Showing papers in "Journal of Communication Inquiry in 2002"
TL;DR: Dollimore as discussed by the authors argues that critical theorists should strive to understand the contradictions within our lives and our literature and explore the daemonic power of the subjects that offend our sense of tradition.
Abstract: but the threat they bring to artistic culture. From his opening mockery of the literary establishment’s tendency to theorize the world in terms of desire or gender to his disapproval of those who venerate art while denying its validity in the same breath, Jonathan Dollimore has created an easily understood, albeit at times too theoretical, synthesis of the literary and the experiential in Sex, Literature and Censorship. His arguments on critical theory do not necessarily reject the concept of theory; rather, he argues that critical theorists should strive to understand the contradictions within our lives and our literature and explore the daemonic power of the subjects that offend our sense of tradition.
1,318 citations
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TL;DR: This article examined the materialist foundations of The Sopranos' advertising strategy and found that the advertising strategy was motivated by the ratings gathering methodology of A.C. Nielsen and AOL Time Warner's tiering strategies.
Abstract: This paper examines HBO's The Sopranos in the context of several industrial factors. I begin with the series'generic inscription. As a gangster program, The Sopranos comes to us in the form of a pedigreed pre-sold product, a television text of esteemed cinematic lineage. This leads to the examination of branding. In order to corral The Sopranos into the slogan, “It's Not TV, It's HBO,” HBO seeks to differentiate its product from lowest common denominator, broadcast fare. The separation results in the construction of the “quality” brand, a problematic concept academics have linked to demographics. HBO's branding strategy has also intensified the claim of competition between pay cable and broadcast television in popular discourse. This claim is problematized by the ratings gathering methodology of A.C. Nielsen and by AOL Time Warner's tiering strategies. By examining the aforementioned strategies, I uncover the materialist— rather than auteurist—foundations of The Sopranos.
53 citations
TL;DR: The authors examined the responses of journalists to the CNN/Time Tailwind story of 1998 and suggested that discourse-extensive repair work, termed paradigm overhaul, occurs on news analysis broadcasts, in which the logic of journalism is reasserted in response to an outside challenge.
Abstract: By examining the responses of journalists to the CNN/Time “Tailwind” story of 1998, this article suggests that discourse-extensive repair work, termed paradigm overhaul, occurs on news analysis broadcasts. Paradigm overhaul may be viewed as a particular type of paradigm repair work in which the logic of journalism is reasserted in response to an outside challenge. Paradigm overhaul is central to broadcasts such as CNN's Reliable Sources and FOX's Fox News Watch, on which journalists criticize challenges to the objective news paradigm and in the process overhaul that paradigm, reasserting objective news without altering or even questioning its underlying assumptions. The article further suggests that paradigm overhaul may be viewed as a ritual activity, providing mark-ers that define the boundaries of a journalistic interpretive community, an activity that masks societal and institutional constraints from news workers.
45 citations
TL;DR: An analysis of news stories about Arab American reactions to the Gulf War shows how the news media represented and reinforced a hegemonic construction of America as a unified, inclusive imagined co-existence as mentioned in this paper.
Abstract: An analysis of news stories about Arab American reactions to the Gulf War shows how the news media represented and reinforced a hegemonic construction of America as a unified, inclusive imagined co...
39 citations
TL;DR: In this article, the authors consider the discursive forces that shape our perceptions of community, group identity, solidarity, and belongingness, and the freedoms and limits of these forces.
Abstract: Contemporary processes of globalization beckon consideration of the discursive forces that shape our perceptions of community, group identity, solidarity, and belongingness. The freedoms and limits...
35 citations
TL;DR: In the past few years, the Brazilian bikini wax, a procedure involving the removal of hair from women's genital area, has become the subject of substantial media attention as discussed by the authors, and it has become one of the most popular procedures in women's grooming.
Abstract: In the past few years, the Brazilian bikini wax—a procedure involving the removal of hair from women's genital area—has become the subject of substantial media attention. From HBO's Sex and the Cit...
34 citations
TL;DR: The authors examines how the introduction of satellite television into India during the 1990s has led to the emergence of a new form of cultural nationalism based on the active and self-conscious indigenization of global media.
Abstract: The article examines how the introduction of satellite television into India duringthe 1990s has led to the emergence of a new form of cultural nationalism based on the active and self-conscious indigenization of global media. Using MTV India as an ethnographic case study, this process is demonstrated through analysis of the images themselves and by a consideration of what they mean to informants. It outlines a now-mythical historical narrative whereby a wired-in middle class forced the indigenization of programming on MTV India, programmingthat was initially aimed at a more abstract global audience. It then demon strates the ways and reasons why this cultural nationalism depends, somewhat paradoxically, on its own global dimensions.
30 citations
TL;DR: In this article, the semiotic-structuralist approach is used to explore the denotative and connotative mean- ings of advertisements and to point to the ideological nature of advertising and the discourses promising new identities and desired lifestyles.
Abstract: Advertising appeals to people in such a way that it affects their choices. Adver- tisers operate on the basis of different discourses that are both verbal and non- verbal. This article explores how contemporary discourses of advertising interpellate individuals as subjects. Furthermore, ideological work in the dis- courses, as Althusser has put it, are discussed on the basis of "voices" of adver- tisers. The theory is brought into practice in the analysis of the case studies: two of Mobitel's advertisements promoting the mobile phone. The semiotic- structuralist approach is used to discuss the denotative and connotative mean- ings of the advertisements and to point to the ideological nature of advertising and the discourses promising new identities and desired lifestyles. Advertisements are one of the most important cultural artifacts affecting life today. Even if one does not read newspapers or watch television, the images posted over our surroundings are inescapable, and advertisements have an immense influence. Their existence in several media gives advertisements a sort of independent reality that links them to our own life. As they appear con- stantly and thus share continuity, they form a world experienced as real. Advertisements provide a structure that transforms a language of objects to that of people and vice versa. Contemporary Slovene advertising is making that transformation through discourses and representational forms discussed in this article. We explore the advertisements of a new communication technology com- pany in Slovenia both because of the recent invention and rapid spread of mobile phoning in this country and because of the transparent introduction of new advertising techniques. It is the intention of this article to explore—using semiotic-structuralist analysis of the advertisements—how contemporary advertising discourses are practiced. Slovene national mobile phone operator Mobitel has created a systematic and organized advertising campaign that
26 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, a critical examination of The Scarlet Letter's symbolic language reveals that the film draws on, and circulates, centuries-old Western symbolism and mythology of black sexuality, and that even a polysemic interpretation of the text still reveals blackness as a marker of difference and hypersexuality.
Abstract: Despite criticisms of the film The Scarlet Letter as engaging in historical revisionism of representations of blighted groups in society, a critical examination of its symbolic language reveals that the film draws on, and circulates, centuries-old Western symbolism and mythology of black sexuality. The article undertakes a review of Western iconography surrounding black sexuality in nineteenth-century Europe and shows how it manifests itself in the interaction of race and sex in contemporary American mythology. The article attempts to show how the iconography of black sexuality undergirds signification of the narrative relationship between the main character and her black servant in the film. The article argues, from the perspective of potential multiaccentual interpolation of the audience, that even a polysemic interpretation (from the hegemonic male gaze or a subversive female gaze) of the text still reveals blackness as a marker of difference and hypersexuality.
TL;DR: The authors examines an official document addressing the University of North Dakota's (UND's) "Fighting Sioux" logo and concludes that prior to the civil rights movement of the 1960s, the UND campus was...
Abstract: This article critically examines an official document addressing the University of North Dakota's (UND's) “Fighting Sioux” logo. Prior to the civil rights movement of the 1960s, the UND campus was ...
TL;DR: A Tinker/Nave short-term field research grant supported this research in Argentina during the summer and fall of 1997 as mentioned in this paper, which examined the relationship between media and democracy in Argentina.
Abstract: This article examines the relationship between media and democracy in Argentina. A Tinker/Nave short-termfield research grant supported this research pro ject during the summer and fall of 1997. It...
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors examine the history and changing role of SBS Television within the shifting topography of Australian multiculturalism and also the differing notions of community that are rehearsed across SBS programming practices.
Abstract: Australia's Special Broadcasting Service (SBS) Television is unique as a specifi cally multicultural public broadcaster. The manner in which SBS addresses and recognizes different modes of community is also distinctive. As a national broadcaster, SBS Television observes the uniformity of a nationally defined community through reflecting the interests of a dominant culture and audience. However, formations of community that are not as static or reified will also recognize themselves as communities through the way they respond to the address of SBS as a narrowcast television service. This article will examine not only the history and changing role of SBS Television within the shifting topography of Australian multiculturalism but also the differing notions of community that are rehearsed across SBS programming practices. It will then turn to the individual documentary texts in the Hybrid Life series to explore how community and collective identity can be narrated at the localized level of the subject.
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors test the assertion that deregulation of broadcasting has caused a decline in the amount of local non-news programming produced by commercial television stations and find that the number of public affairs programs airing in the markets has declined.
Abstract: The authors' research tests the assertion that deregulation of broadcasting has caused a decline in the amount of local non–news programming produced by commercial television stations. Locally produced programming from stations in three markets was analyzed for the years 1976 (before deregulation), 1985 (during deregulation), and 1997. The markets were selected to give a broad representation of market size. Local programlistings were taken fromsystematically selected back issues of TV Guide to formconstructed weeks for analysis. The number of public affairs programs airing in the markets has declined. There was also a significant decrease in the number of hour-long programs aired and a significant relationship across all markets between the year studied and the days of the week on which a programaired. The analysis suggests that stations have not maintained their commitment to local public affairs programming. A recent Gore Commission report adds relevance to these findings.
TL;DR: Negri and Hardt as discussed by the authors discuss information inequality in the age of the Fortune 500, and present a review of Empire, by Antonio Negri and Michael Hardt. 2001.
Abstract: March. Hardt, Michael, and Antonio Negri. 2001. What the protesters in Genoa want. New York Times, 20 July, A21. Ikenberry, G. John. 2000. Review of Empire, by Antonio Negri and Michael Hardt. Foreign Affairs, July/August, 148. James, William. 1882. On some hegalisms. Mind 7:186-208. Marx, Karl, and Frederick Engels. 1947.TheGerman ideology: Part one. Edited byC. J. Arthur. New York: International. Ninkovich, Frank. 2000. Review ofEmpire, by Antonio Negri andMichael Hardt.Political Science Quarterly, fall, 488. Schiller, Herbert I. 1981.Who knows: Information in the age of the Fortune 500. Norwood, NJ: Ablex. . 1996. Information inequality: The deepening social crisis in America. New York: Routledge.
TL;DR: In this paper, the role of educational children's television as a contributor to the forging of the notion of multiculturalism by analyzing Sesame Street's suitability as a tool for multicultural pedagogy is discussed.
Abstract: Now in its fourth decade, Sesame Street, which has been called one of the most influential children's shows in television history, plays an important role in shaping society's construction of multiculturalism. This article addresses the role of educational children's television as a contributor to the forging of the notion of multiculturalism by analyzing Sesame Street's suitability as a tool for multicultural pedagogy. Using McLaren's theory of resistance postmodernism (1994), this study argues that while Sesame Street does not directly provide a language for educators to critique social and cultural practices, it is a text that allows and invites multifaceted dialogues that critically discern an Other in the construction of identity.
TL;DR: Using the concepts of collective memory, the public sphere, and political econ omy, this article examined the narrative of the Newseum, the Freedom Forum's museum of the news.
Abstract: Using the concepts of collective memory, the public sphere, and political econ omy, this article critically examines the narrative of the Newseum, the Freedom Forum's museum of the news. This article contends that the Newseum presents a narrative that is unresponsive to real criticism of the press, limits visitors' ability to explore alternative ideas, and does so while invoking collective memory and a rhetoric of freedom.
TL;DR: The late Stanley Kubrick's film 2001: A Space Odyssey portrayed a computer, HAL 9000, that appeared to be a conscious entity, especially given that it seemed capable of some forms of emotional expression.
Abstract: The late Stanley Kubrick's film 2001: A Space Odyssey portrayed a computer, HAL 9000, that appeared to be a conscious entity, especially given that it seemed capable of some forms of emotional expression. This article examines the film's portrayal of communication between HAL 9000 and the astronauts. Recent developments in the field of artificial intelligence (AI) (and synthetic emotions in particular) as well as social science research on human emotions are reviewed. Interpreting select scenes from 2001 in light of these findings, the authors argue that computer-generated emotions may be so realistic that they suggest inner feelings and consciousness. Refinements in AI technology are now making such realism possible. The need for a less anthropomorphic approach with computers that appear to have feelings is stressed.
TL;DR: The last portion of Air Wars is dedicated to identifying other efforts waged by community activists to reform their public broadcasters and outlining his plan to recapture public broadcasting to serve the true public interest.
Abstract: countable to the listeners and members of the station. Though, in all fairness, implementing democracy in the station’s professional staff would entail a revolutionary change in station culture. The last portion of Air Wars is dedicated to identifying other efforts waged by community activists to reform their public broadcasters and outlining his plan to recapture public broadcasting to serve the true public interest. Starr’s plan is anchored on “restructuring the system as an independently funded public trust” (p. 275), buffered by reducing the control that “corporations, state politicians and wealthy contributors” (p. 279) have over public broadcasting. Without a doubt these are laudable and necessary goals, but unfortunately, Starr does not provide clearer details on the concrete steps that might achieve this. In trying to cover so many bases Starr could be accused of attempting overachievement. But that does not detract from the fundamental usefulness of this book as both an inspiration and guidebook for action. Starr resolves that “we ourselves must first become a public for public broadcasting” (p. 285) and with Air Wars he has demonstrated plainly that it is both necessary and possible.
TL;DR: The role of imagination in framing how people engage in social structures is explained by the concept of social imaginaries, discursive structures that articulate the framing of social forms, affecting subjects' understanding of themselves, their practices, and the places they occupy in society.
Abstract: This JCI theme issue presents five original articles that deal with the notion of imagination and its role in the articulation of media cultural texts. The authors explore media through the lens of theoretical concepts such as imagined community (Anderson 1983) and the social imaginary (Castoriadis 1987) to engage in new ways of understanding the role of media products in “an increasingly complex, culturally hybrid and diasporic world” (Durham and Kellner 2001). The role of imagination in framing howpeople engage in social structures is explained by the concept of social imaginaries, discursive structures that articulate the framing of social forms, affecting subjects’ understanding of themselves, their practices, and the places they occupy in society. By becoming the “implicated order through which all understanding necessarily pass” (Durand 1993), the social imaginary turns out to be a guiding tool that mobilizes social subjects in a world full of uncertainties. Although the term “social imaginary” is elaborated by Cornelius Castoriadis (1987) in his book The Imaginary Institution of Society, the role of imagination in the constitution of the collective should be traced to Emile Durkheim’s (1995) work The Elementary Forms of Religious Life. In this work, Durkheim proposed that the natural condition of human subjects is to be in society. He suggested that the way social subjects bond in society is due to the sharing of symbolic forms that enable individuals to come together as a collective (Durkheim 1995, 444). This collective organizes through systemic (conscious and unconscious) articulations. Those articulations constitute meanings that take form and are communicated in what Durkheim called the “conscience collective.” As a theoretical concept, the conscience collective has been explored in different ways by the works of Cornelius Castoriadis (1987), Michael Maffesoli (1993a, 1993b), Charles Taylor (1989, 2002), and Arjun Appadurai (1996). These scholars rethinkDurkheim’s (1995) idea of the conscience collective by suggesting that as a social articulation, it emerges in the form of a social imaginary, a kind of symbolic template or cultural conditioning that generates a sense of identity and inclusiveness between the members of a community.
TL;DR: The Kama Sutra of Vatsyayana was used in discourses about sex in the United States in the early 1960s and its political charge and its potential for offering alternatives to traditional sex-related ideologies as mentioned in this paper.
Abstract: The Kama Sutra of Vatsyayana took part in discourses about sex in the United States in the early 1960s Initial reactions to it display its political charge and its potential for offering alternatives to traditional sex-related ideologies A discussion of historical context and close analysis of early commentary and reviews show, in detail, how the Kama Sutra cut against familiar racial, cultural, class, gender, and sexual biases Chantal Mouffe's political philosophy of radical and plural democracy is used to make sense of these initial responses, laying out the implications of the Kama Sutra as both political antagonist and political enemy In the process, implications of this analysis for the Kama Sutra's role in US sex discourses, in particular, and the political role that sex literature and other antagonistic discourses play in democratic politics, in general, are discussed
TL;DR: The authors used a philosophical method called casuistry to see how journalists evaluated the Janet Cooke case fifteen years later and found that they tended to favor scaling back tentative exceptions to the paradigm of journalistic lying that emerged in response to the New Journalism of the 1960s and the Watergate investigation in the 1970s.
Abstract: Discourse produced in 1996 by journalists and journalism educators on the Internet was analyzed using a philosophical method called casuistry to see how they evaluated the Janet Cooke case fifteen years later. This analysis shows that these journalists, in reconsidering the Janet Cooke case, tended to favor scaling back tentative exceptions to the paradigm of journalistic lying that had emerged in response to the New Journalism of the 1960s and the Watergate investigation in the 1970s. This analysis illustrates the gradual refinement of moral concepts in journalism.
TL;DR: This article analyzed public reactions to three high school boys from Tržic, Slovenia, who were accused of killing more than forty cats in March 2000 and used discourse analysis to interpret newspaper articles and television reports and examine the nature of quotes offered by state agents and experts.
Abstract: Through the concept of moral panic, the author analyzes public reactions to three high school boys from Tržic, Slovenia, who were accused of killing more than forty cats in March 2000. The author uses discourse analysis to interpret newspaper articles and television reports and to examine the nature of quotes offered by state agents and experts. The analysis is based on the constructionist paradigm and focuses on the claim makers rather than the behavior and people defined as deviant. The author emphasizes the considerable role of the mass media, experts, interest groups, and popular myths in the emergence of the moral panic. He argues that moral panics regarding youth function as a symptom of broader ideological struggles between different discourses and regulative practices. He suggests the way the concept should be used in the East European context in the light of economic, sociopolitical, and cultural changes that took place there.
TL;DR: In this article, the authors examine the first three films directed by Paul Thomas Anderson and argue that they strain against the core ideologies of the market and patriarchal family in part by transposing it to the surrogate family.
Abstract: This article examines the first three films directed by Paul Thomas Anderson. One of the rising auteurs in the U.S. film industry, Anderson's films have generated passionate and mostly favorable responses from audiences and critics. In their narratives and visual style, Anderson's films are striking for their sympathetic portrayals of marginal figures and their audacious use of the film medium to tell stories. In examining the ideology that is inscribed within the three films, I will argue that they strain against the core ideologies of the market and patriarchal family. Although the strain is considerable, the films affirm the ideology of the patriarchal family in part by transposing it to the surrogate family. Similarly, the films present relations of dominance and submission within market relations; nonetheless, slippage occurs and market relations are recuperated as the optimal steering mechanism for society. In this manner, Anderson's films demonstrate how far a liberal critique may extend before clo...
TL;DR: In this paper, Luhmann analyzes the role of the mass media in a self-reproducing society and argues for their surveillance and control to protect a democratic order in the form of media effects.
Abstract: cation. He describes their position in society as suppliers of a background reality, without being subject to any consensus, from which to enter into distinct personal (or individual) opinions and positions with mistrust, to be sure, but also with sufficient knowledge about the media to sustain the conditions for further communication. Indeed, Luhmann theorizes media not in terms of their truthful representations of the day’s events, fairness, or objectivity but in terms of the workings of their internally operating information/noninformation code. Stripped to their functions in a selfreproducing society, the mass media are reduced to information technologies that dominate the public discourse and generate the conditions for social and political survival. The resulting image is that of a powerful media model whose continuous references to the individual reproduce “the myth of service to the person” (p. 75), a medium that must be informed constantly and guided adequately to function accordingly in contemporary society. Therefore, Luhmann’s work adds an alternative explanation to traditional understandings of media effects. By shifting to the consequences of reality construction, the notion of “effects” emerges as an inherent quality, which is the difference mass media make in the course of observing the world and producing information. Media are their effects, and their pervasiveness in turn shapes the image of self and others and maintains the signs of culture. Without the mass media, culture is not recognizable as culture. In either case, Luhmann confirms the centrality of the mass media in the selfreproduction of society and the perpetuation of a reflexive culture in particular. His book is an exercise in theorizing mass media and communication that subsumes issues of culture, ideology, freedom, power, and domination under the technical considerations of a systemic worldview. Despite his differentiated theoretical position, however, the resulting observations regarding media in society cannot but reinforce the work of critical communication studies that responds to the ideological nature of the media and their institutional power and argues for their surveillance and control to protect a democratic order.
TL;DR: Tomlinson's Globalization and Culture as mentioned in this paper explores the structural fluidity of culture as a keen sensor for detecting the volatile climate of globalization, while raising probing questions as to culture's inexorable association with a fixed locality, increasingly vexed under the conditions of globalization.
Abstract: Culture is, perhaps, one of the most ethereal of concepts that impede categorical transparency and analytic consistency. For some, culture is amarker of difference, representing an ensemble of collective routines. For others, culture is only an effect of differentiation, whose chimerical boundaries are drawnwith such apocryphal dualism as self-other, us-them, here-there, and the Western–the Oriental. In his book Globalization and Culture, Tomlinson shrewdly exploits the structural fluidity of culture as a keen sensor for detecting the volatile climate of globalization, while raising probing questions as to culture’s inexorable association with a fixed locality, increasingly vexed under the conditions of globalization. Attending the poignant encounter of culture and globalization, Tomlinson provides a set of guideposts that lucidly charts the steep alteration of humanboundaries and social consciousness.At the heart of this project lies Tomlinson’s ambition to reappraise cosmopolitanism as the intellectual infrastructure for the globally interconnected world. At the heart of this project lies Tomlinson’s six chapters ofGlobalization and Culture involve issues, debates, and concepts vital to understanding the shifting contours of human life, traversed with the plateaus of modernity, imperialism, geography, media technology, capitalism, and cosmopolitan consciousness. Each chapter retains unique agendas within the thematic coherence of cosmopolitanism and offers an array of informed dialogues with many of the sociological luminaries, including Giddens, Hannerz, Harvey, Bauman, Hall, Robertson, Deleuze, and Massey. Tomlinson is a skilled navigator who cruises through the rough crosscurrents of postcolonialism, political economy, cultural studies, critical sociology, and human geography without sinking into the abyss of knowledge exhibitionism. The first two chapters of Globalization and Culture cogently address why culture matters to globalization and vice versa. In these chapters, Tomlinson represents globalization as both an irrefutable reality and a condensed image of human relations stretching across geographic boundaries. To unravel the mechanisms of globalization more concretely, Tomlinson brings to the fore the notion of “complex connectivity,” which refers to “the rapidly developing and ever-densening network of interconnections and interdependences that characterize modern social life” (p. 2). This is a statement that earnestly avows the existential entanglement between self and other, wherein “the myriad small everyday actions of millions” are linked with “the fates of distant, unknown others and even with the possible fate of the planet” (pp. 25-26). “Complex connectivity” is by no means a conceptual novelty; rather, it bears close kinshipwith “interconnections” byMcGrew (1992), “flows” byLash andUrry (1994),
TL;DR: Aglobal society? InModernity and its Futures, edited byS.Hall,D.Held and A.McGrew, this paper, 61-102.
Abstract: Ahmad, A. 1995. The politics of literary postcoloniality. Race and Class 36 (3): 1-20. Albrow,M. 1997.The global age: State and society beyondmodernity. Cambridge: Polity Press. Appadurai, A. 1990. Disjuncture and difference in the global cultural economy. InGlobal Culture, edited by Featherstone, 295-310. Castells, M. 1996. The rise of the network society (The information age: Economy, society and culture, vol. I). Oxford: Blackwell. Hebdige, D. 1989. After the masses. In New Times: The changing face of politics in the 1990s, edited by S. Hall and M. Jacques, 76-93. London: Lawrence and Wishart. Lash, S., and J. Urry. 1994. Economies of signs and space. London: Sage. McGrew,A. 1992.Aglobal society? InModernity and its Futures, edited byS.Hall,D.Held and A. McGrew, 61-102. Cambridge: Polity Press. Miller, J. 1971. McLuhan. London: Fontana.
TL;DR: The book deals with so many questions that this reviewer simply does not have enough space to consider all of them as discussed by the authors, and it is a must-read study, or as Ebert and Roeper would say, two very enthusiastic thumbs up!
Abstract: lenges many generally accepted notions and theses and gives many new cogent arguments, some of them very interesting. Indeed, the book deals with so many questions that this reviewer simply does not have enough space to consider all of them. To close, I may only repeat myself by writing that this work is one incredible, intelligent, innovative book on journalism history. It is a must-read study, or as Ebert and Roeper would say, “Two very enthusiastic thumbs up!”