Authors:Sut Jhally Pages: 1 - 1 Abstract: The following is an edited transcript of Sut Jhally’s keynote address at the Union for Democratic Communications Conference, “Media Resistance, and Justice” on May 12, 2018 in Chicago, Illinois. Jhally is the 2018 recipient of the Dallas Smythe Award from the Union for Democratic Communications (UDC) for outstanding and influential scholarship in the critical political economic tradition of Dallas Smythe. Jhally discusses the development of the Media Education Foundation (MEF) and the relatedness of Stuart Hall’s work to that of Smythe and UDC. PubDate: 2019-04-04 Issue No:Vol. 28, No. 1 (2019)
Authors:Jeff Tischauser Pages: 11 - 11 Abstract: I use discourse analysis to investigate the white press of the original Rainbow Coalition, founded by the Illinois Chapter of the Black Panther Party, to dissect how radical media is used as a platform to build coalitions, and debate the role of allies. Borrowing from Viraj Patel’s intersectional approach to allyship, which suggests that one’s cross-cutting identities creates situationally-specific roles for allies, I add a communicative perspective to understand how allies can effectively represent and practice allyship using mass communication. In doing so, I break down how whiteness is represented in radical media to understand if it’s an inherently negative concept. PubDate: 2019-04-04 Issue No:Vol. 28, No. 1 (2019)
Authors:Derek Hrynyshyn Pages: 27 - 27 Abstract: Until the last few years, the vast majority of theorizing about the political implications of online social networking capacities tended to assume that new communications media would empower progressive forces against the undemocratic tendencies in industrialized countries. However, the election of Donald Trump, the electoral success of similar political movements in other capitalist democracies, and the rise to prominence of the so-called ‘alt-right’ in numerous online spaces constitute a development that requires re-examination of much of the common wisdom about social media and politics. This essay explores why earlier optimistic theory cannot explain why reactionary ideas have been so politically successful in the world of social media. PubDate: 2019-04-04 Issue No:Vol. 28, No. 1 (2019)
Authors:Eduardo Gonzalez Pages: 46 - 46 Abstract: Depictions of U.S. Latinos in the media and politics are often rooted in narratives of illegality, criminality, and immigration. By reproducing stereotypes of violence, lawlessness, and foreign identity, Latinos in the U.S. often exist in the social imaginary of media and political elites as being legally and culturally incompatible with conventional understandings of U.S. citizenship. Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign was rooted in nativist politics that sought to criminalize legal and unauthorized immigrants by representing them as the largest threat to U.S. national security and the economy. This article employs a content analysis of all 74 speeches made during Trump’s “Make America Great Again” presidential campaign to investigate how U.S. Latinos were depicted in the media during the 2016 election cycle. The proceeding section situates the empirical findings within a broader time-series textual analysis, tracking Latino depictions across the eighteenmonth campaign. The findings corroborate Trump’s anti-Latino and anti immigrant positions, as well as a progression on Trump’s discussions of Mexico and NAFTA. Furthermore, the analysis illuminates how Trump exports U.S. Latino stereotypes to villainize his Democratic opponent, Hillary Clinton. Taken together, this article demonstrates how Trump’s rhetoric refurbished and aggrandized Latino and immigrant narratives and stereotypes for the consumption of a 2016 audience. PubDate: 2019-04-04 Issue No:Vol. 28, No. 1 (2019)
Authors:Michelle Rodino-Colocino Pages: 63 - 63 Abstract: Taking UDC’s 2018 conference theme as a prompt, I put together a panel asking participants, “How Should Academic Associations ‘Fight for Humanity’'” after organizing alternative accommodations for NCA’s (National Communication Association) 103rd convention because of a boycott of Texas, the host state. Immigration activists and the State of California were boycotting Texas antiimmigrant and anti-LGBTQ laws, respectively. As organizing this alternative convention moved forward, and indeed, at the convention itself, I found myself asking the same questions that inspired UDC’s founding three decades ago: What is an academic association for' How can an academic association politically mobilize through a union of radical scholars to work for justice, equity, and peace' This essay engages these questions and asks UDC members to build a solidarity network to support each other in the fight for humanity. PubDate: 2019-04-04 Issue No:Vol. 28, No. 1 (2019)
Authors:Benjamin J. Birkinbine Pages: 66 - 66 Abstract: In the search for alternatives to capitalism, the commons paradigm has emerged as a promising way forward. PubDate: 2019-04-04 Issue No:Vol. 28, No. 1 (2019)
Authors:Aimee-Marie Dorsten Pages: 70 - 70 Abstract: Nicole S. Cohen’s Writer’s Rights: Freelance Journalism in a Digital Age offers a much-needed intervention into the conventional wisdom that Canadian freelance journalism is just one more industry to be “freed” from the “bondage” of standardized practices of respect, fair contracts, and protected intellectual property. PubDate: 2019-04-04 Issue No:Vol. 28, No. 1 (2019)
Authors:Sean Hughes Pages: 76 - 76 Abstract: The photo credit for the 2019 Volume 28 cover of the Democratic Communiqué is given to Sean Hughes, Associate Professor of Journalism at the University of Cincinnati. PubDate: 2019-04-04 Issue No:Vol. 28, No. 1 (2019)