Social media platforms have become critical components of rebel groups’ communication channels. While discussions on rebels’ social media presence usually centre around issues of violence and...Show moreSocial media platforms have become critical components of rebel groups’ communication channels. While discussions on rebels’ social media presence usually centre around issues of violence and disruption, mounting evidence exists pinpointing the non-violent tactics rebel actors employ online. Interested in how social media use contributes to the ability of established rebel groups to project, cultivate, and negotiate favourable online personas internationally, this research project offers an exploratory case study analysis of the 5-day long #AskHamas Twitter campaign that Islamic resistance movement for Palestinian liberation Ḥarakat al-Muqāwamah al-ʾIslāmiyyah - commonly known as Hamas, conducted in March 2015. A mixed method approach combining social network analysis and empathic close-text reading was employed to reconstruct the international reception of the online event. Framing the Twitter campaign conceptually as an instance of public relations (PR) management, findings substantiate that the #AskHamas Twitter event allowed Hamas to establishing direct, and relevant relations with its targeted Western audience. At the same time, evidence pinpoints the ultimate dependency of online campaigns on the willingness of targeted audience to engage seriously. In case of #AskHamas, meaningful exchange with Hamas was obstructed by deliberate trolling, mocking and ridiculing on parts of participating. Evidence collected in this study implicates the urgency to overcome violence-fixation in Western understandings of rebel actors, and the necessity to contextualise identified rebel online communication practices to their socially mediated context of creation and dissemination.Show less
This thesis studies leadership in J. R. R. Tolkien’s The Silmarillion by way of social network analysis (SNA) methods. I combine the fields of leadership studies and social network analysis by...Show moreThis thesis studies leadership in J. R. R. Tolkien’s The Silmarillion by way of social network analysis (SNA) methods. I combine the fields of leadership studies and social network analysis by constructing and analysing the social networks in The Silmarillion. I analyse which characters act as leaders in a selection of tales from Tolkien’s Silmarillion, since these tales form the basis for Middle-earth and lay bare the roots of how power and leadership function in Tolkien’s secondary world. In order to do so, I use the social network visualisation software Visone, which also enables users to conduct various calculations on the constructed networks. Social networks can lay bare the key actors in a network and show the ways in which leaders exert their power, which is why I compare the Silmarillion network to networks that depict leaders and leadership types in real life. In doing so, I examine which characters come to the fore as leaders in The Silmarillion, how they exert their power, and how realistic the social networks in Tolkien’s fictional narrative are. The characters that came to the fore as leaders when observing the social networks of The Silmarillion were mostly kings and Valar. In this way, the results indicate that leadership is presented realistically in J.R.R. Tolkien’s Silmarillion, and they also provide information about the ways in which the leaders of the work exert their power. This thesis showed that SNA can be used successfully to study works of fiction, and that it could be further used in order to obtain a deeper understanding of Middle-earth, realistic fiction, and good leadership.Show less
