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The social visuality of distant suffering

Social movements and collective action through social networking sites: the case of the Occupy Buffer Zone movement in Cyprus

What is the social in social media?

The use of the word “social” in the context of information technology goes back to the very beginnings of cybernetics. It later pops up in the 1980s context of “groupware.” The recent materialist school of Friedrich Kittler and others dismissed the use of the word “social” as irrelevant fluff – what computers do is calculate, they do not interfere in human relations. Holistic hippies, on the other hand, have ignored this cynical machine knowledge and have advanced a positive, humanistic view that emphasizes computers as tools for personal liberation. This individualistic emphasis on interface design, usability, and so on was initially matched with an interest in the community aspect of computer networking. Before the “dot-com” venture capitalist takeover of the field in the second half of the 1990s, progressive computing was primarily seen as a tool for collaboration among people.

A theoretical and methodological approach to social entrepreneurship as world-making and emancipation

This article presents and analyses three cases, which integrate features of both social movements and social entrepreneurship (SE). It is the result of a longitudinal study (January 2012 to September 2015). The study contributes new insights to the theoretical and methodological discussions on SE, focusing on ‘the social’ in SE literature. The three selected movements, active in the Netherlands, are: ‘The Dutch Chapter of Zeitgeist’ henceforth Zeitgeist (TZM), (2010–present), ‘Giving is All we Have’ (henceforth GIAWH, (2011–2014) and ‘MasterPeace’ (MP) (2010–present). Each movement shows a strong inclination towards social transformation, while being rooted in organizational structures, therefore considered ‘social entrepreneurial movements’. Specific contributions entail: the presentation of these innovative cases, the design of a methodology based on critical discourse analysis, state theory, narrative analysis, political theory and discourse theory and a thorough analysis and interpretation of these cases in the national and global contexts in which they emerged. More specifically, it contributes to SE literature on emancipation, defined as ‘breaking free’ when further developing the method in the direction of world-making, defined as ‘creating new worlds’. This study suggests that transition theory can be useful for the study of the impact of social entrepreneurial movements.

Expertise and Deceptive Movements in Sport

Background: Deceptive movements occur when an actor seeks to fake, hide or delay kinematic information about their true movement outcomes. The purpose of deceptive movements is to impair the perception of opponents (the ‘observer’) to gain an advantage over them. We argue though that a lack of conceptual clarity has led to confusion about what deception is and in understanding the different approaches by which an actor can deceive their opponent. The aim of this article is to outline a conceptual framework for understanding deceptive movements in sport. Main body: Adopting Interpersonal Deception Theory from the field of communication, we define deception as when an actor deliberately alters their actions in an attempt to impair the ability of an observer to anticipate their true action outcomes. Further, deception can be achieved either by what we define as deceit, the act of providing false information, or disguise, the act of concealing the action outcome. Skilled athletes often have actions that are difficult to anticipate, but an action is only classified as containing deception if the actor has explicit intent to deceive an observer. Having outlined the conceptual framework, we then review existing empirical findings on the skilled perception of deceptive movements considering the framework. This approach includes a critical evaluation of the mechanisms known to facilitate the perceptual ability to prevent being deceived, including a consideration of visual search strategies, confidence, the contribution of visual and motor experiences, and the influence of response biases and action capabilities on perceptual performance. Conclusion: The distinction between deceit and disguise particularly helps to show that most research has examined deceit, with little known about how an actor can more effectively disguise their action, or about how an observer can improve their ability to anticipate the outcome of disguised actions. The insights help to identify fruitful areas for future research and outline implications for skill acquisition and performance enhancement.

The discourse of social movements

In line with discursive psychology’s re-specification of psychological categories as discursive practices, this chapter focuses on everyday mobilisation as social action. We analyse online communication on Facebook Event pages of local social movements, designed to mobilise for political gatherings such as demonstrations. The aim of the chapter is to explore how language is used to make available the social action of mobilizing for collective events such as demonstrations. In addition to other perspectives on the role of language in mobilisation, the discursive psychological perspective takes into account both the rhetorical and the interactional features of online calls for collective action participation. Members of social movements construct calls for participation in collective action as appropriate or fair by carefully managing their reasonableness. In dit hoofdstuk wordt alledaagse mobilisatie behandeld als een sociale handeling, vanuit een discursief-psychologisch perspectief. Dit perspectief herformuleert psychologische categorieën als discursieve praktijken. We analyseren online communicatie op Facebook Event pagina’s van sociale bewegingen, die ontworpen zijn om mensen op te roepen deel te nemen aan bijeenkomsten zoals demonstraties. Het doel van dit hoofdstuk is in kaart te brengen hoe taal wordt gebruikt om mobilisatie voor collectieve gebeurtenissen mogelijk te maken. In aanvulling op andere perspectieven op de rol van taal in mobilisatie, wordt gekeken naar de interactionele en retorische aspecten van oproepen tot deelname aan collectieve acties. Leden van sociale bewegingen construeren de motieven voor deze oproepen als redelijk en weerleggen daarmee het idee dat ze handelen uit activistische motieven.