0000000000002784
AUTHOR
Gareth E. Hamilton
A Mediated Tolerance of Violence: An Analysis of Online Newspaper Articles and “Below-the-line” Comments in the Latvian Media
A mediated tolerance of violence: an analysis of online newspaper articles and “below-the-line” comments in the Latvian media This article analyses the framing of tolerance of violence in Latvian newspaper articles published online and the reader response “below-the-line” comments to these and how these frames may negatively present and impact those who suffer violence. It makes visible the language used and concepts employed in such cases where someone supports, justifies, or positively perceives violence. The text is based on qualitative media content analysis of 3,166 documents in the Latvian, Russian and English languages from Latvian news sources online published between 2010 and 2018…
Plural gifting of singular importance: mass-gifts and sociality among precarious product promoters in eastern Germany
In this article I explore and investigate the concept of ‘mass-gifts’ (Bird-David and Darr), based on fieldwork in eastern Germany among product promoters in wholesale and retail environments. After introducing mass-gifts, I show how they are employed by promoters for the intended purpose (persuading customers to purchase). However, mass-gifts are also appropriated by these precarious workers to create social networks. In so doing, I argue that they simultaneously recreate the social aesthetic of work in the state socialist era, where factories were a nexus of sociality – in stark reality to the social and economic precariousness faced today by promoters.