Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Social Learning Theory In The Frontline Documentary “The Merchants Of Cool”, Alixe A. Wiley

Faculty Curated Undergraduate Works

In the Frontline documentary The Merchants of Cool, the relationship between major media conglomerates and their hedonistic teenage customers is examined through exploring the different tactics industries use to discover and market the next “cool” thing. Industries maintain what the documentary refers to as a “feedback loop” with their customers, which is a cyclic, supply-and-demand relationship that blurs the line between fiction and reality. It has become impossible to tell which side is imitating the other: who do the products and trends that define popular youth culture belong to? What's more, are the sexual and aggressive hormone-fueled behaviors on …

Counting Electric Sheep: Understanding Information In The Context Of Media Ecology, Lance Strate

CMS Faculty Publications

In the field of media ecology, defined as the study of media as environments, media and medium, and ecology and environment are key terms, while information, although commonly employed, is generally used without reference to a specific definition. This article examines the mostly implicit assumptions about and understandings of the term information in the context of the field of media ecology. Information can be seen as a synonym or subset of content or message, can be divided into different orders or levels of content/communication and relationship/medium, and on both levels is dependent on and altered by changes in technology, code, …

Book Review: Public Journalism 2.0: The Promise And Reality Of A Citizen-Engaged Press, Sue Burzynski Bullard

College of Journalism and Mass Communications: Faculty Publications

Digital technology has changed journalism dramatically. Through a collection of research studies, essays, case studies, and interviews, Public Journalism 2.0 takes a detailed look at evolving public journalism and where audience-generated stories fit into that evolution. The editors divide the book into three sections: the history of civic and citizen journalism, current practices, and future possibilities. They conclude with their views of where professionals fit in to a citizen-engaged press.

Mobilizing Mother: From Good Mother To Patriotic Mother In World War I, Ana C. Garner, Karen L. Slattery

College of Communication Faculty Research and Publications

The American press played a key role in the Wilson administration’s effort to craft an image of the Patriotic Mother of the Great War. The Patriotic Mother of a soldier was encouraged to assume the mantle of the Spartan Mother. This monograph contrasts the Spartan Mother archetype used by the government and the press to another wartime maternal archetype, that of Thetis, the mother of Achilles, who objected to her son’s participation in the Trojan War. U.S. mothers of soldiers were socially and politically positioned to assume the role outlined by the Wilson administration and advocated by the news media.

Neo-Liberal Attacks On Labour: A Municipal Workers' Strike In A Labour Town, James Winter, Travis Reitsma, Amanda Wilson

Communication, Media & Film Publications

Labour is the primary target of neo-liberalism. A principled strike in 2009 over post-retirement medical benefits for new hires by Canada’s largest public sector union in the labour town of Windsor, Ontario was studied in the local monopoly daily. Three quarters of the reported news on the 101-day strike was anti-union, while the editorials and opinion columns were virtually entirely negative. City administrators could do no wrong, as they stuck to their agenda of privatization and union derogation. Four out of every five articles inaccurately described the City unions as greedy, wasteful, self-destructive, violent or militant. Ironically, the Windsor Star …

The Communication Of Capital: Digital Media And The Logic Of Acceleration, Vincent Manzerolle, Atle Mikkola Kjøsen

Communication, Media & Film Publications

This paper argues that questions concerning the circulation of capital are central to the study of contemporary and future media under capitalism. Moreover, it argues that such questions have been central to Marx’s analysis of the reproduction of capital vis-à-vis the realization of value and the reduction of circulation time. Marx’s concepts of both the circuit and circulation of capital implies a theory of communication. Thus the purpose of our paper is to outline the logistical mechanisms that underlie a Marxist theory of media and communication and thereby foregrounding the role new media plays in reducing circulation time. We argue …

Intervention: Reality Tv, Whiteness, And Narratives Of Addiction, Jessie Daniels

Publications and Research

Purpose – Reality TV shows that feature embodied “transformations” are popular, including Intervention, a program that depicts therapeutic recovery from addiction to “health.” The purpose of this chapter is to address the ways whiteness constitutes narratives of addiction on Intervention.

Methodology – This analysis uses a mixed methodology. I conducted a systematic analysis of nine (9) seasons of one hundred and forty-seven (147) episodes featuring one hundred and fifty-seven individual “addicts” (157) and logged details, including race and gender. For the qualitative analysis, I watched each episode more than once (some, I watched several times) and took extensive notes on …

Young Men Consuming Newspaper Prostitution: A Discourse Analysis Of Responses To Irish Newspaper Coverage Of Prostitution, Joseph Fitzgerald, Brendan O'Rourke

Articles

No abstract provided.

Fishing For Animal Rights In The Cove: A Holistic Approach To Animal Advocacy Documentaries, Carrie Packwood Freeman

Communication Faculty Publications

The Oscar-winning 2009 documentary The Cove serves as a thrilling and poignant advocacy tool promoting activism to save free-roaming dolphins off the coast of Japan from kidnapping, enslavement in marine parks, and slaughter for meat. This essay evaluates the ethical and social justice implications of The Cove not just for dolphins but for the animal rights movement as a whole, particularly in terms of how it could challenge the ethicality of humans killing any nonhuman animals for food. Strategic media recommendations are made for how animal protection advocates could better deconstruct the human/animal dualism that is at the root of …

Tweets And Votes: A Study Of The 2011 Singapore General Election, Marko M. Skoric, Nathaniel D. Poor, Palakorn Achananuparp, Ee Peng Lim, Jing Jiang

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

This study focuses on the uses of Twitter during the elections, examining whether the messages posted online are reflective of the climate of public opinion. Using Twitter data obtained during the official campaign period of the 2011 Singapore General Election, we test the predictive power of tweets in forecasting the election results. In line with some previous studies, we find that during the elections the Twitter sphere represents a rich source of data for gauging public opinion and that the frequency of tweets mentioning names of political parties, political candidates and contested constituencies could be used to make predictions about …