Cover not available
Part of
Doing Politics: Discursivity, performativity and mediation in political discourse
Edited by Michael Kranert and Geraldine Horan
[Discourse Approaches to Politics, Society and Culture 80] 2018
► pp. 211–234

Chapter 9
Es-tu Charlie?

Doing politics on Wikipedia

editor

This chapter examines the representation of the slogan “Je Suis Charlie” (JSC) on Wikipedia. Drawing on corpus tools in addition to purely qualitative analytical tools led to the identification of several themes that recur throughout Wikipedia’s article on JSC as well as on the associated discussion pages. The Wikipedia article represents JSC as a globally-used symbol of freedom of speech and solidarity with victims of specific violent events. On the discussion pages, JSC receives a markedly different treatment, e.g. the debates focus on whether JSC – rather than symbolising freedom of speech – symbolises the freedom to discriminate against groups of people. Furthermore, the discussions focus on JSC as uniting the “West” only and not on JSC as a global phenomenon.

Keywords: Critical Discourse Studies, Wikipedia, Je Suis Charlie, Corpus-Assisted Discourse Studies, floating signifier, Charlie Hebdo , freedom of speech, Islamophobia
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.The magazine Charlie Hebdo, the shooting and “Je Suis Charlie”
  • 3.Wikipedia, the free online encyclopaedia
  • 4.Data and methods of analysis
  • 5.Intertextual analysis – The article’s sources
  • 6.Textual analysis – Je Suis Charlie’s meanings on the article and discussion pages
    • Worldwide and inclusive
    • Solidarity and identification with victims
    • Freedom
    • Violence
  • 7.Conclusion
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 12 December 2018
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/dapsac.80.09kop
References
Al Jazeera America
2015 “Charlie Hebdo: ‘Fighting with the Pen’ and Pulling No Punches” 7 January. Accessed 6 June 2015. [URL]
Alexa
2016 “The Top 500 Sites on the Web.” Accessed 20 March 2016. [URL]
Anderson, Monica, Paul Hitlin, and Michelle Atkinson
2016 “Wikipedia at 15: Millions of Readers in Scores of Languages.” Accessed 7 March 2016. [URL]
Anthony, Laurence
2015 AntConc. Accessed 12 April 2014. [URL]
Baker, Paul
2006 Using Corpora in Discourse Analysis. Continuum Discourse Series. London, New York: Continuum.Google Scholar
Barton, David, and Carmen Lee
2013 Language Online: Investigating Digital Texts and Practices. London: Routledge.DOI logoGoogle Scholar
BBC
2011 “French Satirical Paper Charlie Hebdo Attacked in Paris” 2 November. Accessed 10 November 2016. [URL]
2015a “Charlie Hebdo and its Place in French Journalism” 8 January. Accessed 6 June 2015. [URL]
2015b “Charlie Hebdo Attack: Three Days of Terror” 14 January. Accessed 8 June 2015. [URL]
Bilefsky, Dan, and Maia de La Baume
2015 “Terrorists Strike Charlie Hebdo Newspaper in Paris, Leaving 12 Dead.” The New York Times 7 January. Accessed 7 December 2016. [URL]
Black, Laura W., Howard T. Welser, Dan Cosley, and Jocelyn M. DeGroot
2011 “Self-Governance Through Group Discussion in Wikipedia: Measuring Deliberation in Online Groups.” Small Group Research 42 (5): 595–634.DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Callahan, Ewa S., and Susan Herring
2011 “Cultural Bias in Wikipedia Content on Famous Persons.” Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology 62 (10): 1899–1915.DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Castillo, Mariano
2015 “Following the Tangled and Treacherous Trail after France Terror Attack” 15 January. Accessed 2 April 2015. [URL]
Chandler, Daniel
2007 Semiotics: The Basics. 2nd ed. London, New York: Routledge.DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Charlie Hebdo
2016 “Charlie Hebdo: History.” Accessed 20 March 2016. [URL]
Darics, Erika
2010 “Politeness in Computer-Mediated Discourse of a Virtual Team.” Journal of Politeness Research. Language, Behaviour, Culture 6 (1): 129–150.DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Der Tagesspiegel
2015 “Designer Joachim Roncin entsetzt über Kommerzialisierung seines Logos.” Der Tagesspiegel 16 January. Accessed 20 February 2015. [URL]
Devichand, Mukul
2016 “How the World was Changed by the Slogan ‘Je Suis Charlie’” 3 January. BBC Accessed 26 April 2016. [URL]
Dorfer, Tobias
2015 “Der Mann, dessen Bild um die Welt geht [The man, whose sketch goes around the world].” Süddeutsche Zeitung 8 January. Accessed 25 March 2015. [URL]
Emigh, William, and Susan Herring
2005 “Collaborative Authoring on the Web: a Genre Analysis of Online Encyclopedias.” Proceedings Of The 38Th Annual Hawaii International Conference On System Sciences: 1–11.
Gayle, Damien, and Sian Boyle
2015 “#JeSuisCharlie Sweeps Twitter as Internet Users Rush to Show Solidarity with French Satirical News Magazine after Massacre.” The Daily Mail 7 January. Accessed 15 April 2015. [URL]
Gibson, Megan
2015 “The Provocative History of French Weekly Newspaper Charlie Hebdo.” Time 7 January. Accessed 20 February 2015. [URL]
Goffman, Erving
1959 The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life. Garden City, New York: Anchor Books.Google Scholar
Herring, Susan
2013 “Discourse in Web 2.0: Familiar, Reconfigured and Emergent.” In Discourse 2.0: Language and New Media, ed. by Deborah Tannen, and Anna M. Trester, 1–25. Georgetown University Round Table on Languages and Linguistics series. Washington, D.C: Georgetown University Press.Google Scholar
2004 “Computer-Mediated Discourse Analysis: An Approach to Researching Online Behavior.” In Designing for Virtual Communities in the Service of Learning, ed. by Sasha A. Barab, Rob Kling, and James H. Gray, 338–376. Learning in Doing Series. New York: Cambridge University Press.DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Hewitt, Jim
2005 “Toward an Understanding of How Threads Die in Asynchronous Computer Conferences.” Journal of the Learning Sciences 14 (4): 567–589.DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Je Suis Charlie
2015 Wikipedia. [URL] Accessed 1 February 2015.
:Revision History 2015 Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation Inc. [URL] Accessed 2 May 2015.
John, Mark
2015 “Attack Vigils Restore French Pride – but Now What?” 12 January. Accessed 23 November 2016. [URL]
Jolly, David
2011 “Satirical Magazine Is Firebombed in Paris.” The New York Times 2 November. Accessed 30 March 30 2015. [URL]
Jones, John
2008 “Patterns of Revision in Online Writing: A Study of Wikipedia’s Featured Articles.” Written Communication 25 (2): 262–289.DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Jordan, William
2014 YouGov | British People Trust Wikipedia More Than the News. Accessed 11 January 2016 [URL]
Kurth, James
2003 “Western Civilization: Our Tradition.” Intercollegiate Review 39 (1/2): 5–13.Google Scholar
Libération
2015 “Comment J’ai Créé “Je Suis Charlie”: Par Joachim Roncin, Directeur Artistique et Journaliste Musique au Magazine Gratuit Stylist, Créateur du Slogan “Je Suis Charlie”.” Libération 13 January. Accessed 20 February 2015. [URL]
Lutzky, Ursula, and Andrew Kehoe
2016 “Your Blog is (the) Shit.” International Journal of Corpus Linguistics 21 (2): 165–191.DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Magpile
2016 “Charlie Hebdo: About.” Accessed 1 March 2016. [URL]
McEnery, Tony, Richard Xiao, and Yukio Tono
2006 Corpus-Based Language Studies: An Advanced Resource Book. Routledge Applied Linguistics. London, New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Merriam-Webster
2015 “Massacre.” Accessed 30 April 2015. [URL]
Messner, Marcus, and Marcia W. DiStaso
2013 “Wikipedia versus Encyclopedia Britannica: A Longitudinal Analysis to Identify the Impact of Social Media on the Standards of Knowledge.” Mass Communication and Society 16 (4): 465–486.DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Messner, Marcus, and Jeff South
2011 “Legitimizing Wikipedia.” Journalism Practice 5 (2): 145–160.DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Müller, Lothar
2015 “Wer bin ich? [who am I?].” Süddeutsche Zeitung 15 January. Accessed 20 March 2015. [URL]
Myers, Greg
2010 The Discourse of Blogs and Wikis. Continuum Discourse Series. London, New York: Continuum.Google Scholar
Nadkarni, Miryam
2011 “Tabloid vs. Broadsheet: Reasons for the UK’s Yellow Press Victory.” Accessed 2 April 2016. [URL]
Okoli, Chitu, Mohamad Mehdi, Mostafa Mesgari, Finn Årup Nielsen, and Arto Lanamäki
2014 “Wikipedia in the Eyes of Its Beholders: a Systematic Review of Scholarly Research on Wikipedia Readers and Readership.” Journal of the Association for Information Science and Technology 65 (12): 2381–2403.DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Page, Ruth E.
2014a “Counter Narratives and Controversial Crimes: The Wikipedia Article for the ‘Murder of Meredith Kercher’.” Language and Literature 23 (1): 61–76.DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2014b Researching Language and Social Media: A Student Guide. London, New York: Routledge.DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Partington, Alan
2010 “Modern Diachronic Corpus-Assisted Discourse Studies (MD-CADS) on UK Newspapers: An Overview of the Project.” Corpora 5 (2): 83–108.DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Potet, Frédéric
2015 ““Je Suis Charlie”, c’est lui [“Je suis Charlie”, it’s him].” Le Monde 9 January. Accessed 5 April 2016. [URL]
Reed, Jessica
2015 “Charlie Hebdo’s Spirit will Endure, Despite this Atrocity.” The Guardian 7 January. Accessed 5 May 2015. [URL]
Reisigl, Martin, and Ruth Wodak
2001 Discourse and Discrimination: Rhetorics of Racism and Antisemitism. London, New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Roncin, Joachim
2015 Je Suis Charlie. Twitter. [URL] Accessed 30 January 2015.
Shaw, Donna
2008 “Wikipedia in the Newsroom: While the Line ‘According to Wikipedia’ Pops Up Occasionally in News Stories, It’s Relatively Rare to See the User-Created Online Encyclopedia Cited as a Source. But some Journalists Find It very Valuable as a Road Map to Troves of Valuable Information.” 30 (1). [URL] Accessed 20 February 2017.
Stegbauer, Christian
2009 Wikipedia: Das Rätsel der Kooperation. Netzwerkforschung Bd. 2. Wiesbaden: VS Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften / GWV Fachverlage GmbH, Wiesbaden.DOI logoGoogle Scholar
The New York Times
2015b “Eyewitness Videos of Paris Shooting Terror Attack at Charlie Hebdo.” YouTube: The New York Times Channel, 7 January. Accessed 1 June 2015. [URL]Google Scholar
Thompson, Geoff
2004 Introducing Functional Grammar. 2nd edn. London, New York: Arnold.Google Scholar
Thomson, Adam, Anne-Sylvaine Chassany, and Claer Barrett
2015 “Charlie Hebdo: Suspect Surrenders to Police in France.” Financial Times 8 January. Accessed 30 March 2015. [URL]
Tognini-Bonelli, Elena
2001 Corpus Linguistics at Work. Studies in Corpus Linguistics. Amsterdam, Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing Company.DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Toulmin, Stephen Edelston
2003 The Uses of Argument. Cambridge, New York: Cambridge University Press.DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Twitter France
2015 #JeSuisCharlie. Twitter. Twitter Reverb; Periscopic. [URL] Accessed 23 November 2016.
Unger, Johann W., and Majid KhosraviNik
2016 “Critical Discourse Studies and Social Media: Power, Resistance and Critique in Changing Media Ecologies.” In Methods of Critical Discourse Studies, ed. by Ruth Wodak, and Michael Meyer. 3rd edn, 205–233. London, Thousand Oaks, California: Sage Publications Ltd.Google Scholar
United Nations Organization
2006 “Free Press Fundamental Human Right, Foundation of Democratic Societies, Says Under-Secretary-General, at Headquarters Observance of World Day.” News release 3 May 2006 Accessed 27 March 2017. [URL]
van Eemeren, Frans
1995 “A World of Difference: the Rich State of Argumentation Theory.” Informal Logic 17 (2): 144–158.DOI logoGoogle Scholar
van Leeuwen, Theo
1996 “The Representation of Social Actors.” In Readings in Critical Discourse Analysis, ed. by Carmen R. Caldas-Coulthard, and Malcom Coulthard, 32–70. Texts and Practices. London, New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Wikimedia Foundation Inc.
2011 “Wikipedia Editors Study: Results from the editor survey, April 2011.” Unpublished manuscript, last modified 18 November 2016. [URL]
Wikipedia
2016 Wikipedia. [URL] Accessed 1 February 2016.
Wikipedia:About
2016 Wikipedia. Accessed 11 October 2016. [URL]
Wikipedia:Article development
2016 Wikipedia. Accessed 6 March 2016. [URL]
Wikipedia:Identifying reliable sources
2016 Wikipedia. Accessed 7 October 2016. [URL]
Wikipedia:Neutral Point Of View
2015 Wikipedia. Accessed 15 July 2015. [URL]
Wikipedia:Notability
2016 Wikipedia. Accessed 30 November 2016. [URL]
Wikipedia:Talk Page guidelines
2015 Accessed 12 September 2015. [URL]
Wikipedia:User access levels
2016 Wikipedia. Accessed 10 October 2016. [URL]
Wikipedia:Verifiability
2015 Accessed 10 August 2015. [URL]
Wodak, Ruth
2001 “The Discourse-Historical Approach.” In Methods of Critical Discourse Analysis, ed. by Ruth Wodak, and Michael Meyer, 63–95. London, Thousand Oaks: Sage Publications Ltd.Google Scholar
Wodak, Ruth, and Scott Wright
2006 “The European Union in Cyberspace: Multilingual Democratic Participation in a Virtual Public Sphere?” JLP 5 (2): 251–275.DOI logoGoogle Scholar
X!’s Tools
2015 “Je Suis Charlie.” Accessed 2 April 2015. [URL]
Cited by

Cited by 3 other publications

Heaton, Dan, Elena Nichele, Jeremie Clos & Joel E. Fischer
2024. “ChatGPT says no”: agency, trust, and blame in Twitter discourses after the launch of ChatGPT. AI and Ethics DOI logo
Kopf, Susanne
2020. ‘This is exactly how the Nazis ran it’: (De)legitimising the EU on Wikipedia. Discourse & Society 31:4 ► pp. 411 ff. DOI logo
Kopf, Susanne
2022. Wikipedia’s Architecture and Modus Operandi. In A Discursive Perspective on Wikipedia, ► pp. 27 ff. DOI logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 22 april 2024. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.