Contact Information Digital
Inequality 9/11 Political Discourse Global New Media Curriculum Vitae
Negotiating 9/11:
Cultural Repertoires and
Discourses
Brazilian, French, and American
Online Fora
National Communication Association
2005 Student Paper Award
Association of Internet Researchers
2005 Best Graduate Student Paper
This
research examines Brazilian, French, and American discourse fora devoted to the
same topic: the meaning and implications of September 11, 2001. In the
Nowhere
are these collective identifications more forcefully and colorfully articulated
than in the global virtual discourse fora that spring up in response to 9/11.
Contributors grapple with the ramifications of these momentous events. They
deal with the weighty themes of guilt and innocence, power and powerlessness.
With their passions aroused, members of a reflective and ideologically diverse
user population plunge into these turbulent virtual spaces to debate, defend,
disparage, and discuss.
The
most prominent American online forum, that sponsored by the newspaper The
New York Times, attracts an especially articulate and passionate group of contributors.
Among the most vibrant fora outside the
The
work differs from existing studies in its theoretical orientations.
Analytically, it breaks new ground by linking the most macro of social
identities, national and supra-national types of identity, to the most micro of
contexts—the exchanges between individual participants in online fora. Whereas
many prior studies in this field have concentrated on the importation and
reworking of offline identities, such as gender or race in online contexts, my
inquiry delves into the importation and recasting of less primordial types of
identity such as nationality, religious orientation, and ideological
disposition. In so doing, it provides rich empirical underpinning to theories
dealing with cultural trauma, moral accounting, and the social construction of
identity.
The
work is also unique in its empirical scope: it uses multiple methods (content
analysis, ethnography, and interviewing) to examine data in three languages
drawn from citizens of three continents. In comparing the French and Brazilian
cases to the American case, the work makes badly needed contributions to bodies
of literature on non-Anglophone populations. The inclusion of the Brazilian and
French cases is also critical to uncovering how individuals from the
semi-periphery and core of the world system navigate online venues to construct
and negotiate identities, as well as how they utilize these spaces in
culturally specific ways.
The
research was supported by national and international funding: a Mellon
Fellowship in Latin American Studies, Brazilian Portuguese FLAS Grants, a UC
Berkeley Institute of European Studies Predissertation Fieldwork Fellowship, a
World Society Foundation Research Grant, and a Bourse d'Accueil from the Ecole
Normale Supérieure.
Book
Negotiating
9/11. Under contract with
Peer-Reviewed Journal Articles
"The Moral
Accounting of Terrorism: Competing Interpretations of September 11, 2001."
2008.
Qualitative Sociology, Volume 31:3.
"Debating the
Events of September 11th: Discursive and Interactional Dynamics in Three Online
Fora." 2005.
The Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, Volume 10,
Issue 4.
Awards
2005 Best Graduate Student Paper
ASA: Computer and Information
Technology Section
2005 Student Paper Award
Association of Internet
Researchers
Working Paper
The
World Society Foundation Focus Paper Series.
Talks and Conference Presentations
"The
Moral Accounting of September 11, 2001: Competing Understandings of Political
Violence."
National
Communication Association Annual Convention,
"Nationalism
and Transnationalism in Online Communities: Processes of Negotiation Using New
Media."
International
Communication Association Conference,
"National
and Transnational Identities as Meaning-Making Tools."
National Communication Association Annual Convention,
"Nationalism and Transnationalism in Online Communities:
Processes of Negotiation Using New Media."
International Communication Association Conference,
"National and Transnational Perceptions of the
Global Information Infrastructure Symposium,
"National and Transnational Identities: Determining Spheres
of Moral Concern."
Annual
Meeting of the American Sociological Association,
"Symbolic
Boundaries, National and Cosmopolitan Identities: Brazilian Framings of
9/11."
Symposium
on Portuguese Traditions, UCLA Department of Spanish and Portuguese, 2006.
"A Cyberethnographic Account of 9/11: Analyzing Forum
Communities in Brazil, France, and the United States."
Association of Internet Researchers Conference, Chicago ,
2005.
Grants and Fellowships
2005-2006 Research Grant
World Society Foundation
Program
2005-2006 Foreign
Language and Area Studies Fellowship: Brazilian Portuguese
2004-2005 Bourse
d’Accueil, Research Privileges in
Ecole
Normale Supérieure
2000-2003 Mellon
Fellowship in Latin American Studies
UCLA
Department of Sociology
2001
Predissertation Fellowship for Fieldwork in
UC
Berkeley Institute of European Studies
2001 Predissertation
Fellowship for Fieldwork in
2000
Tinker
Foundation Grant
Latin
American Studies: Fieldwork in
2000
Foreign
Language and Area Studies Fellowship: Brazilian Portuguese
1999-2000 Foreign Language and Area Studies Fellowship:
Brazilian Portuguese