conflict & communication online, Vol. 12, No. 1, 2013
www.cco.regener-online.de
ISSN 1618-0747

 

 

 

Jacob Sommer & Triin Rum
Discovering the Libyan youth movement’s identity through facebook

This study demonstrates that critical discourse analysis can be used to quickly discern the identity of a political actor and make accurate predictions about that actor’s intentions and goals, even in the context of a revolution. This study’s authors used critical discourse analysis to empirically assess the identity of the Libyan Youth Movement using 45 images posted on the group’s Facebook page during the opening weeks of the Libyan revolution of 2011. The authors uncovered multiple discourses which permitted the positing of a group identity as well as predictions of the group’s goal and intentions. The findings are significant in that they provide new evidence to support the practical utility of discourse analytic approaches in contemporary communications and political science research.

 

  englischer Volltext  
 


On the authors:
Jacob Sommer is a graduate student in Political Science at Uppsala University in Sweden. He is currently a researcher for the Uppsala Conflict Data Program and is interested in traditional and new media’s role in international relations
.
eMail:
jacob.sommer@pcr.uu.se

Triin Rum is a graduate student at the Department of Sociology at the University of Tallinn in Estonia. She is currently researching the concept of communication power and exploring how power is constructed in the “network society”.