Topic
Webring
About: Webring is a research topic. Over the lifetime, 2 publications have been published within this topic receiving 2 citations.
Papers
1 Dec 2012
TL;DR: According to Padovani et al. as discussed by the authors, about 150 websites are run in Italy by extreme-right groups and political parties, and most of these websites are easily reachable and apparently "neutral".
Abstract: AntiFascismo Militante; etc.) monitor, archive materials, and investigate the Italian
extreme right (Padovani 2008). Some studies focus on the way these extremists’
websites portray immigration issues or the historical fascist period (see Criscione
2003; Padovani 2008: 755); others concentrate on the links of the Italian extremeright websites and their attempt to create national and international Web com -
munities (e.g. for the use of ‘Webring’ see Qin et al. 2007; Caiani and Wagemann
2009). According to some estimates, about 150 websites are run in Italy by
extreme-right groups and political parties. Likewize, a 2002 study conducted by
UISP (Unione Italiana Sport) on ‘racism, soccer and the Internet’, found that among
the websites maintained by soccer fan clubs, the Italians ones were among the most
racist (Wetzel 2009: 365). Some of these websites are easily reachable, and apparently
‘neutral’. Others are more complex to access and more violent and radical, at the
borderline between legality and illegality according to Mancino Law (Fasanella and
Grippo 2009: 158). Furthermore, extreme-right organizations do not only use the
Internet as a simple showcase. In addition, commu nication technologies ‘afford
opportunities to debate, mobilize, reflect, imagine, critique, archive, and inform’
(Downing and Brooten 2007: 538, as quoted in Padovani 2008). In Italy in the
1990s, the first sites of the so-called ‘multimedia antagonism’, linked to companies
that produce and commercialize right-wing music, appeared on the Web (on music
and the extreme right, see Langebach and Raabe in this volume). Ever since, these
sites, advertising concerts and ‘cultural’ initiatives, have played a central role in the
ideal re-composition of the Italian extreme-right family, offering new ‘spaces for
the confrontation and debate among the various souls’ of the extreme right, such
as AN, Fiamma Tricolore, and Forza Nuova (Caldiron 2001: 336). The Internet
thus represents not only a new forum of communication for these political forces
in which an ‘electronic community’ of like-minded people can be created, but also
a stimulus and a means to renovate themselves, adopt new topics and action strategies, modernizing their identity by embracing technological and cultural changes.
For example, in 1997, Alleanza Nazionale organized a multimedia conference on
‘populism and new media’ (Caldiron 2001: 336).
2 citations
1 Jan 2018
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors use a now-vanished webring that in 1999 connected 584 amateur websites commemorating deceased children, and show that today's social media are potentially unstable, despite the fact they have become tremendously influential in modern culture.
Abstract: Starting with the remarkable example of a now-vanished webring that in 1999 connected 584 amateur websites commemorating deceased children, this chapter expresses clear awareness that today’s social media are potentially unstable, despite the fact they have become tremendously influential in modern culture. As a simple demonstration project, a secret Facebook group called Bailiwick Archives was created to share among living family members pictures and documents belonging to the particular family whose history this book has used as its primary example. The content of the archive included a great variety of materials, including a 546-line poem about the contrasting forms of families dating from 1874, a lecture about the plight of poor urban mothers given at the 1897 meeting of the National Congress of Mothers, and a reminiscence by a son about the process of publishing a novel written by his deceased mother, that was a fictionalized version of their own real family history. The chapter then uses Facebook and other online communication media in search for all the former homes of a particular married couple, discovering that one unexpectedly was now at the very center of a radical religious community with an intense focus on building families, and that four competing Facebook community groups were debating the intense cultural conflict around that utopian experiment. Other examples show how towns vary greatly in the extent to which there are Facebook groups oriented to their history, based on factors as diverse as culture conflict, enthusiasm by amateur community historians, and tourism advertising. The chapter concludes with examples showing that distinct wikis can be created to organize information about particular families, serving as encyclopedia-style social media.
Related Topics (5)
Performance Metrics
| Year | Papers |
|---|---|
| 2018 | 1 |
| 2012 | 1 |