The Centre for Sociology of Democracy studies democracy in modern societies. Our projects deal with democracy from different perspectives and with different methods.
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Recent News & Blog Posts
In her article, Carla Malafaia studies how youths manage their activism and argues that activists construct margins of resistance in their political practices by incorporating processes that interrupt adult structures while reframing educational imagination.
In their article, by augmenting Mouffe’s agonistic pluralism with Thévenot’s pragmatic sociology, Veikko Eranti and Taina Meriluoto develop both an analytical framework for a more nuanced study of urban politics as sites of democracy and a detailed conceptualization of pluralism in democracy.
In their article, Eeva Luhtakallio and Taina Meriluoto argue that a fame-based logic has become dominant in the strategies of actors in many different situations concerning political action in public. By recognizing the fame-based values informing public action with a pragmatist approach, they argue that a wider variety of action can be recognized as public action and the normative foundations that inform people’s action in public can be interrogated.
In their article, Luhtakallio, Ylä-Anttila and Lounela compare the efforts of civil society organizations to influence climate change policymaking in three countries with very different traditions of democratic decision making.
In her article, Taina Meriluoto conceptualizes selfies as reflexive practices of self-coordination, and develops an analytical framework adapted from the literature of sociology of engagements for their analysis.
What are the next walls to fall in science and society? Led by this question, the brightest minds from the international scientific community submitted their groundbreaking projects for the prestigious Falling Walls Science Breakthrough of the Year 2022.
In their article, Luhtakallio and Meriluoto argue that two significant shifts, namely, the blurring of lives offline and online and the increasing significance of the visual character of these lives, pose new challenges to social science research methods.
Julkisuuteen noussut kohu on keskittynyt pääasiassa yhden suuren ketjuravintolan toimintakulttuuriin, mutta Lotta Junnilaisen ja Lotta Haikkolan haastatteluiden perusteella ongelmat eivät koske yksittäistä pikaruokaketjua, vaan ravintola-alaa laajemminkin.
Kahdeksan kuplan Suomi kuvaa talouden murrosten silmässä elävien ihmisten kokemuksia itsestään ja yhteiskunnasta: sitä, mitä he odottavat itseltään ja toisiltaan. Se kertoo myös tahdosta ja tunteista, jotka sitovat ihmisiä yhteen. Millaista tarinaa suomalaiset kertovat itsestään, ja millaisia tunteita tarinaan liittyy? Kuulemmeko ja ymmärrämmekö toistemme tarinoita?
Linda Haapajärven, Jutta Juveniuksen ja Lotta Junnilaisen artikkeli valittiin Sosiologia-lehden toimituskauden 2020-2021 parhaan artikkelin palkinnon voittajaksi.
The Pepe the Frog Image-Meme in Hong Kong: Visual Recurrences and Gender Fluidity on the LIHKG Forum
Using a combination of a computational big data analysis and a qualitative analysis, Katrien Jakobs, Degel Cheung, Vasileios Maltezos and Cecilia Wong examine how activists used the Pepe the Frog image-meme to make statements about Hong Kong politics, gender and democracy during the 2019 Anti-Extradition Bill and Law Movement.
Abstract:
This paper examines how Pepe the Frog, a cartoon character originally created by American cartoonist Matt Furie, and currently a global digital image-meme of online activism, was adopted and adapted in Hong Kong during the 2019 Anti-Extradition Bill and Law Movement (反對逃犯條例修訂運動; faan deoi tou faan tiu lai sau ding wan dung) (hereafter: anti-ELAB Movement) on one of the most prevalent protest platforms, the LIHKG forum (LIHKG 論壇). We combined a computational big data analysis of the posts’ metadata and a qualitative analysis of the Hong Kong Pepe image-meme to examine how it contributed to highly emotive and contentious discussions about the future of Hong Kong. The aim is to reveal how activists on this platform framed this imported image-meme to make statements about Hong Kong politics, as well as gender and democracy. The scope of visual content on social media today creates an opportunity for cross-disciplinary collaboration and new methodological approaches that combine a scaling of large quantities of images with representative sampling and theories of online activism. Our theoretical interest aims at documenting how activists reveled in various visual cultures and adopted the image-meme within social media discourse. We are equally interested in identifying the gender representations of these figures and how they drove emotional responses and discussions during the movement’s high points. The Anti-ELAB protests and the LIHKG forum were specifically characterized by a large participation of younger women. Alongside the proposition for Hong Kong self-determination, the forum hosted discussions about the role of female activists within the struggle. Since Pepe had previously been adopted by xenophobic alt-right groups and the misogynist “manosphere,” we monitored and interpreted recurring Pepe-imagery to find out how normative-conservative, or gender-fluid and emancipatory tropes were used on the LIHKG forum.
The article is published open access and is available here.
