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Why Media Distribution Matters: A Critical Interlude

Joshua A. Braun

in This Program Is Brought To You By...: Distributing Television News Online

This chapter examines the potential of media distribution, and the balance of structure and agency enacted in different approaches to it, to inform our view of a wide array of major social and ... More

This chapter examines the potential of media distribution, and the balance of structure and agency enacted in different approaches to it, to inform our view of a wide array of major social and scholarly concerns. In particular, it considers the key role played by the technologies and practices of media distribution in the conditions under which people congregate and imagine their communities. It first explores the impact of distribution on the conditions of media work in the media industries, paying attention to media ownership models and their effect on media distribution strategies. It then discusses the ability of online distribution networks to spur social change by cutting across social and regional boundaries and helping to reconfigure them; how distribution renders societal groups and subcultures visible; how states impinge on distribution as a form of political oppression; and how distribution platforms can promote public participation. It also analyzes the implications of distribution platforms for political activism as well as for film and literary culture.Less

Imagining the Franchise: Structures, Social Relations, and Cultural Work

Derek Johnson

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

This chapter discusses the social relations of franchising, the industrial structures they enable, and the cultural discourses historically brought to bear on media objects to conceive them in the ... More

This chapter discusses the social relations of franchising, the industrial structures they enable, and the cultural discourses historically brought to bear on media objects to conceive them in the terms of “franchising.” This requires an analysis that begins outside of media studies to consider the history of franchising as a means of sharing business formats within the retail industries. Although retail franchising does not perfectly fit into media production, the social relations shared by both allows for a better understanding of the industrial exchanges facilitated in and by media franchising. The chapter also examines how media work has already been theorized and imagined as franchising by practitioners, critics, and consumers; as well as the cultural consequences of franchising through the lens of gender.Less

Dates and Plan II: Quinquennium Ulpiani

Tony Honoré

in Ulpian: Pioneer of Human Rights

This chapter relates the composition of Ulpian’s fifty-one-book treatise On Sabinus to his work On the Edict. On Sabinus was largely written in the second part of Caracalla’s reign. Making allowances ... More

This chapter relates the composition of Ulpian’s fifty-one-book treatise On Sabinus to his work On the Edict. On Sabinus was largely written in the second part of Caracalla’s reign. Making allowances for medium-scale and lesser works it is argued that Ulpian wrote for five years (Quinquennium Ulpiani) at this period for forty-three ½ weeks a year, but ceased writing during the two holiday periods of thirty days each.Less

Dates and Plan III: Lesser Works

Tony Honoré

in Ulpian: Pioneer of Human Rights

This chapter takes up the allocation of Ulpian’s lesser works to the years 213–217. The overall picture is of 217 books (really more like modern chapters) composed in the years 213–217.

Discourses, Dispositions, Tactics: Reconceiving Management in Critical Media Industry Studies

Derek Johnson, Derek Kompare, and Avi Santo

in Making Media Work: Cultures of Management in the Entertainment Industries

This introductory chapter asserts that management must be understood as a much wider network of cultural power, negotiated by participants at all levels in institutional hierarchies. Management, in ... More

This introductory chapter asserts that management must be understood as a much wider network of cultural power, negotiated by participants at all levels in institutional hierarchies. Management, in this sense, is a culture of shifting discourses and dispositions that create meaning, generate value, and shape media work throughout each moment of production and consumption. For this understanding, the chapter draws from organizational sociology and critical theory in examining how historically situated ideas about management operate as modes of managerial identity formation. Though management has become an important practice in the contemporary era of branding, IP licensing, and convergence, management as a discursive category has existed for a long time. Its functions, representations, and dispositions have changed in accordance with both industrial and cultural shifts.Less

Conclusion

Anne McKnight

in Nakagami, Japan: Buraku and the Writing of Ethnicity

This chapter explains how placing Nakagami’s work within the context of the historical and cultural modernization of the early twentieth century, including mixed-media work and subcultural forms of ... More

This chapter explains how placing Nakagami’s work within the context of the historical and cultural modernization of the early twentieth century, including mixed-media work and subcultural forms of narrative, gives new light to understanding the role of writing in the postwar landscape. The book as a whole demonstrates how Nakagami’s literary endeavors address the relationships between literary and political representation, and aesthetics and social movements. He illustrates the personal responsibility of being different in a cultural marketplace; Nakagami’s roji suggests the discarding of one’s habitual vocabularies of identity and difference, and instead understand the neologisms of experience. The concept of parallax was essential to Nakagami’s writing, his twofold perspective attempted to contradict the myth of Japan’s postwar reality as a homogeneous society.Less

Advances in Neuropsychological Assessment of Attention

Unai Díaz-Orueta

in The Role of Technology in Clinical Neuropsychology

Attention is one of the most basic cognitive processes and is a prerequisite for the use of more complex functions, since it is not possible to evaluate perception or memory processes without ... More

Attention is one of the most basic cognitive processes and is a prerequisite for the use of more complex functions, since it is not possible to evaluate perception or memory processes without keeping in mind attention issues (Amador, Forns, & Kirchner, 2006). The ability to maintain an appropriate level of attention is basic for education and learning, especially during childhood and school age. With the aim of studying attention separately from other cognitive functions, the so-called continuous performance tests (CPT) were created. The first series of CPTs were developed by Rosvold, Mirsky, Sarason, Bransome, and Beck (1956) to study vigilance in adults with acquired brain injury (Riccio, Reynolds, & Lowe, 2001), more specifically, persons with seizures (Amador, Forns, & Kirchner, 2006). Nowadays, CPTs are still one of the most widely used measures for the assessment of attention and processing speed. Briefly, it can be said that a CPT is a group of paradigms to evaluate attention, inhibitory response or disinhibition (a component of executive control that provides information about the subject’s impulsivity), and processing speed. Basically, CPTs rely on the rapid, random presentation of a series of stimuli to which the subject must respond following instructions given at the beginning of the test. The main value of CPTs is their empirical support. Diverse CPT paradigms have consistently demonstrated their sensitivity for a great variety of both neurological and psychiatric disorders, in adults and in children. Frequently, CPTs also use a continuous vigilance task, in order to obtain quantitative information about the individual’s ability to sustain attention in time. From its creation, the CPT paradigm has been used with many variants of its task component. Greenberg and Walkman (1993) found up to 100 different versions of CPT in use. Historically, when Rosvold and his collaborators introduced the test, they had the goal of measuring correct answers provided by the subject as an indicator of selective attention. With subsequent experimentation, other measures, such as processing speed, impulsivity, inattention, and sustained attention, divided or alternate, have been included. Less