Thursday, October 9, 2014

Ekman Response

Ekman's essay researches the 'Darker Side' of digital activism, focusing on extreme right-wing activists in Sweden. After giving a historical background about the movement, Ekman's main goal is to analyze how these groups use digitality to endorse their cause, specifically through Youtube.
I think Ekman's analysis falls right in line with Stewart, Smith, and Denton's perspective, most particularly with the concept of 'transferring perceptions of reality'. This is obviously a key focus for the right-wing extremists in Sweden, as Ekman highlights their showcase of seemingly innocent or 'everyday', as he describes it, activities like hiking or socializing. This is used as a technique to relate with the audience, to make them feel like this is something that would interest them to be doing.
I think Youtube is a great platform for the type of persuasion that Ekman analyzes, because the videos can be personally edited and framed in any way, and then presented on an objective or unbiased format. There are no caution advisories stating that the content is racist or anti-Semitic, it is just presented, and the audience needs to decide how they are to respond to the video with no presumptions.
What I find most fascinating is this idea of transferring perceptions of reality, it seems to me to be the ultimate goal of rhetoricizing. While it does appear very abstract and substantial, changing the reality of a person can be as simple as adjusting the relationship between their personal narrative viewpoint and the world that they act within.

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