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The play Bánk bán, written by József Katona, was put on stage at the National Theatre of Pécs by two young artists in the Fall of 2020. Three days after the premiere, a statement was released on the theatre's Facebook page, in which the management called the audience’s attention to the facts that the creators of the piece were students of the Hungarian University of Theatre and Film Arts and that the performance contained “scenes not constituting part of the original work as well as profane language, including expletives at times”. The unusual announcement received over 1300 comments, by a stunning number of at least 500 users. The aim of my study was to analyze the debate generated by the statement in the context of the political process known as ‘culture wars’ as well as the Mediapolis theory. The arguments of the commenters defending and of the ones attacking the performance was inseparable of the situation created by the authoritarian change of administration at the University of Theatre and Film Arts, and even beyond this, from the state of the Hungarian public policy of the 2020’s and the judgement of the societal role of national (high) culture. The comments also highlighted the matter of artistic freedom on the one hand as aesthetic, on the other hand as a political issue. The discussion conducted in an online space was deeply interwoven by threads of resentfulness and hatred, by the opposition of us against you, as well as anti-Semitic remarks in various forms and with various levels of intensity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we complicate and bring a new perspective to debates on the democratic limitations of filter bubbles, by exploring the case study of feminist filter bubbles. We extend understandings of the filter bubble to examine the highly reflexive, everyday ways in which filtering is adopted as a practical response to the information saturation and the politicised vulnerability engendered by digital environments. In doing so, we make a case for the necessity of filtering practices to create 'safe spaces' for feminist deliberation, at the same time as questioning whether absolute 'safety' is possible in feminist politics. Drawing on two separate studies of young feminist women who regularly engage with feminist private groups on Facebook, we document significant ambivalence regarding these closed spaces. While feminist filter bubbles were essential for surviving the risks of more open online environments, participants reported complicated feelings of guilt in not moving beyond these bubbles. Maintaining the 'safety' of these spaces also involved significant, ongoing labour in the requirement for participants to customise content within these bubbles, involving vigilant practices of moderation of content and the consistent application of trigger warnings. As such, we question whether the model of the feminist filter bubble is sustainable in the labour it requires already exhausted feminists to perform, and politically capacious enough to allow sustained difficult conversations. We suggest further critical engagement is required to connect filter bubbles to the everyday, affective politics of deliberation on social media platforms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many studies emphasize the importance of preparing students with critical thinking skills, and these skills can be honed through classroom debate. During Covid-19 pandemic, however, it is impossible to carry out classroom debate. Therefore, this study focused on online debate through WhatsApp. Specifically, the present study aimed at finding out students' voices towards online debate through WhatsApp as alternative media to enhance critical thinking skills during Covid-19 pandemic. 17 undergraduate students participated in online debate for ten sessions throughout one whole semester. At the end of the research, 17 participants completed the survey questionnaires and 8 students volunteered to participate in semi-structured interviews. The results from both quantitative and qualitative data revealed that the participants found critical thinking skills important. Furthermore, the respondents believed that the online debate was good learning media to help them improve their critical thinking skills during this Covid-19 pandemic. The activity provided flexibility in terms of time and place. Other advantages, as claimed by the participants, included reducing students' anxiety, improving teamwork skills, and improving persuasion skills. However, some barriers were also found based on the participants' responses. The participants were concerned with the issue of being distracted, tendency to copy and paste, unstable network, and limited time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The research described in this article explored the efficacy of a novel approach to recreating classroom debates online. Using a structured approach and collaborative group work, the researcher developed an approach that students found very useful in six different dimensions. The research also explored possible differences in perceptions stemming from students’ familiarity with online learning by comparing the perceptions of students enrolled in only online classes with those of students enrolled in primarily on-ground classes. No significant differences in any of the variables were found, indicating the efficacy of the approach for all students.

The article analyses two contrasting photographs that powerfully shaped Danish debates about the refugee crisis in September 2015. In the first, a civilian man is seen spitting at a group of refugees from a highway bridge. In the other, a police officer sits on the highway as he plays with a young refugee girl. Politicized photographs such as these offer unique and rarely utilized sociological prisms to probe the narratives and binary codes that define national value complexes and categories of 'inside–outside', 'us–them' and 'civil–uncivil'. The spitting man and gentle cop photographs are particularly forceful in this regard as they do not simply portray refugees/migrants in isolation, but rather the reactions they generate in the host country. The article explores why and how these photographs became so resonant in stimulating affective public debates about refugees, Danish identity, and solidarity with strangers. Methodologically, the article focuses on debates occurring on Facebook, Twitter and in newspaper commentary tracks. This choice reflects a wider trend where the media ecology of Web 2.0 is transforming the way photographs are being politicized in affective publics. Finally, interviews were conducted with the journalists behind the photographs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• AM-supported online group debates were used to foster students' critical thinking skills and to assess the changes in CT deepness and processing patterns. • Students' depth of critical thinking skills increased gradually during the six debate activities. • Recognise→Understand, Evaluate→Recognise and Create→Understand are the three processing patterns of critical thinking skills recorded in the students enrolled in the activity. • Student highly valued the AM-supported online group debate activities as a whole. Although argument maps (AM) have been proven to be an effective tool for visually presenting arguments and enhancing students' critical thinking skills, the time available for argumentation in traditional face-to-face environments is often limited. Additionally, AMs are typically created by group members from the same side, with few conflicting views. In this study, 17 sophomores majoring in education were divided into four groups, with each group consisting of pros and cons. These groups participated in debates centred around analysing scientific papers. Using a collaborative online platform called 'ZJUYuQue', all the groups engaged in six online group debate activities, anonymously and simultaneously creating AMs. To examine the depth and processing patterns of college students' critical thinking skills in these activities, both content analysis and lag sequence analysis (LSA) were employed to analyse the quality of the debates. Additionally, interviews were conducted with eight participants to explore their perceptions of this instructional design. Thematic analysis was used to analyse the interview data. Results indicated that: first, students' depth of critical thinking skills increased gradually across the six activities, and second that three processing patterns of critical thinking skills emerged: Recognise→Understand, Evaluate→Recognise and Create→Understand. This suggests that students typically identified certain issues with supporting facts and criticised opposing arguments, while also proposing creative ideas during the debates. Lastly, the interviews showed the AM-supported online group debates were appreciated. The online environment provided ample time for students to express their thoughts, while the AMs encouraged clear articulation of arguments. Several implications were highlighted based on these findings. Instructors should provide timely feedback during students' debate, the number of debate topics should be appropriate, and the value of professional knowledge and debating skills should be emphasized. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents the use of a debate in an online asynchronous social policy course. Debate is frequently used as an instructional strategy in higher education, but little is known about the use of this tool in an online learning environment. Participants (N = 36) completed an online debate assignment and both qualitative (reflection papers) and quantitative (survey) data was gathered to learn about the effectiveness of the assignment, and what students learned, liked, and disliked about the project. A majority of students reported the debate assignment helped them further understand course concepts, understand concepts better than lecture or reading would have, use or improve critical thinking skills, and improve collaboration among students in the course. Key themes from qualitative data are also reported, as well as recommendations for using this assignment in other courses.

The project discussed here involved an online debating activity between intellectual property (IP) law students in Egypt and the UK, using a closed group on Facebook. The aim was to harness freely available online social media technology to create a space in which valuable discussions and learning could take place. We showed that Facebook can be a powerful educational tool to encourage active learning and usefully connect learners across continents. In enabling the exchange of views between students in different jurisdictions, Facebook provides exposure to different cultures and different perspectives as well as different legal cultures and different legal systems, while also, importantly, enabling participants to identify commonalities. This debate focused on IP law, which is of increasing international importance, and specifically on the topic of access to medicines, which is highly contentious. Through the activity, students learned that they need not only to learn the law, but also to appreciate the socio-cultural and political complexity underlying policy issues in different jurisdictions. On reflection, the Facebook debate definitely enhanced the study of IP law through an interesting and enjoyable international, intercultural activity, led by staff and students, which successfully extended the classroom experience. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As higher education institutions in United States offer online courses to growing audiences, there is increasing desire to understand how best to engage students with both course content and their peers. This case study examines the effects of assigning chat roles and facilitating self and group reflection on student-content and student-student interaction outcomes in four synchronous chats conducted in an online introductory-level sustainability course. We also considered what occurred within group reflections to inform how they are structured in the future. We found that assigning roles increased the proportion of critical student-student interactions. Self-reflections had no effect on either interaction type. Groups completing group reflections had a greater proportion of critical student-content interactions in the third chat and critical student-student interactions in the fourth chat than the groups that did not complete the group reflections. Based on our results, we plan to keep roles and group reflections going forward, and eliminate self-reflections. Furthermore, to increase the effectiveness of the group reflections, we propose some ideas to increase student ability to convert their ideas into change during subsequent chats.

As higher education institutions in United States offer online courses to growing audiences, there is increasing desire to understand how best to engage students with both course content and their peers. This case study examines the effects of assigning chat roles and facilitating self- and group reflection on student-content and student-student interaction outcomes in four synchronous chats conducted in an online introductory-level sustainability course. We also considered what occurred within group reflections to inform how they are structured in the future. We found that assigning roles increased the proportion of critical student-student interactions. Self-reflections had no effect on either interaction type. Groups completing group reflections had a greater proportion of critical student-content interactions in the third chat and critical student-student interactions in the fourth chat than the groups that did not complete the group reflections. Based on our results, we plan to keep roles and group reflections going forward, and eliminate self-reflections. Furthermore, to increase the effectiveness of the group reflections, we propose some ideas to increase student ability to convert their ideas into change during subsequent chats. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Motherhood forums as arenas for political debate – An analysis of online discussions about the welfare state. This article analyses online debate in a popular Norwegian discussion forum for mothers, a forum in which participants discuss a wide range of topics that includes news and politics. A quantitative and qualitative textual analysis is given of forum discussions on welfare services and welfare politics, and how these are understood in relation to the Norwegian welfare state. Findings are contextualized in light of a theoretical perspective drawing on public sphere theory and the concept cultural citizenship.

This article provides a detailed analysis of novel forms of class-making in Finland, with special emphasis on emerging threads on 'white trash' in a popular discussion forum. The article is based on an empirical study, the data for which were gathered by making online observations and extracting discussion threads on white trash. There is no consensus in the data on the meaning of the term white trash. While the stereotypes concerning the alleged group of white trash have been linked with tastelessness, poverty or immorality in studies conducted in other countries, popularity and ordinariness are also associated with it, as are expensive and exclusive consumer choices. On the one hand, the term is used to reproduce class stigma, illustrating how class is made through racialisation. On the other, the phrase is used in new and flexible ways. However, the debate greatly focuses on taste and thus grounds itself in struggles over classification in consumer culture, which may further privilege middle-class definitions of class. The article concludes that the examination of taste offers a novel route for the study of privilege, as an investment in keeping one's tastes unreadable to others may be an asset in the struggle over classifications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Several studies have found that political online debates do not to live up to deliberative standards of discussion. Even so, these debates may have democratic value. In the present article, the analytic focus is extended from deliberative democratic theory alone to a broader framework of analysis, which also includes a competitive and a participatory democratic ideal. An analytical framework for identifying democratic elements in online debates, based on these three ideals, is developed, and a sample of postings from two Norwegian newspaper-hosted online forums is explored using this new analytical framework. The analysis shows that the online debates are not particularly deliberative, but that they show ample traces of a participatory and a competitive democratic ideal, indicating that the democratic value of these online forums does not primarily lie in fostering deliberation, but rather in clarifying and contrasting different alternatives, and in providing a training ground for political debates.

Abstract The terrorist attacks in Oslo on 22 July 2011 led to a comprehensive public debate about the systems for online debate in Norwegian newspapers. Through interviews with editors and moderators, this article examines changes made in the facilitation and administration of online debate in four central newspapers after the terrorist attack. In different ways, the three largest newspapers tightened their control in four important areas: Identification of the participants, pre-publication moderation, control over the agenda of the debate and more active moderation of it. These changes are interpreted as moderate alteration from an initially anarchic policy towards a more intervening policy concerning the regulation of online debate.

Argumentative debates are a powerful tool for reaching agreements in open environments. However, in large scale settings, such as social networks, making sense of ongoing debates may be a compelling task, and debates risk to lose their effectiveness. We thus propose "microdebates" to help organizing and confronting users' opinions in an automated way. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents an exploratory study of the representations of science and scientists in online debates about Global Warming between non-scientists. We analysed qualitatively and in an comprehensive manner the exchanges held in two websites discussing so-called "skeptic" theses. Results show that debates occur in very small and active communities that develop quite well-structured argumentation. Skeptics claim to produce a true scientific discourse, and develop a representation where science skeptical scientists embody the scientific ideal face of scientific institutions and researchers perceived as corrupted and driven by ideology. Opponents to skeptical positions highlight sêcific mechanisms of the scientific literature to deny to skeptics the status of experts.

There is a growing emphasis in many countries on matters such as participation in e-government, e-democracy, the provision of forums for online debate, and so on. A critical issue in all of these cases is one of encouraging engagement across a broad spectrum of potentially interested parties and stakeholders. In this paper, we use an ethnographic study of an online event, designed to encourage debate, to explore some critical issues in how the mechanisms productive of debate have shifted in company with the Web 2.0 phenomenon. By contrasting this with a prior study of how players managed their gameplay in a multiplayer pervasive game, we focus upon how different ways of constructing games and events can have serious implications for their ordinary everyday reportability in routine face-to-face interactions. We conclude that designing for reportability should be an active consideration when designing the resources for online debate and consider some ways in which that might be accomplished. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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Three academics from different fields collaborated on a study in which we reflected on our group involvement. Although we originally worked together to provide our different perspectives on how to use debates in online courses, we found that our multidisciplinary collaboration evolved into self-study as we each wrote narratives about our own participation which we then discussed and interpreted from our unique perspectives. Despite the fact that our members consisted of someone from nursing, someone from business, and someone in psychology, we all agreed that we engaged in a successful collaboration, as assessed by our desire to work together again and by the joint publication of an article. This paper presents our individual and collective interpretations of our attempts to understand why we were successful in this project, even though we did not follow most of the principles of multidisciplinary collaboration, nor of the usual conventions of our respective disciplines. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Formal debating is a process for argumentation with a long history of use in classroom settings to promote students’ development of skills associated with influencing others. In an online, 14-week, MN nursing course, modified formal debate procedures and rules were used to address contemporary issues in nursing. A qualitative descriptive study of student’s reflections about engaging in the debate process was conducted involving 24 of 48 students representing three sections of this course taught by three professors during the 2009-2010 academic year. On analysis, the data revealed five categories of outcomes: 1) Risk Taking; 2) Defence of a Position; 3) Coverage of all Aspects; 4) Skill and Knowledge Transfer; and 5) Critical Thinking. Additionally, factors that influenced each of these outcomes are described. Study findings support the compelling benefits of debating in online learning environments using a format modified for use online. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]