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Speaker: Dr. Rhys Crilley, Post-Doctoral Research Fellow, University of Glasgow
Discussant: TBD
Abstract:
How do citizens think and feel about nuclear weapons? This question has been central to recent scholarship on understanding the non-use of nuclear weapons since August 1945. In this paper Dr. Rhys Crilley explores this question and builds upon research on public opinion about nuclear weapons by demonstrating how social media data can help to understand how members of the public think about, and feel emotions towards, nuclear weapons. Through an analysis of the 20,000 most popular publicly available Facebook posts on the topic of nuclear weapons published between January 2016 and May 2022, Dr. Rhys Crilley traces the representation of nuclear weapons in the digital age. He then thematically analyzes the 500 most popular Facebook posts on nuclear weapons to understand how nuclear weapons are framed online, before analyzing public interactions (likes, comments, shares, and emoji reactions) with these posts to explore public opinion about nuclear weapons. In doing so, Dr. Rhys Crilley goes beyond studies that draw upon opinion polls and survey experiments to highlight how social media data can provide an insight into the ways in which people already express their thoughts and feelings about nuclear weapons in their everyday lives.
Speaker bio:
Dr Rhys Crilley is an award winning academic who is currently working on a Leverhulme Trust Funded Early Career Fellowship titled Narratives of Nuclear Weapons: How Emotions Shape Deterrence and Disarmament.
Rhys joined Glasgow in May 2020, and his research explores the contemporary politics of nuclear weapons by analysing how states narrate changes to their nuclear weapons policies and how citizens feel emotionally invested in them. It aims to transcends mainstream approaches by placing narrative and emotion at the centre of analysis, and provides a qualitative study of changing nuclear weapons policies, the collapse of arms control, and other issues in the new nuclear age.
Prior to starting at Glasgow, Rhys was employed as a Post Doctoral Research Associate in Global Media and Communication at The Open University, where he worked on the AHRC funded project: Reframing Russia for the Global Mediasphere: From Cold War to “Information War”? Before this, in 2016 and 2017, he was a Teaching Fellow in Intelligence and International Security at the University of Warwick.
Rhys was awarded his PhD from the University of Birmingham in 2016. That same year he was awarded the International Studies International Communication Section's Best Paper Award. In 2017 Rhys was nominated by his students at the University of Warwick for a Warwick Award in Teaching Excellence.
In the space of several years, Rhys has published over 20 peer reviewed articles and book chpaters in prestigious outlets such as International Studies Review, Millennium, Cambridge Review of International Affairs, Media, War and Conflict, The Hauge Journal of Diplomacy, Journalism, Media & Communication, and International Affairs. He is currently writing his first monograph and co-editing a textbook.