Deakin University: openjournals@Deakin
Not a member yet
1277 research outputs found
Sort by
Having fun saving the climate: The climate influencer, emotional labour and -storytelling as counter-narrative on TikTok
Get PDF“How dare you!”. Greta Thunberg’s angry address at the United Nations Climate Action Summit in 2019 epitomised the younger generations’ emotionally charged critique of the political establishment and that establishment’s clear deficit in addressing the climate crisis. Similarly, recent studies of the communication of climate change issues, specifically on the social media platform TikTok, have revealed how Generation Z directly critiques ‘boomers’ for not preventing the climate crisis (Zeng and Abidin 2021) or explicitly express climate anxiety and helplessness (Kaye et al. 2023). Expressions of emotion are in many ways central to how climate change is addressed on social media, and research has so far focussed primarily on quantitative content analysis of affective publics with TikTok hashtags such as #forclimate (Hautea et al. 2021), #climatechange (Corey et al. 2022) and #ecotok (Huber et al. 2022). Less attention has been paid to how individual influencers address climate change through an emotional focus (Murphy 2021). This article aims to remedy this gap through an analysis of two climate influencers on TikTok and how they address climate change through the lens of fashion and science, respectively. They apply their personas (Marshall et al. 2020) to engage in emotional storytelling (Wahl-Jorgensen 2019) and emotional labour (Senft 2008), as well as using hashtags as part of an affective public (Papacharissi 2016). These two influencer types communicate upbeat and fact-based climate narratives in contrast to other ‘gloom and doom’ videos shared on TikTok (Hautea et al. 2021; Kaye et al. 2023) and further represent individual takes on counter-narratives to misinformation about climate change (van Eerten et al. 2017). Our analysis exemplifies how, in a qualitative study, we can investigate the extent to which climate influencers, through their emotional address as well as their fact-based communication, contribute to counter-narratives about climate change on TikTok
The Art of Resurrection: Affectivity and Afterlives in Historical Biofiction
Get PDFThis paper explores the ways in which writers of biofiction manipulate the tools of narrative to generate fictional representations of real historical figures and broker an affective relationship between the reader and the protagonist of the text. Narratological perspectives offered by Dorrit Cohn and the methodology of cognitive poetics advanced by Peter Stockwell inform analysis of recent exemplars of the genre, including Kate Grenville’s A Room Made of Leaves (2020), Maggie O’Farrell’s Hamnet: A Novel of the Plague (2020), and Hilary Mantel’s The Mirror and the Light (2019). Particular attention is paid to the authors’ use of tense, structure, and narrative point of view as practical techniques for ‘resurrecting’ the dead. I argue that the felt response to the protagonist is part of the immersive experience of fiction generally but biofiction in particular, making the genre a powerful medium for shaping the afterlives of historical figures
Making Room for Post-Authentic Domesticity
Get PDFThis creative response interrogates the persona that seems to inhabit sex webcam platforms, online services where people can stream and monetize amateur sexual performances (Henry & Farvid 2017; Jones 2020). If the perception of authenticity has been a crucial feature of camming since its inception (Senft 2008), this impression is no longer conveyed only through amateur signifiers (Hernández 2019). Domesticity on the sexcam platform oscillates between two poles. One of them is incarnated by the professional webcam studio, where uninhabited rooms are presented as private yet generic spaces (Korody 2019). The other pole is the personal space, staged for its transmission through the platform. Decorative trends and habits crossover between these extremes, creating a new type of domesticity with no other purpose than the sexual spectacle. The product of this mutual influence is referred to as ‘post-authentic domesticity’ in this article. Drawing upon literary studies, post-authenticity implies a fiction that engages with an ‘authentic’ referent but does not aim to replicate it (Gefter Wondrich 2020). As such, domesticity in the sexcam platform is both a second-hand reference and a space where its online persona unfolds.The exploration of this post-authentic domesticity is conveyed by means of a website that replicates some of the graphic conventions of sexcam performers’ profiles. The website is divided into different pages that address distinct aspects in the form of short poems. The images accompanying the texts, created by the author, were made using ASCII characters and they reference empty webcam rooms observed in the sexcam platform Chaturbate during 2022. The abstract character of the images aims to emphasize the role of the audience in the construction of online intimacy and meaning
Editorial Issue 4
Get PDFThis is the editorial for Issue 4 of c i n d e r journal.
"The question of exactly what we are doing when we are writing remains an open one. I love to read, and am heartened and provoked by, the grapplings of artists and thinkers when they state, manifesto-like, just what they consider themselves up to… or even what the writing itself is up to, with its own kind of agency, surprises, and non-compliance. How we approach the writing-activity (its thought, para-doings, community of practice, representation of it to ourselves, and ambivalences regarding it) can alter chameleon-like, across the course of our reading and making lives...
Analyse le procédé de résolution de problèmes au sein de l’Unité WatHab du CICR : une approche centrée sur l'humain
Get PDFThe Water and Habitat department (WatHab) of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) is an engineering department dealing with technical problems in humanitarian contexts. This paper outlines research that used humancentric design (HCD) as a framework to analyse the problem-solving process in the WatHab department. The project took a qualitative approach to data collection and analysis, with 16 interviews conducted with WatHab engineers in five countries. Viewed through a HCD lens, the research found that there are a lack of clear systems within WatHab to include beneficiaries in the problem-solving processes, issues with departmental planning processes, which focus on yearly plans, rather than the longer-term planning needed to respond to the root causes of issues, and a tendency for WatHab staff to think more with their technician hats rather than their humanitarian hats. The research advocates for the importance of creating new and more inclusive solutions, while keeping in mind the realities on the ground and the impossibility of satisfying everyone.L’Unité eau et habitat ou WatHab du Comité International de la Croix-Rouge (CICR) est une unité d'ingénierie qui traite des problèmes techniques dans les contextes humanitaires. Cet article présente une recherche qui a utilisé la conception centrée sur l'humain ou l’utilisateur (CCH) comme cadre pour analyser le processus de résolution de problèmes au sein de l’Unité WatHab. En ce qui concerne la collecte et l'analyse des données, le projet a adopté une approche qualitative par le biais de 16 entretiens menés auprès des ingénieurs WatHab dans cinq pays. À travers le prisme de la conception centrée sur l’humain, la recherche a montré qu’il existe une absence de systèmes précis d’inclusion des bénéficiaires dans les processus de résolution de problèmes. C’est en effet le cas quand il est question des problèmes liés aux processus de planification de l’unité, qui se basent sur des plans annuels plutôt que sur une planification à long terme et pour la tendance du personnel WatHab à penser davantage avec leur casquette de technicien plutôt qu'avec leur casquette d’humanitaire. L'étude souligne l'importance de créer de nouvelles solutions plus inclusives, tout en gardant à l'esprit les réalités du terrain et l'impossibilité de satisfaire toutes les parties prenantes concernées. 
Rethinking Reading at Home: Connecting families with multilingual digital texts
Get PDFReporting a Brisbane Catholic Education (BCE) project spanning 2018-2020, this paper looks at what happened when early primary, multilingual students were given e-readers with bilingual texts to take home to read together with their families. The shift in pedagogy to view our learners as multilingual, from learning English to developing multicompetence, influenced our decision to make digital texts in community languages more readily available to our students. Although our increasingly digital world has led to improved access to information, texts in different languages and the opportunity for students to access learning in different ways, we realised that students at school, particularly those from a refugee background, have limited access to these resources.
Along with improved access for students, we also wanted parents to have access to reading materials in their home languages, so that they could read together with their young children. Our goal was not only to facilitate reading in both home languages and English but to create greater student engagement in reading, while strengthening home and English literacy. In the course of compiling the digital library, we realised that we needed to find out more about what helps our multilingual students with reading and gain a greater understanding of family literacy practices in our school communities. Our learnings about the sustainability of libraries, student progress in reading, and family literacy practices in Brisbane Catholic Education school communities has important implications for how we teach multilingual learners to read toda
La décolonisation des interventions liées à la santé mentale dans le système humanitaire.
Get PDFMental health is an increasing concern around the world, but there is a substantial gap between Western and non-Western countries in terms of access to quality mental healthcare. To help close this gap and improve the delivery of mental health and psychosocial support services (MHPSS), the UN’s 2016 Grand Bargain declared a new approach of prioritising the localisation of these services. This paper examines the effects of the Grand Bargain on the localisation of mental health and psychosocial support services in non-Western countries, as a means to decolonise mental health.
An outcome evaluation was carried out to measure the amount of funding received by local and national agencies that provide MHPSS services in less economically developed countries. All data was gathered from the UN Financing Track System (FTS) and looked at financial contributions over time in six humanitarian sectors: health; water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH); gender-based violence; nutrition; protection, and shelter. The results show that local and national agencies received only 3% of international donors' MHPSS-related humanitarian funding between 2017 and 2021. Most localised MHPSS-related funding is driven by country-based pooled funds, with Middle Eastern countries as the primary beneficiaries, and localised MHPSS funding predominantly went to the health, WASH, and protection sectors. The study found limited localisation of MHPSS services in less economically developed countries, and a limited focus on community capacity building through associated humanitarian sectors. Based on this study, it is recommended that humanitarians should advocate for increased localisation and culturally competent practices in the MHPSS space.La santé mentale est une préoccupation grandissante à l’échelle globale. Pourtant, lorsqu’il s’agit d’accès à des traitements et des soins de qualité, l’écart de services proposés entre les pays du Nord et les pays du Sud est considérable. Afin de tenter de réduire cet écart et d’apporter de meilleurs services de Santé Mentale et de Soutien Psychosocial (SMSPS), le Grand Bargain des Nations Unies a élaboré une nouvelle approche mettant la priorité sur la localisation, à savoir l’adaptation des services au contexte local. Cet article analyse les effets de cette nouvelle approche comme moyen de décoloniser les pratiques liées à la santé mentale.
Une évaluation des résultats a été menée afin de mesurer les financements reçus par les organismes nationaux et locaux en charge des soins dans les services de SMSPS dans les pays en voie de développement. Ces données ont été récoltées à partir du Système de surveillance financière (Financial Tracking Service - FTS) des Nations Unies et se concentrent sur les contributions financières touchant six secteurs : la santé ; l’eau, l’assainissement et l’hygiène (Water, Sanitation and Hygiene - WASH) ; les violences liées au genre ; la nutrition ; la protection et finalement le logement. Les résultats montrent que seuls 3% des dons internationaux liés à la SMSPS entre 2017 et 2021 ont été versés aux agences locales et nationales.
La plupart des financements liés à la SMSPS touchant directement les organismes locaux sont assurés par les Fonds de financement commun pour les pays (Country-based Pooled Funds - CBPF). Les principaux bénéficiaires de ces financements sont les pays du Moyen-Orient et ces fonds sont majoritairement dirigés vers les secteurs de la santé, de WASH et de la protection.
L’étude a montré une quantité restreinte de services liés à la SMSPS dans les pays économiquement moins développés et une faible attention portée au renforcement des capacités locales à travers l’aide humanitaire. En se basant sur cette étude, nous recommandons aux acteurs du secteur humanitaire de plaider en faveur d’une approche plus localisée, afin de donner davantage de pouvoir aux acteurs locaux dans les pratiques de la SMSPS
“Hello Ableds, Is It Vacation Yet?”: Disability, Domesticity, and Digital Alchemy During COVID-19
Get PDFWhen the novel coronavirus began spreading globally in 2020, people within disability communities marked the term ‘social distancing’ as oxymoronic and ignorant of those for whom isolation, quarantine, and limited public life is common. For many, COVID-19 did not signal a complete upheaval of their domestic lives; instead, it created opportunities to increase disability visibility in digital spaces and to lament the ways the pandemic further erased their existences. The first few months of quarantine saw the digital rise of prominent disability advocate Imani Barbarin, known to her social media communities as @crutches_and_spice. Barbarin’s persona as a Black disabled fat queer woman became distinct subversion to non-disabled people’s frequent social media laments of boredom, loneliness, and/or living in quarantine. Drawing upon Bailey’s digital alchemy theory situating how Black women’s online identity performances combat anti-Blackness and sexism (2021), I assert Barbarin is a purveyor of ‘disabled digital alchemy’ who employs social media for the “construction, constitution, and production of self through identity play and performance” (Marshall & Barbour 2015, p. 2). Combining Bailey’s framework with disability and persona studies conceptualizations of performance, I use Brock’s critical technocultural discourse analysis to examine how Barbarin utilizes social media affordances to challenge ableist notions of disabled people’s selfhood while calling out problematic pandemic rhetoric. Critically analyzing @crutches_and_spice specifically within TikTok enables a nuanced grasp of disabled people’s digital personas, how they are often ignored, and ways they perform domesticity to mitigate erasure in an ableist body politic
Setting Historical Fiction Ablaze with Autoethnography, Allegory and ADHD
Get PDFTo advance autoethnography territory lines, I have conceived a research design that utilises allegory and extended metaphors to write a historical fiction novel and an exegesis. The contextual background derives from my memories of teaching at an Australian high school in the six months after the COVID-19 pandemic arrived in Australia in 2020, and the experiential effect of the State and Federal Government’s policies in managing the COVID-19 pandemic on my professional life during this time. The novel is an allegory stemming from my examination of texts that foreground the teaching experiences of women,and establishes the continuity of the historical process of an exceptional situation from Australia’s past (the Spanish Flu epidemic) to the present (the COVID-19 pandemic). In 2021, I received an attention-deficit-hyperactivity-disorder (ADHD) diagnosis that has provided another lens to analyse my memories, writing practice and novel. This article explains my research design and how I have used it to develop a form of creative and critical expression that has advanced my capacity to address personal and professional issues during the COVID-19 pandemic
‘Many a story is but a crooked way to the truth’? Lessons from the Past as Truths for the Present in a Selection of Arthurian Young Adult Disaster Fictions
Get PDFThe myth of King Arthur has been used for many purposes. In post-disaster fiction for young adults, the Arthurian myth has been drawn upon by a number of authors to advocate unity and equality as major factors in creating a just and peaceful world. This article focuses on seven texts set after major global disaster caused by human action has devastated, or is threatening to devastate, the world of the implied present-day reader. The texts for discussion are Ron Langenus’ Merlin’s Return; Janice Elliott’s The King Awakes and The Empty Throne; and Pamela Service’s Winter of Magic’s Return, Tomorrow’s Magic, Yesterday’s Magic, and Earth’s Magic. Although King Arthur is portrayed differently by the three authors, he is presented as a figurehead of unity and peace in all of the texts, and the texts all transpose contemporary values held by the implied author and the implied reader onto what the texts present as ‘King Arthur’s time’, in order to suggest that greed, selfishness, and lust for power contributed to the destruction of King Arthur’s society, and are also threatening to destroy the world of the implied reader. Drawing upon Foucault’s concept of the regime of truth, this article demonstrates that the forms of the Arthurian myth used in the texts for discussion are, however, inherently gendered and nationalistic, and thus subvert the ideas of equality and unity that the texts seek to present.