Diversity’s discontents: in search of an archive of the oppressed

ABSTRACT

Australian and US-based archivists have recently begun to confront their complicity in a documentary landscape that excludes and erases the voices and views of minority, oppressed and poor communities. Archival professional organisations in both countries attempt to confront this issue by focusing on the homogeneity of the profession, specifically through using the discourse of diversity. Thus, this keynote address, delivered at the 2017 conference of the Australian Society of Archivists in Melbourne, explores the following question: how, if at all, does diversity form part of the solution for dismantling the white supremacy of archives? It begins this inquiry by recounting the author’s participation and experience with diversity projects of the Society of American Archivists, before speculating how archivists might transition away from the language of diversity and towards the language of liberation through the concept of an archive of the oppressed. The central argument of the address is that dismantling white supremacy in archives requires archivists abandon the neoliberal discourse of diversity and adopt an archive of the oppressed, or a cooperative approach in which oppressed peoples are positioned as subjects in our own liberation.     

“Nor Any Drop to Drink”: New Orleans Libraries in the Aftermath of Hurricane Katrina

SUMMARY

Hurricane Katrina's winds and flood waters impacted nearly every library in the New Orleans metropolitan area. The author provides a brief commentary on the extent of damage at the academic libraries before describing in detail the destruction and recovery of the library at Xavier University. The article offers a series of questions that librarians in flood-prone areas might ask in order to prepare themselves and their staffs for the possibility of a major flood and its consequences.     

Amazon’s Day One in China: The Role of Amazon’s Kindle in China

After the long-standing effort and negotiations, Amazon finally released its two Kindle products in China since it entered China 9 years ago. Some say Kindle as it plays as a Catfish would stir up China’s e-book reading market, while the others say Kindle has missed the best timing to enter the market. The article describes the Kindle’s current status in China digital publishing arena, exploring the consistent Amazon strategies in China e-commerce market, and analyzing its threats and opportunities coming from four aspects in the long run, policy, content, willingness-to-pay and competition.     

Daring to Be Weird: Exploring the Invocation of the “Company Freak” in Vonage’s New Advertising Campaign

A textual analysis was performed on the first five advertisements from Vonage’s “Crazy Generous” campaign. The ads ask the audience to consider what happens when co-optation is itself deployed as a promotional tool. Three primary themes emerge: the main character is Vonage’s “house hippie”; interacting with him is a “sanitary act”; and that by coaxing the main character to take a job with Vonage, the company has has restored social order.     

“The Gerbner violence profile”—an analysis of the CBS report

The Cultural Indicators Research Team is composed of George Gerbner, Larry Gross, Michael F. Eleey, Marilyn Jackson‐Beeck, Suzanne Jeffries‐Fox and Nancy Signorielli. (Readers are reminded that all four parts of this extended discussion are best read together, as constant reference is made to remarks in previous articles in the series.)     

Interpreting and shaping geopolitics in Chinese media: the discourse of the ‘New style of great power relations’

Chinese leaders have attempted to alleviate international anxiety about its rise to global prominence describing its development as a ‘peaceful rise’ or ‘peaceful development’. Most recently, Chinese leaders have begun deploying a new term, the ‘New Style of Great Power Relations’ (新型大国关系). The purpose of this study is to examine the treatment of the ‘New Style of Great Power Relations’ as a political slogan within the Chinese media as a means to shape a geopolitical worldview among Chinese citizens and international actors. Researchers identified 541 articles from 25 different Chinese media sources selected to represent varying levels of government influence and editorial perspectives. This study found the concept primarily intended to engage the United States by stressing cooperative aspects of U.S.–China relations, but also challenges specific U.S. actions. Those U.S. policies challenged within the Chinese media are portrayed as inconsistent with the ‘new style’ concept’s principles. This forms a ‘rhetorical trap’, as it were for the United States, in that the framing of the discourse implicates U.S. intentions and policies as disingenuous unless the United States changes its policy stances. The essay examines the implications of the discourse for understanding Chinese political communication.     

Re-imaging and re-imagining the past after ‘memoricide’: intimate archives as inscribed memories of the missing

This paper discusses a number of stories about loss, grief and genocide in Bosnia-Herzegovina and the attempts by the survivors to construct intimate archives about their shattered lives. In addition to the loss of human lives, the deliberate destruction of documents, photographs, books and official records has been deeply felt by the genocide survivors and other victims of ‘memoricide’ in Bosnia as a very personal loss, an aggravated trauma and a metaphor for annihilation of their personal, family and communal existence. Subsequently, for them, the recreation of personal records and communal archives ultimately becomes an attempt to reclaim their own past and, in the process, to reaffirm their identities and recreate and sustain a sense of continuity in a post-genocide context. Using a series of ethnographic vignettes from Bosnia and the Bosnian refugee diaspora, the paper highlights the importance of the survivors’ emotional (and embodied) attachment to various forms of records and archival material. It also demonstrates the potential for research in memory and archival studies to actively engage in the creation of historical narratives about violations of human rights, thus contributing to truth-finding, social healing and reconciliation processes in post-conflict and post-genocide communities.     

“Listening is an act of love”: Learning listening through StoryCorps

Courses: Interpersonal Communication, Basic Survey Course, Group Communication, Organizational Communication, Intercultural Communication, Listening, Family Communication, Interviewing, Business and Professional Communication.

Objectives: After completing this single class activity, students will be able to: (a) define listening; (b) identify listening as a top skill employers desire; (c) explain how listening may be perceived as an act of love; and (d) critically assess ways in which their listening behaviors may be improved.     

“Once an Eagle,always an Eagle?”: symbolic divestment,recuperative critique,and in-house protests against the anti-gay BSA

A group of Eagle Scouts protested the Boy Scouts of America’s (BSA) anti-gay, lesbian, bi-sexual, and queer policies and heteronormative citizenship ideals by forfeiting their badges, divesting their membership, and writing personal, emotionally charged letters addressed to the BSA to critique the institution from within. Engaging the correspondence illuminates the repertoires of critique and dissent they employ in their in-house protests. To these ends, this essay makes four primary contributions: it (re)calls attention to the correspondence archive as a fruitful site to investigate political speech acts and forms of dissent; it provides an understanding of the politics of emotions in protest and social change efforts, thus contributing to resonant dialogues in social movement studies; it codifies the Eagle Scouts’ particular tactics employed in their in-house protests, captured in the terms “symbolic divestment” and “recuperative critique”; and it offers a case study that details the rhetorical mechanisms of intrainstitutional change.     

New media–new voices: satirical representations of Nigeria’s socio-politics in Ogas at the top

New media are increasingly providing spaces and opportunities for media houses and activist groups engaged in socio-political reform in Africa. In Nigeria, social media are becoming platforms for communicating messages of resistance against oppressive political and exploitative economic power structures. This study analyzed Ogas at the top (OATT), an online puppetry series by Buni TV, as a way of examining new platforms and message content in Nigeria’s rapidly changing media sphere. Relying on semiotics and critical discourse analysis perspectives, the study analyzed select episodes of the series, to gauge how producers constructed powerful visual and linguistic messages to boldly satirize social injustices perpetrated by Nigeria’s political elites.     

New Challenges in the Coverage of Politics for UK Broadcasters and Regulators in the “Post-Truth” Environment

The last two years have been times of turbulence for the BBC, and other broadcasters, in terms of their coverage of UK politics. Their reporting of the general elections of 2015 and 2017, of the 2016 European Union Referendum and the 2015 election of Jeremy Corbyn to the leadership of the Labour Party have been much criticised (as has that of other mainstream media outlets). And despite the rise of social media, the BBC remains the most used and most trusted source of news in the UK and hence is a vital element in the UK public sphere. Consequently, these journalistic failures—when its political coverage failed to reflect what turned out to be the reality on the ground - are particularly problematic. This brings into focus the issue of “the truth” in election and referendum campaigns. The example quoted here—about the Labour Party and antisemitism—illustrates the difficulties in arriving at the “truth”, even in the less frenetic atmosphere between campaigns. It demonstrates how there can be many truths and this, in itself, raises urgent questions about the nature of political journalism which pose challenges for public broadcasting in Britain with implications that go much wider.     

How to manage an information state: Jean-Baptiste Colbert’s archives and the education of his son

This article examines the archival methods developed by Colbert to train his son in state administration. Based on Colbert’s correspondence with his son, it reveals the practices Colbert thought necessary to collect and manage information in his state encyclopedic archive during the last half of the 17th century.

Measuring Issue-specific and Generic Frames in the Media’s Coverage of the Steroids Issue in Baseball

This study explored frames in the coverage of the steroids issue in baseball through a content analysis of traditional and new media. Using issue-specific and generic frames, it proposed a hybrid measurement tool that combines both approaches. Findings of the principal component analysis indicate the media framed the steroids issue primarily in terms of conflict and policy. Significant differences emerged between traditional and new media, on the one hand, and between the news and sports media, on the other. Besides these frames, the media also presented the steroids story as a public opinion and morality issue, using organizational officials, the public, and the media to convey these frames.     

“I'm in sheer survival mode”: Information behaviour and affective experiences of early career academics

Affect plays an important role in the information behavior of early career academics. While there is a recognition of the importance of affect to information behavior in the information science literature, there has been a lack of empirical research that details its influence. Using a constructivist grounded theory methodology, early career academics were followed for a 5- to 7-month period and data were collected using in-depth and brief, ‘check-in’ interviews. Three prominent aspects of early career academics' affective experiences are described and their connection to specific information behavior is discussed, including feelings of: stress (linked to prioritization, information nonuse, information avoidance, and information seeking from colleagues); frustration (linked to prioritization and decision making to discontinue, persevere, or change tactics); and, stability and belonging (linked to comparison as a way of using information, seeking help, building information relationships, and sharing information with colleagues).     

“Land of the Long Black Cloud”: Copyright Globalization and Viral Counterpublicity in Aotearoa New Zealand

Viral flows of counterpublicity are an increasingly common occurrence in the global modular network of the modern public spheres. This article applies a public sphere theoretical framework built upon the radical or agonistic tradition and a critical discourse analytical methodological framework to interpret the example of the 2009 New Zealand Internet Blackout, which was mobilized in protest against impending copyright legislation that would have rendered the Aotearoa New Zealand environment one of the harshest in the world. It shows that viral counterpublicity can generate successful counterhegemonic projects and even bring about legislative change, and in doing so, makes the argument that our understanding of what the modern public sphere is should allow for more unruly and contentious forms of democratically legitimate communication.