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MEDIA CONDITIONS

Kevin Korsyn

in Decentering Music: A Critique of Contemporary Musical Research

This chapter focuses on how our formation as subjects in a media culture affects what can be said about music. It addresses questions about technology: how do various communications media — ... More

This chapter focuses on how our formation as subjects in a media culture affects what can be said about music. It addresses questions about technology: how do various communications media — technologies, from the book to the computer, that store, transmit, or process symbols, images, and sounds — affect what can be said about music? How do such media, by creating new modes of thinking, perceiving, and feeling, new ways of conceptualizing time, space, memory, and ourselves, change the frameworks within which musical research operates? The works of Eugene Narmour and Wayne Koestenbaum are analyzed.Less

When the Korean Wave Meets Resident Koreans in Japan:: Intersections of the Transnational, the Postcolonial and the Multicultural

Koichi Iwabuchi

in East Asian Pop Culture: Analysing the Korean Wave

This chapter explores the complexity of the impact of the Korean Wave in Japanese society and addresses the possibility of transnational dialogues through popular cultural connections. It first ... More

This chapter explores the complexity of the impact of the Korean Wave in Japanese society and addresses the possibility of transnational dialogues through popular cultural connections. It first examines how the reception of other East Asian media cultures proves to be an opportune moment for Japanese audiences to critically review the state of their own lives, society and history. This is done by comparing the reception of the Korean Wave, and Winter Sonata in particular, with the fervent reception of Hong Kong popular culture in the late 1990s. It also investigates the representation of and audience responses to a popular Japanese TV drama series that for the first time deals with socio-historical issues about resident Koreans. The critical analysis of the impact of the Korean Wave on the social positioning and recognition of resident Koreans in Japan should not be taken as totally rejecting positive changes. Critique is a necessary detour to further the potentiality of the emergent change and to actualize transnational dialogue through media consumption.Less

Popular Perceptions of Homosexuality in Postsocialist China

Tiantian Zheng

in Tongzhi Living: Men Attracted to Men in Postsocialist China

Chapter 2 captures current social attitudes toward homosexuality in postsocialist China. This chapter argues that social attitudes toward homosexuality are not as open and tolerant as previous ... More

Chapter 2 captures current social attitudes toward homosexuality in postsocialist China. This chapter argues that social attitudes toward homosexuality are not as open and tolerant as previous researchers have ascertained. Interviews with civilians and an analysis of media coverage suggest a common understanding of homosexuality as a perversion often caused by poor parenting, mistakes in child-rearing techniques, traumatizing experiences with the opposite sex, and misidentification of gender roles. Homosexuality has become a scapegoat on which is displaced anxiety over current social problems such as dissolved marriages and the AIDS epidemic. Although a dissolved family is pinpointed as one of the key factors that can lead to a child’s homosexuality, the media also portray homosexuality not only as a public menace and a threat to the family but also as a metaphor for passive masculinity and a national crisis, reminiscent of the colonial past when China was defeated by the colonizing West and plagued by its image as the Sick Man of East Asia. It is believed that building a strong manhood and sharpening proper male gender roles are required to revive and strengthen the nation.Less

Introduction: Media, Mediation, and Jewish Community

Simon J. Bronner and Caspar Battegay

in Connected Jews: Expressions of Community in Analogue and Digital Culture

This chapter disputes the common assumption that media-driven popular culture has weakened ethnic-religious ties of community with each advance in communication technology and has been detrimental to ... More

This chapter disputes the common assumption that media-driven popular culture has weakened ethnic-religious ties of community with each advance in communication technology and has been detrimental to tradition-centred groups such as Orthodox Jews. It mentions popular-culture theorists who have long asserted the notion of popular works against the survival of ethnic-religious groups. It also talks about Russel Nye, who claimed that the idea of popular culture, associated with urbanization and industrialization, depends on artists and agents who exploit media and create cultural standards. This chapter discusses how the process of popularization depends on a mass audience that consumes secularized cultural expressions that became accessible in Western societies through communication media. It analyses the advent of popular culture purportedly that diminishes the need for public space and peer pressure.Less

Luther Blissett, the Mythmaker

Marco Deseriis

in Improper Names: Collective Pseudonyms from the Luddites to Anonymous

This chapter shows how the founders of Luther Blissett were aware of the Canstin experience and thus adopted a series of measures to prevent individuals from over-identifying with the alias, which ... More

This chapter shows how the founders of Luther Blissett were aware of the Canstin experience and thus adopted a series of measures to prevent individuals from over-identifying with the alias, which was used to author media pranks, sell apocryphal manuscripts to publishers, fabricate artists and artworks, denounce media witch hunts, and author best-selling novels.Less

From the Mole to the Dinosaur: Global Nostalgia and the Ambivalences of Late- and Postcommunist Children’s Media Culture

in Identity Games: Globalization and the Transformation of Media Cultures in the New Europe

This chapter begins with an exploration of the human fascination with dinosaurs and their imaginary influences and references on children and communism. It examines the nostalgic turn that has ... More

This chapter begins with an exploration of the human fascination with dinosaurs and their imaginary influences and references on children and communism. It examines the nostalgic turn that has increasingly contributed to making Eastern European national histories playful, mediated, and most often spectacular, entertainment in recent past times. The chapter proceeds with a short description of Svetlana Boym's emphasis on the movie Jurassic Park. Its later parts analyze the shades of postcommunist nostalgia, global children's media habits in postcommunism, and the contrasts between the popular Krtek (the “Little Mole”) and The Land Before Time animations. The concluding section of the chapter describes the programmatic recommendation for governing the fluctuation of such games in order to generate less domesticating theories about global children's media culture, along with related case studies.Less

Media literacy

Brian O'Neill and Ingunn Hagen

in Kids online: Opportunities and risks for children

Across Europe and beyond, the promotion of media literacy for both children and adults has acquired an important public urgency. Citizens need to be media literate; it is claimed, to enable them to ... More

Across Europe and beyond, the promotion of media literacy for both children and adults has acquired an important public urgency. Citizens need to be media literate; it is claimed, to enable them to cope more effectively with the flood of information in today's highly mediated societies. As teachers, politicians, and policy makers everywhere struggle with this rapid shift in media culture, greater responsibility is placed on citizens for their own welfare in the new-media environment. This chapter focuses on how media literacy might be achieved. First, it examines how media literacy has been defined, with particular reference to the growing importance of digital literacy. Second, the chapter examines how media literacy has been adopted within policy frameworks as a response to rapid technological change. Third, the chapter critiques the ‘technological literacy’ that dominates much of the current policy agenda, and argues for a new approach based on better knowledge about children and young people's media and internet habits.Less

Women, Gossip, and Celebrity Online: Celebrity Gossip Blogs as Feminized Popular Culture

Erin A. Meyers

in Cupcakes, Pinterest, and Ladyporn: Feminized Popular Culture in the Early Twenty-First Century

This chapter offers a brief analysis of the initial ascendency of celebrity gossip blogs into popular culture during the early twenty-first century. It establishes the notion of gossip as “women's ... More

This chapter offers a brief analysis of the initial ascendency of celebrity gossip blogs into popular culture during the early twenty-first century. It establishes the notion of gossip as “women's talk” and as a form of shared social meaning-making—from which context arises the celebrity gossip blog as a unique form of feminized popular culture that speaks to the broader shifts in media cultures in the early twenty-first century. As such, this chapter explores the gossip blog as a particularly feminized form of new media through attention to the existing social practices of gossip that continue to shape the place of gossip blogs within the celebrity media industry and the everyday lives of their predominantly female readers.Less

Conclusion: Future Exchanges and Iterations

Derek Johnson

in Media Franchising: Creative License and Collaboration in the Culture Industries

This book offers a theoretical and historical intervention that redefines franchising as a model for conceptualizing collaborative production in media culture, problematizing the tendency to consider ... More

This book offers a theoretical and historical intervention that redefines franchising as a model for conceptualizing collaborative production in media culture, problematizing the tendency to consider this media production in terms of convergence culture, and challenging the assumption that socialized creative collaboration defies the labor hierarchies and power structures of industry. By directing attention to the history of media franchising, one can situate today's emerging social media within a wider tradition of collaborative and socially networked culture. The study of media franchising also advocates for a wider scope of analysis for the socialized production and consumption of culture beyond digital formations. In recognizing the kinds of collaborations and media productions franchising has sustained over time, it is possible to situate the current age of convergence within a tradition of reproducing culture out of commons exchange.Less

A Critical History of Documentary and Participatory Media Cultures

Angela J. Aguayo

in Documentary Resistance: Social Change and Participatory Media

Despite the increasing tendency for documentary to function as political discourse, there is little historical work addressing the rhetorical and material influence of documentary in public life. ... More

Despite the increasing tendency for documentary to function as political discourse, there is little historical work addressing the rhetorical and material influence of documentary in public life. These stories of documentary impulse and political struggle have been only erratically recorded. Documentary scholarship frequently addresses the issues that surround the process of social change, focusing on the screen as the central location for communicative exchange, but there are many other sites of struggle for those working on the ground with documentary and the political process. This chapter will cover the broader questions of documentary and social change, how it functions in relation to generating participatory media cultures. The chapter will specifically address the shifts in the documentary commons and how opportunities for social change emerged as it moved through the introduction of portable analog video recording equipment in the late 1960s and on into a digital culture of new media. This chapter will contribute to articulating the ways in which documentary is a distinct form of discourse that engages the political in patterned ways, creating a mediated commons for the engagement of political struggle.Less

Culture, Politics, and the Media in Norway and England

David A Green

in When Children Kill Children: Penal Populism and Political Culture

This chapter compares Norway and England historically, economically, culturally, and politically. It begins with a brief overview of the post-war historical and cultural contexts, including the ... More

This chapter compares Norway and England historically, economically, culturally, and politically. It begins with a brief overview of the post-war historical and cultural contexts, including the status of children. It then compares the political economies and economic conditions in both countries and profiles the political systems and distinguishes between the majoritarian and consensus models of democracy. Finally, this chapter compares and contrasts developments in Norwegian and English press markets and media cultures.Less

The Constraints and Effects of Political Culture

David A Green

in When Children Kill Children: Penal Populism and Political Culture

This chapter defines some of the concepts used to explain the differences in responses to both the Bulger and Redergård cases, and to crime and the concern about it more generally in England and ... More

This chapter defines some of the concepts used to explain the differences in responses to both the Bulger and Redergård cases, and to crime and the concern about it more generally in England and Norway. It offers two conceptual models. The first model describes the reciprocal ways that knowledge, discourses, and public sensibilities interact with media culture and political culture to influence the penal climate. Sentencing guidelines systems and the US Constitution are used as examples to illustrate the relationship between culture and structure. The second conceptual model explains the ways in which political culture and the assumptions embedded within it constrain the way we think about the problems we face and the ways we respond to them.Less

Introduction: Desert Island Discs in context

Julie Brown, Nicholas Cook, and Stephen Cottrell

Julie Brown, Nicholas Cook, and Stephen Cottrell (eds)

in Defining the Discographic Self: Desert Island Discs in Context

This chapter provides an overview of the long-standing and highly popular British radio programme Desert Island Discs (DID). It sets out the historical contexts in which the programme was established ... More

This chapter provides an overview of the long-standing and highly popular British radio programme Desert Island Discs (DID). It sets out the historical contexts in which the programme was established and developed, and interrogates both its changing format and the meanings and values that have been associated with DID over time. Developments in the production process are also assessed, including the impact of various presenters and the selection of castaways, as well as the programme’s place in broader media culture and its relationship to particular national identities. Finally, it considers the potential value of DID to the world of scholarship, particularly following the establishment in 2011 of the programme’s online archive, and the contribution of chapter authors to the realisation of that potential.Less

“Where was King Kong when we needed Him?”: Public Discourse, Digital Disaster Jokes, and the Functions of Laughter after 9/111

Giselinde Kuipers

in A Decade of Dark Humor: How Comedy, Irony, and Satire Shaped Post-9/11 America

This chapter examines how people (as individuals and groups) came to terms with the 9/11 attacks and ensuing hawkish rhetoric by looking at alternative narrative forms, particularly Internet jokes ... More

This chapter examines how people (as individuals and groups) came to terms with the 9/11 attacks and ensuing hawkish rhetoric by looking at alternative narrative forms, particularly Internet jokes circulated through e-mail that reflect themes targeting Osama bin Laden as well as patriotism, hostility, and degradation. More specifically, it considers the way the events of 9/11 affected American humor and the temporary moratorium on humor in the country, as well as the jokes that emerged, both in the United States and abroad, in the wake of 9/11. It discusses Internet-based jokes about 9/11 and their relationship with a predominantly American visual culture and argues that they are not meant to cope with grief and suffering. Instead, it views Internet jokes as a comment on the serious and mournful tone of public discourse and media culture surrounding the events of 9/11.Less

Introduction: Film Authorship as Place Making

Dennis Lo

in The Authorship of Place: A Cultural Geography of the New Chinese Cinemas

The introduction advances a theoretical framework for interpreting how New Chinese Cinema auteurs shoot on-location as a mode of “place making,” the experiencing and imaging of rural shooting ... More

The introduction advances a theoretical framework for interpreting how New Chinese Cinema auteurs shoot on-location as a mode of “place making,” the experiencing and imaging of rural shooting locations as places. Drawing from poststructural cultural geography, production culture studies, environmental psychology, and critical tourism studies, I demonstrate how production environments are more than blank canvases, but places where cultural meanings are being continually contested. As cultural elites, auteurs make coherent disorienting social changes by engaging in production as lived experiences of nation building, homecoming, and cultural salvage. The rural is thus a stage for auteurs to perform their aspirations for social activism, while location shooting constitutes an embodied and performative practice through which auteurs make meaningful sense of their ever-shifting and often precarious roles of authorship. Consequently, images and representations of the rural in the resulting films cannot simply be classified as signifying one cultural logic or another. Rather, they bear traces of the institutional politics, social tensions, and geopolitical ambivalences negotiated by auteurs during production, thus confounding distinctions between the ideologically complicit and subversive, a reductive binary too often mobilized by scholars when periodizing Chinese and Taiwanese film histories.Less