Internet archaeology, music and nostalgia

For the moment I am curious about the term “Internet archaeology” that is about “abandoned” and “forgotten” websites and preservation of what is seen as cultural artefacts on the web. As one of the “fathers” of Internet archaeology Ryder Ripps once wrote:  

“explore, recover, archive and showcase the graphic artefacts found within earlier Internet Culture."

Two weeks ago I came to think about a song that was popular when I was a child. The name of the song is “My heart goes boom” and was played by the group French Affair. While I was listening to the song on YouTube I started searching for information about the group because I was curious if the group was still active. On their YouTube channel French Affair have six songs/videos and one can see that their channel started on 2014-11-11. What was far more interesting for me was to see their webpage.

The first time I saw their website I really felt a “nostalgic kick” when it comes to memories of how webpages used to look like during early 2000´s regarding design, layouts, colours, appearance, brightness, pixels etc. Keyword: “Flash player”.

Look at that wonderful information

And one can still subscribe for the newsletter

History feels as best when it is combined with nostalgia :) .

Commodore 64 ad

This is one of the most amazing computer ads I have ever seen 

Emigration policy for soft power and political influence

Recently I read the article by Gerasimos Tsourapas “Authoritarian emigration states: Soft power and cross-border mobility in the Middle East”. In my view, since I have never read something similar before when it comes to policy-making, it represents an interesting case of how an authoritarian government can make and use migration policy to conduct its interests in other countries.

Tsourapas article is about Egypt during the Cold War period -Nasser’s administration (1954-1970). He writes that Nasser’s government developed an emigration policy that subsidized the short-term emigration of high-skilled professionals, who were also loyal supporters of the ruling regime, across the Arab world and Africa. As Tsourapas writes, emigration is often researched in economic terms as regarding remittances or in political terms as regarding dissidents. The case of Nasser’s government emigration policy represents other aspects as foreign policy, geopolitics, ideological interests, soft power.

The case is interesting since Nasser’s administration developed a policy where high-skilled Egyptian professionals as teachers and doctors were used, as Tsourapas writes, as “a tool of cultural diplomacy to disseminate ideas of anti-colonialism, anti-Zionism, and Egyptian-led pan-Arabism across the Arab world”.

More information about the article you can find here.

Political communication and Trump

Recently I read a paper written by Lucian Gideon Conway, Meredith A. Repkea and Shannon C. Houck under the name "Donald Trump as a Cultural Revolt Against Perceived Communication Restriction: Priming Political Correctness Norms Causes More Trump Support".  

One of the main arguments of the paper is that "Political correct norms" as for example, using communication perceived as inclusive when it comes to minority groups can: 

1) result in the reduction of the amount of negative communication in the short term 

2) may produce more support for negative communication in the long term. 

The paper provides evidence for what researchers describe as norms that are designed to increase the overall amount of positive communication can actually "backfire" by increasing support for a politician who uses extremely negative language that explicitly violates the norm.

In my view, one thing that paper is describing is the current situation of polarisation and radicalisation of US political development. One fact is that Donald Trump won the presidency also by using political communication often described as racist, sexist and xenophobic. 

According to the paper, one explanation for Trump’s success involves a socio-historical discussion that is essentially exclusive to conservative American politics where evidence suggests that increased authoritarianism, increased social dominance, and lower cognitive abilities were all predictive of Trump support during
the election. 

In their general discussion, the researchers conclude that their results provide support for a connection between the salience of restrictive communication norms and support for Trump. 

For example, participants who had the interests to think about and focus on the restrictive communication norms during the presidential campaign showed more support for Trump than participants who were not so primed. 

For more information about the paper, click on the following link.