%0 Journal Article %J Journal of Religion, Media and Digital Culture %D 2019 %T “No More Apologies”: Violence as a Trigger for Public Controversy over Islam in the Digital Public Sphere %A Sumiala, Johanna %A Harju, Anu A. %X This article investigates how violence associated with religion, here namely Islam, functions as a trigger for public controversy in the Turku stabbings that took place in Finland in 2017. We begin by outlining the Lyotard-Habermas debate on controversy and compound this with current research on the digital public sphere. We combine cartography of controversy with digital media ethnography as methods of collecting data and discourse analysis for analysing the material. We investigate how the controversy triggered by violence is constructed around Islam in the public sphere of Twitter. We identify three discursive strategies connecting violence and Islam in the debates around the Turku stabbings: scapegoating, essentialisation, and racialisation. These respectively illustrate debates regarding blame for terrorism, the nature of Islam, and racialisation of terrorist violence and the Muslim Other. To conclude, we reflect on the ways in which the digital public sphere impacts Habermasian consensus- and Lyotardian dissensus-oriented argumentation. %B Journal of Religion, Media and Digital Culture %G eng %U https://brill.com/view/journals/rmdc/8/1/article-p132_132.xml?language=en %0 Journal Article %J New Media & Society %D 2017 %T Mediated Muslim martyrdom: Rethinking digital solidarity in the “Arab Spring” %A Sumiala, Johanna %A Korpiola, Lilly %X In today’s world of networked, mobile, and global digital communication, Muslim martyrdom as a multi-layered communicative practice has experienced a new type of media saturation, thereby posing a challenge for the study of media, religion, and culture in a digital age. In this article, the analysis focuses on two cases of high symbolic relevance for the events later referred to as the “Arab Spring”—the deaths of a Tunisian fruit seller Mohammed Bouazizi and a young Egyptian man Khaled Saeed. Special focus is given to the discussion of digital solidarities and their construction in circulation and remediation of martyr narratives of Bouazizi and Saeed in diverse media contexts. In this global development of digital solidarities, we identify two categories of martyr images of particular relevance—a “living martyr” and a “tortured martyr”—and discuss their resonance with different historical, religious, cultural, and political frames of interpretation. In conclusion, we reflect on the question of the ethics of global mediation of Muslim martyrdom and its implications for the study field of media, religion, and culture in its digital state. %B New Media & Society %G eng %U https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/1461444816649918 %0 Book %D 2018 %T Hybrid Media Events: The Charlie Hebdo Attacks and the Global Circulation of Terrorist Violence %A Sumiala, Johanna %A Valaskivi, Katja %A Tikka, Minttu %A Huhtamäki, Jukka %X What are hybrid media events? Who creates them and what kind of purpose do they serve in contemporary societies? This book addresses these questions by re-thinking media events in the contemporary digital media environment saturated by intensified circulation of radical violence. The empirical analyses draw on the investigation of the Charlie Hebdo attacks in Paris, in 2015 and the global responses those attacks stirred in the media audience. This book provides a new way of thinking about the idea of the hybrid in global media events. The authors give special emphasis to the hybrid dynamics between the different actors, platforms and messages in such events, explaining how global news media, terrorists and political elites interact with ordinary media users in social media. It demonstrates how tweets such as "Je suis Charlie" circulate from one digital media platform to another and what kind of belongings are created in those circulations during the times of distraction. In addition, the book examines how emotions, speed of communication and fight for attention become hybridized in the digital media. All these aspects, the authors argue, shape the ways in which we make sense of global media events in the present digital age. The authors invite readers to critically reflect the technological, economical, political and socio-cultural challenges connected with today's global media events and the ethical encounters they may entail. %I Emerald Publishing Limited %@ 978-1-78714-852-9 %G eng %U https://www.researchgate.net/publication/324922193_Hybrid_Media_Events_The_Charlie_Hebdo_Attacks_and_the_Global_Circulation_of_Terrorist_Violence %R 10.1108/9781787148512 %0 Journal Article %J Journal of Religion in Europe %D 2017 %T Introduction: Mediatization in Post-Secular Society—New Perspectives in the Study of Media, Religion and Politics %A Sumiala, Johanna %X The way the media handle religion is deeply embedded in a set of historical, cultural, and political perceptions about religion’s natural, proper, or desirable place in democratic public life. %B Journal of Religion in Europe %G eng %U https://brill.com/view/journals/jre/10/4/article-p361_361.xml?language=en&body=previewPdf-39133