Showing papers in "Journal of Communication Inquiry in 2011"

Creative Economy and Labor Precarity: A Contested Convergence

Abstract: Publication of Hardt and Negri’s trilogy coincides with the ascent of a dominant discourse on the so-called creative economy that presents media, communication, and cultural sectors as priority sites for market growth and job opportunity. Hardt and Negri’s work and the wider autonomist tradition supply elements for a counter-perspective on the vaunted creative economy. Of the vast lexicon associated with autonomist thought, two concepts—precarity and recomposition—are especially relevant to an oppositional response to the creative economy. The first part of the paper introduces a schema of precarious labour personas so to illuminate some of the multiple manifestations of labor precarity as an effect of post-Fordist exploitation. The concept of precarity is, however, more than a linguistic device highlighting labor conditions that are denied in dominant discourses on the creative economy. It also signals a promising laboratory of a recomposition of labor politics in which media and communication workers ar...

“We Need a Showing of All Hands”: Technological Utopianism in MAKE Magazine

Abstract: Make magazine is a quarterly publication focused on do-it-yourself projects involving technology and innovation. The magazine also sponsors a biannual event, the Maker Faire, that brings “makers” together to share their knowledge. As a strategy for building audience loyalty and identification with the magazine, the Make products are skillfully crafted. However, they also invoke ideals such as environmentalism and nationalism in a potent mix that not only engages readers, but also represents an additional cultural demonstration of the phenomenon of technological utopianism.

Confessions of a Radical Eclectic: Reality Television, Self-Branding, Social Media, and Autonomist Marxism

Abstract: This paper explores the contributions of autonomist Marxist theory to my understanding of reality television, self-branding and social media. Autonomist Marxist ideas help to bridge the classic media studies divide between critical political economy and cultural studies, illuminating the very material connections between television’s mode of production, its texts, and its broader cultural context and impact. Concepts such as the social factory, immaterial labour, the socialized worker, and virtuosity, contributed by thinkers such as Mauricio Lazzarato, Paolo Virno, Antonio Negri and Michael Hardt, have enabled me to argue that reality television is a privileged site of production in the post-Fordist era; it not only produces texts or ideologies about work and life, but also models the monetization of “being” and produces “branded selves”. While autonomist ideas are extremely useful, the field of thinking is complex and not without its internal debates. This paper also explores contributions by George Caff...

Language put to Work: Cognitive Capitalism, Call Center Labor, and Worker Inquiry

Abstract: This article considers the growing convergence between labor and communication in the digital economy Taking the rapid growth of call center employment as its focus, the article argues that the approach taken by the political and theoretical tradition of post-operaismo, or autonomist Marxism, has produced promising encounters between labor activism and communication inquiry Through its theory of cognitive capitalism and its focus on labor resistance, the article suggests, post-operaismo offers communication scholars a set of tools through which to move beyond the limits of both liberal-democratic theories of the knowledge worker and Marxist labor process theory

Sex, Feminism, and Advertising: The Politics of Advertising Feminism in a Competitive Marketplace

Abstract: Feminist media organizations must balance ideology with financial viability via advertising revenue. Yet advertising rests on the assumption that sex sells. Research considering sex appeals in women’s magazines has shown that women are often portrayed in a demeaning manner. However, research has not considered that alternative media, such as Bust magazine, may construct sex appeals differently. This textual analysis applies third wave and feminist political economy theories to analyze how sex appeals are constructed in the discourse and images of advertisements in Bust. This analysis offers three strategies that indicate how sex functions in Bust advertising: (a) sex appeals that equate sexual commodities with a tenet of feminism; (b) sex appeals that foster feminist political protest; and (c) sex appeals that promote a feminist commitment to alternative identities. Findings suggest that sex appeals not only provide opportunities for revenue streams but also opportunities to reinforce feminist ideology.

The Biopolitical Economy of Time

Abstract: This article considers the political limitations of Hardt and Negri’s treatment of time in Empire and offers the concepts of “The Biopolitical Economy of Time” and “Recalibration” as a means to enliven the possibility to demand a social wage for all.

ICTs and Immaterial Labor From a Feminist Perspective

Abstract: In this article, I discuss an issue which lies at the core of today’s “political economy” of the domestic sphere. The issue in question is that human beings are pushed to “outsource” their emotions...

Better at Life Stuff Consumption, Identity, and Class in Apple’s “Get a Mac” Campaign

Abstract: Apple’s “Get a Mac” advertising campaign defines for its audience the dichotomy between the casual, confident, creative Mac user and the formal, frustrated, fun-deprived PC user through a series of comical television spots featuring human representations of each technology. The company has been largely applauded over the years for their creative, innovative, and thought-provoking marketing, and “Get a Mac,” winner of the American Marketing Association’s 2007 Grand Effie award, fits nicely with Apple’s tradition of infusing cultural ideology into their ads. Utilizing the methods of close reading and ideological criticism, this study considers the North American “Get a Mac” television campaign as a popular culture text with embedded implications about consumption, identity, and class. The text reveals a number of thematic dichotomies that obscure meaningful issues of difference and class while promoting the spectacle of consumption and the myth of self-actualization through commodities.

A Boyfriend to Die For: Edward Cullen as Compensated Psychopath in Stephanie Meyer’s Twilight

Abstract: This article is an analysis of the teen-targeted vampire novel Twilight. The series and related merchandise have been a runaway financial success. Illustrative quotes from Twilight are presented according to Guggenbuhl-Craig’s concept of the “compensated psychopath” (CP)—an individual who approaches the psychological extreme of psychopathy but is able to pass for functional in society. The author argues the lead male character Edward Cullen is a CP and that the representation is problematic. The book’s main female character, Bella Swan, becomes completely dependent on Edward, desires him in part because he seems unattainable, and is willing to die and live a life of predation in order to be with him. The largely uncriticized idealization of Edward as top boyfriend material flies under the radar of contemporary concern for girls’ psychic and physical well-being.

The Break-Up Hardt and Negri’s Politics of Love

Abstract: Responding to a recent marketing campaign in Australia, this paper considers how the politics of love suggested in Hardt and Negri’s Commonwealth (2009) may have pragmatic application for media studies. The publicity strategies of a major bank in the wake of the Global Financial Crisis provide a rich illustration of the ways love’s genres and registers can be directly co-opted towards commercial interests - and the challenges this presents for critical thinking. Placing Hardt and Negri’s ‘turn to love’ in the context of ongoing debates in feminist and queer theory, the paper isolates both the possibilities and limitations of autonomist thinking. The authors’ distinct contribution is to note the inventiveness characteristic of both love and poverty, which in turn provides a model for the kind of ontological bearing necessary to trouble the ongoing pact between intimacy and property under capitalism.

Framing Pictures, Picturing Frames: Visual Metaphors in Political Communications Research:

Abstract: What does the conceptual indebtedness to visual metaphors portend for the study of communication? And what can be learned about the metaphoricity of concepts, and their impact upon analytical disco...

“Is Anybody Listening?” Questioning the Local Bond Between LPFM Programmers and Their Audience

Abstract: In an effort to promote localism in U.S. broadcasting, the Federal Communications Commission began licensing Low-Power FM (LPFM) radio in January 2000. FCC rules require that LPFM stations are noncommercial, locally owned and operated, and broadcast at power of 100 watts or less, with signals that travel three to five miles. This article focuses on LPFM programmers’ statements of uncertainty about audience constitution and presence. Given that the establishment of LPFM service rides on the argument that, due to consolidation, there is a need for local stations to produce locally originated programming, serving unique community interests, it is striking to hear programmers reveal they are unsure if any community members are tuning in. In addition to raising questions about prevailing expectations for a form of radio imagined to be the essence of American broadcasting, their comments support claims made by scholars of media policy about the need to reconceptualize localism dur ing a period of media convergence.

The Yellow Press: Asian American Radicalism and Conflict in Gidra

Abstract: This article analyzes the highly politicized Asian American newspaper Gidra as a way of expanding our conception of ethnic media beyond mainstream publications to include radical ethnic media. In contrast to the notion that ethnic communities might shy from exposing the internal conflicts that jeopardize their own community’s stability, Gidra demonstrates three different kinds of conflict: external conflict, internal conflict, and conflict that is produced by the paper itself. Through this exploration, the different ways that Asian American identities were created and discussed during the late 1960s and early 1970s are also assessed, as the radical contingent of the Asian American Movement used print publications to redefine what it meant to be Asian in America.

“Redemption for Our Anguished Racial History”: Race and the National Narrative in Commemorative Journalism About Barack Obama:

Abstract: This article considers how race was discussed in commemorative journalism produced after Barack Obama’s election and inauguration by major American newspapers, magazines, and television news A discourse analysis of these commemorative media texts reveals competing—though often overlapping—narratives Some celebrated Obama’s victory as a racial milestone, claiming it for African Americans past and present, yet another hurdle crossed in the continuing struggle for equality Other commemorative texts either elided or marginalized racial issues, instead emphasizing diversity and democracy in a narrative of generalized American “freedom” and unity The narrative in each text, however, was ultimately a tale imbued with nationalist ideology, emphasizing unity and progress at the expense of discussing issues related to contemporary racial inequality in America Overall, although the coverage of this election demonstrated some change in racial representation, the overall discourse on race in America—and journalis

The subjective architects: when tweens learn to immaterial labor

Abstract: The rapid rise of the tween, an influential market-constructed demographic of youth between the ages of 8 and 13, raises several questions. How and why did the tween emerge? How do we account for this downward trend in marketing and the corporate targeting of younger and younger children? And most importantly, for the purposes of my argument, what role has immaterial labor played in demarcating this new category of youth? Initially, Hardt and Negri theorized the shift of production outside the factory walls; this diffused, expanded and intensified production now accounts for new modes of sociality and hence modalities of subjectivization required for capital’s reproduction. As such, the concept of immaterial labor, beginning with Maurizio Lazzarato and extended by Hardt and Negri, is paramount for accounting for new subjective formations such as the tween. This paper illustrates the intensification of immaterial labor by examining how the tween has already “learned to immaterial labor 2.0”. By so doing, it examines the synergy that flows out of the ease in which this demographic moves between the virtual and the material and the marketing practices used to engage and capitalize on their mediated cultural practices.

Media narratives and social events: the story of the Redfern riot

Abstract: This article uses a narrative framework to analyze the role of newspapers in discursively reestablishing social order during times of social crisis and upheaval. Using the coverage by three diverse newspapers (Sydney Morning Herald, Daily Telegraph, and Koori Mail) of the 2004 Redfern Riot in Sydney, Australia, the article will explicate the way each paper narrates social actors, discourses, and events in order to make sense of the riot and promote a way to reestablish social equilibrium. It is argued that the narratives of the two mainstream papers (Sydney Morning Herald and Daily Telegraph) converge in a coverage that draws on powerful cultural tropes of race and crime in Redfern to explain the riot. The Indigenous owned and run Koori Mail, in challenging many of those same tropes, is left with fewer publicly available narrative resources through which to conclude its story of the riot.

What Is a Media Dispositif? Compositions With Bifo:

Abstract: This article is a dialogue with the Italian autonomist media theorist Franco Berardi, also known as Bifo. The discussion turns on how to conceptually frame Italian experiments in media activism—from the pirate broadcaster Radio Alice to the networked microemissions of Teletreet. Throughout, special emphasis is put on the importance of Foucault, and Deleuze and Guattari to the creative wing of Italian autonomist thought which focused on media, communication, and culture. Thus “the Italian Foucault” is presented as an apposite conceptual persona. Finally, both the Foucault-inspired dispositif and the more autonomist composizione (elsewhere presented as either composition or recombination) are suggestions for better theorizing new networked organizational forms. Thus, media is presented as constitutive of the social body; that is, media is not understood as an additive with “effects” but as comprising and calibrating those constitutive elements, their affective, communicative, and signifying capacities.

Constitutive Communications and the Shimmering Project of the Multitude

Abstract: In Multitude: War and Democracy in the Age of Empire (2004), Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri analyze the major shifts in the inner workings of capitalism and class that have taken place across the last forty years. Building on these global transformations they offer a compelling vision for a new political project, which relies on the growing power of a new political subject, the multitude. They argue that this new political subject is irreducible to a singular identity or project, and therefore demands new horizontal networked, organizational forms, held together by communication technologies, in an effort to forge a radical democratic praxis. In this essay I argue that while their vision for a new logic of contemporary class-based social movements takes us in important new directions ultimately they are unable to deliver on the pledge of a meaningful political program because they rely to heavily on communications as a tool to bind the multitude.

iPhones in China: The Contradictory Stories of Media-ICT Globalization in the Era of Media Convergence and Corporate Synergy

Abstract: This study analyzes Mainland China’s official and unofficial reception of the iPhone, a highly popular smartphone made by Apple. Apple, with its synergistic business measures, seeks to shape all aspects of iPhone users’ mobile experiences, whether related to hardware, software, content, or service. As Apple attempts to expand on its U.S. success, the iPhone case in China displays many contradictory stories of Apple’s globalization endeavors. This article analyzes the structural obstacles facing Apple that come from the Chinese bureaucratic capitalist party-state and local wireless carriers and reveals both the creativity of Chinese iPhone users and the limits of their resistant tactics. To make sense of the intricacies of this global-local encounter, we need to combine political economic and critical cultural analyses and interpret resistance in light of the power imbalance intensified by media convergence and corporate synergy on the structural level.

Labor’s New Empire

Abstract: Within communication studies today, the term labor is being employed more often and with more variety than at any time in the discipline’s history. What role did the Empire phenomenon play in this recent promotion of labor into such a fungible and expansive category? Contemporary theories and analyses of communication are largely dispensing with traditional oppositions like production and consumption, labor and leisure, or everyday life and any of the above. The influence of Hardt and Negri has left us less inclined to describe new forms of leisure and consumption in contrast to labor and more likely to find in them new modalities of labor.

The General, the Watchman, and the Engineer of Control The Relationship Between Cooperation, Communication, and Command in the Society of Control

Abstract: Taking cue from the Marxian analysis of the relationship between cooperation and capitalist command in Capital and the Grundrisse, the article reviews how Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri have addressed this matter. Drawing from the notorious fragment of the Grundrisse on the general intellect, Hardt and Negri argue that in post-industrial societies the production of value tends to coincide with the ensemble of social activities. Hardt and Negri maintain that since any social activity is potentially a value-generating practice, the capitalist organization of labor is increasingly parasitical and external to the social bios. From this flows that labor can no longer be measured in abstract units of time and the exploitation of living labor leaves way to the expropriation of the common. The second part of the article challenges Hardt and Negri’s idealized view of the common by arguing that in the society of control communication and cooperation are always affected and tinged by the media that enable them—the ...

Communication Commoning Amidst the New Enclosures: Reappropriating Infrastructure

Abstract: This article considers autonomist practices of communication commoning amidst the neoliberal enclosures. I reflect on recent theoretical distinctions between the notion of the common and the commons and argue for an approach that brings them together both conceptually and in practice. One place where we find the common and the commons converge is in globalizing communication infrastructures. And it is through the infrastructure of global communication, I argue, that one of the principle political technologies of contemporary enclosure comes into sharpest focus: fear. If, as many observers contend, the political use of fear is instrumental to modern processes of enclosure, we can look to the urban communication infrastructure is a site of resistance to the double enclosure of the common and the commons because it is a site that encompasses both the means of mediation and the wealth of human sociality. To illustrate, I briefly discuss three examples in which the communication infrastructures are appropriate...

Corruption and Empire: Notes on Wisconsin

Abstract: We seek to elaborate the concept of corruption as formulated by Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri. By providing a brief history of the concept, we show that it reveals how the compositional and autonomous politics of class struggle and becoming are threatened by decompositional techniques of capture and exploitation. In order to thicken the historical-material specificity of this distinction, we provide a research note about organized labor’s effort to communicate an alternative to Governor Walker’s union busting legislation in Wisconsin. We are particularly critical of the effort to re-direct the class struggle into an electoral campaign of recall and referendum.

Empire, Biopolitics, and Communication

Abstract: Hardt and Negri’s description of Empire is in a large part based on Michel Foucault’s account of biopolitics. For Hardt and Negri, the biopolitical nature of Empire means that social forms and modes of subjectivity are considered as the result of communication processes, and that imperial domination is exercised through networks of communication. However, this reading of Foucault is problematic inasmuch as he never reduced communication or modes of subjectivity to a product of biopolitical society. As a consequence of this partial reading, Hardt and Negri fail to consider the specificities of biopolitical communication. Furthermore, by taking the Internet as the model for communication and social forms in Empire, Hardt and Negri seem to ignore the constitutive nature of communication and address the role communication could take in the liberation process of the multitude.

Cherokee Independent Press Act of 2000

Abstract: Prior to the 1997 constitutional crisis of the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma, journalists working for the tribe’s Cherokee Phoenix and Indian Advocate, then called the Cherokee Advocate, did not have any press freedoms similar to the First Amendment. However, the 2-year crisis led to a revision of the tribe’s constitution, out of which sprang the first Independent Press Act for a Native American nation. Although about 65 tribes in the United States have provisions for a free press in their constitutions, many are prohibited from acting on this provision due to tribal politics or other issues. The Cherokee Independent Press Act of 2000 for the first time guarantees journalists working for the Cherokee Phoenix newspaper the same rights and privileges that their non-Native journalist counterparts have who work under the freedoms granted by the First Amendment. This study examines the conditions that led to both the crisis and the new Act, summarizes the history of federal law restricting Native media, and expl...

Hardt, Negri, and Antagonism: Media and Communication Studies in the Context of Empire

Abstract: At first glance, Hardt and Negri.FN”s brief excursion into the sociology of media in Empire is hardly earth shattering; in fact it is quite disappointing. In Empire the media occupies a fraught and complex space between the past (civil society) and the emergence of the neoliberal consensus in which capitalism is considered the only social and economic option. Popular instrument or lackey for corporate capital, this is the tension that marks institutional forms of media. But by looking more closely at Hardt and Negri’s diagram of Empire, we find that there is a second and more expansive sense of the operation of media. Media works as the glue that holds the heterogeneous components of Empire in place. This glue (media operation), however, serves a double function. On the one hand, it works as communication that connects and information is exchanged, but, on the other, it connects in such a way that it maintains heterogeneity and distance. The double function of media as communication, the article contends,...

Is There an Autonomist Model of Political Communication

Abstract: This article explores the different models of political communication that inhere in Hardt and Negri’s Empire trilogy, models that are explicit and implicit, intended and accidental, dominant and latent. From their existence tangled up in Hardt and Negri’s work, I draw out for consideration the communicative models of the rhizome-book, manifesto, textbook, mass-market book, autonomous language, and political journal. My aim is less to evaluate the relative dominance of these models in the trilogy, than to take the opportunity this work offers for thinking political communication as specifically communist problematic, a somewhat neglected field of inquiry.

The Path to Madness: McCarthyism and New York Post Editor James A. Wechsler’s Campaign to Defend Press Freedom

Abstract: Between 1950 and 1954, Sen. Joseph R. McCarthy’s anticommunist crusade created a schism in the journalistic interpretive community with publishers and editors being forced by the public nature of their work to choose sides. When he called New York Post Editor James A. Wechsler before his committee in 1953 to answer for his newspaper’s editorial policy, McCarthy brought that schism into clear focus. Wechsler’s determination to obtain the release of the hearing transcript as evidence of McCarthy’s true aims led to his capitulation with McCarthy’s demands that he name names. In the aftermath of his appearance, Wechsler asked his journalistic colleagues to determine whether or not a congressional inquiry into editorial policy constituted a threat to press freedom. In a time clouded by the madness of McCarthyism and despite the clarity of Wechsler’s argument that intimidation of any journalist represents a threat to all, the brightest editors of the time were unable to agree even with that fundamental assertion.