Members of the Communication Department gathered on October 31 for the second Agora of the fall semester. The Agora is the department dynamic lecture series where faculty, visiting speakers and students share their work in a spirit of intellectual exchange. This event spotlighted three graduate students–Seth Davis, Zoe Tzanis, and Berna Gorgulu–whose presentations offered fresh perspectives and sparked lively discussions.
Seth Davis: Peter Thiel and the End of the World
Seth Davis presented findings from his current research on tech billionaire Peter Thiel. He argued thatThiel’s push for the “abandonment of the fictions of liberalism” reflects a growing sense of apocalypticism in American right-wing discourse. As Davis noted during his talk, “if we want to understand our reality, we have to understand the views of those steering it.”
Zoe Tzanis: Co-Framing the WNBA Narrative: ESPN’s “Neutral” Approach to Sensationalizing Racism
Zoe Tzanis discussed their analysis of the 2024 WNBA Finals and the ways ESPN engages in what they term “co-framing” of racialized narratives on social media. They argued that ESPN’s self-proclaimed “neutral” stance allows the network to deflect responsibility for addressing racist commentary by attributing these comments to bots or trolls while still profiting from the engagement this discourse generates. Tzanis’ work situates this phenomenon within the long-standing racial rivalries that have shaped both NBA and WNBA narratives in the media and within fan communities.
Berna Gorgulu: Mis/Disinformation and Misogyny: Digital Repression of #PinarGultekin Movement in Turkey
Berna Gorgulu examined the use of coordinated disinformation campaigns on social media to undermine feminist activism, focusing on the #PinarGultekin movement, Turkey’s longest-running feminist hashtag campaign. The movement arose in response to the 2020 murder of university student Pinar Gultekin, a case that brought national attention to femicide in Turkey. Gorgulu’s preliminary findings reveal that pro-government accounts flooded the hashtag with false information about the case, “in an attempt to divert attention from the issue.”