Showing papers in "Journal of Communication Inquiry in 2009"

Digital Subculture: A Geek Meaning of Style

Abstract: Recent scholarship in critical/cultural studies and ethnography has suggested studies of youth subculture can no longer be solely centered around musical preference and that the Internet may be a new resource for the affiliation and expression of subcultural identity. This study furthers this scholarship through the analysis of one such group: the “geeks.” Through examination of Internet sites devoted to the subculture, this analysis argues that geeks who affiliate in self-assigned Web-based chat rooms demonstrate the characteristics, community, and style common to the expanding conceptualizations of Internet-based subculture. This study adds strength to the argument that the Internet can simultaneously be a gathering site for subculturalists and a medium for expression of subcultural identity.

More Than Just Free Content: Motivations of Peer-to-Peer File Sharers

Abstract: This study explores file sharers' reported motivations for downloading and uploading content on peer-to-peer networks, including ethical obligations guiding file sharing. Drawing on Lessig's classi...

Open Sourcing Our Way to an Online Commons Contesting Corporate Impermeability in the New Media Ecology

Abstract: Understanding the social dynamics shaping the internet is vital as media power takes on new dimensions in the digital realm. The internet is increasingly necessary for participation in social life yet corporations continue to shape the online architecture to suit their own narrow commercial interests. In their drive to enclose the internet, online media companies create synergistic membranes with prescribed circuits that constrain user freedoms. Taken together, these synergistic membranes form a new layer of the internet — the Google layer, which constrains and commodifies users' range of motion within a narrow, privatized slice of the world wide web. This jeopardizes the creation of a commons-based communications system with a public service orientation, something that is essential to participatory and democratic dialogue. The open architecture of the internet, characterized and supported by free and open source software (FOSS), defends the digital commons against cyber-enclosure. Social practices and va...

Walking in Fear An Autoethnographic Account of Media Framing of Inner-City Crime

Abstract: For decades, scholars have studied the powerful effects of media. More specifically, researchers have found that media can be considered agents of socialization—shaping and influencing people's identities and identity formations. Because media is often our only “gateway” to witness what occurs outside of our view, it becomes the lens in which we use to view our world—especially when it comes to the framing of crime in the inner city. In this essay, I use the events surrounding Cincinnati, Ohio, and its race riots of 2001 as the case for analysis. Specifically, I use an autoethnographic account to detail the impact that news coverage on crime in Cincinnati can have on minority individuals who do not reside in the inner city. Finally, this essay further establishes the role—intentional or unintentional—that reporters and journalists play in community and public relations issues.

Constructing Breast Cancer in the News Betty Ford and the Evolution of the Breast Cancer Patient

Abstract: In this article, the author explores a key moment in breast cancer history—the publicity surrounding Betty Ford's radical mastectomy in 1974—and points to the ways in which the print news coverage of Ford's mastectomy offers an identity, or subject position, for breast cancer patients that is constrained by stereotypical gender roles, particularly the need for breast cancer patients to maintain their femininity. Betty Ford is articulated as an “ideal patient” within a medical success narrative that tells a story of breast cancer diagnosis and treatment in a progressive, linear fashion that minimizes the complexity of breast cancer as a disease and the questions surrounding best treatment practices. The aestheticization of breast cancer in the coverage of Betty Ford's mastectomy is one of the primary discursive building blocks of the contemporary subjectivity of the breast cancer survivor.

Facing Barack Hussein Obama: Race, Globalization, and Transnational America

Abstract: Arguing that race does not receive enough attention in studies of globalization, this article examines the implications of Barack Hussein Obama's successful presidential candidacy for both expandin...

Efficient Servants of Pluralism or Marginalized Media Policy Tools?: The Case of Swedish Press Subsidies

Abstract: For more than 30 years, Sweden’s media policy has relied on positive incentives to promote diversity. That is, competition law has rarely been used to prevent dominant newspapers from acquiring sma ...

Media Criticism as Competitive Discourse Defining Reportage of the Abu Ghraib Scandal

Abstract: This article treats media criticism as a specific form of discourse that aspires to define what journalism is, what it should aspire to, and who should speak about it. Recognizing journalists' cultural role of creating shared meaning, criticism either strives to uphold journalistic norms and isolate problematic incidents as deviant or calls attention to a faulty underlying framework of news production and presents foundational alternatives. Aside from being competitive discourse, media criticism is also collective by constructing various groups through its discourse by addressing specific audiences in an effort to create boundaries of acceptability. As a site for inquiry, the article tracks criticism surrounding reportage of the Abu Ghraib prison abuse scandal in April and May of 2004. Specific critical arguments regarding the scandal are systematically examined in four different spheres: within the news, the journalism trade press, from the left, and from the right.

Love as Redemption: The American Dream Myth and the Celebrity Biopic

Abstract: This research documents the American Dream in two popular biopics: Ray (2004) and Walk the Line (2005). In both films, the American Dream, framed by the ideology of individuality, follows a particu...

Marketing Science: The Corporate Faces of Genetic Engineering

Abstract: The controversy over genetically engineered foods can be seen as a struggle over knowledge, whose version of truth will be accepted. Drawing off frameworks from social studies of science, the follo...

Reforming policy to promote local broadband networks

Abstract: Most existing assessments of local Wi-Fi projects have concentrated on either top-down, government-driven endeavors, or bottom-up projects developed by volunteers or community organizations. In both Canada and the United States, existing local Wi-Fi projects—both top down and bottom up—have failed to fulfill expectations that they could increase digital inclusion. Current policy frameworks may play some role in these failures. This article argues for a policy approach that favors hybrid public broadband that is neither completely bottom up nor top down, and for the development of policy frameworks that support hybrid public broadband.

Social Control in an American Pacific Island Guam's Local Newspaper Reports on Liberation

Abstract: Not much research has examined the social roles of local media in the Pacific Islands. In an attempt to fill this gap, this article critically analyzes news articles, opinion pieces, letters to the editor, and editorials printed in Guam’s local newspaper, the Pacific Daily News (PDN). The items were published between the 50th and 60th anniversaries (1994-2004) of the American liberation of Guam. My analysis revealed that the PDN downplayed a conflict between pro-American and prolocal ideological stances. It rallied behind American interests, and when it reported about the resistances of prolocal actors in news articles, it first reaffirmed the actors’ loyalty to the United States. This article concludes that the PDN served to hegemonically maintain Guam’s society as an unincorporated American territory.

Public Participation and Agency Discretion in Rulemaking at the Federal Communications Commission

Abstract: In recent years, many practitioners, policymakers, and scholars have embraced participatory politics in communications policymaking at the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) with the expectation that mass involvement by the public will—and should—influence regulatory outcomes. However, calls for participation may not be sufficient; a commitment to public-spirited decision making among agency officials is also needed alongside procedural safeguards for participation. The following analysis uses a Habermasian framework to move beyond participatory politics and advocates for a deliberative understanding of the role of the public and policymakers in producing legitimate outcomes. Looking at legal and legislative history of the Commission and of administrative procedure more generally, the article reconsiders the value of agency discretion and turns attention to the importance of public participation in debates about communications regulation outside the rulemaking system. If members of the public generat...

Resisting Abridgment Librarianship as Media Reform

Abstract: Media reform is a vital component for sustaining public access to information, and supports libraries in fulfilling their mission as what educator Robert D Leigh termed “a public agency of communication,” In many ways, the struggles for media democracy are waged side by side with those of librarians Like media activists, librarians are deeply concerned about issues related to information production, dissemination, and access In this article, the author will describe how American librarianship complements a democratic media system and will provide examples of how libraries have played a key role in providing public access to independent media (ie, alternative, noncorporate, or small press) in print and electronic formats Finally, considering the interdependency of their goals and interests, the author wishes to advocate for greater collaboration between the media reform movement and library activists

Blasphemous Allusion Coming of Age in South Park

Abstract: Through an examination of narrative developments in South Park and a deeper textual analysis of two of the television show's episodes in particular, this article discusses the ramifications of anar...

Coming to You “Live” Exclusive Witnessing and the Battlefield Reporter

Abstract: Operation Iraqi Freedom marked not only the U.S. military's second foray into Iraq in just over a decade but also an unprecedented partnership between the U.S. government and corporate media outlets. Some 600 journalists—sanctioned, select teams of reporters and camera crews—were given battlefield training and allowed to live and travel with U.S. troops. This article argues that embed accounts thus were exclusive, both as the purview of a given network and as a form of reporting that excluded more expansive coverage in favor of a highly individualized viewpoint.

A Concept of Autonomy for Critical Communication Studies

Abstract: The concept of autonomy has had an integral and enduring role in political economic reflection on the relationship between culture and the economy. A prevailing version of the concept, developed in postmodernist scholarship, has suggested the erosion, if not complete demise, of autonomy. The article contends that autonomy, as an aesthetic concept in these debates, has mainly overlooked its function in critical thinking about capitalism's expansion to the sphere of culture. By building on recent research on the Frankfurt School, in particular, the work of Theodor Adorno, it is possible to reassert the importance of a version of the concept of autonomy in the critical analysis of culture today.

Authenticating subcultural identities: African American and Jamaican English in niche media

Abstract: This article discusses the hybrid language practices of presenters of hip-hop and reggae programs in Flemish niche media. A qualitative linguistic analysis shows that different varieties of English are employed depending on the particular subcultural affiliation of these programs. In-depth interviews with presenters reveal that in using African American and Jamaican English, they authenticate their subcultural membership vis-a-vis their listeners. It is concluded that by mixing these varieties with standard American English and Dutch, presenters exemplify an adherence to a “hybrid authenticity,” in which the global (subcultural) and the local are creatively fused.

Taking Root in the Sunshine State: The Emergence of the Media Reform Movement in the State of Florida

Abstract: This paper explores the emergence of the media reform movement in the state of Florida in 2008. Focusing on the development of a statewide coalition, the paper details the tensions between local and national policy agendas, the barriers faced by local activists as they attempt to build support for the concept of media reform in their communities, and the diversity of interests represented under the banner of media reform. This case study also reveals an ideological bias toward the left among the movement activists currently working in Florida, signaling a need to harness the broad-based dissatisfaction that exists across the political spectrum.

Dialogues in Communication Research: Bratich, J. Z. (2008). Conspiracy Panics: Political Rationality and Popular Culture. Albany: State University of New York Press

Abstract: Book Reviews Editor’s Note: The idea to have Professors Mark Fenster and Jack Bratich engage in a collaborative review came about when I first talked with Professor Bratich about my frustration with the lack of communication in the field of communication. It seemed like many scholars were producing works on the same or similar topic but with little acknowledgment of each other’s works. So as a reviews editor I wanted to do a project where scholars who have similar research area can come together and discuss each other’s works. Because Professor Bratich was open to the idea of engaging in a collaborative dialogue-based review on his book I chose Conspiracy Panics: Political Rationality and Popular Culture as the first book for this project. With great luck, Professor Fenster’s 2nd edition of his book, Conspiracy Theories: Secrecy and Power in American Culture (University of Minnesota Press, 2008), came out in the same year as Conspiracy Panics. I contacted Professor Fenster and he agreed to join in this project. Initially I wanted the authors to freely talk about each other’s books but this plan had to change as Professor Bratich had agreed to write a review on Conspiracy Theories for International Journal of Communication (IJOC). So instead of having one big conversation between the authors we will have two separate conversations between the authors in two different journals. For the Journal of Communication Inquiry review, the review will be in the form of Professor Fenster’s regular review of Conspiracy Panics and then the exchange of questions and answers on Conspiracy Panics (initiated by Professor Fenster). The authors will continue their conversation on Conspiracy Theories in the IJOC review, which will be coming out almost simultaneously with this review. This is a rare moment where not only two scholars worked together to talk about each other’s works but also two journals in the same field worked together to engage more scholars in dialogues. I thank both Professors Mark Fenster and Jack Bratich for participating in this great project and I hope their conversation will trigger many more conversations among scholars in the field. Also, I encourage the readers to check the continued dialogue between the authors in the IJOC review on Professor Fenster’s Conspiracy Theories.

Book Review: Gray, J., Jones, J. P., & Thompson, E. (2009). Satire TV: Politics and Comedy in the Post-Network Era. New York: NYU Press:

Abstract: like. This particular history illustrates in clear ways that humans would not be humans without chickens and chickens would not be chickens without humans, for good or ill. In addition, the infoldings of flesh that are technologies have evolved as a third component in this equation. Haraway’s book serves as a model for anyone wishing to explore the relationships between humans and other species. She models a wide variety of approaches to the subject on a plethora of animal-related topics. When Species Meet is a groundbreaking addition to theoretical work on bodies, animal studies, and technology. Although her answers as to how to proceed in these stickiest of situations may be unclear, she provides a framework for understanding human–animal entanglements in future scholarship. As Haraway notes,