted alcoholic husband and demographically similar nonalcoholic controls, whereas remitted alcoholics and their wives had similar levels of verbal aggression to the nonalcoholic controls. Further, frequency of drinking was positively correlated with verbal aggression in the 2 years after BMT; verbal aggression was greater when the alcoholic husband drank more frequently.     

企业并购融合的沟通问题探讨

企业并购不仅是有形资产的合并而且是企业文化、人力资源的有效整合。沟通是企业并购过程的重要活动,是实现企业并购整合的重要途径。     

性别与传播研究30年发展轨迹

性别与传播研究作为一个学术研究范畴已经经历了30多年的发展历程,中国学者在95’世妇会前后开始关注学理化的性别与传播研究的相关议题。近几年来,各国学者在该领域的研究均有了长足的进展,世界性的学术对话使该领域呈现出生动而又充满活力的景象。本文着重探讨了性别与传播研究的学术源头、历史演变、各阶段发展特征以及发展趋势,呈现了性别与传播研究的历史性成果,梳理了性别与传播研究较为系统的发展脉络。