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Papers by Mirjam Aeschbach
Online-Heidelberg Journal of Religions on the Internet, 2019
In this article, we examine the question of religious communalization on the micro-blogging servi... more In this article, we examine the question of religious communalization on the micro-blogging service Twitter. Twitter has only relatively recently been adopted as a field of research by scholars of media and religion, and the question of religious community building on Twitter has yet to be addressed. Along with conceptualizations of Twitter as a social network and a social medium, we present specific approaches to community and the emergence of communal identity. Drawing on theories of community building online as well as offline, this study emphasizes mediated communication as central in the formation of community. Finally, through an analysis of postings under the hashtag #WhatBritishMuslimsReallyThink, we outline how Twitter is used for event-based communication and emotional affiliation. In this way, Twitter is conceptualized as a digital space in which fleeting communities may emerge in the process of communicative event communalization.
In the discursive construction of intra-national sameness, religious identity is often a key crit... more In the discursive construction of intra-national sameness, religious identity is often a key criterion for inclusion or exclusion from the imagined national community. In today’s Europe, the boundaries of individual nations are increasingly secured by applying a logic characteristic of Islamophobia and cultural racism. Therefore, the negotiation of Muslim identity and its intersection with the respective national identity category is of particular interest. In this study, the Twitter hashtag #WhatBritishMuslimsReallyThink was examined in order to analyze how members of the British Muslim digital community both construct and reinforce their collective identity as well as employ discursive strategies to negotiate British national identity and their national belonging in the face of exclusionary political rhetoric. Drawing on a corpus of 480 tweets containing the hashtag #WhatBritishMuslimsReallyThink, a mixed-method content analysis approach was employed to analyze the topics and stra...
German Studies Review, 2020
Criteria are an essential component of any procedure for assessing merit. Yet, little is known ab... more Criteria are an essential component of any procedure for assessing merit. Yet, little is known about the criteria peers use in assessing grant applications. In this systematic review we therefore identify and synthesize studies that examine grant peer review criteria in an empirical and inductive manner. To facilitate the synthesis, we introduce the Scriven Model, which separates each criterion into an evaluated entity (i.e. the object of the evaluation) and an evaluation criterion (i.e. the dimension along which an entity is evaluated). In total, this synthesis includes 12 studies. Two-thirds of these studies examine criteria in the medical and health sciences, while studies in other fields are scarce. Few studies compare criteria across different fields, and none focus on criteria for interdisciplinary research. We conducted a qualitative content analysis of the 12 studies and thereby identified 15 evaluation criteria and 30 evaluated entities as well as the relations between them...
Negotiating British Muslim identity on Twitte
In contemporary public discourses across Europe, concepts of religion and secularity are drawn on... more In contemporary public discourses across Europe, concepts of religion and secularity are drawn on in delineations of national ‘Selfs’ and acceptable Muslim positionalities. Based on six Swiss-German media outputs discussing Islam in Switzerland in 2016, I argue that concepts of the ‘secular’ as progressive and the ‘religious’ as potentially dangerous, disruptive and as currently arriving from the outside shape images of national identity and belonging in Switzerland. Analyzing the entanglements of these images with gendered issues, such as gender equality as tied to ‘secular,’ male (sexual) violence and the oppression of women as inherently ‘religious’ and particularly Muslim, I illustrate the specific positionalities that mark the fault line between acceptable and unacceptable Muslimness. In this context, the joint declaration of the group secular Muslims is introduced as an example of how gender-specific views associated with current normative notions of the ‘secular’ are invoked ...
Zeitschrift für Religionswissenschaft, 2021
Zusammenfassung In der Deutschschweizer massenmedialen Debatte zur Weigerung zweier Schüler in de... more Zusammenfassung In der Deutschschweizer massenmedialen Debatte zur Weigerung zweier Schüler in der Gemeinde Therwil, ihrer Lehrerin die Hand zu schütteln, wird häufig der Kulturbegriff verwendet. Der vorliegende Beitrag analysiert, wie „Kultur“ als wissensstrukturierende Kategorie in der Konstituierung der Gruppenzugehörigkeiten zur Schweizer Mehrheitsgesellschaft und zur muslimischen Minderheit zum Tragen gekommen ist. Basierend auf dem Konzept der „Kulturalisierung“ untersucht die qualitative Medienanalyse die verschiedenen „Spielarten der Kulturalisierung“ (Teczan 2011), die in der Debatte um den Fall Therwil verwendet wurden. Die Ergebnisse zeigen, dass „Kultur“ in Beziehung zu geografischer Herkunft, religiöser Zugehörigkeit und spezifischen Wertvorstellungen gesetzt wurde. Gleichzeitig kann die Verknüpfung dieser Ideen mit Vorstellungen „kulturspezifischer“ Geschlechterverhältnisse und angenommenen Einstellungen zur Geschlechtergerechtigkeit und sexuellen Liberalisierung beoba...
Palgrave Communications, 2020
Criteria are an essential component of any procedure for assessing merit. Yet, little is known ab... more Criteria are an essential component of any procedure for assessing merit. Yet, little is known
about the criteria peers use to assess grant applications. In this systematic review we
therefore identify and synthesize studies that examine grant peer review criteria in an
empirical and inductive manner. To facilitate the synthesis, we introduce a framework that
classifies what is generally referred to as ‘criterion’ into an evaluated entity (i.e., the object of
evaluation) and an evaluation criterion (i.e., the dimension along which an entity is evaluated).
In total, the synthesis includes 12 studies on grant peer review criteria. Two-thirds of these
studies examine criteria in the medical and health sciences, while studies in other fields are
scarce. Few studies compare criteria across different fields, and none focus on criteria for
interdisciplinary research. We conducted a qualitative content analysis of the 12 studies and
thereby identified 15 evaluation criteria and 30 evaluated entities, as well as the relations
between them. Based on a network analysis, we determined the following main relations
between the identified evaluation criteria and evaluated entities. The aims and outcomes of a
proposed project are assessed in terms of the evaluation criteria originality, academic relevance,
and extra-academic relevance. The proposed research process is evaluated both on the
content level (quality, appropriateness, rigor, coherence/justification), as well as on the level of
description (clarity, completeness). The resources needed to implement the research process
are evaluated in terms of the evaluation criterion feasibility. Lastly, the person and personality
of the applicant are assessed from a ‘psychological’ (motivation, traits) and a ‘sociological’
(diversity) perspective. Furthermore, we find that some of the criteria peers use to evaluate
grant applications do not conform to the fairness doctrine and the ideal of impartiality. Grant
peer review could therefore be considered unfair and biased. Our findings suggest that future
studies on criteria in grant peer review should focus on the applicant, include data from non-
Western countries, and examine fields other than the medical and health sciences.
Online - Heidelberg Journal of Religions on the Internet, 2019
In this article, we examine the question of religious communalization on the microblogging servic... more In this article, we examine the question of religious communalization on the microblogging service Twitter. Twitter has only relatively recently been adopted as a field of research by scholars of media and religion, and the question of religious community building on Twitter has yet to be addressed. Along with conceptualizations of Twitter as a social network and a social medium, we present specific approaches to community and the emergence of communal identity. Drawing on theories of community building online as well as offline, this study emphasizes mediated communication as central in the formation of community.
Finally, through an analysis of postings under the hashtag #WhatBritishMuslimsReallyThink, we outline how Twitter is used for event-based communication and emotional affiliation. In this way, Twitter is conceptualized as a digital space in which fleeting communities may emerge in the process of communicative event communalization.
In the discursive construction of intra-national sameness, religious identity is often a key crit... more In the discursive construction of intra-national sameness, religious identity is often a key criterion for inclusion or exclusion from the imagined national community. In today’s Europe, the boundaries of individual nations are increasingly secured by applying a logic characteristic of Islamophobia and cultural racism. Therefore, the negotiation of Muslim identity and its intersection with the respective national identity category is of particular interest. In this study, the Twitter hashtag #WhatBritishMuslimsReallyThink was examined in order to analyze how members of the British Muslim digital community both construct and reinforce their collective identity as well as employ discursive strategies to negotiate British national identity and their national belonging in the face of exclusionary political rhetoric. Drawing on a corpus of 480 tweets containing the hashtag #WhatBritishMuslimsReallyThink, a mixed-method content analysis approach was employed to analyze the topics and strategies present in the hashtag discourse. Thereby, the issues addressed and the strategies of belonging employed in the Twitter conversation are embedded in a larger public discourse on British national identity and intra- national boundary making. This research investigates Twitter as a site of national and religious identity construction and sheds light on the contested nature of such identity categories.
Books by Mirjam Aeschbach
In the discursive construction of intra-national sameness, religious identity is often a key crit... more In the discursive construction of intra-national sameness, religious identity is often a key criterion for inclusion or exclusion from the imagined national community. In current European discourses, the negotiation of Muslim identity and its intersection with the respective national identity category is of particular interest. In this thesis, the hashtag #WhatBritishMuslimsReallyThink was examined in order to analyze how members of the British Muslim digital community both construct and reinforce their collective identity as well as employ discursive strategies to negotiate British national identity and their national belonging in the face of exclusionary political rhetoric. Thereby, the issues addressed and the strategies of belonging employed in the Twitter conversation are embedded in a larger public discourse on British national identity and intra-national boundary making. This research investigates Twitter as a site of national and religious identity construction and sheds light on the contested nature of such identity categories.
Book Reviews by Mirjam Aeschbach
German Studies Review, 2020
Online-Heidelberg Journal of Religions on the Internet, 2019
In this article, we examine the question of religious communalization on the micro-blogging servi... more In this article, we examine the question of religious communalization on the micro-blogging service Twitter. Twitter has only relatively recently been adopted as a field of research by scholars of media and religion, and the question of religious community building on Twitter has yet to be addressed. Along with conceptualizations of Twitter as a social network and a social medium, we present specific approaches to community and the emergence of communal identity. Drawing on theories of community building online as well as offline, this study emphasizes mediated communication as central in the formation of community. Finally, through an analysis of postings under the hashtag #WhatBritishMuslimsReallyThink, we outline how Twitter is used for event-based communication and emotional affiliation. In this way, Twitter is conceptualized as a digital space in which fleeting communities may emerge in the process of communicative event communalization.
In the discursive construction of intra-national sameness, religious identity is often a key crit... more In the discursive construction of intra-national sameness, religious identity is often a key criterion for inclusion or exclusion from the imagined national community. In today’s Europe, the boundaries of individual nations are increasingly secured by applying a logic characteristic of Islamophobia and cultural racism. Therefore, the negotiation of Muslim identity and its intersection with the respective national identity category is of particular interest. In this study, the Twitter hashtag #WhatBritishMuslimsReallyThink was examined in order to analyze how members of the British Muslim digital community both construct and reinforce their collective identity as well as employ discursive strategies to negotiate British national identity and their national belonging in the face of exclusionary political rhetoric. Drawing on a corpus of 480 tweets containing the hashtag #WhatBritishMuslimsReallyThink, a mixed-method content analysis approach was employed to analyze the topics and stra...
German Studies Review, 2020
Criteria are an essential component of any procedure for assessing merit. Yet, little is known ab... more Criteria are an essential component of any procedure for assessing merit. Yet, little is known about the criteria peers use in assessing grant applications. In this systematic review we therefore identify and synthesize studies that examine grant peer review criteria in an empirical and inductive manner. To facilitate the synthesis, we introduce the Scriven Model, which separates each criterion into an evaluated entity (i.e. the object of the evaluation) and an evaluation criterion (i.e. the dimension along which an entity is evaluated). In total, this synthesis includes 12 studies. Two-thirds of these studies examine criteria in the medical and health sciences, while studies in other fields are scarce. Few studies compare criteria across different fields, and none focus on criteria for interdisciplinary research. We conducted a qualitative content analysis of the 12 studies and thereby identified 15 evaluation criteria and 30 evaluated entities as well as the relations between them...
Negotiating British Muslim identity on Twitte
In contemporary public discourses across Europe, concepts of religion and secularity are drawn on... more In contemporary public discourses across Europe, concepts of religion and secularity are drawn on in delineations of national ‘Selfs’ and acceptable Muslim positionalities. Based on six Swiss-German media outputs discussing Islam in Switzerland in 2016, I argue that concepts of the ‘secular’ as progressive and the ‘religious’ as potentially dangerous, disruptive and as currently arriving from the outside shape images of national identity and belonging in Switzerland. Analyzing the entanglements of these images with gendered issues, such as gender equality as tied to ‘secular,’ male (sexual) violence and the oppression of women as inherently ‘religious’ and particularly Muslim, I illustrate the specific positionalities that mark the fault line between acceptable and unacceptable Muslimness. In this context, the joint declaration of the group secular Muslims is introduced as an example of how gender-specific views associated with current normative notions of the ‘secular’ are invoked ...
Zeitschrift für Religionswissenschaft, 2021
Zusammenfassung In der Deutschschweizer massenmedialen Debatte zur Weigerung zweier Schüler in de... more Zusammenfassung In der Deutschschweizer massenmedialen Debatte zur Weigerung zweier Schüler in der Gemeinde Therwil, ihrer Lehrerin die Hand zu schütteln, wird häufig der Kulturbegriff verwendet. Der vorliegende Beitrag analysiert, wie „Kultur“ als wissensstrukturierende Kategorie in der Konstituierung der Gruppenzugehörigkeiten zur Schweizer Mehrheitsgesellschaft und zur muslimischen Minderheit zum Tragen gekommen ist. Basierend auf dem Konzept der „Kulturalisierung“ untersucht die qualitative Medienanalyse die verschiedenen „Spielarten der Kulturalisierung“ (Teczan 2011), die in der Debatte um den Fall Therwil verwendet wurden. Die Ergebnisse zeigen, dass „Kultur“ in Beziehung zu geografischer Herkunft, religiöser Zugehörigkeit und spezifischen Wertvorstellungen gesetzt wurde. Gleichzeitig kann die Verknüpfung dieser Ideen mit Vorstellungen „kulturspezifischer“ Geschlechterverhältnisse und angenommenen Einstellungen zur Geschlechtergerechtigkeit und sexuellen Liberalisierung beoba...
Palgrave Communications, 2020
Criteria are an essential component of any procedure for assessing merit. Yet, little is known ab... more Criteria are an essential component of any procedure for assessing merit. Yet, little is known
about the criteria peers use to assess grant applications. In this systematic review we
therefore identify and synthesize studies that examine grant peer review criteria in an
empirical and inductive manner. To facilitate the synthesis, we introduce a framework that
classifies what is generally referred to as ‘criterion’ into an evaluated entity (i.e., the object of
evaluation) and an evaluation criterion (i.e., the dimension along which an entity is evaluated).
In total, the synthesis includes 12 studies on grant peer review criteria. Two-thirds of these
studies examine criteria in the medical and health sciences, while studies in other fields are
scarce. Few studies compare criteria across different fields, and none focus on criteria for
interdisciplinary research. We conducted a qualitative content analysis of the 12 studies and
thereby identified 15 evaluation criteria and 30 evaluated entities, as well as the relations
between them. Based on a network analysis, we determined the following main relations
between the identified evaluation criteria and evaluated entities. The aims and outcomes of a
proposed project are assessed in terms of the evaluation criteria originality, academic relevance,
and extra-academic relevance. The proposed research process is evaluated both on the
content level (quality, appropriateness, rigor, coherence/justification), as well as on the level of
description (clarity, completeness). The resources needed to implement the research process
are evaluated in terms of the evaluation criterion feasibility. Lastly, the person and personality
of the applicant are assessed from a ‘psychological’ (motivation, traits) and a ‘sociological’
(diversity) perspective. Furthermore, we find that some of the criteria peers use to evaluate
grant applications do not conform to the fairness doctrine and the ideal of impartiality. Grant
peer review could therefore be considered unfair and biased. Our findings suggest that future
studies on criteria in grant peer review should focus on the applicant, include data from non-
Western countries, and examine fields other than the medical and health sciences.
Online - Heidelberg Journal of Religions on the Internet, 2019
In this article, we examine the question of religious communalization on the microblogging servic... more In this article, we examine the question of religious communalization on the microblogging service Twitter. Twitter has only relatively recently been adopted as a field of research by scholars of media and religion, and the question of religious community building on Twitter has yet to be addressed. Along with conceptualizations of Twitter as a social network and a social medium, we present specific approaches to community and the emergence of communal identity. Drawing on theories of community building online as well as offline, this study emphasizes mediated communication as central in the formation of community.
Finally, through an analysis of postings under the hashtag #WhatBritishMuslimsReallyThink, we outline how Twitter is used for event-based communication and emotional affiliation. In this way, Twitter is conceptualized as a digital space in which fleeting communities may emerge in the process of communicative event communalization.
In the discursive construction of intra-national sameness, religious identity is often a key crit... more In the discursive construction of intra-national sameness, religious identity is often a key criterion for inclusion or exclusion from the imagined national community. In today’s Europe, the boundaries of individual nations are increasingly secured by applying a logic characteristic of Islamophobia and cultural racism. Therefore, the negotiation of Muslim identity and its intersection with the respective national identity category is of particular interest. In this study, the Twitter hashtag #WhatBritishMuslimsReallyThink was examined in order to analyze how members of the British Muslim digital community both construct and reinforce their collective identity as well as employ discursive strategies to negotiate British national identity and their national belonging in the face of exclusionary political rhetoric. Drawing on a corpus of 480 tweets containing the hashtag #WhatBritishMuslimsReallyThink, a mixed-method content analysis approach was employed to analyze the topics and strategies present in the hashtag discourse. Thereby, the issues addressed and the strategies of belonging employed in the Twitter conversation are embedded in a larger public discourse on British national identity and intra- national boundary making. This research investigates Twitter as a site of national and religious identity construction and sheds light on the contested nature of such identity categories.
In the discursive construction of intra-national sameness, religious identity is often a key crit... more In the discursive construction of intra-national sameness, religious identity is often a key criterion for inclusion or exclusion from the imagined national community. In current European discourses, the negotiation of Muslim identity and its intersection with the respective national identity category is of particular interest. In this thesis, the hashtag #WhatBritishMuslimsReallyThink was examined in order to analyze how members of the British Muslim digital community both construct and reinforce their collective identity as well as employ discursive strategies to negotiate British national identity and their national belonging in the face of exclusionary political rhetoric. Thereby, the issues addressed and the strategies of belonging employed in the Twitter conversation are embedded in a larger public discourse on British national identity and intra-national boundary making. This research investigates Twitter as a site of national and religious identity construction and sheds light on the contested nature of such identity categories.
German Studies Review, 2020