Sara Polak – författare

Playing Politics in Digital Spaces offers a timely analysis of play and politics woven together to imagine and enact new worlds, democratic and reactionary alike.Bringing together media and philosophical insights into the concepts of play, politics and worlding (or world-making), the book highlights the dual potential of play-politics for both oppression and liberation. Through theoretical and cultural-historical perspectives on the emergence and repercussions of a post-digital “radical uncertainty”, the book allows readers to understand how play has become a crucial component of contemporary politics. It examines this through an array of diverse cases, from different places and scale.This book will interest scholars and students from media studies, philosophy, cultural studies, games and play studies, and political theory and philosophy, and will be valuable for other stakeholders including policy-makers, politicians, journalists, game designers, activists and NGOs.

Trolls for Trump', virtual rape, fake news — social media discourse, including forms of virtual and real violence, has become a formidable, yet elusive, political force. What characterizes online vitriol? How do we understand the narratives generated, and also address their real-world — even life-and-death— impact? How can hatred, bullying, and dehumanization on social media platforms be addressed and countered in a post-truth world? Violence and Trolling on Social Media: History, Affect, and Effects of Online Vitriol unpacks discourses, metaphors, dynamics, and framing on social media, in order to begin to answer these questions. Written for and by cultural and media studies scholars, journalists, political philosophers, digital communication professionals, activists and advocates, this book connects theoretical approaches from cultural and media studies with practical challenges and experiences 'from the field', providing insight into a rough media landscape.

How was FDR's image constructed—by himself and others—as such a powerful icon in American memory?In polls of historians and political scientists, Franklin Delano Roosevelt consistently ranks among the top three American presidents. Roosevelt enjoyed an enormous political and cultural reach, one that stretched past his presidency and across the world. A grand narrative of Roosevelt's crucial role in the twentieth century persists: the notion that American ideology, embodied by FDR, overcame the Depression and won World War II, while fascism, communism, and imperialism—and their ignoble figureheads—fought one another to death in Europe. This grand narrative is flawed and problematic, legitimizing the United States's cultural, diplomatic, and military role in the world order, but it has meant that FDR continues to loom large in American culture.In FDR in American Memory, Sara Polak analyzes Roosevelt's construction as a cultural icon in American memory from two perspectives. First, she examines him as a historical leader, one who carefully and intentionally built his public image. Focusing on FDR's use of media and his negotiation of the world as a disabled person, she shows how he consistently aligned himself with modernity and future-proof narratives and modes of rhetoric. Second, Polak looks at portrayals and negotiations of the FDR icon in cultural memory from the vantage point of the early twenty-first century. Drawing on recent and well-known cultural artifacts—including novels, movies, documentaries, popular biographies, museums, and memorials—she demonstrates how FDR positioned himself as a rhetorically modern and powerful but ideologically almost empty container. That deliberate positioning, Polak writes, continues to allow almost any narrative to adopt him as a relevant historical example even now.As a study of presidential image-fashioning, FDR in American Memory will be of immediate relevance to present-day readers.

Violence and Trolling on Social Media: History, Affect, and Effects of Online Vitriol unpacks discourses, metaphors, dynamics, and framing on social media. This book connects theoretical approaches from cultural and media studies with practical challenges and experiences 'from the field', providing insight into a rough media landscape.