This volume provides a comprehensive analysis of the ways in which digital communication facilitate and inform discourses of legitimization and delegitimization in contemporary participatory cultures.

Andrew S. Ross is a Lecturer in the School of Education and Social Work at the University of Sydney, Australia. His research interests are interdisciplinary and varied but include critical discourse studies, political communication, discourses of new media, and sociolinguistics. His work has been published such venues as Communication and Sport, The Language Learning Journal, Journal of Language, Identity and Education, and Discourse, Context and Media, and Australian Review of Applied Linguistics. He is the co-editor of the volume The Sociolinguistics of Hip-Hop as Critical Conscience: Dissatisfaction and Dissent (2017). See www.asross.com

Damian J. Rivers is an Associate Professor [Communication] at Future University Hakodate, Japan. His research interests concern critical pedagogies, the discourse of social media and political communities of participation, and expressions of power within educational philosophy, policy and practice. He is co-author of Beyond Native-Speakerism: Current Explorations and Future Visions (2018, Routledge), editor of Resistance to the Known: Counter-Conduct in Language Education (2015) and co-editor of Isms in Language Education: Oppression, Intersectionality and Emancipation (2017), The Sociolinguistics of Hip-Hop as Critical Conscience: Dissatisfaction and Dissent (2017), Native-Speakerism in Japan: Intergroup Dynamics in Foreign Language Education (2013) and Social Identities and Multiple Selves in Foreign Language Education (2013). See www.hakodate7128.com.

Introduction: (De)Legitimization and Participation in the Digitized Public Sphere

Andrew S. Ross and Damian J. Rivers

Part I: Participatory Language Use Online and Discursive Positioning

Chapter 1: (De)Legitimizing Language Uses in Language Ideological Debates Online

Antonio Reyes

Chapter 2: Persuasion by Commonality: Legitimizing Actions through Discourse on Common Sense in a Japanese Advice Forum

Giancarla Unser-Schutz

Chapter 3: A Name Rightly Given? The Use, Abuse, and Adoption of the Term "Cybernat" During the Scottish Referendum Debate

Rowan R. Mackay

Chapter 4: Online Performances of Expertise by Sustainability Practitioners: Tracing Communicative Episodes of Professional (De)Legitimization

Rahul Mitra

Part II: Discursive (De)Legitimization through Social Media Participation

Chapter 5: 'Stop the Boats': Internet Memes as Case Study of Multimodal Delegitimization of Australian Refugee Policy Rhetoric

Andrew S. Ross

Chapter 6: Understanding Participatory Culture through Hashtag Activism after the Orlando Pulse Tragedy

Nicholas DeArmas, Jennifer Roth Miller, Wendy Givoglu, David Thomas Moran and Stephanie Vie

Chapter 7: Digital Narratives of Struggle and Legitimacy in the Arab Spring

Aditi Bhatia

Chapter 8: Not the Desired Offspring: #FertilityDay, the Italian Ministry of Health, and the Campaign that Wasn't

Tommaso Trillò

Chapter 9: Nike Y U No Do It Yourself: Decrowning Brands by Means of Memes

Vittorio Montieri

Part III: (De)Legitimization in Production, Participation and Performance

Chapter 10: Always On, But Never There: Political Parody, the Carnivalesque, and the Rise of the 'Nectorate'

Annamaria Neag and Richard Berger

Chapter 11: Trolling as Creative Insurgency: The Carnivalesque Delegitimization of Putin and His Supporters in Online Newspaper Commentary

Alla V. Tovares

Chapter 12: Political Cartoons as Creative Insurgency: Delegitimization in the Culture of Convergence

Damian J. Rivers

Chapter 13: Participation That Makes a Difference and Differences in Participation: Highrise - An Interactive Documentary Project for Change

Anna Wiehl

Chapter 14: Film Festival Participation and Identity Formation: Non-Professional Creativity and the Pleasures of Mobile Filmmaking

Gavin Wilson

Part IV: (De)Legitimizing Participatory Discourses of Religion

Chapter 15: Modding as a Strategy to (De)Legitimize Representations of Religion in the Civilization Game Franchise

Stefan Werning

Chapter 16: Identity, Social Media and Religion: (De)Legitimization of Identity Construction through the Language of Religion

Soudeh Ghaffari