Showing papers in "Media, Culture & Society in 2010"

Beyond user-generated content: a production study examining the ways in which UGC is used at the BBC

Abstract: This article provides a case study of the BBC, and the attitudes of its news workers towards audience material, or, as it is more commonly referred to, usergenerated content (UGC). Research has been carried out about the adoption of participatory and interactive elements in online newsrooms (Boczkowski, 2004a, 2004b; Örnebring, 2008; Thurman, 2008), but this is one of the first articles to examine a major broadcast organization. Before the London bombings on 7 July 2005, BBC News Interactive in London received around 300 emails on an average day. This has now risen to around 12,000, with spikes around certain popular stories. This transformation has been reflected in the establishment of a dedicated newsroom, the UGC Hub, responsible for centrally managing material sent in by the public. From a very low base around three years ago, the hub now receives around 1000 stills and video clips in a quiet week, and during the floods in June 2006 they received around 7000 photos and videos in five days. These are just approximate figures for the information and raw material flowing into the BBC’s growing UGC Hub; they do not include the content sent directly to individual programmes, or to the many local and regional newsrooms across the UK, which can be considerable, especially during big ‘UGC stories’, such as a terrorist attack or extreme weather. We propose that the term ‘audience material’ should be used instead of UGC, because the latter fails to capture adequately the range of phenomena

Online spaces have material culture: goodbye to digital post-materialism and hello to virtual consumption

Abstract: In the history of the study of economic policies and behaviours, there is a wellknown pattern where a crisis in the real economy results in a change of the dominant approach used to understand it. The Great Depression of the 1930s resulted in neoclassical dogma being replaced with Keynesian economics. The oil crisis of the 1970s resulted in the Keynesian system being scrapped in favour of monetary economics. The latest global economic downturn, suggest Akerlof and Shiller, highlights a need for psychologically and sociologically informed understandings of economic behaviour. In sociology and anthropology, there is a long tradition of scholarship dealing with behaviour that is today considered part of the economic sphere. This tradition is based on the observation that one of the most important ways in which we relate to each other and ourselves is through material objects (Douglas and Isherwood, 1978; McCracken, 1990; Mauss, 1990). Gifts express love and gratitude. Possessions establish social standing. Dress and accessories organize people and time into occupations and leisure activities.

Childhood in crisis? Tracing the contours of ‘crisis’ and its impact upon contemporary parenting practices

Abstract: At the beginning of the twenty-first century media commentary and public discourses on childhood commonly invoke a notion of ‘crisis’. This paper poses the question, what is new about the current invocation of crisis and how does it manifest itself? Specifically, the paper explores the ways in which media texts, cultural commentary and policy documents/initiatives collectively produce a dominant discourse of childhood in crisis. I aim to trace the anatomy of this so-called ‘crisis’ in childhood, to examine how far it exists and what the main features of such a crisis may look like from different perspectives. In doing so I consider and comment upon the relationship between the past and the present and the ways in which a historical perspective can be instructive in understanding how concerns about childhood are conceptualised and given meaning. Based on an analysis of cultural texts that promote or collude in the normative idea of a crisis in childhood, the paper provides alternative ways of conceptualising prevailing ideas and assumptions of crisis and calamity. The paper draws upon a textual analysis of pregnancy magazines to examine the ways in which parents may be responding to the idea of a crisis in childhood and the impact this has on their parenting practices. Finally, the paper argues that contemporary meanings of childhood are shaped by the links between the past and present, to be found in residual notions of childhood in the popular imagination and contemporary accounts of risk and crisis. In the context of contemporary childrearing, cultural texts and residual meanings cohere to produce a reconfigured version of childhood that can be seen as a generative mixture of romantic, late modern and scientific identifications.

Race, ethnicity, and content analysis of the sports media: a critical reflection:

Abstract: Opinions about and attitudes towards the constructs of race and ethnicity in contemporary Western society are not only influenced by institutions such as those of academic institutions, politics, education, family or paid labour, but also by the media. Popular forms of media culture, varying from news broadcasts and talk shows to soap operas and music videos, can be highly influential in structuring ideas about race and ethnicity. Entman contended that the media ‘call attention to some aspects of reality while obscuring other elements’ (1993: 55). The media create dominant interpretations of reality that appeal to a desired or anticipated audience. According to Hall (1995, 1997), the media are not only a powerful source of dominant ideas about race and ethnicity, but should also be considered as sites of constantly shifting meanings and struggles over meaning. This is evident in the way that the media on the one hand celebrate successful African-Americans like Oprah Winfrey and Michael Jordan, while also confirming and reinforcing racist stereotypes. According to Jessica Rhodes, a scholar in ethnic studies and mass communication, racist stereotypes have been embedded in the US mass media since the 18th century, whether it be ‘the benign and happy slave figure’, ‘the black brute who rapes white women’ or the ‘promiscuous black woman’ (1995: 36–7). This stereotypical and one-dimensional framing of

Class, knowledge and new media:

Abstract: The exploited class is ‘free from, unencumbered by, any means of production of their own’, which would mean the ‘complete separation between the workers and the ownership of the conditions or the realization of their labour’ (1976 [1867]: 874). The proletariat is ‘a machine for the production of surplus-value’, capitalists are ‘a machine for the conversion of this surplus-value into additional capital’ (1976 [1867]: 742). Knowledge labour is labour that produces and distributes information, communication, social relationships, affects, and information and communication technologies. It is a direct and indirect aspect of the accumulation of capital in informational capitalism: there are direct knowledge workers (either employed as wage labour in firms or outsourced, self-employed labour) that produce knowledge goods and services that are sold as commodities on the market (e.g. software, data, statistics, expertise, consultancy, advertisements, media content, films, music, etc.) and indirect knowledge workers that produce and reproduce the social conditions of the existence of capital and wage labour such as education, social relationships, affects, communication, sex, housework, common knowledge in everyday life, natural resources, nurture, care, etc. These are forms of unpaid labour that are necessary for the existence of society, they are performed not exclusively, but to a certain extent by those who do not have regular wage labour – houseworkers, the unemployed, retirees, students, precarious and informal

Taking the public seriously: three models of responsiveness in media and journalism:

Abstract: Until recently, media and journalists have worked in a supply market, ideally providing the public with the kind of information the former thought the latter needed to participate as full citizens in a democracy. The shift to a demand market means that, increasingly, the media are providing what the public wants: what is in the public interest seems to be less important than what the public is interested in. Such a more marketdriven approach sits uncomfortably with professional values of independence and functions of information provision. The question, however, is whether this is the only way that journalists are becoming more responsive to their public. The article distinguishes three different ways of how they (are beginning to) take the public into account: civic, strategic and empathic responsiveness. Three separate case studies from the Netherlands also deal with the question of how media and journalists come to terms with, on the one hand, their professional values and, on the other, being more responsive to the public.

Media coverage of environmental pollution in the People’s Republic of China: responsibility, cover-up and state control:

Abstract: On 13 November 2005, an explosion rocked the Jilin Petrochemical Company, a subsidiary of the state-owned China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC), spilling nearly 100 tons of benzene into the Songhua River. Six people were killed in the blast, and thousands of residents were forced to evacuate their homes. The explosion also resulted in an 80-kilometer slick of toxic benzene in the Songhua, which supplies the municipal water system of Harbin, a city of more than 5 million people in China’s northeastern region of Manchuria. Benzene is a clear, colorless liquid that is used in industrial solvents and for making plastics, rubber, resins, nylon and polyester. Acute exposure to high levels of benzene causes dizziness, headaches, elevated heart rate, and possibly death. Long-term exposure to benzene, a known carcinogen, has been linked with immunological defects, cancers such as leukemia, and toxic effects on the blood, liver, kidney, lungs, heart and brain (ATSDR [Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry], 2007). The Chinese Ministry of Environmental Protection (MEP), which conducts airand waterquality monitoring, and sets national emissions standards, established a safety threshold of 5 micrograms of benzene per liter of drinking water (MEP, 1996); following the chemical plant explosion, benzene levels in the Songhua River exceeded that level by more than 100 times. Government authorities avoided notifying the public for more than a week, shutting down the entire municipal water system of Harbin for several days under the guise of conducting ‘routine repairs’. However, China Central Television (CCTV), which operates under state control but exercises some editorial autonomy, reported on the story immediately. Panicked residents,

Female individualization?: Transnational mobility and media consumption of Asian women:

Abstract: Women are travelling out of South Korea (hereafter, Korea), Japan and China for very different reasons than those that sent them into diaspora only 20 years ago. From the mid-1980s onwards there has been a rising trend in women leaving their country to experience life overseas either as tourists or as students, which has eventually surpassed the number of men engaging in foreign travel. Now, 80 per cent of Japanese people studying abroad are women (Kelsky, 2001; Ono and Piper, 2004); an estimated 60 per cent of Koreans studying abroad are women; and more than half of the Chinese entering higher education overseas are women (HESA, 2006; IIE, 2006). This phenomenon is part of a larger trend described as the ‘feminization of migration’, yet there remains a striking lack of analysis on the gender dimension (World Bank, 2006). Today women are significant and active participants in the increased scale, diversity and transition in the nature of international migration. Studying abroad has become a major vehicle for entry into Western countries (Lucas, 2005) and East Asia continues to be the largest sending region every year. In 2005, 53,000 Koreans, 42,000 Japanese and 62,000 Chinese students moved to US institutions of higher education; and 4000 Koreans, 6000 Japanese and 53,000 Chinese students moved to UK institutions of higher education. Studying abroad has become a common career move for relatively affluent women in their twenties. This new generation of women, who depart from the usual track of marriage, are markers of contemporary transnational mobility, constituting a new kind of diaspora – a ‘knowledge diaspora’.

Twenty years on: the second-order prediction of the Herman-Chomsky Propaganda Model

Abstract: October 2008 marked the 20th anniversary of the publication of Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media by Edward Herman and Noam Chomsky. Their Propaganda Model (PM), which attempted to explain the behaviour of the media in the United States, found that it consistently served the interests of corporate and state power. Furthermore, they anticipated that the PM would be generally ignored within academia, which, all too often, also served the interests of corporate and state power. This commentary breaks new ground by focusing upon their second-order prediction, concerning the reception of the PM within academia; it demonstrates that the PM has been systematically marginalized within the field of media and communication studies, just as Herman and Chomsky forecast it would. The commentary is divided into six sections. The first section highlights the contrast between the liberal pluralist perspective and the Marxist-radical critique of how political and media systems function in capitalist, liberal-democratic societies. The second section situates the PM within the Marxist-radical tradition of media and communication studies. The third section provides an overview of the PM, more specifically its three hypotheses, its five operative principles and the evidence presented by Herman and Chomsky in support of the PM. The fourth section, which assesses how the PM has been received within the field of media and communication studies since 1988, is concerned with the second-order prediction that the PM would be neglected. More specifically, it surveys the way in which scholars have engaged with the PM; it provides data on the proportion of media and communication journal articles that have attended to the PM; and it submits data on the number of media and communication texts that refer to the PM. The fifth section suggests a number of reasons to explain why the PM has been generally dismissed, while the sixth section makes the case for the continued relevance of the PM.

Political communication and ‘media system’: the Australian canary:

Abstract: We came to this project troubled by the ‘disconnection’ of Australian media policy discourses from the normative democratic framework of informed citizenship – a common ‘connection’ in many other democracies. In such a framework, informed citizenship is a leading goal of media policy. Institutional design and regulatory specifications are configured to ensure the provision of, most especially, an adequate ‘space’ for professional journalism to perform its key function of informing citizens (Hutchinson, 1999). Such a situation, combined with the conspicuous lack of a bill of rights, makes Australia a somewhat unusual democracy. However, Australia’s media/politics system also displays the lack of a primary policy anxiety in most Western democracies – the relationship between the media and citizen engagement as measured by (usually declining) voter turnout (Couldry et al., 2007). For Australia has one of the oldest, and strictest, compulsory voting systems in the world (established in 1924). According to a major longitudinal study, Australia has the highest average turnout of registered voters for national elections in the world – 94.5 percent (IDEA, 2002: 78). This has led to some advocacy of this Australian ‘democratic innovation’ elsewhere (Hill, 2006), including a 2001 UK proposal, developed in the wake of poor turnout in that year’s election, that reached the First Reading stage in the House of Commons (Hill, 2004: 480). The absence of any central role for informed citizenship in Australian media policy thus seems to us all the more remarkable. One might have expected that the onus on the state to facilitate informed citizenship in the nation with the world’s highest voter turnout would be immense. For mere compulsion to

Generating forms of media capital inside and outside a field: the strange case of David Cameron in the UK political field

Abstract: As societies become more ‘mediated’ so the elevation of public figures is increasingly linked to their ability to generate a positive public profile through the mass media. Politicians, artists, film stars, authors and others each gain professional status, in part, based on how consumer-citizens actively respond to media representations of themselves. The linking of media to individual celebrity and symbolic power is now implicit in much writing. Individuals succeed because of their personal charisma (Weber, 1948) and an innate ability to present a media personality that directly engages with large publics (Ankersmit, 1997; Horton and Wohl, 1993; Pels, 2003; Street, 2003). Alternatively, one’s symbolic image is primarily manufactured by promotional professionals (Boorstin, 1962; Evans, 2005; Franklin, 2004; Hall Jamieson, 1996; Lilleker and LeesMarshment, 2006) and parts of themedia industry itself (Evans and Hesmondhalgh, 2005; Turner, 2004). However one’s public image develops, media exposure then bestows a ‘primary definer’ status on those placed in positions of power thus drawing additional media coverage (Bennett, 1990; Champagne, 2005; Hall et al., 1978, Herman and Chomsky, 2002).

New media, young audiences and discourses of attention: from Sesame Street to ‘snack culture’

Abstract: One need not look far to find claims in popular American discourse that today’s attention spans are short. Central causes of shortened attention are typically assumed to include media technologies and forms of media content, especially those characterized by brevity and fragmentation, such as television commercials and web videos. The putative victims of this supposed condition are often children or members of younger generations whose entire lives have been suffused with electronic media. Some of this discourse might aim merely to be descriptive, but on the whole it indicates negative implications and forecasts undesirable consequences. Attention span and advanced intelligence are often correlated in popular discourse as in educational contexts, and the medicalizing of attention deficit in the diagnosis and treatment of ADHD further creates a negative association with the inability to pay sustained attention. In the popular imagination, stupidity and pathology often characterize this condition, and colloquial usage dehumanizes its victims, however humorously, through figurative language like ‘the attention span of a fly’ or ‘of a gnat’ or ‘of a rock’. The linkage of attention deficit with emergent forms of media functions as a technophobic discourse of media effects, pathologizing a civilization too eager to adopt new tools of communication. If the attention span is imperiled, this can hardly bode well for society. The idea of a connection between a culture’s media and its collective habits and patterns of paying attention has been appealing to a number of influential thinkers, including Walter Benjamin (1968), Theodore Adorno and Max Horkheimer (Adorno, 1974; Adorno and Horkheimer, 2002), and Marshall McLuhan (2004). It is especially pertinent when critics and intellectuals ponder

The internet in everyday life: a typology of internet users

Abstract: This study focuses on those factors that determine internet usage. How can differences in use be explained, and what factors influence the relevance the various web applications have for the individual? This article argues that the increasing diffusion of the internet has by no means closed the digital divide within society (Roe, 2006): the differences have merely shifted from disparity in internet access to disparity in the quality of its usage (Hargittai and Hinnant, 2008). The concept of digital inequalities assumes that different patterns of internet use influence the life chances of a user: the more capital he/she can accumulate using the internet, the more he/she benefits from web use (Zillien and Hargittai, 2009). Until now, research on the digital divide has operationalized capital-enhancing activities using demographic variables (van Dijk, 2006). As an alternative, we suggest using the habitus–capital theory of Bourdieu as a theoretical background to answer the question regarding which kinds of capital the internet users gain online and which factors influence the patterns of usage. These patterns are not only influenced by user age, but also by social position, gender and job status, and can only be assessed in the context of everyday life (Roe, 2006). The present study is based on in-depth interviews (basis: Germans aged 14 years and older), because the practical sense that users assign to the internet is more readily observable when their background, daily routines and media repertoire (and therefore functional alternatives) are well known. The sample of 102 interviewees was selected

Legitimation strategies of public service broadcasters: the divergent rhetoric in Norway and Sweden

Abstract: Public service broadcasting (PSB), a specific way of organizing broadcast media with a mission to ‘inform, educate and entertain’ (SOU, 2005:1: 50), was particularly influential in the 20th century. As the media environment is now characterized by convergence, digitalization, globalization and audience fragmentation, many are questioning PSB’s role in the 21st century. This article looks at the national PSB institutions in Norway and Sweden, Norsk Rikskringkasting (NRK) and Sveriges Television (SVT), and asks how they are coping with these challenges: how do the national broadcasters in Norway and Sweden regard the PSB mission and legitimate their position in today’s media environment? How do they relate to the classical PSB features of enlightenment and democracy? How do they approach the public? The analysis is based on interviews, institutional documents and the CEOs public appearances to debate PSB. Differences and similarities are explained and interpreted in light of social, cultural and historical variations within the two countries, which have much in common in this respect (Sejersted, 2005).

Email lists and participatory democracy in the European Social Forum

Abstract: The Global Justice Movement burst into the public consciousness in Seattle in late 1999. Since then ‘almost every summit of a transnational (economic) organization has led to street mobilizations’ (van Aelst and Walgrave, 2004: 102), attracting thousands of activists and extensive media coverage. Targets include international economic institutions, such as the World Bank or the International Monetary Fund, which are considered as the main regulators of the neoliberal globalization project. Apart from protests and demonstrations, global justice activists have also launched another type of convergence space, the social forums. These ‘have largely eclipsed mass protests as the primary vehicles where diverse movement networks converge across urban space to make themselves visible, generate affective attachments, and communicate alternatives and critiques’ (Juris, 2005: 255). According to its Charter of Principles, the World Social Forum (WSF) constitutes ‘an open meeting place’ that is meant to operate as a ‘public square’ for actors to meet and network (Whitaker, 2004: 113). The WSF was founded in 2001 as an alternative to the ‘World Economic Forum’ (WEF), an independent organization consisting of the 1000 leading businesses in the world (Patomäki and Teivanen, 2004: 145). The WSF idea met with such success that, since its inception, regional or even national and local social forums have swiftly started to crop up around the world, in Asia, Europe and the Americas. The first European Social Forum (ESF) took place in Florence in October 2002, drawing around 60,000

Cultural imperialism or vernacular modernity? Hindi newspapers in a globalizing India

Abstract: The theory of cultural/media imperialism has received great scholarly attention, especially after the Frankfurt School’s characterization of mass media as a tool of ‘mass deception’, which works for commercialized interests (Horkheimer and Adorno, 1972). It argues that there is a domination of American-based cultural flow carried through media, particularly in developing countries, which has not only resulted in cultural homogenization, but also the in spread of consumerist ideology (Herman and McChesney, 1997; Mattelart, 1983; Ritzer, 1996; Schiller, 1976). Interest in the theory of media imperialism has been renewed recently with the disintegration of the USSR in 1991, concomitant with the acceleration of the process of globalization and fears of domination of American and Western ideologies and viewpoints promoted through the worldwide expansion of global media. Despite criticisms, the theory of media imperialism still holds sway in much academic discourse. While criticizing the cultural homogenization thesis, Appadurai argues that ‘the United States is no longer puppeteer of a world system of images, but is only one node of a complex transnational construction of imaginary landscapes’ (1996: 31). Thussu (2007), although he recognizes the contra-flow of information from erstwhile peripheries, argues that it is the North, with the United States at its core, that still dominates the global media flow in terms of volume and economic value. At macro level, the theory of media imperialism might be true in terms of dominance of media business by the US-based media firms. However, what such a view ignores is the autonomy of local media producers, who, despite giving an impression of reproducing the global content locally, in fact incorporate several elements which have been indigenously produced in global form.

Net work: the professionalization of web design:

Abstract: In the decade or so since it first emerged as an area of work, web design has normalized. From its birth as an anarchic free-for-all, web design has undergone a process of standardization, resulting in recognizable job titles, core skills and an emphasis on adhering to the guidelines established by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) and other international standards. At the same time, a great representative burden is placed on the shoulders of web designers. They are portrayed as exemplary of the future of work and of working in the new economy. Their work is emotional and affective, it is claimed. They are either creative and autonomous producers of culture for the digital economy, or victims enslaved to the mundane and low-paid, or to the insecurity of portfolio knowledge work. As Rosalind Gill stated in 2002, web designers and other new media workers are ‘invoked rhetorically all the time but rarely studied’ (Gill, 2002: 75). This article addresses the call made by Gill and others for more empirical studies of (new) media workers, which move away from rhetorical invocation and burdensome representation, to focus on how this group of cultural labourers feel about their work, and what work means to them. The paper focuses on a topic which is central in web designers’ talk about their work – that is, the professionalization of web design. This issue has not been sufficiently acknowledged in the limited body of literature on new media work (though Christopherson, 2004 and Gill, 2007 are exceptions). Instead, this literature has focused on other issues in cultural work, such as affect, creativity, networking and risk, themes which all, in turn, map onto broader debates about the contemporary social formation. The prevalence of these issues in the literature sidelines the professionalization

Between credulity and scepticism : envisaging the fourth estate in 21st-century science journalism

Abstract: For years Anglo-American news media participated in hyping claims of imminent cures from therapeutic cloning. This hype was scrutinized following the scientific fraud of South Korean therapeutic cloning researcher Hwang Woo-Suk. The scandal left questions about contemporary science journalists' commitment to the ideals of the press as fourth estate or watchdog. The present study adduces data from qualitative interviews with Anglo-American journalists (n = 18) who covered the issue of therapeutic cloning for major newspapers and periodicals. The journalists expressed commitment to the fourth estate ideal, although previous research has shown that their actual coverage fell short of this ideal. Synthesizing previous theory and research with the present study, four meso-level theoretical explanations are postulated for this disjuncture between ideals and practice in journalistic coverage of therapeutic cloning.

The rise of the media punditocracy? Journalists and media pundits in Danish election news 1994—2007

Abstract: In the literature on changes in political journalism, it is often claimed that journalists and media pundits have become more prominent in the media's political news coverage. At the same time, politicians allegedly receive less attention and are more often depicted either positively or negatively instead of neutrally. It has also been claimed that those commenting on politicians' actions in the news are predominantly conservative. Based on data from a content analysis of thousands of news stories from all five Danish national elections since 1994, this study investigates whether the assumed changes have indeed taken place. Among other things, the results show that journalists and media pundits today appear more often on camera and that media pundits more often than not are right-rather than left-wing. However, these and other trends are not unidirectional, suggesting more complex patterns than is often assumed.

Citizenship, diversity, law and Ugly Betty:

Abstract: Early in the first season of Ugly Betty (ABC) we learn that Betty’s father, Ignacio Suarez (played by Cuban-American actor Tony Plana) is having some problems with his Health Maintenance Organization (HMO). He is ill; his medicine has run out, but he does not want to ask the HMO for a new prescription. In the episode ‘Fey’s Sleigh Ride’, Betty (America Ferrera) must go in person to the pharmacy where she discovers that her father has been using a fake social security number. Up to this point in the narrative, Ignacio has been depicted as an unusual man and father. He is the primary care-giver to his two daughters: he cooks for them, stays at home, and shows kindness and emotional wisdom not typically associated with an older working-class Latino male. He has been made sympathetic through softening (or perhaps feminizing) his masculinity. But the plot throws a monkey-wrench in the narrative when we discover that he is an undocumented immigrant, one who has committed what the legal and immigration system tried to define as a felony. Perhaps because of this sympathetic representation of an undocumented immigrant, perhaps because the show casts Latinas/os in key production, writing and acting positions, Ugly Betty is seen in the media world as a great example of good media corporate ethics. However, Ugly Betty is the only one-hour show centered on and at least partly produced by Latinas/os on prime-time English-speaking US television. Ironically, by its very existence, the show has helped ABC maintain a respectable reputation regarding diversity programming. In its exceptionality, and in the discursive positioning of the show as good corporate ethics, Ugly Betty illustrates current understandings of diversity and labor in today’s deregulated media environment. Using Latina/o media and citizenship studies, in this article I will show that current ideas of diversity and labor are constitutive ofUgly Betty’s exceptionality.