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This chapter offers a critique of the affirmative forms of thought that attempt to ground the ontology of social being through subjective-idealist terms. Some recent examples came in the form of notion of truth grounded in subjects' experience and in rationality of language and discourse. The first part of the chapter demonstrates the perilous implications of such an approach for social theory tasked with ontology and for the conception of truth necessary for its task. The second part scrutinizes the paradigm of society that stems from this subjective-idealist notion of truth and social ontology that adopts discourse, language, and literary metaphors to comprehend social being. As an alternative, the final part of the chapter offers a preliminary sketch of the relation of ontology, normativity, and mediation, as well as the notion of critique necessary for social theory tasked with ontology.

Focusing on critical discourse analysis, this paper aims to propose a framework for analysing the way activist anti-tourism groups construct their social action of protest. The authors argue that activist groups use different narrative strategies to construct and legitimise their discourse of protest to convey social meanings for social action practices. This study represents an attempt to explain how anti-tourism activist groups have the agency to build different paradigms of protest rooted in particular views of tourism.

As a result of the lack of research in this area, this study used a comparative case study methodology drawn on four case studies in the field of anti-tourism protest. Case study is deemed adequate to explore a complex social phenomenon, how activist groups differ from each other, in a specific socio-economic context. A critical discourse analysis method is used to study primary (interviews) and secondary sources (reports, websites and online campaigns documents) of information, which express the activist group motivations and objectives to protest against tourism.

This study’s findings provide evidence in how discourse differs among the protest groups. Three narrative paradigms of protest are identified, which guide their agency: scepticism, based on a global and ecological approach; non-interventionist transformation, rooted in local community issues; and direct transformation, based on a sectoral problem-solving approach. These differences are interpreted as the consequences of the emergence and the development of different paths of protest according to specific social contexts and power relations in which anti-tourism groups are embedded.

This paper provides a contemporary approach to anti-tourism activism within the context of social movements. This case study may be of interest to practitioners and international destination managers interested in gaining a better understanding of anti-tourism protest strategies, new anti-tourism narratives following COVID-19 and the opportunities and challenges for opening a dialogue with those involved in activism and social urban movements as part of sustainable tourism governance. Our results can also help activists to rethink how they integrate differences and particular strategic positions to avoid hindering collective action. This knowledge is especially useful for managers and authorities seeking to develop more accurate collaborative governance practices with local activists, and especially those interested in fostering participative action without marginalising the diverse range of local community perspectives.

Current social entrepreneurship (SE) literature advocates a critical reexamination of the core construct. As such, and based on the seemingly endless definitional debate among academics, this paper seeks to empirically analyse social entrepreneurship discourse in the United Kingdom. It aims to posit that this debate is in fact detrimental to a more coherent and evenly distributed discourse. Furthermore, the ensuing ambiguities suit other, more powerful participants, and keeping this debate live allows the discourse to be shaped.

The author utilised critical discourse analysis (CDA) in this study, developing a personal qualitative data set (including a third sector and SE corpora containing SE policies covering 2002‐2008). This data set was then subjected to an online analysis tool WMatrix, and both sets were compared with a widely used base line corpus.

The findings show that SE discourse is now firmly attached to public policy discourse. Furthermore, this public policy concerning SE was heavily imbued with political language and ideology. Thus, the findings show empirically that SE is characterised in broader public policy debates as a politically re‐constructed concept.

SE will continue to be a contested concept in the public sphere, however further research should explore the potential of dissensus from political reconstructions as a powerful counter‐discourse.

This study is among the first to utilise CDA to interrogate SE discourse, and the analysis provides novel insights for academics and practitioners to reinterpret and contest SE as more than the solution for failing public services.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the representations of male and female social actors within the subversive gendered discourse of “equal opportunities for men and women” in Iranian English as a foreign language (EFL) textbooks.

From the methodological perspective, this study fused van Leeuwen’s (2003) “Social Actor Network Model” and Sunderland’s (2004) “Gendered Discourses Model”.

Data obtained from this study showed the subversive gendered discourse of “equal opportunities” was supported through such representations within a narrow perspective in line with dominant gender ideologies in Iran. The findings suggest the resistance against such subversive gendered discourse in Iranian EFL textbooks underpins gender norms and religious ideologies existing in Iran.

Such representations of male and female social actors in school textbooks show inclusive education and the discourse of “equal opportunities” have yet to be realised in education system of many countries, including Iran.

This chapter examines discourses and social practices at individual, community, and institutional levels related to non-majority Vietnamese ethnic girls’ access to and participation in secondary school. This critical analysis utilizes Sen's framework of capabilities to illustrate differences in discourse and social practice that exist around poverty, and the ways in which gendered relations and ethnic traditions are intertwined with the discourse and practices of poverty to affect girls’ choices and well-being in and through secondary education. We particularly draw on girls’ and their parents’ constructions of these issues as they negotiate and are affected by them. We argue that strategies must move beyond the discourse that ethnic traditions and gendered relations are barriers to girls’ education to consider the inequalities and lack of capabilities that perpetuate poverty and unequal gendered relations for non-majority ethnic groups in societies.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the role of social media in communication discourse in the Islamic Middle East and North African (MENA) countries.

By applying the theory of social networks and a method known as critical discourse analysis (CDA) this study investigates the role of social media in the recent waves of popular unrest in the MENA region.

This study finds that social media not only played an important role in citizens’ participation in communication discourse and mobilization, but also that these media activities intensified in part because of the authorities’ failing rationales against protesters, as shown in the four‐part CDA validity test.

This study is limited to a particular time frame covering the recent democratic discourse in the MENA region for the period 2009‐2011. While this research is limited to the case study of the MENA region, the author believes that lessons learned from this case study can be applied to other developing countries across the globe.

Social media tools available via the internet have provided web users across the globe effective tools and services to share and disseminate information by interactively collaborating with each other in digital communities through blogs, social networking and video sharing sites. In this context, social networks are considered to be effective media for communication discourse. The intensive use of social media networks among citizens’ of the MENA region indicate that the internet has the potential to be a multivocal platform through which silenced and marginalized groups can have their voices heard.

While the existing literature focuses largely on deploying Habermasian critical discourse analysis to media discourse within the context of democratic and well developed nations, this paper presents one of the few studies that extends the CDA method to non‐democratic countries. As such it contributes to the existing knowledge and understanding of the mobilizing effects of social media in communication discourse.

This study scrutinizes the convergence between commercial advertising and the political vision of social movement in media advertisements. This study deliberates how commercial advertisement could be compatible with movement discourses and social resistance. Such hybridization between commercial narration and movement discourses is different from political advertising sponsored by political and civic organizations. This study uses an advertising campaign in Hong Kong which expressed outcry against police search on an outspoken media as a case study to conceptualize advertising activism with the thematic analysis of the movement discourses shown in printed advertisements. This study aims to engage with scholarly dialogue surrounding social movement studies and discuss how movement discourses could hybridize with commercial advertisement.

This study examines the discourses and textual features of an advertising campaign initiated by the public instead of political elites and social movement organizations in Hong Kong, in which various individual citizens, anonymous participants, business enterprises and civic organizations expressed their anger over a police search against an outspoken media (Apple Daily) by Hong Kong police. This bottom-up advertising campaign shows how the narration of commercial advertising could be hybridized with the activism for social resistance, which is conceptualized as advertising activism in this paper.

Based on the textual features and discourses embedded in the advertisements, this study investigates the printed advertisements mushroomed in Apple Daily since the police search in August 2020 by the thematic analysis under the concept of advertising activism: frame construction, identities mobilization and decentered solidarity. Advertising activism differs from commercial and political advertising from two ways. Firstly, its advertisements are cosponsored by numerous nonpolitically well-known individuals or organizations. Secondly, advertising activism feature with hybridization between commercial narration and political or movement discourses. Discourses of advertising activism aim to mobilize the commercial identity of consumers for noncommercial means by their consumption behaviors.

The findings illustrate a hybridization of commercial narration and movement discourses stemming from social movement and identity politics, which is coined by our conceptualization of advertising activism. While commercial and political advertising focus on business promotion and political messages, respectively, advertising activism demonstrates multiple layers of cultural meanings on the consumption behaviors which hybridize with political and movement discourses. The authors hope this study could unleash further intellectual dialogue on the social role of advertising in social movement and how movement discourses “spillover” from social events to the commercial advertisement.

The paper aims to answer how important institutional actors, such as academic researchers, consulting firms, and foundations, are tracing the boundaries of social entrepreneurship (SE) and how they justify SE as a legitimate form of social purpose organization.

The paper employs a discourse analysis methodology.

The paper finds traces of the legitimacy issues in the literature on non‐profits and, based on this, argue that a new institutional domain is being constructed. The paper concludes that in this new domain not only is the use of market‐based initiatives seen as a legitimate means of funding a social mission, but also it has now become the normative way and one that is promoted by consultants and foundations concerned with social entrepreneurs and their initiatives.

This paper highlights the developing norms of SE.

Trafficking in women is among the most serious human rights challenges. Extant studies of the media images of trafficked women suggest that these images emphasize women’s victimization and contribute to the reproduction of existing gender inequalities and power relations. In this case study of Moldovan media and scientific discourse, the authors sought to identify the images of trafficked women that are presented in the print media, on the one hand, and the scientific discourse, on the other. The authors also asked whether those images portray trafficked women in a stereotypical manner. The findings of this chapter revealed that the most prevalent images in both discourses are trafficked women as victims, commodities, and slaves. Both media and scientific discourses include gender oppression, domestic violence, and poverty as dimensions of the victim image. However, these three aspects of the victim image are treated more comprehensively by the scientific discourse. Some of the most prominent differences between the two types of discourses are the absence of women’s agency in the media discourse and absence of the men’s nature as a dimension of the victim image in the scientific discourse. The authors conclude by suggesting that, despite these differences, the images present in both types of discourse could be used to justify policies that would limit the migration of women but fail to effectively address the root causes of sex trafficking in women.

To demonstrate, through the application of Fairclough's critical discourse analysis framework, that the discourse surrounding corporate social responsibility (CSR) has broader implications.

Argues that the evolution of CSR has become a two‐way process of interaction between business and civil society.

As companies place increasing emphasis on their ability to act responsibly as “corporate citizens”, CSR provides new opportunities for social actors to assimilate these strategies; enabling them to scrutinise, question and oppose the business practices of global corporations and challenging them to prove that there is more to CSR than merely corporate rhetoric.

Demonstrates that the discourse surrounding CSR has broader implications.