The Public Interest Behind #JeSuisCharlie and #JeSuisAhmed: Social Media and Hashtag Virality as Mechanisms for Western Cultural Imperialism

Authors

  • Phillip Arceneaux University of Florida

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.32473/jpic.v2.i1.p41

Keywords:

hashtag, virality, Je Suis Charlie, electronic colonialism theory, international law

Abstract

As social creatures, humans are highly involved in storytelling. With the continued advancement of communication systems, the mechanisms for telling the narrative of human events also have evolved. Social media and the memetic properties of hashtags’ going viral are the apex of modern, digitally mediated, storytelling tools. This critical essay discussed two hashtags, i.e., narratives, of the Charlie Hebdo Paris shooting to illustrate how hashtag virality can be a mechanism for the spread and enforcement of Western perspectives. It then explored precedents under which international law could potentially warrant regulation of such behavior. Concerned with the protection of human diversity and cultural pluralism, this essay advanced a normative course of action to facilitate social change as conceived by an interdisciplinary framework. 

Author Biography

Phillip Arceneaux, University of Florida

Phillip Arceneaux is a Ph.D. student in the College of Journalism and Communications at the University of Florida. His research attempts to blend the fields of communication, international relations, and law, via a critical studies lens, to address contemporary social issues as propagated by the digital nature of globalization.

References

Alcott, H., & Gentzkow, M. (2017). Social media and fake news in the 2016 election. Journal of Economic Perspectives, 31(2), 211-236. doi: 10.1257/jep.31.2.211

Annex: General Assembly Resolution 217 A, III. (1996). The International Bill of Human Rights. Retrieved from http://www.ohchr.org/Documents/Publications/

FactSheet2Rev.1en.pdf

Bechmann, A., & Lomborg, S. (2013). Mapping actor roles in social media: Different perspectives on value creation in theories of user participation. New Media & Society, 15(5), 765-781. doi:10.1177/1461444812462853

Benson, E., Haghighi, A., & Barzilay, R. (2011). Event discovery in social media feeds.

Human language technologies: Proceedings of the 49th annual meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics: Human language technologies, 389-398. Portland: Association for Computation Linguistics.

Betsill, M. M., & Corell, E. (2008). NGO diplomacy: The influence of nongovernmental organizations in international environmental negotiations. Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press.

Bjola, C., & Holmes, M. (2015). Digital diplomacy: Theory and practice. New York, NY: Routledge.

Bond, M. H. (2015). How I am constructing culture-inclusive theories of social-psychological process in our age of globalization: Constructing culture-inclusive theories. Journal for the Theory of Social Behaviour, 45(1), 26-39. doi:10.1111/jtsb.12053

Boult, A. (2016, July 15). #PrayForNice: Tributes to Nice terror attack victims flood social media. The Telegraph. Retrieved from http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/07/15/

prayfornice-tributes-to-nice-terror-attack-victims-flood-social/

Brownlie, I., & Crawford, J. (2012). Brownlie's principles of public international law (8th

ed.). Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Buchanan, C. (2015). Revisiting the UNESCO debate on a new world information and communication order: Has the NWICO been achieved by other means? Telematics and Informatics, 32(2), 391-399. doi:10.1016/j.tele.2014.05.007

Butchart, G. C. (2010). The exceptional community: On strangers, foreigners, and communication. Communication, Culture, & Critique, 3(1), 21-25. doi. 10.1111/j.1753-9137.2009.01055.x

Casaly, P. (2016). Al mahdi before the ICC: Cultural property and world heritage in international criminal law. Journal of International Criminal Justice, 14(5), 1199-1220. doi:10.1093/jicj/mqw067

Cinéma: 2011 année de records en France. (2011, December 31). France-Soir. Retrieved from http://archive.francesoir.fr/loisirs/cine/cinema-2011-annee-records-en-france-169581.html

Clarke, J. (2016). International crimes against cultural heritage: The ICC’s Mali judgment. Australian Human Rights Centre. Retrieved from http://archive.ahrcentre.org/news/2016/10/20/852

Cobb, R. W., & Elder, C. D. (1971). The politics of agenda-building: An alternative perspective for modern democratic theory. The Journal of Politics, 33(4), 892-915.

Commission on Freedom of the Press. (1947). A free and responsible press: A general report on mass communication. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.

Cowen, T. (2002). Creative destruction: How globalization is changing the world’s cultures.

Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

Earl, J. (2016, March 22). #JeSuisBruxelles dominates social media after Brussels attack.

CBS News. Retrieved from http://www.cbsnews.com/news/brussels-attack-jesuisbruxelles-dominates-social-media/

Entman, R. M. (1993). Framing: Toward clarification on a fractured paradigm. Journal of

Communication, 43(4), 51-58. doi:10.1111/j.1460-2466.1993.tb01304.x

Falk, R. A. (1967). New approaches to the study of international law. The American Journal of International Law, 61(2), 477-495.

Figueiredo, C. (2015, November 24). My problem with the ‘pray for’ hashtag. The Odyssey.

Retrieved from https://www.theodysseyonline.com/my-problem-with-the-pray-for

Galt, F. S. (2004). The life, death, and rebirth of the "cultural exception" in the multilateral trading system: An evolutionary analysis of cultural protection and intervention in the face of American pop culture's hegemony. Washington University Global Studies Law Review, 3(3), 909-35.

General Assembly Resolution 2200A, XXI. (1966). International Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights. Retrieved from http://2covenants.ohchr.org/downloads/ICESCR.pdf

Giglietto, F., & Lee, Y. (2015, May). To be or not to be Charlie: Twitter hashtags as a discourse and counter-discourse in the aftermath of the 2015 Charlie Hebdo shooting in France. Paper presented at the Making Sense of Microposts: Big things come in small packages Conference, Florence, Italy.

Gitlin, T. (1980). The whole world is watching: Mass media in the making of unmaking of the new left. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.

Glasgow, K., & Fink, C. (2013). From push brooms to prayer books: Social media and social networks during the London riots. Proceedings of the iConference, 155-169. doi:10.9776/13167

Golan, G. J., Yang, S. (2015). Introduction: The integrated public diplomacy perspective. In G. J.

Golan, S. Yang, & Kinsey, D. F. (Eds.). International public relations and public diplomacy: Communication and engagement (pp. 1-14). New York, NY: Peter Lang.

Goldman, D., & Pagliery, J. (2015, January 9). #JeSuisCharlie becomes one of the most popular hashtags in Twitter’s history. Cable News Network. Retrieved from http://money.cnn.com/2015/01/09/technology/social/jesuischarlie-hashtag-twitter/

Graber, D. A., & Dunaway, J. (2018). Mass media and American politics (10th ed.).

Washington, D.C.: Sage.

Gramer, R. (2017, January 27). Denmark creates the world’s first ever digital ambassador.

Foreign Policy. Retrieved from http://foreignpolicy.com/2017/01/27/denmark-creates-the-worlds-first-ever-digital-ambassador-technology-europe-diplomacy/

Greenwood, S., Perrin, A., & Duggan, M. (2016). Social media update 2016. Pew Research

Center: Internet & Technology. Retrieved from http://www.pewinternet.org/2016/11/11/

social-media-update-2016/

Guynn, J. (2015, January 9). Twitter: #JeSuisCharlie one of most popular hashtags. USA

Today. Retrieved from http://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/2015/01/09/jesuischarlie-twitter-hashtag/21511631/

Hanson, E. C. (2008). The information revolution and world politics. Lanham: Rowman &

Littlefield.

Harris, S. A. (2016, December 20). Berlin attack prompts social media users to share ‘pray

for berlin’ and #IchBinEinBerliner messages of support. Huffington Post. Retrieved from http://www.huffingtonpost.com.au/2016/12/20/world-declares-ichbineinberliner-in-solidarity-following-german/

Harrower, N., & Heravi, B. R. (2015). How to archive an event: Reflections on the social

repository of Ireland. New Review of Information Networking, 20(1-2), 104-116. doi:10.1080/13614576.2015.1116322

Hebert-Leiter, M. (2014). Disney's Cajun firefly: Shedding light on Disney and

Americanization. Journal of Popular Culture, 47(5), 968-977. doi: 10.1111/jpcu.12182

Henley, N. M. (1974). Power, sex, and nonverbal communication. Berkeley Journal of

Sociology, 18(1), 1-26.

Hill, R. (2014). The new international telecommunication regulations and the internet: A

commentary and legislative history (1st ed.). Berlin: Springer. doi:10.1007/978-3-642-45416-5

Hunter, M. (2014). The occidental colonization of the mind: The dominance of “Western”

management theories in south-east Asian business schools. Economics, Management, and Financial Markets, 9(2), 95-114.

Ingram, D. (2017, June 17). Facebook hits 2 billion-user mark, doubling in size since 2012.

Reuters. Retrieved from https://www.reuters.com/article/us-facebook-users/facebook-hits-2-billion-user-mark-doubling-in-size-since-2012-idUSKBN19I2GG

Inkster, N. (2016). Information warfare and the US presidential election. Global Politics and

Strategy, 58(5), 23-32, doi:10.1080/00396338.2016.1231527

Jacobsen, S. (2017, June 19). Silicon Valley giants outrank many nations, says first

‘techplomat’. Reuters. Retrieved from https://www.reuters.com/article/us-denmark-tech/silicon-valley-giants-outrank-many-nations-says-first-techplomat-idUSKBN19A17A

Kandias M., Galbogini, K., Mitrou, L., Gritzalis, D. (2013) Insiders trapped in the mirror reveal themselves in social media. Malware & Intrusions: Proceedings of the 7th International Conference of Network and System Security, 220-235. Madrid: Springer.

Kellner, D. (2012). The Murdoch media empire and the spectacle of scandal. International

Journal of Communication, 6, 1169-1200.

Khrebtan-Hörhager, J. (2013). Multiculturalism or Euroculturalism? “Nomadism,”

“passing,” and “the West and the rest” in German-Italian Solino. Communication, Culture, & Critique, 7(4), 524-540. doi:10.1111/cccr.12063

Kiely, R. (2014). Imperialism or globalisation? Or imperialism and globalisation: Theorising the international after Rosenberg's 'post-mortem'. Journal of International Relations and Development, 17(2), 274-300. doi:10.1057/jird.2013.2

King, E. (2016). Crimes against culture. Oxford Human Rights Hub. Retrieved from

http://ohrh.law.ox.ac.uk/crimes-against-culture/

Kuruvilla, C. (2015, January 9). #JeSuisAhmed reminds us that a French Muslim died to protect free speech. Huffington Post. Retrieved from https://www.huffingtonpost.com

/2015/01/08/jesuisahmed-twitter-hashtag_n_6438132.html

Laurent, O. (2015, November 16). 70 million people shared their prayers on Instagram this weekend. Time Magazine. Retrieved from http://time.com/4114288/paris-instagram/

Lazear, E. P. (2000). Economic imperialism. The Quarterly Journal of Economics, 115(1),

-146. doi:10.1162/003355300554683

Liew, K. K. (2012). Intersecting anglicization and sinicization: Hong Kong cinema and the modernized colonial. Cultural Studies, 26(5), 765-781. doi:10.1080/09502386.2012.697738

Lin, Y., & Margolin, D. (2014). The ripple of fear, sympathy and solidarity during the

Boston bombings. EPJ Data Science, 3(1), 1-28. doi:10.1140/epjds/s13688-014-0031-z

Linning, S., & Boyle, S. (2015, January 7). Je suis Charlie! They cry of defiance. The Daily

Mail. Retrieved from http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2900835/Crowds-gather-central-Paris-solidarity-murdered-Charlie-Hebdo-journalists-slogan-Je-Suis-Charlie.html

Lipschultz, J. H. (2014). Social media communication: Concepts, practices, data, law and

ethics. New York, NY: Routledge.

Lowery, S. A., & DeFleur, M. L. (1995). Milestones in mass communication research:

Media effects. White Plains, NY: Longman.

Magro, M. J. (2012). A review of social media use in e-government. Administrative

Sciences, 2(2), 148-161.

Mansell, R., & Nordenstreng, K. (2007). Great media and communication debates: WSIS

and the MacBride report. Information Technologies and International Development, 3(4), 15-36. doi:10.1162/itid.2007.3.4.15

Marx, L., Smith, M. R. (1994). Does technology drive history? The dilemma of technological determinism. Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press.

Matthews, S. (2017). Colonised minds? Post-development theory and the desirability of development in Africa. Third World Quarterly, 38(12), 1-14. doi: 10.1080/01436597.2017.1279540

McConnell, F., Moreau, T., & Dittmer, J. (2012). Mimicking state diplomacy: The legitimizing strategies of unofficial diplomacies. Geoforum, 43(4), 804-814. doi:10.1016/j.geoforum.2012.01.007

McCombs, M. E., & Shaw, D. L. (1972). The agenda-setting function of mass media. The

Public Opinion Quarterly, 36(2), 176-187.

McLuhan, M. (1994). Understanding media: The extensions of man. Cambridge, MA: MIT

Press.

McPhail, T. L. (1987). Electronic colonialism: The future of international broadcasting and communication (Rev. 2nd ed.). Newbury Park, CA: Sage Publications.

McPhail, T. L. (2014). Global communication: Theories, stakeholders, and trends (4th ed.). Malden, MA: Wiley.

McQuail, D. (2002). McQuail's reader in mass communication theory. London: Sage Publications.

Molloy, M. (2015, January 7). #JeSuisCharlie trends worldwide: Online solidarity after Charlie Hebdo attack in Paris. The Telegraph. Retrieved fromhttp://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/france/11330717/JeSuisCharlie-trends-worldwide-Online-solidarity-after-Charlie-Hebdo-attack-in-Paris.html

Mosendz, P. (2015, January 7). Police officer Ahmed Merabet shot during Charlie Hebdo massacre. Newsweek. Retrieved from http://www.newsweek.com/officer-shot-during-charlie-hebdo-massacre-identified-297603

Natens, B. (2014). A comparative analysis of audio-visual services in selected U.S. and

Japanese regional trade agreements: Lessons for the European Union. Leuven Centre for Global Governance Studies. Retrieved from https://ghum.kuleuven.be/ggs/

projects/policy-research-centre/documents-1/16-kto-audio-visual-services-report-v4-final.pdf

Nerone, J. C. (1995). Last rights: Revisiting four theories of the press. Urbana: University of Illinois Press.

Nye, J. S. (2004). Soft power: The means to success in world politics (1st ed.). New

York, NY: Public Affairs.

Payne, R. (2016). Je Suis Charlie: Viral circulation and the ambivalence of affective

citizenship. International Journal of Cultural Studies, doi:10.1177/1367877916675193

Peek, S., Sampat, R., & Torres G. (2015, January 8). Why the popularity of #killallmuslims

is not all it seems. BBC Trending. Retrieved from http://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-trending-30728491

Persily, N. (2017). Can democracy survive the Internet? Journal of Democracy, 28(2), 63-

, doi:10.1353/jod.2017.0025

Petrof, S. (2015). The dialectics of media representation. Je Suis Charlie as fetishization of an image. Journal for Communication Studies, 8(16), 207-225.

Pickard, V. (2014). America's battle for media democracy: The triumph of corporate libertarianism and the future of media reform. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Potter, W. J. (2013). Media effects. New York, NY: Sage.

Prosecutor v. Ahmad al Faqi al Mahdi. (2016). International Criminal Court, No.: ICC-

/12/01/15. Retrieved from https://www.icc-cpi.int/CourtRecords/CR2016_07244.PDF

Prowda, J. B. (1996). U.S. dominance in the "marketplace of culture" and the French

"cultural exception." New York University Journal of International Law and Politics, 29(1-2), 193-210.

culture-war-pits-protectionists-against-free-traders.html

Reparations for Injuries Suffered in the Service of the United Nations. (1949). International

Court of Justice. Retrieved from http://www.icj-cij.org/en/case/4

Riding, A. (2005, February 5). A global culture war pits protectionists against free traders.

The New York Times. Retrieved from http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/05/arts/a-global-

Schiller, H. I. (1969). Mass communications and American empire. New York: A. M. Kelley.

Slaughter, A. (1993). International law and international relations theory: A dual agenda. The American Journal of International Law, 87(2), 205-239.

Smith, W. D. (2016). Contexts of colonialism. History and Theory, 55(2), 290-301. doi:10.1111/hith.10802

Sohail, H. (2015, February 9). Effects of Westernization on the culture of Pakistan.

Owlcation. Retrieved from https://owlcation.com/social-sciences/Effects-of-Westernization-on-the-culture-of-Pakistan

Spencer, D. R. (2007). The yellow journalism: The press and America's emergence as a

world power. Evanston, Ill: Northwestern University Press.

Stanley, B. (2003). Conversion to Christianity? The colonization of the mind? International

Review of Mission, 92(366), 315-331. doi: 10.1111/j.1758-6631.2003.tb00407.x

Sundar, S., & Limperos, A. (2013). Uses and grats 2.0: New gratifications for new media. Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media, 57(4), 504-525. doi:10.1080/08838151.2013.845827

Syed-Abdul, S., Fernandez-Luque, L., Jian, W. S., Li, Y. C., Crain, S., Hsu, H. M., Wang,

Y. C., Khandregzen, D., Chuluunbaatar, E., Nguyen, P. A., & Liou, D. M. (2013). Misleading health-related information promoted through video-based social media: Anorexia on YouTube. Journal of Medical Internet Research, 15(2), 137-149. doi:10.2196/jmir.2237

Tai, Z. (2010). Casting the ubiquitous net of information control: Internet surveillance in China from golden shield to green dam. International Journal of Advanced Pervasive and Ubiquitous Computing, 2(1), 53-70. doi:10.4018/japuc.2010010104

Tomlinson, J. (1999). Globalization and culture. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Triesman, D. (2007). Public diplomacy: Steps to the future. Lecture at the London School of

Economics. Retrieved from http://www.lse.ac.uk/website-archive/newsAndMedia/videoAndAudio/channels/publicLecturesAndEvents/player.aspx?id=329

Tunstall, J. (1977). The media are American. New York, NY: Columbia University Press.

Turner, G. (2007). Shrinking the borders: Globalization, culture, and belonging. Cultural

Politics, 3(1), 5-20. doi:10.2752/174321907780031025

Universal Declaration on Cultural Diversity. (2002). United Nations Educational, Scientific,

and Cultural Organization. Retrieved from http://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/

/001271/127162e.pdf

We Are Social. (2015). Digital, Social & Mobile in 2015. Retrieved

from https://www.slideshare.net/wearesocialsg/digital-social-mobile-in-2015

Whitehead, T. (2015, January 9). Paris Charlie Hebdo attack: Je Suis Charlie hashtag one of

most popular in Twitter history. The Telegraph. Retrieved from

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/france/11336879/Paris-Charlie-Hebdo-attack-Je-Suis-Charlie-hashtag-one-of-most-popular-in-Twitter-history.html

Winseck, D. R., & Pike, R. M. (2008). Communication and empire: Media markets, power

and globalization, 1860—1910. Global Media and Communication, 4(1), 7-36. doi:10.1177/1742766507086850

Wolfson, T., Crowell, J., Reyes, C., & Bach, A. (2017). Emancipatory broadband adoption:

Toward a critical theory of digital inequality in the urban United States. Communication, Culture, & Critique, 10(3), 441-459. doi:

1111/cccr.12166

Vanston, C. (1999). In Search of the Mot Juste: The Toubon Law and the European

Union. Boston College International & Comparative Law Review, 22, 175.

Vigouroux, C. B. (2013). Francophonie. Annual Review of Anthropology, 42, 379-397.

doi:10.1146/annurev-anthro-092611-145804

Zacher, M., Brehm, H. N., & Savelsberg, J. J. (2014). NGOs, IOs, and the ICC: Diagnosing

and Framing Darfur. Sociological Forum, 29(1), 29-48. doi: 10.1111/socf.12068

Downloads

Additional Files

Published

2018-06-01

Issue

Section

Original Research