JournalTOCs

Media, Culture & Society
Journal Prestige (SJR): 0.846

Citation Impact (citeScore): 2
Number of Followers: 45

Hybrid journal (It can contain Open Access articles)
ISSN (Print) 0163-4437 - ISSN (Online) 1460-3675
Published by Sage Publications

[1176 journals]

Media, digital sovereignty and geopolitics: the case of the TikTok ban in
India
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  Authors: Anilesh Kumar, Daya Thussu
  Abstract: Media, Culture & Society, Ahead of Print.
  TikTok, one of the most downloaded apps in the world, has been banned in India since June 2020, following military clashes on the India-China border. This article focuses on government narratives of the TikTok ban in the Indian media and situates the issue within the broader geopolitical framework of deteriorating Sino-Indian relations and attempts for digital sovereignty. At a time of strong nationalist discourses dominating the political and social communication in India, it is perhaps unsurprising that the narratives have been seen outside India as protectionism. However, this paper argues that the digital sovereignty in the Indian context is not exclusionary but aims to create a robust digital infrastructure that is critical for economic development and self-reliance. Highlighting the lessons from India, this paper concludes the following: (i) digital sovereignty is a form of discourse which does not imply any specific policy, (ii) digital sovereignty relates to user control over their data, however, the role and limits of the State is not clearly defined and (iii) digital platforms are highly vulnerable to changing geopolitics in which their existence is not determined by user-platform interactions but by international relations.
  Citation: Media, Culture & Society
  PubDate: 2023-05-22T04:50:27Z
  DOI: 10.1177/01634437231174351
Creative compliance and selective visibility: How Chinese queer uploaders
performing identities on the Douyin platform
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  Authors: Qi Ai, Yuchen Song, Ning Zhan
  Abstract: Media, Culture & Society, Ahead of Print.
  The growth in video-sharing social media platform use has changed modes of communication, which has helped to improve the visibility of gender and sexual minority groups. This tendency became evident given the social distancing during the COVID-19 pandemic. Likewise, the use of these platforms empowers LGBTQ individuals living in China to share knowledge and experiences, receive social and emotional support and so on. Previous studies rarely interrogate Chinese queer groups’ socially sanctioned performance of identities on popular video-sharing platforms such as Douyin. This article undertakes a preliminary discussion of that research gap. It examines the conditions that enable such activities and concludes with a discussion of the strategies and methods that Chinese queer uploaders use in the process. Simply put, this article explores how the queer uploaders accommodate and negotiate their identity performances within a heterosexual and mainstream popular social media environment.
  Citation: Media, Culture & Society
  PubDate: 2023-05-18T08:57:46Z
  DOI: 10.1177/01634437231174345
Compelled TikTok creators' The ambivalent affordances of the short video
app for Filipino musicians
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  Authors: Jeremy Tintiangko, Anthony Y.H. Fung, Jindong Leo-Liu
  Abstract: Media, Culture & Society, Ahead of Print.
  This study is concerned with the incorporation of TikTok by Filipino musicians in their performances, promotion strategies, and other career-related endeavors. As the music artists are compelled, whether consciously or otherwise, to adhere to the logics of the platform, we critically evaluate its implications on their experiences as creative workers. As revealed, the use of TikTok by Filipino musicians fosters the construction of a new cultural logic and format that enhances music content and narratives as they engage in novel creative pursuits as well as participate in nascent forms of audience relations. Yet the prevalence of TikTok use within the music industry also engenders a new range of obligations that reinforce existing pressures on musicians. This study sheds light on the ambivalent role of TikTok as a platform that could potentially liberate and amplify independent and creative cultural production while also generating new sources of tension for creative workers.
  Citation: Media, Culture & Society
  PubDate: 2023-05-16T05:12:36Z
  DOI: 10.1177/01634437231174356
The use of animation in NGOs’ audio-visual communication about
solidarity and migration
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  Authors: Guglielmo Scafirimuto
  Abstract: Media, Culture & Society, Ahead of Print.
  One of the latest transformations of humanitarian communication in recent years has certainly been the growing adoption of the language of animation, especially in online media. Looking at the effects of this new trend, this article intends to reflect on how NGO communication has concretely changed on a visual and discursive level through the use of animation. The corpus analysed, selected from YouTube, consists of a series of examples of animated online videos of NGOs that deal with a recent and influential phenomenon: the refugee crisis. Since 2015, an increasing number of new NGOs have emerged in order to contribute to aid for migrants, as opposed to European policies: what kind of representation of migrants do NGOs convey in their communication campaigns that employ animation' What kind of solidarity discourse is adopted through this audiovisual language' The analysis of these examples will serve as a basis for introducing the theorisation of numerous characteristics specific to animation, which make it an effective medium for the promotion of humanitarian missions and for the transmission of the testimonies of migrants.
  Citation: Media, Culture & Society
  PubDate: 2023-05-05T10:45:16Z
  DOI: 10.1177/01634437231169908
“Re-stratifying” women: female images in China’s state media from
the perspective of social stratification (2011–2020)
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  Authors: Min Wang, Qiushui Li
  Abstract: Media, Culture & Society, Ahead of Print.
  In the 2010s, feminism thrived in China amid a transformation in social stratification and a rise in women’s social status. The focus of this study is on the representation of the images of women of various social strata in national news reports. Taking Xinwen Lianbo, a national news program produced by China Central Television, as an example, we analyzed visual representations of 360 female figures from 2011 to 2020. The findings revealed that, rather than reflecting China’s Tǔ-shaped stratification structure, the program depicted an “olive-shaped” pseudo-society in which women of what we term the “middle” stratum constituted the largest portion and served as multifaceted role models, women of the “prominent” stratum served as bellwethers of socioeconomic development, and women of the “ordinary” stratum did not participate in social development. The program’s imagery also created a double standard for domestic duties: Women of the prominent stratum were depicted as disembedded from the social role of housewife and breaking through the career “glass ceiling,” though not achieving equality with men in terms of their positions in society or politics, while women of the ordinary stratum as bearing the ideological reshuffle of conservative gender values. This study suggests a fresh perspective on the great disparities in the representation of women in different strata, which differs from the status of gender and stratum in real society.
  Citation: Media, Culture & Society
  PubDate: 2023-05-02T08:58:34Z
  DOI: 10.1177/01634437231169912
The manufacture of militarized masculinity in Chinese series You Are My
Hero (2021)
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  Authors: Roxanne Tan Yu Xian
  Abstract: Media, Culture & Society, Ahead of Print.
  The entertainment industry is driven to sell certain commodities transnationally, particularly in a world where borders are becoming increasingly diffused through the access afforded by the Internet. Media content is easily consumed, making cultural exporting fast and easy. Similar tropes and plot have been replicated in the East Asian film and TV industry, perhaps in hopes of replicating the success. This paper looks at the manufacture of ideal masculinities within East Asia, particularly China. From ex-members of K-pop group EXO to the successful TV series, cross-influence of East Asian popular culture is prominent. Through this paper, I look at the influence of K-dramas on the Chinese TV industry and particularly the manufacturing of a militarized masculinity on Chinese TV. Far from portraying brute and fearsome soldiers, ideal masculinity on TV is portrayed as “steely exterior but gentle internally” and thus desirable romantic partners to heterosexual women. By exploring the basic conception of Chinese masculinity, I then discuss representations of militarized masculinity on the silver screen (Wolf Warrior II) and C-dramas, with particular focus on the series, You Are My Hero (2021).
  Citation: Media, Culture & Society
  PubDate: 2023-04-29T12:28:57Z
  DOI: 10.1177/01634437231172307
Deplatforming “the people”: media populism, racial capitalism, and the
regulation of online reactionary networks
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  Authors: Reed Van Schenck
  Abstract: Media, Culture & Society, Ahead of Print.
  This essay contributes to a materialist theory of media populism by criticizing America First, an influential U.S. American reactionary live-stream hosted by Nicholas J. Fuentes, and its Groyper fans. Fuentes has expanded his online presence despite the deplatforming, or administrative suspension, of his social media accounts on account of his antisemitic, antiblack, and sexist hate speech. To understand the ideological ramifications of deplatforming populist influencers, I read clips from America First into the economic and infrastructural context of U.S. far-right subcultures. I argue that media studies must attend to bourgeois digital platform management as a technology which reproduces the undemocratic conditions of racial capitalism. The deplatforming of Fuentes facilitates the ascent of reactionary populism by reinforcing possessive individualism, or a white masculine fantasy of unmediated access to the public. “The people” of populism functions as media whose lost presence naturalizes sovereign violence against marginalized people. Media populism illustrates the need for to move beyond the dichotomy of “mainstream” versus “fringe” platforms to consider the material affinity of bourgeois digital publics and white nationalist provocation.
  Citation: Media, Culture & Society
  PubDate: 2023-04-20T06:01:11Z
  DOI: 10.1177/01634437231169909
Twitter trolling of Pakistani female journalists: A patriarchal society
glance
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  Authors: Ayesha Siddiqua, Jiakun Gong, Iffat Ali Aksar
  Abstract: Media, Culture & Society, Ahead of Print.
  The incorporation of new media technology into journalistic practices led to online harassment, particularly of female journalists. The researchers investigated the tweets of four prominent Pakistani female journalists through the lens of post-colonial feminism and symbolic violence. The qualitative analysis of 239 tweets revealed themes that corroborated the dominance of sociocultural and political grounds in undermining the status of women and making them susceptible to online harassment. In culturally traditional communities, the position of women is “gender specific,” and socioeconomic status cannot guarantee women’s safety from cultural behaviors. The harassment themes included “you called for it,” adhering to the limits of a male-dominated society, women’s card, threats, “lifafa,” shamelessness, religious policing, moral policing, and pseudo-intellectual labeling. The study recommends expanding research in sociopolitical, religious, and cultural contexts to comprehend symbolic violence, particularly in relation to women.
  Citation: Media, Culture & Society
  PubDate: 2023-04-20T05:59:51Z
  DOI: 10.1177/01634437231168306
Audiovisual production in Brazil: Will its public support survive the new
political scenario'
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  Authors: Othon Fernando Jambeiro Barbosa, Kátia Santos de Morais, Natacha Stefanini Canesso, Juliano Mendonça Domingues da Silva, Milena Silvino Evangelista
  Abstract: Media, Culture & Society, Ahead of Print.
  This article discusses public funding of the development of Brazilian audiovisual production and the main agents involved in its conception and implementation. Public policies impacted the total revenue of US$ 4.5 billion of the national audiovisual industry in 2014, representing approximately 0.45% of the national GDP and surpassing the percentage participation of sectors such as the pharmaceutical industry. This article addresses the question of whether this innovative Brazilian policy for promoting audiovisual production can be considered to be wellconsolidated, with a well-structured active production chain. It discusses how the policy originated, how it became institutionalized, and the contribution provided by those who played a key role in its development and implementation (2009–2016). The analysis draws on theories relating to the political economy of communication. The research methods and techniques adopted include analysis of data from Brazilian government agencies, exhibitors, professional and trade-union associations, and media groups.
  Citation: Media, Culture & Society
  PubDate: 2023-04-19T06:41:07Z
  DOI: 10.1177/01634437231168309
Entertainment journalism as a resource for public connection: a
qualitative study of digital news audiences
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  Authors: Joel Penney
  Abstract: Media, Culture & Society, Ahead of Print.
  Entertainment journalism has long been a marginal object of academic inquiry due to its reputation as a trivial distraction from public affairs journalism, yet this view has since been challenged by scholars who emphasize its substantive role in political discourse. Although previous research has disputed the idea that entertainment news helps audiences forge connections with public issues, the present study renews this line of inquiry at a time when this journalism has increasingly become a driver of political reporting and opinion, particularly in tandem with activism efforts addressing the media representation of marginalized identity groups as well as celebrity-fueled public advocacy. In-depth interviews are used to illuminate the interpretive processes of US audience members who engage online with this news, outlining how it is used as a resource for navigating the politics of media representation, for making political meanings from celebrity culture, and for fulminating right-wing backlash to cultural institutions.
  Citation: Media, Culture & Society
  PubDate: 2023-04-15T05:25:33Z
  DOI: 10.1177/01634437231168310
Borderline practices on Douyin/TikTok: Content transfer and algorithmic
manipulation
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  Authors: Chunmeizi Su, Bondy Valdovinos Kaye
  Abstract: Media, Culture & Society, Ahead of Print.
  TikTok continues to be the top downloaded app in many countries around the world as the short video consumption craze continues. But TikTok has also come under harsh scrutiny for its Chinese origins and data security. For TikTok, the journey of globalization has involved a painful contest with governments, geopolitical manoeuvrers, and, ultimately, finding platform regulation loopholes. TikTok’s sister app, Douyin, shares identical digital architectures, but follows different trajectories of development in China. Through interviews with Chinese influencers and media practitioners, along with a content analysis of policy documents and industry reports, this paper identifies and analyzes the borderline practices that have occurred on Douyin – including content transfers, and algorithmic platformization – and evaluates the potential for these practices to be replicated on TikTok.
  Citation: Media, Culture & Society
  PubDate: 2023-04-15T05:23:43Z
  DOI: 10.1177/01634437231168308
Wireless telephone, materiality, and making of the national auditory in
Turkey
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  Authors: Nazlı Özkan
  Abstract: Media, Culture & Society, Ahead of Print.
  This paper focuses on the radio’s novelty years in 1920s Turkey to examine how the functions of wireless technology as a material artifact are negotiated in ways that fashion a national auditory. Most studies on radio’s history prioritize sound, eliding people’s tinkering with the wireless as a technical object. Based on archival research and oral history interviews, I suggest that early radio as a material object required as much of its listeners’ attention as did the broadcast content. In young Turkey’s war-torn economy, the only affordable way to listen to radio was learning how to assemble a receiver. Few owners of manufactured radios also learnt how to fix frequent problems. To form a passive national auditory, the state monitored the cultivation of these technical skills by banning transmitter-construction while encouraging assembling/fixing receivers. In addition to the body’s visceral/affective capacities, then, nation-states also discipline technical skills while forming a national auditory.
  Citation: Media, Culture & Society
  PubDate: 2023-03-21T12:56:55Z
  DOI: 10.1177/01634437231159540
Understanding the popularity and affordances of TikTok through user
experiences
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  Authors: Andreas Schellewald
  Abstract: Media, Culture & Society, Ahead of Print.
  In this paper I discuss the affordances and popularity of the short-video app TikTok from an audience studies point of view. I do so by drawing on findings from ethnographic fieldwork with young adult TikTok users based in the United Kingdom that was conducted in 2020 and 2021. I trace how using the app, specifically scrolling through the TikTok For You Page, the app’s algorithmic content feed, became a fixed part of the everyday routines of young adults. I show how TikTok appealed to them as a convenient means of escape and relief that they were unable to find elsewhere during and beyond times of lockdown. Further, I highlight the complex nature of TikTok as an app and the active role that users play in imagining and appropriating the app’s affordances as meaningful parts of their everyday social life. Closing the paper, I reflect on future directions of TikTok scholarship by stressing the importance of situated audience studies.
  Citation: Media, Culture & Society
  PubDate: 2023-03-21T12:26:55Z
  DOI: 10.1177/01634437221144562
Dudes, boobs, and GameCubes: video game advertising enters adolescence
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  Authors: Megan Condis, Jess Morrissette
  Abstract: Media, Culture & Society, Ahead of Print.
  When a product is marketed according to gender, it is often positioned as a way for consumers to enact that gender. In the following pages, we trace how video game advertising “grew up,” transitioning from a broader focus on family entertainment into a more specific focus on selling toys to young boys and finally evolving into what we call “lad ads,” or advertisements designed to appeal specifically to straight male adolescents by playing on expectations of masculine heteronormativity. The legacy of these lad ads has contributed significantly toward solidifying the connection between video games and masculinity.
  Citation: Media, Culture & Society
  PubDate: 2023-03-16T12:16:24Z
  DOI: 10.1177/01634437231159533
Disablement in figure skating: media, celebrity, spectacle
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  Authors: Adan Jerreat-Poole
  Abstract: Media, Culture & Society, Ahead of Print.
  Blood on the ice. Cheers when the injured athlete stands and limps off the field. Comebacks, backflips, and back injuries. Celebrity athletes are punished and rewarded for their abilities, including their ability to perform while injured or work through pain. Injuries, illness, disablement, and even death are not uncommon in celebrity culture broadly and the field of competitive sports more specifically. While critical disability studies often attends to disabled celebrities, less research and critical attention has been paid to the disablement of celebrity and the expectation and performance of injury or illness understood through the lens of ablenationalism. Focusing on international figure skating and the 2022 Winter Olympics, this paper offers a supercripping of athletic celebrity by interrogating how gender, race, age, and nationality impact a global audience’s view of vulnerability, risk, and harm. Analyzing media coverage of the event alongside popular discourse uncovers the impact of nationalism, white supremacy, and patriarchy on sports narratives and celebrity cultures of debilitation and disablement.
  Citation: Media, Culture & Society
  PubDate: 2023-03-16T12:14:06Z
  DOI: 10.1177/01634437231159528
Rethinking telepresence: post- and pre-COVID-19
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  Authors: Jérôme Bourdon
  Abstract: Media, Culture & Society, Ahead of Print.
  Following the marked increase in the use of digital technologies during the recent pandemic, the article reconsiders the concept of social telepresence, in the sense of interpersonal connection at a distance, locating it in the longue durée and within media studies. It reminds the reader that, for centuries, when people were separated from one another by the force of various circumstances, including pandemics, they resorted to technologies at their disposal to experience telepresence, long before the term itself was coined by scholars. Foremost among these has been the epistolary, a vitally important interpersonal media largely overlooked by media and telepresence researchers. Rather than competitively evaluating the performance of various technologies, the article proposes a framework to compare them, along with the practices of social telepresence, in the course of history. This comparative program employs the following criteria: embodiment, synchronicity, the space of the encounter, the ontology of entities other than humans actuated by telepresence and the social preferences for different forms of telepresence.
  Citation: Media, Culture & Society
  PubDate: 2023-03-16T12:12:54Z
  DOI: 10.1177/01634437231159527
Exploring data journalism practices in Africa: data politics, media
ecosystems and newsroom infrastructures
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  Authors: Sarah Chiumbu, Allen Munoriyarwa
  Abstract: Media, Culture & Society, Ahead of Print.
  Extant research on data journalism in Africa has focused on newsroom factors and the predilections of individual journalists as determinants of the uptake of data journalism on the continent. This article diverts from this literature by examining the slow uptake of data journalism in sub- Saharan Africa through the prisms of non-newsroom factors. Drawing on in-depth interviews with prominent investigative journalists sampled from several African countries, we argue that to understand the slow uptake of data journalism on the continent; there is a need to critique the role of data politics, which encompasses state, market and existing media ecosystems across the continent. Therefore, it is necessary to move beyond newsroom-centric factors that have dominated the contemporary understanding of data journalism practices. A broader, non-newsroom conceptualisation beyond individual journalistic predilections and newsroom resources provides productive clarity on data journalism’s slow uptake on the continent. These arguments are made through the conceptual prisms of materiality, performativity and reflexivity.
  Citation: Media, Culture & Society
  PubDate: 2023-03-16T05:22:50Z
  DOI: 10.1177/01634437231155341
How to train your algorithm: the struggle for public control over private
audience commodities on Tiktok
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  Authors: Corinne Jones
  Abstract: Media, Culture & Society, Ahead of Print.
  Social media users are increasingly aware of the politics of their viewing habits, and they attempt to express these politics through interactions with proprietary algorithms. Combining theories about audience commodities with scholarship about “algorithmic imaginaries,” I define “algorithmically imagined audiences” as a kind of algorithmic imaginary, and I analyze 103 TikTok videos to explore how people attempt to politically engage with algorithms to position themselves within audiences. Although algorithms and audiences are proprietary, TikTokers believe they can reassert public control over audience commodities to engage in counterpublic world-making and to re-position themselves within imagined communities. While these practices are impactful, they have conceptual and practical limits; these same tactics are used to reprivatize audience commodities and to reinscribe the neoliberal capitalist underpinnings. This article raises questions for future researchers about the opportunities and limits of sociotechnical beliefs.
  Citation: Media, Culture & Society
  PubDate: 2023-03-15T04:57:05Z
  DOI: 10.1177/01634437231159555
Public service media and race relations in postcolonial Britain: BBC and
immigrant programming, 1965–1988
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  Authors: Julia Giese, Diwas Bisht, Aswin Punathambekar
  Abstract: Media, Culture & Society, Ahead of Print.
  This article explores how British Asians negotiated the politics of race in the formative years of British broadcasting from the 1960s to the 1980s. Marked by significant changes within the BBC and British society at large, this period saw the first institutional initiatives oriented towards Caribbean and Asian communities. Drawing on primary research materials from the BBC Written Archives, we analyse the Immigrant Programmes Unit and the Immigrant Programme Advisory Committees as sites where ideas of race, ethnicity and citizenship were continually debated and worked out. We argue that the BBC functioned as a profoundly asymmetrical contact zone in which British Asians’ efforts to counter assimilationist ideas and programmes were stymied by senior managers working with deeply ingrained ideas of cultural, ethnic and racial differences. Immigrants would be accommodated, but in ways that would not challenge the viewing habits of the majority or imagine solidarities across racial, ethnic and national lines.
  Citation: Media, Culture & Society
  PubDate: 2023-03-14T12:21:59Z
  DOI: 10.1177/01634437231155563
Analyzing caste in media production cultures: a case study from South
India
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  Authors: Deepti Komalam
  Abstract: Media, Culture & Society, Ahead of Print.
  This paper sifts through the affective connotations and methodological issues that crop up during conversations about caste with dominant caste (savarna) women working in the Malayalam language film industry in Kerala, India, in the context of a heightened focus on gender in the post #MeToo era. Drawing on arguments from critical whiteness and critical race theories, it argues that caste ought to be viewed not just as an ontological entity but as an epistemological framework which shapes how knowledge about the world and selves are produced and transferred. It also explores the methodological challenges in broaching the topic of caste with women occupying powerful social locations and how in failing to explore caste in seemingly gender-focused studies, the researcher contributes to an epistemology of ignorance, rendering invisible a crucial power differential.
  Citation: Media, Culture & Society
  PubDate: 2023-03-14T12:17:47Z
  DOI: 10.1177/01634437231159532
Digital subscribers: between freedom and constraint
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  Authors: Guillermo Echauri
  Abstract: Media, Culture & Society, Ahead of Print.
  This article addresses the features, affordances, and limitations that emerge when purchasing and using digital subscriptions, particularly streaming entertainment services. Using a qualitative approach through 15 in-depth interviews with European subscribers of digital services such as Netflix or Spotify Premium, the research inquired into the users’ personal experience with digital subscriptions. The results show two scenarios: in one, subscribers enjoy the flexibility and freedom offered with the digital subscription services to customize their media consumption and entertainment preferences; on the other, digital subscriptions limit and restrict the activity of their subscribers, for example, by fragmenting audiovisual content on different platforms.
  Citation: Media, Culture & Society
  PubDate: 2023-03-08T06:10:20Z
  DOI: 10.1177/01634437231159554
Danmu video as the resemiotised: An attitudinal analysis of Home Visit
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  Authors: Yi Jing, Qingxin Xu
  Abstract: Media, Culture & Society, Ahead of Print.
  Danmu has been gaining increasing popularity in Chinese video-sharing platforms where users can project their comments directly onto the original video. Its popularity resonates with the general trend where user-generated content plays an increasingly important role. This article investigates possible meaning-making shifts produced by danmu from the perspective of resemiotisation. By deploying the Appraisal framework, particularly the attitude system, this study examines the attitudinal meanings expressed in a video and its danmu version. Comparisons between the two sets of attitudinal meanings reveal two patterns of meaning-making shifts. One is a shift in perspective, that is from whose perspective a certain scenario is presented. The other is a shift in the characterisation of one participant in the video. These findings raise our awareness of the possible manipulation of meaning afforded by danmu, which allows viewers to contribute directly to the meaning making of the danmu video. Danmu’s enablement of viewers’ co-production greatly extends the meaning and the meaning potential that could be afforded by the original video, which calls for a reconsideration of the purpose of video sharing, and the relationship between the original producer and viewers.
  Citation: Media, Culture & Society
  PubDate: 2023-03-08T05:57:05Z
  DOI: 10.1177/01634437231158514
Framing data witnessing: Airwars and the production of authority in
conflict monitoring
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  Authors: Heather Ford, Michael Richardson
  Abstract: Media, Culture & Society, Ahead of Print.
  Civilian victims of aerial warfare too often go uncounted and unrecognised by the belligerents. Myriad images and video of attacks against Syrian civilians did little to end their suffering, for example. The UK-based not-for-profit Airwars has had tangible impact on civilian harm disclosures and reparations because they have been able to shape such representations in a form that will be recognised by those with the power to enact change. Building on established theories of media witnessing and their extension to what Gray calls ‘data witnessing’, we argue that Airwars reveals the operative role of framing in open-source investigation and the forms of it witnessing it produces. Through interviews with key team members and detailed analysis of Airwars published methodology and other materials, this article shows how open-source investigations broadens the frame for witnessing civilian harm and in doing so generates relational, multi-scalar accounts of state violence that remain open to contestation and confirmation. In doing so, Airwars claims an epistemic authority via its distinctive framing of emergent practices of witnessing that depend upon the assembling of roles, standards, spatialities and techniques.
  Citation: Media, Culture & Society
  PubDate: 2023-03-06T10:32:45Z
  DOI: 10.1177/01634437221147631
“That’s PEGI, the American system!”: perceptions of video game age
ratings among families in Norway
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  Authors: Khalid Ezat Azam
  Abstract: Media, Culture & Society, Ahead of Print.
  The Pan-European Game Information (PEGI) age rating system was established as a self-regulatory system in 2003 and has been touted as a success story of modern European media regulation. Today PEGI provides video game age ratings for nearly 40 European countries on a vast array of digital platforms. Now, almost two decades after the introduction of PEGI, little is known about how the self-regulation of video games has been received by the end-user, and how the evolving landscape of digital media platforms has affected this reception. The current study draws on qualitative interview data from families in Norway to investigate perceptions and applications of video game age ratings, emphasizing regulatory challenges. The study finds that while families use video game age ratings actively as a part of their investigative practices, there is a severe lack of knowledge about media regulation and a strong sense of Americanization. The study also indicates that families view media age ratings homogeneously without much attention paid to variations in-between different rating systems. I conclude that research on media regulation needs to move beyond a theoretical and legislative vacuum devoid of the end-user’s reality to better enable public knowledge and scrutiny of media regulation.
  Citation: Media, Culture & Society
  PubDate: 2023-02-28T06:47:49Z
  DOI: 10.1177/01634437231155340
Journalism as profession helping women in conflict to move beyond
victimhood discourse: a case study of Kashmir
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  Authors: Ruheela Hassan
  Abstract: Media, Culture & Society, Ahead of Print.
  Kashmir, the northernmost valley of Indian territory, is an acknowledged conflict area reeling under continuous violence for the past three decades. It is more in focus due to militancy, civil unrest, and human rights violations that have created difficult situations for the women of the Kashmir valley. They are usually portrayed as submissive and bound to conservative roles. While on one hand, their security of life and dignity is of prime concern, their education and professional development often take a backseat. Despite several odds and unstable circumstances, these women are striving hard to emerge as strong personalities. As Journalism empowers the masses with information and builds public opinion, it is crucial to have female contributions in this profession as their perspectives can’t be presented by men. Media in Kashmir provided women a platform to express themselves and help them prove their identities and move beyond victimhood discourse. This paper is an attempt to understand how journalism has emerged as a career choice for women from Kashmir and also aims to document their roles in breaking the traditional stereotypes by moving beyond the conflict and registering their identities as media professionals.
  Citation: Media, Culture & Society
  PubDate: 2023-02-25T11:31:32Z
  DOI: 10.1177/01634437231155795
Onlife intersectionalities as flows of playbour: the case of women in
gaming
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  Authors: Sine N Just, Kai Storm, Sandra-Louise Bukuru
  Abstract: Media, Culture & Society, Ahead of Print.
  Digital capitalism troubles classical notions of contextual singularity and agential unity and destabilises delineations of online and offline realities. Following Floridi, this paper applies the concept of ‘onlife’ for the ‘new experience of a hypermediated reality’, and we contribute to the understanding of this experience by highlighting the socioeconomic entanglements of users’ self-expression and technological corporations’ profiteering. We introduce the notion of onlife intersectionalities, where intersectionalities are understood as the enactment of identities at the crossroad of gender, race, sexuality, class, etc., and add the dimension of commercial interest to better conceptualise dynamics of empowerment and exploitation. Thus, we suggest that onlife intersectionalities are enacted in and as flows of playbour that produce surplus value through playful activity. Seeking empirical substance for these conceptual relations, we turn to the case of women in online gaming. Focusing on three individual women gamers’ onlife trajectories and flows of playbour, we show how these interact differently for each gamer, leading to more play with higher rewards for some and more labour with less compensation for others. With this analysis, we illustrate the exploitation-cum-empowerment of human subjects under digital capitalism.
  Citation: Media, Culture & Society
  PubDate: 2023-02-25T11:29:32Z
  DOI: 10.1177/01634437231155345
Patenting sociality: uncovering the operational logics of Facebook through
critical patent analysis
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  Authors: Lungani Hlongwa, Fernan Talamayan
  Abstract: Media, Culture & Society, Ahead of Print.
  While the growing influence of digital platforms on social life is now widely recognized, scholars continue to grapple with the operation of digital platforms and their mediation of social life. This article examines some of Facebook’s operational logics to shed light on the company’s social imaginary. Our argument is that Facebook imagines a sociality that can be broken down to machine-readable signals which can also be patented for capital accumulation. This argument is based on a critical analysis of Facebook patents that revealed key operational logics underpinning the platform, namely: data extraction, user surveillance, profiling, ranking, and preemption. Through critical patent analysis, we unveil not only the platform’s configuration but also its creators’ orchestration of human actions and interactions. At a time when companies are more inclined to protect their innovations through patents, perhaps now more than ever, is an opportune moment to examine what their inventions make possible.
  Citation: Media, Culture & Society
  PubDate: 2023-02-24T12:19:09Z
  DOI: 10.1177/01634437231154759
Sellers, Shifters, Sharers & Science Communicators: The initial beliefs
and positions of fitness influencers and creators on Instagram
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  Authors: Kyle Kubler
  Abstract: Media, Culture & Society, Ahead of Print.
  This article investigates the initial beliefs about social media held by fitness influencers and content creators. As influencers and content creators continue to play a growing role in mediating our social world, who invests in this work, and why, becomes increasingly important. Using semi-structured interviews with 41 fitness influencers and creators, this article identifies four typologies of initial belief: Science Communicator, Seller, Shifter, and Sharer. Differences in beliefs were explained in part by the variety of social positions held by influencers and creators within the fitness industry. Relying on Pierre Bourdieu’s concepts of social position and belief, this article aims to create a more generalizable account of who influencers and creators are, and why they continue to believe investments in social media are worth it.
  Citation: Media, Culture & Society
  PubDate: 2023-02-20T05:09:28Z
  DOI: 10.1177/01634437231155576
Protests, Internet shutdowns, and disinformation in a transitioning state
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  Authors: Kiran Vinod Bhatia, Mariam Elhussein, Ben Kreimer, Trevor Snapp
  Abstract: Media, Culture & Society, Ahead of Print.
  Internet shutdowns authorized by the state are becoming a recurring case in countries under military or authoritarian rule, such as Sudan. This article examines how the military in Sudan shut down the Internet to cover up the June 3 massacre. The shutdown made it difficult for the protestors and civilians to share and document the human rights violations committed by the state from June 3 to July 9, 2019. We also demonstrate how the Internet shutdowns were instrumental in circulating state-sponsored disinformation campaigns delegitimizing the protests. The article expands on existing literature to explain how information vacuums are conducive to the spread of disinformation and the weakening of on-ground protest movements. Despite the crippling effects of the Internet shutdown in Khartoum, our analysis illustrates how protestors challenged designed technical and physical workarounds to circumvent the shutdown.
  Citation: Media, Culture & Society
  PubDate: 2023-02-18T11:02:56Z
  DOI: 10.1177/01634437231155568
Heterodox approaches to save the day: a framework for analysing
data-related innovation in legacy media businesses
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  Authors: Hanna Jemmer, Indrek Ibrus
  Abstract: Media, Culture & Society, Ahead of Print.
  That legacy media organisations are struggling in this era of global platformisation and datafication is well established. Yet, the power of platforms as well as critiques of them could be seen as being framed and facilitated by the prevailing forms of neoclassical economics. This paper addresses how analysis and planning of data-driven innovation in legacy media organisations could benefit from the perspectives deriving from heterodox economics. Using approaches within heterodox economics as a foundation, we build on two novel conceptual frameworks – innovation commons and cross-innovation systems, where decentralisation of media markets and collaboration between agents on different levels are central. Further, three tools – open data, blockchains and agent-based modelling (ABM) – offer ways to operationalise these frameworks. Central to these tools are further democratisation and growing complexity, openness and dynamism that enable media organisations to identify paths towards data-driven innovation that could improve the competitiveness of the legacy media industry in the platform economy.
  Citation: Media, Culture & Society
  PubDate: 2023-02-18T11:01:20Z
  DOI: 10.1177/01634437231155558
Rethinking affective publics as media rituals through temporality,
performativity and liminality
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  Authors: Haktan Ural
  Abstract: Media, Culture & Society, Ahead of Print.
  This article calls for a rethinking of the formation of affective publics as a ritual process. Given the particularities of networked media, I suggest that media rituals extend into the formation of affective publics celebrating imagined collectivities in a fashion of collaborative storytelling. This is a transitional process in which a collectivity is validated, affirmed and reinforced through ritual actions. To illustrate this dynamic, I suggest drawing upon three key concepts (namely temporality, performativity and liminality), which are derivatives of media rituals theory, but also shed light on the dynamics of affective publics. To specify, first, ritual temporality refers to ambient concentrations that create a breach in the ordinary flow of media texts. Second, performativity implicates the affect-driven rhythms of digital storytelling feeding algorithmic curations that form an embodied harmony between participants and a sense of collectivity. Third, liminality entails ambiguous situations that enable the formation of affective publics by means of voluntary commitment, anonymity and the uniformity of participants. These concepts are the key entry points in capturing the ritual aspects of affective publics. Viewed through this lens, scrutiny for the ritual dynamics of networked publics helps us to grasp the affective formations of networked media.
  Citation: Media, Culture & Society
  PubDate: 2023-02-18T10:56:06Z
  DOI: 10.1177/01634437231155557
Framing the Israel-Palestine conflict 2021: Investigation of CNN’s
coverage from a peace journalism perspective
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  Authors: Sima Bhowmik, Jolene Fisher
  Abstract: Media, Culture & Society, Ahead of Print.
  This study uses textual analysis to examine CNN’s World News coverage of the 12-day conflict between Israel and Palestine in May 2021. We bring into conversation the influential factors that shape U.S. media coverage of other countries, as presented by Dorman and Farhang, and Galtung’s concept of war journalism in our analysis. Our findings show that CNN primarily took a war journalism approach to frame the conflict. However, calls for consideration of Palestinian human-rights from members of U.S. Congress led to coverage that aligned with a peace journalism framework. This finding illuminates the role of counter-discourse by elite social members in influencing the framing of conflict coverage in mainstream media. The study adds to our understanding of U.S. media coverage of ongoing conflict between Israel and Palestine and the implications of war journalism versus peace journalism frames with regards to public discourse and understanding.
  Citation: Media, Culture & Society
  PubDate: 2023-02-18T10:41:06Z
  DOI: 10.1177/01634437231154766
The wellbeing of ordinary people in factual television production
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  Authors: Emily Rose Coleman
  Abstract: Media, Culture & Society, Ahead of Print.
  This article aims to explore the links between the structural organisation of the television industry and the wellbeing of the ordinary people who take part in its productions. Following a series of high-profile suicides, calls have been made for broadcasters to reconsider their duty of care. New regulations have been initiated in the UK, emphasising the need to risk-assess vulnerable contributors and provide them with psychological support. But these changes have been driven by moral outrage and media criticism rather than empirical research, and a lack of attention has been paid to understanding the views of the participants themselves. Based on in-depth interviews with a sample of 30 documentary contributors and producers, this article will seek to contextualise their experiences within the political economy of TV production, focussing on the impact of five recent developments in relation to working practices, jobs functions, narrative norms, marketing strategies, and the wider media ecology. My argument is that the wellbeing of contributors, producers, and the production environment are all intrinsically connected, and have been fundamentally reshaped by the neo-liberal reorganisation of the industry.
  Citation: Media, Culture & Society
  PubDate: 2023-02-17T12:19:50Z
  DOI: 10.1177/01634437231155347
Crosscurrents: Welfare
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  Authors: Anne Kaun, Stine Lomborg, Christian Pentzold, Doris Alhutter, Karolina Sztandar-Sztanderska
  Abstract: Media, Culture & Society, Ahead of Print.
  In this crosscurrent contribution, we approach the notion of welfare through the lens of the data welfare state. We, further, suggest that datafied welfare can be fruitfully studied with the capabilities approach to better understand how ideas and values of data welfare intersect with and may allow for the ‘good’ life and human flourishing. The main aim is to highlight the deep-seated changes of the welfare state that emerge with the delegation of care and control tasks to algorithmic systems and the automation based on datafication practices. Welfare provision is undergoing major shifts that imply fundamentally rethinking the role of technology that supports and enhances welfare with the help of data.
  Citation: Media, Culture & Society
  PubDate: 2023-02-17T12:08:51Z
  DOI: 10.1177/01634437231154777
Audiences of distant suffering in authoritarian regimes: denial mechanisms
and acts of moral justification
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  Authors: Zhe Xu
  Abstract: Media, Culture & Society, Ahead of Print.
  The study of the audiences of distant suffering in authoritarian regimes has received relatively little scholarly attention. This article begins to ameliorate this gap in knowledge by examining how Chinese audiences legitimise their unresponsiveness to mediated victims of global disasters. Drawing upon data from semi-structured interviews and focus groups with participants (N = 81), the study discusses the dominant regimes of justification which inform audience inactivity, the associated argumentation strategies and patterns of reasoning, and their sociocultural and ideological underpinnings. We find that decision-making about the moral justification for inactivity is influenced by state-propaganda media narratives, preferences for ideologies, perceptions of national identity and global responsibility, and geopolitical imaginations. These findings have implications for expanding the ontological horizons of distant suffering studies that are currently embedded in Western spatial and ideological dimensions, particularly in a world of crises spawned by globalisation and mediatisation.
  Citation: Media, Culture & Society
  PubDate: 2023-02-15T10:41:22Z
  DOI: 10.1177/01634437231155339
Digital dependence: Online fatigue and coping strategies during the
COVID-19 lockdown
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  Authors: Emilie Munch Gregersen, Sofie Læbo Astrupgaard, Malene Hornstrup Jespersen, Tobias Priesholm Gårdhus, Kristoffer Albris
  Abstract: Media, Culture & Society, Ahead of Print.
  As the COVID-19 pandemic lockdowns forced populations across the world to become completely dependent on digital devices for working, studying, and socializing, there has been no shortage of published studies about the possible negative effects of the increased use of digital devices during this exceptional period. In seeking to empirically address how the concern with digital dependency has been experienced during the pandemic, we present findings from a study of daily self-reported logbooks by 59 university students in Copenhagen, Denmark, over 4 weeks in April and May 2020, investigating their everyday use of digital devices. We highlight two main findings. First, students report high levels of online fatigue, expressed as frustration with their constant reliance on digital devices. On the other hand, students found creative ways of using digital devices for maintaining social relations, helping them to cope with isolation. Such online interactions were nevertheless seen as a poor substitute for physical interactions in the long run. Our findings show how the dependence on digital devices was marked by ambivalence, where digital communication was seen as both the cure against, and cause of, feeling isolated and estranged from a sense of normality.
  Citation: Media, Culture & Society
  PubDate: 2023-02-11T12:38:58Z
  DOI: 10.1177/01634437231154781
Why so serious' Studying humor on the right
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  Authors: AJ Bauer
  Abstract: Media, Culture & Society, Ahead of Print.
  This essay reviews two new books examining different aspects of right-wing humor, “The Souls of White Jokes” (Stanford University Press, 2022) by Raúl Pérez and “That’s Not Funny” (University of California Press, 2022) by Matt Sienkiewicz and Nick Marx. It puts these works into conversation with a longer tendency within right-wing studies to focus on media content and motivations within a negative affective range. By focusing on the positive emotions associated with white supremacy and right-wing media, these books mark an important turning point away from reductionist accounts of the “reactionary mind” and toward a fuller understanding of the complex and contingent motivations of conservatives.
  Citation: Media, Culture & Society
  PubDate: 2023-02-11T12:37:59Z
  DOI: 10.1177/01634437231154779
Chatting with the dead: the hermeneutics of thanabots
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  Authors: Leah Henrickson
  Abstract: Media, Culture & Society, Ahead of Print.
  In 2021, the San Francisco Chronicle released a feature article about a man who chose to resurrect his deceased fiancée by training a chatbot system built on OpenAI’s GPT language models on her old digital messages. He then had emotional conversations with this chatbot, which appeared to accurately mimic the deceased’s writing style. This case study raises questions about the communicative influences of thanabots: chatbots trained on data of the dead. While thanabots are clearly not living conversational partners, the rhetoric, everyday experiences, and emotions associated with these system have very real implications for living users. This paper applies a lifeworld perspective to consider the hermeneutics of thanabots. It shows that thanabots exist in a long lineage of efforts to communicate with the dead, but acknowledges that thanatechnologies must be more thoroughly studied for better understanding of what it means to die in a digital age.
  Citation: Media, Culture & Society
  PubDate: 2023-01-23T05:47:09Z
  DOI: 10.1177/01634437221147626
The platformization of misogyny: Popular media, gender politics, and
misogyny in China’s state-market nexus
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  Authors: Sara Liao
  Abstract: Media, Culture & Society, Ahead of Print.
  This study aims to map out the popular phenomenon of misogyny in the specific techno-social configuration buttressed by China’s state-market nexus. With a case study of a controversy involving the standup comedian Yang Li and the luxury car brand Mercedes-Benz on the microblogging platform Weibo, I highlight the ‘platformization of misogyny.’ The conceptualization refers to the way that a platform is evoked as tools to manufacture and amplify misogyny. Weibo has this effect both through its design, features, and algorithmic shaping of sociality and through its users’ appropriation of its affordances. On top of that, the platform also engenders a form of governance that is deeply enmeshed in the commercialization of internet opinion, suggesting a techno-nationalist mode of state control that is exercised from afar and deeply imbued with patriarchal and misogynistic characteristics.
  Citation: Media, Culture & Society
  PubDate: 2023-01-16T05:16:21Z
  DOI: 10.1177/01634437221146905
The establishing of subject positions in Swedish news media discourses
during the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic
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  Authors: Annica Lövenmark, Jonas Stier, Helena Blomberg
  Abstract: Media, Culture & Society, Ahead of Print.
  The COVID-19 pandemic has dominated the global media since 2020. To a large extent, it is via the news media that the public has learned about the risks, levels of danger, governmental regulations and mandatory actions. This article highlights the subject positions constructed by the Swedish news media from January 2020 to February 2021 in reports about the pandemic. The result shows that citizens can be active-passive or solitary solidarity, these positions appeal to individual accountability, thus potentially shaping and fostering citizens in line with the Swedish government’s wider response to the pandemic. The news media’s images are of self-regulated citizens who govern and discipline themselves and others according to the current discourses, all of which simultaneously evoke fear, togetherness and hope. The ideological dilemmas for citizens are whether to be active-passive or, if necessary, switch to the solitary solidarity subject position.
  Citation: Media, Culture & Society
  PubDate: 2023-01-12T11:17:57Z
  DOI: 10.1177/01634437221147636
On losing the “dispensable” sense: TikTok imitation publics and
COVID-19 smell loss challenges
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  Authors: Adrianna Grace Michell
  Abstract: Media, Culture & Society, Ahead of Print.
  The enduring effects of COVID-19 have called into question many of the assumptions upon which media and cultural studies rest, including a fundamental mode of perception: the sense of smell. In dialog with the field of sensory studies, this paper traces digital smell loss (anosmia) communities from pre-pandemic Facebook groups to mid-pandemic TikTok challenges. This article considers digital smell loss communities on TikTok as imitation publics characterized by repetition. Via replicable TikTok challenges, digital smell-loss communities reckoned with the unmooring effects of a seemingly mild symptom. By exploring how formulaic smell-loss challenges generated support and facilitated community-building, this article demands greater attention to a sense often considered ‘disposable’.
  Citation: Media, Culture & Society
  PubDate: 2023-01-12T11:14:57Z
  DOI: 10.1177/01634437221146904
Oppression by omission: An analysis of the #WhereIsTheInterpreter hashtag
campaign around COVID-19 on Twitter
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  Authors: Tahleen A Lattimer, Yotam Ophir
  Abstract: Media, Culture & Society, Ahead of Print.
  Critical to managing a crisis such as COVID-19 is the propagation of information to all vulnerable populations. Despite guidelines regarding communicating with people with differing accessibility needs during crises, some often find their needs unmet. Following a lack of assisted communications for d/Deaf people during the COVID-19 pandemic, a Twitter hashtag campaign, #WhereIsTheInterpreter, was launched in the UK, protesting the lack of accessibility during official press briefings around the epidemic. The campaign received support from across the globe. This study analyzes the discourse around the campaign in tweets published from March 1st, 2020 and September 30th, 2021 (N = 27,021) and analyzed the corpus using the Analysis of Topic Model Network (ANTMN) approach. We identified four major themes of discourse: discrimination, accessibility challenges, communication gaps and barriers, and Deaf rights. We analyze the discourse through the perspective of Critical Disability Theory (CDT) and hashtag activism, and discuss practical and theoretical implications.
  Citation: Media, Culture & Society
  PubDate: 2022-12-26T12:00:56Z
  DOI: 10.1177/01634437221135977
Functions of background music among prisoners and staff in the Chinese
prison workplace
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  Authors: Xiaoye Zhang
  Abstract: Media, Culture & Society, Ahead of Print.
  Music listening is one of the most popular leisure activities in our lives, and it can also be found in prisons across the globe. However, most research on music in prison are concerned with its rehabilitative functions and not as an everyday activity. This study collected qualitative questionnaires and interview data from 14 prisons to illustrate the soundscape of music listening in Chinese prisons. The main access to music listening happens at the workspace and it is only available in the form of background music. This study considers the various functions of background music for both prisoners and officers. Music curation and access are about power and control, and it reveals a mostly hierarchical yet also dynamic pattern in the Chinese staff–prisoner relationship. Listening to music has also been found to be one of the coping mechanisms for officers and prisoners who share similar working conditions where conformity to authority is inevitable for all.
  Citation: Media, Culture & Society
  PubDate: 2022-12-24T11:15:46Z
  DOI: 10.1177/01634437221140520
The remains of the disappeared: digital melancholia and Ensaaf (justice)
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  Authors: Shruti Devgan
  Abstract: Media, Culture & Society, Ahead of Print.
  In March 2019, Ensaaf, a transnational, non-profit organization, launched the project of daily posts on their social media pages consisting of remains or traces of disappeared Sikhs (an ethnoreligious minority community in India and the diaspora), that is, their photographs and biographical details. In this paper, I reflect on the meanings implicit in Ensaaf’s daily work of remembering and circulating remains of the disappearance on social media, specifically Facebook. By creating an archive that circulates regularly and frequently in and through social media, Ensaaf is performing what I call digital melancholia: continuous and ongoing grief work. The medium in which Ensaaf enacts its melancholic attachment with the disappeared leaves its imprint on the meaning of the performance itself. The daily work of melancholia performed in the constantly evolving space of Facebook is a form of “epistemic resistance” against the Indian state’s “necropolitics.”
  Citation: Media, Culture & Society
  PubDate: 2022-12-23T11:14:08Z
  DOI: 10.1177/01634437221140523
An autoethnography of automated powerlessness: lacking platform
affordances in Instagram and TikTok account deletions
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  Authors: Carolina Are
  Abstract: Media, Culture & Society, Ahead of Print.
  Situated within the field of platform governance studies, this paper shares findings from an ‘autoethnography of automated powerlessness’, drawing from the researcher’s disempowering experience of being a heavily moderated social media user. Using theoretical frameworks blending affordances and World Risk Society theories, this paper contextualises my experiences of moderation of my pole dance instructor, activist and blogger account @bloggeronpole from February to October 2021 within social media’s broader de-platforming of nudity and sexuality, finding fallacies within platforms’ own affordances, which lack mechanisms to aid or rehabilitate de-platformed accounts. With little to no information from platforms about the details of their moderation, qualitative, ethnographic and autoethnographic explorations of their governance are all users currently have to fight and understand their puritan, patriarchal censorship of nudity and sexuality, which are often conflated with risk. This study concludes with recommendations for different options for better, more equal and community focused moderation.
  Citation: Media, Culture & Society
  PubDate: 2022-12-12T11:00:36Z
  DOI: 10.1177/01634437221140531
Legalization of press control under democratic backsliding: The case of
post-national security law Hong Kong
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  Authors: Francis LF Lee, Chi-kit Chan
  Abstract: Media, Culture & Society, Ahead of Print.
  During democratic backsliding, the state can curtail press freedom through the legalization of press control, that is, the establishment and utilization of legal instruments for the purpose of controlling the media and journalistic work. Drawing upon the literature on authoritarian rule of law, this article emphasizes that legalization of press control has to be examined by paying attention to both the conspicuous and subtle measures that constitute the legal minefield for journalism, the evolution of official discourses that aim at legitimizing the laws and their implementation, and the changing politics of self-censorship as journalists and the society react to emerging legal risks. The empirical analysis focuses on Hong Kong after the establishment of the National Security Law in June 2020. The article offers an updated analytical account of press freedom in Hong Kong and the conceptualization of a process possibly observable in other authoritarian states or hybrid regimes.
  Citation: Media, Culture & Society
  PubDate: 2022-12-02T06:51:12Z
  DOI: 10.1177/01634437221140525
‘They don’t need us’: affective precarity and critique in
transnational media work from the margins of ‘Cultural China’
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  Authors: Siao Yuong Fong
  Abstract: Media, Culture & Society, Ahead of Print.
  Creative labour studies has yielded much critical insights from workers’ experiences of ‘precarity’ and ‘self-exploitation’ with increasing neo-liberalization. This important work’s overwhelming focus on the critique of neoliberalism based on Euro American case studies risk overlooking insights that can be gained from other socio-geopolitical contexts. Drawing on a mix of ethnographic observations and interviews with transnational media producers in Singapore working at the margins of the mainland Chinese media industry, this paper teases out how intersecting cultural, economic and geopolitical power relations manifest in transnational creative labour working under the shadows of both the West and a rising China. Expanding on conceptions of emotional labour and precarity as serving neoliberal structures, I highlight how these producers’ experiences go beyond the economic connotations of precarity to capture what I call affective precarity – a felt sense of spatial-temporal dissonance confronting marginalized media workers. I also consider how such emotional labour can constitute a form of critique.
  Citation: Media, Culture & Society
  PubDate: 2022-12-01T06:30:56Z
  DOI: 10.1177/01634437221140478
Scrutinising South African media companies’ strategies for Generation
Z’s news consumption
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  Authors: Lucky Brian Dlamini, Glenda Daniels
  Abstract: Media, Culture & Society, Ahead of Print.
  This research scrutinises the strategies that three of South Africa’s largest mainstream media companies, namely, Media24, Independent News and Media, and Arena Holdings use to attract younger audiences, particularly Generation Z. The main question under focus is: Are South African media companies innovating adequately in their news media content and platforms to attract young audiences' The research examines the issue from both the discourses of the digital news editors of the media companies and a sample of young people interviewed about their news consumption. The rationale for this study is that Generation Z as active users of the various forms of the media have the potential to influence the way in which the media package and disseminate news. Therefore, it is important to study this rising segment of audiences as young people’s consumption behaviour and spending patterns shape the businesses of media institutions to adjust their news strategies quickly.
  Citation: Media, Culture & Society
  PubDate: 2022-11-12T06:08:30Z
  DOI: 10.1177/01634437221135979
Decolonising public service television in Aotearoa New Zealand: telling
better stories about Indigenous rurality
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  Authors: Susan Fountaine, Sandy Bulmer, Farah Palmer, Lisa Chase
  Abstract: Media, Culture & Society, Ahead of Print.
  In settler-colonial countries like Aotearoa New Zealand, television programmes about rurality are fundamentally entwined with the nation’s colonial history, but how this context impacts on locally made, public service television content and production is seldom examined. Utilising data collected from interviews with programme makers and a novel bi-cultural friendship pair methodology, we examine how a high-rating mainstream programme, Country Calendar, conceptualises and delivers stories about Indigenous Māori and consider the extent to which these stories represent a decolonising of television narratives about rurality. The findings highlight the importance of incorporating Indigenous voices and values, the impact of structural limitations and staffing constraints on public service television’s decolonising aspirations, and challenges reconciling settler-colonialism with the show’s well-established ‘rosy glow’. While rural media are often overlooked by communication scholars, our study demonstrates the contributions they might make to the larger task of decolonising storytelling about national identity.
  Citation: Media, Culture & Society
  PubDate: 2022-10-25T11:36:11Z
  DOI: 10.1177/01634437221127363
Ideal technologies, ideal women: AI and gender imaginaries in Redditors’
discussions on the Replika bot girlfriend
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  Authors: Iliana Depounti, Paula Saukko, Simone Natale
  Abstract: Media, Culture & Society, Ahead of Print.
  There is extensive literature on how expectations and imaginaries about artificial intelligence (AI) guide media and policy discussions. However, it has not been considered how such imaginaries are activated when users interact with AI technologies. We present findings of a study on how users on a subreddit discussed ‘training’ their Replika bot girlfriend. The discussions featured two discursive themes that focused on the AI imaginary of ideal technology and the gendered imaginary of the ideal bot girlfriend. Users expected their AI Replikas to both be customizable to serve their needs and to have a human-like or sassy mind of their own and not spit out machine-like answers. Users thus projected dominant notions of male control over technology and women, mixed with AI and postfeminist fantasies of ostensible independence onto the interactional agents and activated similar scripts embedded in the devices. The vicious feedback loop consolidated dominant scripts on gender and technology whilst appearing novel and created by users. While most research on the use of AI is conducted in applied computer science to improve user experience, this article outlines a media and cultural studies lens for a critical understanding of these emerging technologies as they become embedded in communication and meaning-making.
  Citation: Media, Culture & Society
  PubDate: 2022-08-20T06:32:15Z
  DOI: 10.1177/01634437221119021
Between existential mobility and intimacy 5.0: translocal care in pandemic
times
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  Authors: Earvin Charles B Cabalquinto, Monika Büscher
  Abstract: Media, Culture & Society, Ahead of Print.
  The COVID-19 pandemic has reconfigured every social, political, economic and cultural aspect of modern society. Millions of people have been stuck in lockdown within and across borders, national and regional terrains, in their homes and worse places. At this time of unprecedented change and ‘stuckedness’, digital communication technologies have served as a lifeline to forge and nurture communication, intimate ties and a sense of continuity and belongingness. But being stuck and simultaneously virtually mobile has brought many difficulties, tensions and paradoxes. In this paper we discuss first insights from a study with 15 members of the older Culturally and Linguistically Diverse (CALD) population in Victoria, Australia to explore experiences of being physically stuck and virtually mobile. We find practices of translocal care – ways of caring for distant others through digital technologies, has been made more complex by the pandemic and shaped by two dynamics: networked collective ‘existential mobility’, and a quantification of feeling that we call ‘intimacy 5.0’.
  Citation: Media, Culture & Society
  PubDate: 2022-08-16T10:07:45Z
  DOI: 10.1177/01634437221119295