Media and Cultural Studies

The female terrorist circulates within contemporary Western culture as an object of fascination and heightened concern. Gender and the Political analyses cultural constructions of the female terrorist, arguing that she operates as a limit case of both feminine and feminist agency. Drawing on an interdisciplinary theoretical framework, this book demonstrates that the development of the discourse on terrorism evolves in parallel with, and in response to, radical feminism in the US in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Situated at the borderlines between sexuality, threat and abjection, Amanda Third argues that the figure of the female terrorist compels a reexamination of the project of radical politics and the limits of modernity.

http://www.palgrave.com/page/detail/gender-and-the-political-amanda-third/?K=9781137402752

"A fascinating exploration of the historical twinning of terrorism and feminism in the U.S. By redirecting our attention to these important discourses emerging in the 60's and 70s, this book provides a crucial corrective to counter post 9/11 anxieties that continually project the terrorist as somehow coming from elsewhere." - Jasbir K. Puar, Associate Professor of Women's and Gender Studies, Rutgers University, USA

"Amanda Third's Gender and the Political convincingly argues that the modern concepts of terrorism and feminism are historically and conceptually interwoven. The book does this by reading terrorism studies against the grain while simultaneously positioning the concept of terrorism as a central trope of postmodern thought. These two discourses - the former increasingly foundational to, the latter highly critical of, the modern state and social order - are placed in fruitful conversation with one another, resulting in a deeply illuminating study of the contemporary political terrain in the United States." - Mehmet Döşemeci, Assistant Professor of History, Bucknell University, USA

This article addresses the recent attempts to integrate evolutionary history in the US national narrative. Focusing on the cultural, legal, and scientific controversy over Kennewick Man, the ancient human remains discovered in Washington state in 1996, the article explores the narrative politics of American national belonging. Through a popular historical novel on Kennewick Man's life, the article further theorizes nostalgia as a narrative tool in imagining the evolutionary origins of the nation. The article argues that nostalgia produces a temporal dynamic that bridges the gap between national history and global prehistory, and that this dynamic is reinforced through cultural ideas of genetic knowledge. At the same time, prehistoric nostalgia renders problematic ideas of ethnic difference largely invisible.

La Guerra Civil española es una cuestión sin agotar. Entre sus consecuencias se encuentra el impacto que ésta tuvo en la memoria de varias generaciones. Sin embargo, el estudio de la memoria social y de sus representaciones sobre la guerra y la dictadura franquista no ha recibido la atención necesaria por parte de la historiografía, la sociología, los estudios culturales y los de comunicación. No obstante, ochenta años después de la contienda española, son múltiples y variopintas las producciones culturales producidas bajo el paraguas de la posmemoria o memoria de segunda y tercera generación.

Los ensayos reunidos en este volumen se aproximan, desde un prisma interdisciplinar, a un corpus amplio y heterogéneo de producciones contemporáneas sobre la memoria en la España actual: trabajos literarios, visuales y audiovisuales que incluyen desde novelas a series de televisión, pasando por cómics, textos dramatúrgicos, programas radiofónicos, documentales, cortometrajes de ficción y producciones transmedia. Todos ellos proponen una mirada al pasado de España desde la distancia generacional, pero también subrayan la recuperación de lo traumático o lo nostálgico para nuestro presente.

Posmemoria de la Guerra Civil y el Franquismo aporta nuevas perspectivas acerca de la memoria colectiva, contribuyendo a repensar los modos en que ésta se construye y recrea, destacando el papel esencial que los medios de comunicación y la producción cultural juegan en la conformación de la memoria del pasado entre las generaciones.

This book illuminates the rhetorical work performed by contemporary representations of a specific type of postfeminist hero who has garnered a lot of cultural capital: women who are smart, capable, physically agile and fit, and proficient with weaponry and technology. Employing critical/cultural and feminist approaches, Heather Hundley, Roberta Chevrette, and Hillary Jones engage with a range of theories including intersectionality, critical race theory, postmodernism, and posthumanism to examine a range of contemporary texts, including Kill Bill, Volumes I and II; The Hunger Games films; Wonder Woman; Atomic Blonde; Proud Mary; The Bionic Woman; Deus Ex; Dark Matter; and Caprica. Contributing to a robust existing conversation about postfeminist media as well as tracing how representation has changed in recent years, Hundley, Chevrette, and Jones contend that portrayals of dangerous dames offer limitations and opportunities for audiences. Specifically, should audiences read these characters as evidence of a postfeminist apocalypse, they may heed warnings of the limited interpretations offered. Yet as more women serve as role models and gain public attention, particularly regarding their assets and abilities, they provide important equipment for living for navigating around patriarchal constraints raised by postfeminism, neoliberalism, and humanism.

Available at:
-Peter Lang
https://www.peterlang.com/document/1057643
-Amazon
https://www.amazon.com/Dangerous-Dames-Representing-Female-Bodied-Postfeminist/dp/1433163012

This  dissertation  provides  an  examination  of  the  cultural  significance  of  mannequins during the interwar years. As women grew increasingly visible outside of domestic roles subsequent  to  the  First  World  War  and  emerging  trends  for  streamlined  and  practical fashion posed an assault on traditional ideals of femininity, this thesis questions why it was  that  mannequins  became  suddenly  more  realistic  than  those  seen  in  previous decades.

Published by Cognella Academic Publishing (San Diego), ISBN 978-1-7935-2153-8. Previous editions have been adopted at 10 universities and colleges.

"Media Environments: Using Movies and Texts to Critique Media and Society" uses popular film as a gateway to critical readings, encouraging students to think creatively and critically about media, society, technology, and popular culture.

The text anthology explores media in their totality and provides models and theories for interrogating many universal themes that span media, technology, and planetary civilization. Using popular films about media as lead-ins, students are introduced to the works of well-known thinkers and writers such as Marshall McLuhan, Charlton D. McIlwain, Shoshanna Zuboff, Julia Hildebrand, Neil deGrasse Tyson, Devon Powers, Antonio Lopez, and many others. Chapters span interconnected topics:

Memes (original meaning),
Networks (McLuhan),
Spectacle (Debord),
Hyperreality (Baudrillard).

Capitalism and Consumerism,
Freedom and Protest,
Social-Mobile Media,
Ecology and the Anthropocene,
Science and Our Place in the Universe,
Pseudoscience and Conspiracy,
Celebrity and Superheroes,
New Concepts of "Hot" and "Cool" Media,
Land Art, Dark Skies, and Technological Civilization.

The fourth edition features 19 new readings that explore Afrofuturism in Black Panther, Avatar and global media ecosystems, Hollywood and climate change, Blade Runner 2049 and future earth scenarios, Avengers and environmental advocacy, #BlackLivesMatter and Black movements in digital culture, and the International Dark Sky movement as a radical media-tech philosophy. Intellectually rigorous and thematically diverse, Media Environments is ideal for courses and programs in media and/or communication studies.

İletişim olgusu, toplumsal bir varlık olan insan için her dönem önemli bir konuma sahip olmuştur. Tarihin ilk dönemlerinden itibaren doğa ile iç içe yaşayan insan beslenme, barınma ve korunma gibi temel ihtiyaçlarını giderirken iletişim kurmaya çabalamıştır. İletişim her dönem insanların hayatlarını biçimlendirmiş, yaşayışlarına yön vermiştir. Toplumsal dönüşümü hızlandıran ve sosyalleşmeyi biçimlendiren iletişim olgusu, medyanın etkisiyle birlikte daha zengin bir yapıya kavuşmuştur. Geleneksel medyadan yeni medyaya dönüşüm sürecinde iletişim teknolojileri etkisini derinden hissettirmiş ve içinde yaşadığımız dönem “medya çağı” olarak ifade edilmeye başlamıştır. İletişim bugün gerek sokakta, gerek evde izlediğimiz televizyonlarda, gerek sanal ortamda ve gerekse de reel hayatımızda vazgeçemediğimiz olgular arasında yer almaktadır. 23 farklı çalışmadan oluşan bu kitap, altı farklı kategoride bulunan bilimsel çalışmaları kapsamaktadır. Bu kategoriler sırasıyla; “Halkla İlişkiler ve Medya”, “Bilişim ve Medya”, “Sinema ve Medya”, “Sanat ve Medya”, “Kültür ve Medya”, “Siyasal İletişim ve Medya”dır.

1924 kam Greta Garbo aus Stockholm nach Berlin, um in dem Großfilm der Trianon, DIE ODALISKE VON SMOLNY unter der Regie von Mauritz Stiller mitzuwirken. Kaum weniger spektakulär als der Plot dieses Films war der Skandal, der sich um die Produktion des schwedischen Stars drehte und Garbos deutsche Karriere vorzeitig beendete. Bilder vom Norden erzählt die Geschichte der spannungsvollen Beziehung zweier Filmnationen, die Weltgeltung beanspruchten und mehr als einmal miteinander in Konflikt gerieten.

In diesem Buch wird erstmals der Stellenwert der audiovisuellen Medien für die Herstellung und Popularisierung von Wissen aufgezeigt. Der historische Rahmen der Studie erstreckt sich dabei von den kinematographischen Bewegungsstudien in Psychiatrie und Physiologie Ende des 19. Jahrhunderts bis zum Einsatz von Video in den sozialpsychologischen Experimenten der 1970er Jahre. Mit dem Gebrauch von Bewegtbildern zu Zwecken der Kontrolle, Aufzeichnung und Demonstration veränderte sich die gesamte Experimentalkultur der Wissenschaft. Vor dem Hintergrund flexibler medienkultureller Kontexte transformiert sich das Labor zusehends in ein Filmstudio des Wissens, in welchem die Versuchsanordnung am Storyboard entworfen, die epistemischen Gegenstände in Szene gesetzt und die Probanden gecastet werden.

Article link: https://read.dukeupress.edu/environmental-humanities/article/11/1/216/138278/Toxic-BodiesTicks-Trans-Bodies-and-the-Ethics-of


Tracing ticks in two different artworks and Leslie Feinberg’s activist writing, I take my lead in this article from philosopher Donna Haraway and her suggestion to think about engagement with the environment through an “ethics of response-ability.” By deploying close readings, I will discuss the affects represented in the video installation Act on Instinct (2013) by Elin Magnusson, a sequence of the film Something Must Break (2014) by Ester Martin Bergsmark, and blog entries from the “Lyme Series” by the late trans activist Leslie Feinberg. Through these works, I explore the meaning of this correlation between ticks and transing bodies for environmental ethics as well as for the forging of livable lives for trans people. Toxicity surfaces as a link in these works. The notion of feminist figuration, developed by philosopher Rosi Braidotti among others, allows me to discuss toxicity as a material-discursive figuration, which highlights how human societies in a western context approach the body of the Other, in this case the transgender body as a human-Other and the tick as animal-Other. As a figuration, toxicity then becomes a shared meeting site that helps to problematize the western pathologization of trans bodies and asks what ethics emerge in this proximity between ticks and trans bodies. Toxicity exists in the discussed works in particular as a complex material-discursive trajectory. Although some discourses on toxicity uphold social hierarchies and racist assumptions, as illustrated by Mel Y. Chen, for example, the works here seem to reappropriate the status of the toxic body as a strategy for adjustment and alliance and a site of ethical engagement with the world. The tick will be my guide in weaving together stories of different bodies and of what Deborah Bird Rose and Thom van Dooren call the “unloved other.”

This book chapter, published as part of the edited volume "Empirical Comics Research (Routledge, 2018), puts forward a quantitative approach to the study of comics by introducing a stylistic analysis of a corpus of around 240 graphic novels, graphic memoirs and other non-fiction.

Making News at The New York Times is the first in-depth portrait of the nation’s, if not the world's, premier newspaper in the digital age. It presents a lively chronicle of months spent in the newsroom observing daily conversations, meetings, and journalists at work. We see Page One meetings, articles developed for online and print from start to finish, the creation of ambitious multimedia projects, and the ethical dilemmas posed by social media in the newsroom. Here, the reality of creating news in a 24/7 instant information environment clashes with the storied history of print journalism, and the tensions present a dramatic portrait of news in the online world. This news ethnography brings to bear the overarching value clashes at play in a digital news world. The book argues that emergent news values are reordering the fundamental processes of news production. Immediacy, interactivity, and participation now play a role unlike any time before, creating clashes between old and new. These values emerge from the social practices, pressures, and norms at play inside the newsroom as journalists attempt to negotiate the new demands of their work. Immediacy forces journalists to work in a constant deadline environment, an ASAP world, but one where the vaunted traditions of yesterday's news still appear in the next day's print paper. Interactivity, inspired by the new user-computer directed capacities online and the immersive Web environment, brings new kinds of specialists into the newsroom, but exacts new demands upon the already taxed workflow of traditional journalists. And at time where social media presents the opportunity for new kinds of engagement between the audience and media, business executives hope for branding opportunities while journalists fail to truly interact with their readers. Please note, I have posted the full proof here, but please consider buying the book if you make extensive use of it.  Thanks a lot.

There are more types of borders today than ever before in history. Borders of all kinds define every aspect of social life in the twenty-first century. From the biometric data that divides the smallest aspects of our bodies to the aerial drones that patrol the immense expanse of our domestic and international airspace, we are defined by borders. They can no longer simply be understood as the geographical divisions between nation-states. Today, their form and function has become too complex, too hybrid. What we need now is a theory of the border that can make sense of this hybridity across multiple domains of social life.

Rather than viewing borders as the result or outcome of pre-established social entities like states, Thomas Nail reinterprets social history from the perspective of the continual and constitutive movement of the borders that organize and divide society in the first place. Societies and states are the products of bordering, Nail argues, not the other way around. Applying his original movement-oriented theoretical framework "kinopolitics" to several major historical border regimes (fences, walls, cells, and checkpoints), Theory of the Border pioneers a new methodology of "critical limology," that provides fresh tools for the analysis of contemporary border politics.

This PDF includes Chapters 1 and 2 of the innovative text anthology, designed for use in Media Studies courses, especially large lecture courses like "Media and Society."
-- The book combines movies and texts to introduce students to critical media studies. Accessible and readable, the book is well-liked by students. Topics include the Spectacle, Hyperreality, the Global Village, Social/Mobile Media, Capitalism and Counterculture, Surveillance and Privacy, Ecology and the Anthropocene, Media and Science, Media Futures, the Meme (original version from Dawkins), and many others.
-- Upon adoption, I will provide handouts, syllabus, PPTs.
-- Published by Cognella.  https://titles.cognella.com/media-environments-9781516521104

Die Deutsche Bibliothek verzeichnet diese publikation in der Deutschen NationaJbibliografie, detaillierte bibliografische Daten sind im Internet über http://dnb.d-nb.de abrufbar. Das süerk ist einsctriießlich aller seiner Teire urheberrechtrich geschützt. Jede V-erwenung außerhalb der engen Grenzen des Urheberrechtsgesetzes ist ohne. Zustimmung d-es verlages un-zulässig und st."fb.t. o". gilt insbesondere frir VervielfäJtigungen, überseüung€n, Mii<ro'verfilmurg", ,.rd I. Einspeichemng und Verarbeitung in elekrronis&en Systemen.

Si è cercato, attraverso l’analisi delle interviste contenute all’interno della Notte della Repubblica, non solo di analizzare le risposte alle domande che un Paese intero ha posto ai terroristi attraverso la voce di Zavoli, ma anche di rintracciare una contro-narrazione, di tener conto dell’eterogeneità delle voci degli intervistati. Fornire nuove proposte interpretative e modificare la struttura narrativa accettata dall’opinione pubblica su questo periodo è possibile solo attraverso una rilettura che preveda lo spostamento del focus verso le storie individuali. Questa scelta permette di isolare una piccola parte dell’intreccio degli eventi, sottrarli alla cristallizzazione e ricondurli alla difficoltà del reale.

ABSTRACT How does information become power, who gains and who loses, and what are the implications of this process? As much of the information we produce today is available to very few global companies and governments it is crucial to develop new concepts and modify the existing theories on information and power. Drawing on the political economy of communication, sociology and information science literature, this paper introduces an analytical framework to understand the mechanisms through which information is turned into power and their social and cultural implications. Volume is defined as the informational resources – the amount and diversity of information and the people producing it. Control is described through two competing and complementary mechanisms: popularization (information relevant to most people), and personalization (information relevant to each individual person). The main argument is that the ability to transform information into power requires controlling the interaction between the growing volume of people and information by balancing popularization and personalization mechanisms. This framework is then applied to demonstrate Google’s monopoly of knowledge, its PageRank algorithm, and its inevitable commercial and cultural biases around the world.

The article discusses the production of live television formats, as they have developed in Europe during the past decade. The analytical examples are taken from entertainment as well as factual television, and from public service as well as commercial contexts. In the article, it is argued that there has been an approximation between the textual features and generic and narrative structures of entertainment and factual live television, and a model is presented that is supposed to account for these narrative patterns.

The focus of this comparative, pan-Iberian study is on the negotiation of identity and hybrid cultural production in early twenty-first-century Spain and Portugal. I identify here two subgenres of indie and electronic music scenes and analyze how the handful of musicians that comprise these burgeoning movements are fighting to keep their respective national cultural traditions alive in the face of iTunes, mp3s, and P2P filesharing that have universalized a certain form of pop music which cuts across languages and cultures. The hybrid musicians I interviewed for this project combine flamenco or fado with a variety of indie sounds: rock, pop, power pop, hip hop, trip hop, post punk, spaghetti western, shoegaze, or experimental electronic. The end result is a musical production which simultaneously attempts to voice their nationality as well as their generation. They are the torchbearers of tradition for an Iberian generation raised on The Velvet Underground, David Bowie, The Clash, The Replacements, Nirvana, and The Strokes. Their music references these and other global indie bands alongside those of twentieth century Iberian urban folk icons--Bambino, Camarón de la Isla, Enrique Morente, Amália Rodrigues, Alfredo Marceneiro, and Carlos do Carmo. I have developed a framework with which to contextualize and conceptualize the various issues addressed by these bands: authenticity, globalization, nostalgia, cultural capital, national-gender identity, and the economic crisis plaguing contemporary Europe.

The book focuses on the breakup of the Yugoslav Federation and wars that followed viewed through the comic art in the local and international press. War propaganda and political discourse are examined and placed in the larger historical context of this conflict. The study reveals that Yugoslav cartoonists anticipated, as early as 1984, the disintegration of the country and were forecasting armed conflict in 1989. Using print media and comic art as a primary source of investigation, the author has presented the mental representation of the war as seen in press cartoons, both chronologically and thematically. A representative sampling of some 400 cartoons (out of a database of almost 7’500) and dozens of interviews undertaken with political cartoonists in the 1990s are quoted in the book as a primary source.

"Le basi teoriche della Sociosemiotica e le sue applicazioni nell'analisi di film, programmi e canali televisivi, pubblicità e opere di videoarte.

Sociosemiotics theories and their application to the analysis of films, tv programmes and tv channels, advertising and video art."

The article discusses the production of live television formats, as they have developed in Europe during the past decade. The analytical examples are taken from entertainment as well as factual television, and from public service as well as commercial contexts. In the article, it is argued that there has been an approximation between the textual features and generic and narrative structures of entertainment and factual live television, and a model is presented that is supposed to account for these narrative patterns.

Millions of people around the world today use digital tools and platforms to create and share sophisticated cultural artifacts. This book focuses on one such platform: Instagram. It places Instagram image culture within a rich cultural and historical context, including history of photography, cinema, graphic design, and social media, contemporary design trends, music video, and k-pop. At the same it uses Instagram as a window into the identities of first truly global generation connected by common social media platforms, programming languages, and visual aesthetics. The book demonstrates how humanistic close reading and computational analysis of large datasets can work together by drawing on the work in Manovich's Cultural Analytics Lab with 16 million Instagram photos shared in 17 large cities worldwide since 2012.

A relação entre a política e a mídia sempre foi muito intensa. E, ao que tudo indica, a tensão entre ambos será cada vez maior, uma vez que a mídia ocupa um espaço mais significativo e passa a exercer um papel protagonista neste processo, ou seja, a mídia passa a tecer decisões e criar sentidos que perpassam a sociedade, deixando de ser apenas enunciadora dos acontecimentos. Com isso, o poder político (e seus atores) entra em crise, pois precisam se adequar aos modos de saber, de ser e de fazer do universo midiático. Nesse contexto, em 2010, uma candidata à Presidência da República, que tem o apoio especial do presidente Lula, aparece como um elemento de afirmação da mulher no lugar de disputa pelo poder.
O objetivo não é refletir sobre a qualidade do que está sendo representado pela mídia, e sim desvendar os processos simbólicos de representação, aquilo que está sendo criado, reelaborado, reaproveitado. Assim, desvendamos as “operações de sentido” colocadas em prática pelos jornais analisados.
No posfácio é feita uma breve leitura do momento que antecede as eleições de 2014, buscando relações com a eleição anterior e atualizando as representações de Dilma Rousseff para 2014.
Este livro é resultado da tese de doutoramento defendida na Unisinos, intitulada “Dilma Rousseff como candidata à presidência: estratégias midiáticas de Zero Hora (RS) e Folha de S. Paulo (RS)”.

Given the prominence of Muslim veils—in particular the hijab and full-face veil—in public discourse concerning the place of Muslims in Western society, we examined their impact on non-Muslims’ responses at both explicit and implicit levels. Results revealed that responses were more negative toward any veil compared with no veil, and more negative toward the full-face veil relative to the hijab: for emotions felt toward veiled women (Study 1), for non-affective attitudinal responses (Study 2), and for implicit negative attitudes revealed through response latency measures (Studies 3a and 3b). Finally, we manipulated the perceived reasons for wearing a veil, finding that exposure to positive reasons for wearing a veil led to better predicted and imagined contact (Study 4). Practical and theoretical implications are discussed.

This dissertation analyzes the postfeminist tendencies and biopolitics in contemporary media practices by considering the pop culture exemplar, the Kardashian-Jenner family.

This dissertation received First Class Honors from Trinity College Dublin.
Vanessa graduated with Distinction in B.A. English Literature and Media Studies.

Before the former Yugoslavia was divided by wars, its inhabitants successfully lived side by side in peace. This collection seeks to explain how former neighbors became enemies, with the hope that understanding what drove these peoples apart will help us discover ways for them to coexist in peace again.Contributors analyze political cartoons, psychiatry, the arts, visual media, and law to present a diversity of views on the conflicts in Yugoslavia. While the chapters in this book deal with regional developments, they are not so much focused on politics as they are concerned with how values and attitudes are altered and new identities formed. Thus, this volume goes beyond recent journalistic accounts and should remain relevant for years to come.This book began as a special issue of the journal Anthropology of East Europe Review. Most of the contributors to that issue have revised their chapters for this collection, and new chapters have been added, including one on the recent war in Kosovo. Essays range across all of former Yugoslavia, emphasizing the variability and diversity of ethnic relations throughout its history: Joel M. Halpern & David A. Kideckel (eds.)

C’è almeno un aspetto della generale prassi antagonista esercitata dal movimento autonomo italiano degli anni settanta che, ancora oggi, meriterebbe un’attenzione critica svincolata dal ricorrente discorso sui cosiddetti anni di piombo, ed è quello relativo alla pratica-teorica maodadaista, sistematizzata nel 1976 dal collettivo bolognese A/traverso. Tale emergenza
culturale riconfigurò i tradizionali modi della comunicazione politica e produsse effetti, oggi relativamente ignorati, anche nella teoria dell’arte. Nelle seguenti pagine, la tematizzazione di alcune forme di autorappresentazione riconducibili al paradigma maodadaista sarà condotta e accompagnata dall’analisi dei concetti nel titolo anticipati, dei loro incontri realizzati e degli sviluppi presenti e possibili.

In this article we use the challenge of working with a set of one million manga pages to motivate the need for a computational approach for the exploration of collections of such size, and to explain our particular method that combines digital image analysis and a novel visualization technique. Any reflection on culture begins with an informal comparison between multiple objects in order to understand their similarities and differences. For instance, if we want our analysis to properly reflect the range of graphical techniques used today by manga artists across thousands of manga books, millions of pages in these books, and tens of millions of individual panels, we need to be able to examine details of individual images and to find patterns of difference and similarity across large numbers of images. To do this, we need a mechanism that would allow us to precisely compare sets of images of any size – from a few dozens to millions. We discuss how our method, which combines automatic ...

This collection of essays examines the relationship between the media and cosmopolitanism in an increasingly fragmented and globalizing world. This relationship is presented from multiple perspectives and the essays cover, amongst other themes, cosmopolitanization in everyday life, the mediation of suffering, trauma studies, and researching cosmopolitanism from a non-Western perspective.
Some of the essays explore existing research and theory about cosmopolitanism and apply it to specific case studies; others attempt to extend this theoretical framework and engage in a dialogue with the broader disciplines of media and cultural studies. Overall, this variety of approaches generates valuable insights into the central issue of the book: the role played by the media, in its various forms, in either encouraging or discouraging cosmopolitanist identifications among its audiences.

Football is the most popular sport in Zimbabwe and across the globe. It has been asserted elsewhere that the game is not limited to scoring goals on the pitch but that this also occurs in politics and power struggles. This study explores the interface between football discourse and politics during elections in Zimbabwe in July 2013. The study is based on the premise of a neo-Gramscian perspective which views popular culture (including football) as a terrain of ideological struggle. It utilises an ethnographic approach to make a 'thick description' of the relationship between football discourse and contemporary Zimbabwean politics. The study employs critical discourse analysis on purposively selected political campaign speeches, political advertisements, songs by politicians, and comments posted and circulated in social media such as Facebook and Whatsapp during and after the election period by 'ordinary' Zimbabweans. The findings suggest that political parties, specifically the Zimbabwe African National Union Patriotic Front (ZANU PF) and the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC-T) appropriated football images, symbols, metaphors and discourses in their campaign communications. Zimbabwe symbolically became a football pitch where these two main rivals battled to score political points. 'Ordinary' Zimbabweans resembled the fans and/referees in the game whose vote symbolically became the act of scoring goals for ZANU PF; while for MDC-T it was akin to giving a red card to the ZANU PF party.

Cultural examinations focusing on the spheres
of the Fine Arts and popular media forms –
within sociology, gender studies and cultural
studies – have primarily focused on how gender
roles affect the ability to fully participate in all
aspects of culture, or how media representations
have promoted essentialist and heteronormative
narratives and visual imagery. Much of the scholarship
thus far has looked at culture and gender
from a traditional binary perspective (high/low,
male/female, production/reception). However,
the recent emergence of the interdisciplinary
field of queer studies (within the last decade)
and the study of post-internet participatory media
culture(s) offer new conceptual and empirical
terrain to explore gender and sexuality. Radical
feminist and queer media forms challenge us to
reconsider the creation, distribution and reception
of culture, and present opportunities to resist, and
in some cases pervert, dominant narratives, policies
and ways of seeing.

Longtemps cantonnée au changement de sexe, la question trans est aujourd’hui abordée comme changement de genre au sein des disciplines ouvertes aux études de genre dans un renouvellement et un enrichissement du champ épistémique. Cette recherche inscrite dans l’interdiscipline que forment les Sciences de l’information et de la communication se veut aussi un travail précurseur des Transgender studies francophones suivant la pensée de Sandy Stone et dans la lignée des studies anglo-saxonnes. Cette recherche porte ainsi son attention sur la construction sociale et médiatique des transidentités (personnes transgenres, transsexuelles, identités alternatives). La problématique semble innovante car elle conjugue exigence et créativité  de la recherche avec le statut de la chercheuse insider et outsider à son terrain. Ce premier volume s’attache à croiser l’état des lieux du terrain associatif et militant transidentitaire français avec l’histoire des définitions de la médecine légale depuis les années 1970 aux révisions les plus récentes. Cette nouvelle histoire des trans en France est éclairée par la description des processus de politisation des groupes, de la diversité des identifications de genre, de leurs subcultures, des apports de l’internet et des épistémologies féministes, de leurs rapports aux médias et en retour aux effets de la médiatisation.

Ce travail de recherche a été récompensé par  le 2e Prix jeune chercheur francophone en SIC – 2014,  décerné par la Société française des sciences  de l’information et de la communication (SFSIC).

My Master’s Thesis in Library and Information Science from The Royal School of Library and Information Science (RSLIS), Copenhagen, examines the topic: the profile of the “New Public Library”, primarily in Denmark. However, in the text I have made a few comparisons to foreign projects which single themselves out in this context.
The Danish main title “Det Nye Folkebibliotek”, translates into English as “The New Public Library”. My research hypothesis being: the Danish public library has undergone a series of changes, and the changes and developments are ongoing; from being a mere collections of knowledge and materials such as books, to being active, outgoing, far reaching and versatile institutions focusing on the common good of society in a number of ways. Thus my main research question is this: how and by which means do the public libraries act differently now as opposed to earlier? Another relevant question is: which tactics do the public libraries employ in order to keep, and reinforce, their place as necessary cultural institutions in postmodern, postindustrial society today? A time period sometimes called “the Internet Age”?
My empirical research and observations provide evidence that the public library no longer “just” is an institution for the loaning out of books etc. It has become a public domain focusing on lifting up society, educating the population / the users of the library, while at the same time bringing the users together in social contexts as well as cultural ones. In short, the libraries have taken on new functions and tasks, including some of the social functions earlier managed exclusively at local city halls.
In order to study these new tendencies, I have applied two main methods of research: firstly, the case study, for which I have handpicked three public libraries in the metropolitan area of Copenhagen. Libraries which are similar in some ways, yet still have their different traits, although they are located within a limited geographical area. These three focus libraries have served as case studies and examples for my empirical research, active observation, and for my other primary research method: the semi-structured research interview.
My three focus libraries are:
• Biblioteket, Rentemestervej, Copenhagen Northwest
• Ørestad Bibliotek, in the Eastern and newest part of the city
• Blågårdens Bibliotek, in a central part of the city troubled by various social issues
At each library I have conducted interviews with senior staff members, and gathered further information by active observation and photography, trying to catch everyday life with my eyes and camera.
Part of my theory behind this research, has been the writings of Henrik Jochumsen, Casper Hvenegaard Rasmussen and Dorte Skot-Hansen, amongst others.
From the latest book by the three aforementioned Danish scientists, authors and professors at RSLIS, I have found great inspiration and motivation, and what is more, scientific terms which capture some of the most vital tendencies of The New Library. These are: Public Domain, Placemaker and Icon.
In this thesis I have done my best to apply these terms, and others, in order to answer my research questions, and thereby make my contribution to unveil why we need the public libraries now, more than ever, and which components, so speak, constitute the profile of the Danish public library of today. Including its new functions, profiles, vision and mission.

This study investigates the perceptions of Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) students and professional journalists regarding the quality of curriculum and training sessions that they received at the University and afterwards by looking at curriculum, training sessions and practical programmes related to journalism education, as well as the quality of academic staff and trainings for both GCC journalism students and professionals. A survey was administered to a random sample of 369 students at GCC universities and 34 journalists. Based on the analysed data, the study found that journalism education in the GCC regions is interesting and enjoyable, with respondents being found as ambition, talent skills and motivated. More practical rather than theoretical approach is needed to proof the quality of journalism in the region, though a good number of GCC journalists have had a formal academic journalism qualification. GCC journalism education attempts to reflect the developmental trends in the region.

La relación entre los medios sociales y la participación política de los jóvenes en diferentes contextos, ha sido materia de estudio en la academia durante la última década. Con el objetivo de examinar si en efecto existía un cambio en las preferencias en el consumo de información sobre política entre los jóvenes, se realizó un estudio en cuatro estados de México durante un proceso electoral nacional en 2015. Este mismo estudio se replicó durante las elecciones presidenciales del año 2018. En términos generales, los resultados obtenidos durante la elección no variaron de manera significativa de un proceso electoral a otro. La presente investigación pretende contribuir al debate académico sobre un fenómeno que en algún momento se consideró emergente, pero que en la actualidad parece encontrarse en un proceso de consolidación.

Sewing Reality: Fashion in Non-fiction Media
University of Bedfordshire, Luton Campus, UK
9th June 2018


As two distinct art forms, fashion and film have flirted with each other in symbiotic relationships since the dawn of the medium: from British and American actualities showing current high-street fashion, to French newsreels capturing fashion shows. The synergy has been mutually influential also as far as other media are concerned, with pop stars and television dramas inspiring catwalks and collections. While the literature on film and fashion is quickly growing, this interest has primarily focused on fiction and includes, among others, works on the construction of femininity and masculinity through costumes, the definition of national identities through cinematic clothing, and the haptic pleasure of fashion in film. Non-fiction material remains an understudied source, with only a few scholarly works shedding some light on early cinema’s attention to the fashion world, still and moving images in fashion archives, celebrity and fashion, but also make-up culture and TV entertainment, the relationship between austerity and sewing/knitting programs, and the political potential of fashion documentaries.

This interdisciplinary symposium wants to fill this vacuum and excavate and reassess the role of non-fiction media in shaping our understanding of fashion across multiple platforms and different national contexts. The event aims to create an open space for dialogue between fashion and documentary studies, drawing from different methodologies and approaches: media and cultural studies, ethnography, audience research, marketing and public relations.
Sewing Reality aims to discuss the interconnection between fashion and media industries, the audiences of factual moving images about fashion, as well as the past, the present and the future of fashion documentaries.


Curated by: Dr Elena Caoduro, University of Bedfordshire, UK

Keynote Speaker: Pamela Church-Gibson, Reader in Cultural and Historical Studies at the London College of Fashion, University of the Arts London, UK

PANELS

1a: Fashion Documentaries

• Rona Murray - Have Fun: Fashion Matriarchies
• Daisy Richards - Muses, Mythology and The First Monday in May
• Karen Ritzenhoff - A maverick on the streets: Bill Cunningham, photography and New York fashion

1b: The Pleasure of Sewing

• Laurel Forster - Bringing up the Subject of Sewing
• Joanne Knowles - ‘I should have stayed at home and finished the hem on my skirt’: Sewing, domesticity and distinction in teenage girls’ magazines of the 1970s and 1980s
• Nickianne Moody - Bunty’s Cut-Out Wardrobe Goes to Art College
• + Rosie Steele’s poster

2: Fiction/Factual fashion exchanges

• Rachel Velody - Stitching authority
• Mariaemanuela Messina - Fashion Cinema and Representations

3: Capturing the Fashion Real

• Mark Pickering - HUMAN SEE, HUMAN DO: A case study exploration of the para-social interaction between celebrity blogger and fashion consumer
• Boel Ulfsdotter - Shooting fashion: the double-bind of a non-fiction approach to Paris Fashion Week

4: Fashioning the Archive

• Silvia Vacirca - Call to fashion reality: a closer look at Istituto Luce Archive fashion cinejournals (1939-1941)
• Jihane Dyer - Documenting Fashion Histories on the BBC, 1989-2014: Temporality and Cultural
• Sigrun Lehnert - The Fashion of East and West in German Cinema Newsreels
• Giulia Caffaro - The Italian Ready-to-wear Fashion through Carousels

We argue that the continued growth of the Internet, both as a form of mainstream media and as a tool for organizing democratic social interactions, requires that Internet politics be retheorized from a standpoint that is both critical and reconstructive. While we undertake an approach that is critical of corporate forms and hegemonic uses of the Internet, we advocate for new software developments such as blogs and trace the oppositional deployments of the Internet made by a wide variety of groups in the cause of progressive cultural and political struggle. In this regard, we describe how the Internet has facilitated the worldwide VOLUME 1, ISSUE 1 PP 75-100