Summary
±·´Ç²Ô-²¹±è´Ç±ô´Ç²µ¾±±ð²õÌýis a research project conducted at ¹û¶³´«Ã½ by Peter Wikström and Erica Sandlund. The project concerns public apologies associated with the #MeToo movement, and the reception of these apologies in traditional and social media. The project began in January 2020 and is expected to be finished by 2024. It is funded by the Bank of Sweden Tencentenary Foundation (Reg. no P19-0213:1)
Summary
The aim of the project is to identify and analyze how discourse participants receive and reject public apologies in the wake of the #MeToo movement, in mediated journalistic interaction as well as in informal communication in social media. The reception of public apologies is studies with a focus on how discourse participants practice a kind of folk linguistics by appealing to various ideas and norms of what constitutes a proper apology. Further, these folk linguistic practices are analyzed as a form of everyday political participation in social media.
In the context of #MeToo, a number of prominent public figures have made statements after having been publicly accused of harassment or worse trespasses. Such statements have frequently been received by a lay public as insufficient or dishonest attempts to play at apologizing – as non-apologies.
Through case studies applying ethnomethodological conversation analysis (EMCA) and digital discourse analysis (DDA), the project with investigate, firstly, how the original apology statements were designed and delivered, and, secondly, how the reception of these statements as non-apologies has been articulated both in traditional journalistic discourse and informal discourse in social media. The results will be disseminated as international scientific journal articles as well as in a book project and through popular scientific venues.
The results are expected to shed light on the interface between language and politics at a time when both discursive and political norms are undergoing renegotiation in mediated contexts.