Showing papers in "Journal of Communication Inquiry in 1995"

Media Dependency, Bubonic Plague, and the Social Construction of the Chinese Other

Abstract: There is no other city in Europe or America that has met the peril of plague in the way San Francisco has done, there is no place where press and public have so persistently fought the necessary me...

The Naturalized Gender Order Of Rock and Roll

Abstract: ment,&dquo; &dquo;near-hysteria,&dquo; &dquo;mass hysteria,&dquo; or &dquo;pandemonium,&dquo; according to several newspaper and magazine descriptions. Elvis Presley, with his 1956 national debut, was the chief cultural site for this type of youthful expression. While the mass media regularly characterized the young female Elvis fans as innocent, gullible, and easily manipulated by the &dquo;obscene&dquo; physical gyrations of a showman like Elvis, the president of at least one Elvis fan club suggested that teenage fans were more savvy than many adults would like to think.

Media, Modernity, And Lived Experience:

Abstract: What difference have the media made to our experience of daily life in the modem world? In a general sense, of course, this question has never been off the agenda in communications inquiry~ut it is rarely tackled head on or dealt with in a wholly satisfactory manner. Mass society critics, effects researchers, gratificationists and cultural studies theorists have all offered specific answers of one sort or another-focusing variously on the commodification of contemporary culture, on patterns of behavioural change and media usage, or on interpretative practices of meaning construction. However, with the notable exception of a handful of writers’, few communications scholars have addressed themselves directly to what I would see as the most fundamental issue for investigations of mediated social experience-the complex relationship between media technologies and time-space transformations. That issue remains just as pressing now as it ever was, given the rapidly changing character of media systems and communication flows in the current period, and the possible consequences for formations of identity and community. It also points us towards broader debates at present in social theory to do with the organization of what we might call &dquo;economies of signs and space&dquo; (Lash and Urry 1994). I want to concentrate in this article on some recent work by Anthony Giddens, a major contributor to these ongoing debates, critically assessing the relevance of his diagnostic writings on modernity for our understanding of media and everyday life. In two books, The Consequences of Modernity ( 1990) and Modernity and Self-Identity (1991), Giddens offers an account of contemporary institutions and ways of living which is well suited to those who seek a convincing answer to the question posed at the start of this article. Although references to the media in these books are relatively few and far between, he does provide a valuable analytical framework within which to consider communicative styles and processes-tracing the connections

Toward a Conception Of "Gonzo" Ethnography

Abstract: In 1967, Hunter S. Thompson burst into public atttention with a best-selling account of the savage Hell’s Angels motorcycle gang, written in a style that combined journalistic sensationalism with an extreme form of ethnographic participant observation: Thompson rode with the hell-raising Angels. Thompson-whose own drinking, drugging, and sexist exploits were to become nearly as legendary as the notorious biker troop-pioneered a form of journalism that celebrated in-depth research and personal involvement, and that was vividly descriptive and rabidly opinionated. The style was promptly christened &dquo;gonzo&dquo; with all connotations of overweening machismo clearly intended. On quite another front, during roughly the same period of time, some researchers in British cultural stud-

Partisan Press Coverage Of Anti-Abolitionist Violence: A Study of Early Nineteenth-Century "Viewsflow"

Abstract: content was becoming more and more event-centered (Dicken-Garcia 1989, 63). And by the end of the nineteenth century, the concept of news as the essential focus of newspapers emerged as the mechanisms of commercialism made it possible for papers to make the switch from party supporter to news provider (Baldasty 1992). Research up to this point has focused productively on the importance of partisan newspapers in political organization during the first half of the nineteenth century; researchers have also explored the extent of the newspaper exchange system as an emerging information network and the foundation for modem newsgathering, especially in the years before widespread use of the telegraph. For the most part, these research areas have followed parallel paths. This article attempts to guide these lines of inquiry toward an intersection by addressing the performance of partisan newspapers, via newspaper exchange, as purveyors of news. Central to such an investigation are the concepts of partisanship and of information flow. This essay examines several interconnected questions. How might an analysis of partisan papers help formulate a more historically grounded understanding of news and information? What role did newspapers geographically proximate to the events being covered play in determining the character of information that spread through newspaper exchange? Did information about ideologically charged events flow along partisan lines? How did the ideological nature of the party press affect the character of information flow? Were

Rodney King, Reginald Denny, and TV News: Cultural (Re-)Construction of Racism

Abstract: The television news coverage of the beatings of Rodney King and Reginald Denny presents an important opportunity to explore how and why the symmetrical video narratives worked to restore racial inequality as social order. The recognition of these video images not as reproduction of reality but as cultural product opens a public space for a discussion about race and representation. As Butler (1993) notes: &dquo;The visual field is

Little Bromides of the Fourth Estate: Playful Meiosis versus Demeaning Relegation in the Public Representation of Childhood:

Abstract: During the period since Philippe Ari~s’s landmark monograph Centuries of Childhood first appeared (Ari6s 1962) a steadily expanding body of scholarly analysis has cast critical doubt on the work’s principal argument. What might be called the Ari~s thesis has come to represent a natural point of departure for debate about our concepts of childhood (Bradley 1989; DeMause 1974; Pollock 1983; Shahar 1992). The Ari6s thesis holds that the idea of childhood did not exist in medieval times but emerged in its recognisably modem form-expressed by concepts of coddling and corrigibility-in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, to be joined in the eighteenth by a burgeoning concern for bodily hygiene and physical health, but freed of a narrow moralism that had dominated in earlier times.

Mass-Mediated Popular Music And Cultural Change: The Cuban New Song Movement

Abstract: Determining the role of popular music as a mass media genre in social and cultural change remains elusive. Cuba’s nueva trova [hereinafter NT], the only new music genre institutionalized by the revolutionary government (Manuel 1985), presents a case in which popular music became a conduit for social and cultural change, not only in Cuba but throughout the hemisphere.’ Today, NT is experiencing a rebirth as young musicians of a new generation rearticulate a new NT, identified as novisima trova [hereinafter NNT], which calls for social change again, now &dquo;rectification&dquo; responding to the collapse of the Soviet style marxist &dquo;paradigm&dquo; of socialism. These changes have initiated a period of reevaluation, challenging the traditional &dquo;left&dquo; institutions. Over the last thiryt years an explosion in the university student population has produced an outspoken, radical intelligencia who seek to liberate and empower the people through literature, film, and the popular arts (Castaneda 1993, 175-202). This cultural vanguard extends from poets to songwriters who combine lyricism and politics to speak to a mass audience. This article is a critical examination of this mass-mediation process with a case study of NT and its more recent manifestation NNT. NT musicians attempted to use popular music to promote the Cuban revolution, but today they are under intense criticism. I argue that the NNT musicians and those who attempt to use the mass media to promote change must reclaim the popular by resignifying the mass-mediation process-its audience as community, its source as democratic, and its media as significative.

Determining the Legal Limits Of the "Right to Beg": A Spatial Communication Argument

Abstract: commuter senses a figure approaching. Though the commuter tries to avoid contact, the poorly clothed individual forces an encounter.’ &dquo;You got any spare change?&dquo; he asks. &dquo;I haven’t eaten in two days.&dquo;’ Feeling crowded, the commuter thus faces several choices, none of them comforting.’ One option is to respond by ignoring the beggar and walking on. This is an extremely difficult choice for the commuter to make as almost no one wishes to be viewed as heartless, unfeeling, and without compassion. On the other hand, the commuter may make an excuse of some kind for not contributing. This second option acknowledges the communication yet frees the commuter from a corresponding responsive act; however, the response classifies the commuter as a modern-day &dquo;Ebenezer Scrooge&dquo;aware of the problem but unsympathetic-and is, therefore, not much better than the first. As a third option, the commuter may relinquish a handful of loose change. This choice suits the beggar best, but leaves the

“… The Whole Truth …”: The First Amendment, Cultural Studies, and Comparative Law

Abstract: discussion and analysis of the causes for legislative, agency or court decisions-aside from references to precedent-and seemingly scant awareness of the maelstrom of events in the political, economic, religious, educational and other arenas which to one degree or another influence those decisions. In part, this is due to First Amendment scholars’ obsession with normative analysis, with moving an understanding of freedom of expression in the &dquo;right&dquo; direction, and in part it is due to judges’ convictions that precedent is to be obeyed with little consideration of context and

A Critical Perspective On the Law of Speech And Communication

Abstract: The most appropriate critical perspective on the modem law of speech would probably be located in one strand in the critical tradition derived from Horkheimer and Adorno. Focusing on the technologies by which speech is produced and distributed, it would direct attention to the ways in which the legal system has responded in sequence to the development of print, film, and television distribution of speech. It would speculate about the likely regulation of speech on the information superhighway. Its normative concerns would be embedded in a view of political economy. It would describe the utopian possibilities each new technology of speech makes available, as new entrants can challenge the dominance of existing forces over the existing technologies. It would examine the history of legal regulation of these speech technologies to show how the political

Critical Legal Studies And the Constitutional Right of Access to Information

Abstract: At least since James Madison stated that &dquo;a popular government with out popular information or the means of acquiring it, is but a Prologue to a Farce or a Tragedy; or perhaps both,&dquo;’ the importance of the link between information and effective self-government has been recognized. One of the most quoted First Amendment scholars, Alexander Meiklejohn, writes that the &dquo;primary purpose of the First Amendment is ... that all the citi-

Remembering and Forgetting: A Postmodern Interpretation Of the Origins of the "Right of Privacy"

Abstract: come at a price-they have helped create an elitist view of the law that often marginalizes the contributions that have been made by communities that have been traditionally excluded from the process of creating our jurisprudential norms.5 As Condit and Lucaites have recently reminded us in Crafting Equality, this denigration of the role of rhetoric results in the trivialization of the contributions of African-Americans, women, and other historically oppressed groups. 6