Arts and Humanities Commons^™

Simmel, Social Media And The Debatable Virtues Of Not Caring, Edward Brennan

Conference Papers

This paper asks how can bare to talk about the nightmares served up by our media? How can we witness horror, only to forget about it and have It replaced by fresh horror the next day? As Keith Tester wrote, most of us today, can ‘witness horror, and feel next to nothing’ (86). How has this become installed as a modern tradition? And, how might we communicate care while escaping from a cycle of outrage and forgetting.

Be Media Smart: A National Media Literacy Campaign For Ireland, Phillip Russell

Conference Papers

This paper presents Ireland’s public awareness campaign – ‘Be Media Smart’- which was launched in March 2019 to encourage people of all ages to stop, think, and check that information they see, read or hear across any media platform is reliable. Be Media Smart is an initiative of Media Literacy Ireland (MLI), an independent group facilitated by the Broadcasting Authority of Ireland (BAI) to enhance Irish people’s understanding of, and engagement with, media. Group members include large media and social media companies, Government bodies, libraries, academia and voluntary sector organisations.

The paper will provide an overview of this national campaign, …

An Investigation Of Therapeutic Rapport Through Prosody In Brief Psychodynamic Psychotherapy, Carolina De Pasquale, Charlie Cullen, Brian Vaughan

Conference Papers

Therapeutic alliance, a concept closely related to rapport, is one of the most important variables in psychotherapy. High degrees of synchrony/coordination in the therapeutic session are considered to contribute to rapport, and have received attention in the psychotherapy literature. Coordinative behaviours are observable in speech, and they manifest in phenomena such as prosodic accommodation, a dynamic phenomenon closely related to conversational success. A preliminary investigation of interpersonal prosodic dynamics in psychotherapy was performed on a database obtained in collaboration with the University of Padua, consisting of 16 recordings making up the entire course of a brief psychodynamic psychotherapy intervention for …

Categorisation Of Isolated Sounds On A Background - Neutral - Foreground Scale, William Coleman

Conference Papers

Recent technological advances have driven changes in how media is consumed in home, automotive and mobile contexts. Multi-channel audio home cinema systems are not ubiquitous but have become more prevalent. The consumption of broadcast and gaming content on smart-phone and tablet technology via telecommunications networks is also more common. This has created new possibilities and consequently poses new challenges for audio content delivery such as how media can be optimised for multiple contexts while minimising file size. For example, a stereo audio file may be adequate for consumption in a mobile context using headphones, but it is limited to stereo …

Irish Journalists And Journalism During The American Civil War, Michael Foley

Conference Papers

Irish journalists played a significant role in the lead up to the US Civil War in ensuring the Irish population supported the Union and volunteered for the army.

Perception Of Auditory Objects In Complex Scenes: Factors And Applications, William Coleman

Conference Papers

Over the past twenty years, technological advances have driven the development of media consumption in both home and mobile contexts. While not ubiquitous, multi-channel audio home cinema systems have become more prevalent, as has the consumption of broadcast and gaming media on smartphone and tablet technology via mobile telecommunications networks. This has created new possibilities and poses new challenges for audio content delivery such as how the same content can be presented to greatest effect given that it may be consumed via either a surround-sound home entertainment system or in a mobile context using stereo headphones. This paper outlines research …

Television In Ireland Before Irish Television: 1950s Audiences And British Programming, Edward Brennan

Conference Papers

The first television broadcasts in Ireland were watched in the 1950s. These initial programmes were British. This history of these early viewers, however, has been ignored. A dominant narrative has addressed the history of television in Ireland as the history of the public broadcaster Radio Telefís Éireann (RTÉ). Thus, the history of Irish television often begins in 1961, overlooking Irish people’s experience of the medium in the preceding decade. This paper breaks with traditional historiography by employing life history interviews to explore the uses, rituals and feelings attached to television in the years before RTÉ.

Irish people who watched television …

Television In Ireland: A History From The Mediated Centre, Edward Brennan

Conference Papers

This paper identifies and critiques a dominant narrative in the history of Irish television, which is too often passed off for, or accepted as, the history of television in Ireland. The his- tory of television in Ireland has been written within an institutional framework and depends on the cultural binary of tradition and modernity, ‘old Ireland’ and ‘new Ireland’. This dom- inant narrative fails to interrogate television as a medium. It provides an account of the Irish broadcaster RTÉ rather than an account of the arrival of a new medium. Ironically this nar- rative which hinges on the role of …

Why Does Film And Television Sci-Fi Tend To Portray Machines As Being Human?, Edward Brennan

Conference Papers

This paper identifies, and attempts to explain, a lack of diversity in the way that cinema and television science fiction represents robotics and artificial intelligence (AI). Through a qualitative content analysis of recent film and television portrayals, it is argued, that a limited and limiting vision predominates. This limitation may serve to ideologically reinforce the power of corporate elites. It may also hamper discussion and debate around technological possibilities and their relationship with society.

There has been a slew of entertainment productions since 2013 that represent AI and robotics. This work examines Her (2013), Transcendence (2014), Interstellar (2014), Chappie (2015), …

On The Factory’S Ruins: The Death Of A Nation And The Birth Of A Museum, Anthony Haughey

Conference Papers

Stuart Hall describes ‘living archives’ as a field of […] rupture, significant breaks, transformations, new and unpredicted departures’. For an artist, the interpretation of archival and historical materials is not solely an academic exercise; it can also be viewed as a societal intervention, where historical narratives are ruptured and re-contextualised, generating an emerging critical and contested site of reinterpretation. In this article I discuss my work as an artist and researcher with particular emphasis on cultural memory, archival formations and the production of contemporary artworks, including my recent video installation, UNresolved which reflects on the twentieth anniversary of genocide in …

Providing Objective Metrics Of Team Communication Skills Via Interpersonal Coordination Mechanisms, Celine De Looze, Brian Vaughan, Finnian Kelly, Alison Kay

Conference Papers

Being able to communicate efficiently has been acknowledged as a vital skill in many different domains. In particular, team communication skills are of key importance in the operation of complex machinery such as aircrafts, maritime vessels and such other, highly-specialized, civilian or military vehicles, as well as the performance of complex tasks in the medical domain. In this paper, we propose to use prosodic accommodation and turn- taking organisation to provide objective metrics of communica- tion skills. To do this, human-factors evaluations, via a coordi- nation Demand Analysis (CDA), were used in conjunction with a dynamic model of prosodic accommodation …

Digital Takeover Of News: Journalism As A Public Service In The Social Media Age, Jenny Hauser

Conference Papers

Research into the use of social media by news organisations to source information and user-generated content has shown substantial changes in the news production process. It is argued that these changes are resulting in increased access to established mainstream media for ordinary citizens, mainly through citizen-journalism.

To date, the news industry has been fixated on how free information and visual content shared on social media platforms can be sourced and verified in such a way that standards of accuracy are maintained. While news organisations focus on reaping the benefits of citizen-journalism on social networks, a growing trend of de-professionalisation in …

Speed In Context: Real-Time News Reporting And Social Media, Jenny Hauser

Conference Papers

Dubbed the ‘tyranny of real time’, the immense acceleration of the news cycle poses serious challenges to professional journalism. As news media struggle to keep up with the speed at which news is reported on social media while maintaining journalistic standards of accuracy, real-time coverage is blamed for de-contextualising news events. While reports may be accurate, the question asked is if they also show the truth? This paper compares the effects of the real-time news coverage of both the Ukrainian uprising and the Gaza-Israel conflict in the summer of 2014, examining how context was shaped and relayed in both instances.

Childrens' Rights Or Journalists' Ethics, Michael Foley

Conference Papers

The coverage of issues concerning children and childhood has become increasingly prominent and journalists now have access to any number of sets of guidelines. Within academia there is a growing body of scholarly literature concerning journalism, the media, and coverage of children.

This activity has been mainly in the context of children’s rights. UNICEF, has been successful in highlighting the UNCRC and the role of journalists and the media in making the Convention work.

DIT, and the author, has been working with UNICEF, since 2006, in developing a syllabus for journalism schools. So far 27 universities from Turkey to Central …

Children And The Internet In Ireland: Research And Policy Perspectives, Brian O'Neill, Thuy Dinh

Conference Papers

For good or ill, the internet is now very much part of children’s lifestyles today. Indeed, it is hardly possible to approach contemporary childhood – its possibilities and its risks – without understanding the degree to which information and communications technologies (ICTs) are embedded in every aspect of young people’s lives. For policy makers, the fast pace of change in the technology sector represents an additional challenge and effective interventions to protect children as well as promote positive opportunities sometimes struggle to keep up an environment that continues to evolve rapidly. There is also a tension between some of the …

Journalism Training And Media Development, Daire Higgins, Michael Foley

Conference Papers

It is now 17 years since the collapse of the communist regimes in Eastern and South Eastern Europe and nearly 17 years since the first initiatives were put in place to train journalists and reform the media. In that time a vast amount of money has been spent on media training and development with thousands of journalists receiving some sort of training from Western journalists, trainers and educators. Today, with some exceptions, journalism throughout the region is still characterised by a lack of professionalism, little understanding of the need for accuracy, a willingness to accept bribes and a lack of …

Space And The Geographical Imagination On The Dublin Docklands’, Moira Sweeney

Conference Papers

In my practice–based doctoral study Dublin Dockers, Visualising a Changing Community, I am foregrounding the application of ethnographic documentary methods and investigation in examining the world of a docker and stevedore community on Dublin's docks. Through excavating and recuperating narratives which are absent from mainstream media hegemony, the study is unraveling the transformations experienced by a stevedoring constituency as a consequence of globalisation, urban regeneration and the current recession. This paper engages with arguments for the revitalisation of our imaginations on space in the context of an audio visual and textual study of the urban and maritime Dublin dockland space.

Portraying Migrants’ Experiences In Irish Documentary Film, Agnes Kakasi

Conference Papers

Portraying Migrants’ Experiences in Irish Documentary Film

In this presentation I critically analyse the types of narratives and formal characteristics, as well as the variety of social issues that filmmakers in the Republic of Ireland have engaged in, in creating stories about transnational migration and the immigrant subject in recent Irish documentary film. As a result of the Celtic Tiger economy from the mid-90s until 2008, Ireland has experienced a major transformation in its ethnoscape (Appadurai, 1996) by becoming a ‘country of immigrants’, with an estimated 12% of the population born outside the country. Through the analysis of such documentary …

Television In Ireland Before Irish Television: Nationalist Rhetoric And International Programming, Edward Brennan

Conference Papers

Typical of an international tendency, the history of television in Ireland has been framed by national boundaries. This paper argues that viewing the history of television solely through institutional sources and a nation state-bound perspective obscures transnational influences and homogenises diverse audience experiences. Moreover, such histories may serve to reproduce a limited range of types of nationalist rhetoric. The research presented here explores the history of television in Ireland through life story interviews. This reveals views of the nation, its global context and processes of social change quite different to those discussed in orthodox histories. Arguably, this shift in historical …

Voice, Listening And Social Justice: A Multimediated Engagement With New Immigrant Communities And Publics In Ireland, Alan Grossman

Conference Papers

No abstract provided.

The Future Of Audience Research, Brian O'Neill

Conference Papers

ECREA roundtable The future of audience research IAMCR conference @ BRAGA July 21 14:30-16:00 Convenor: Nico Carpentier Institutional and critical perspectives on audience representation This contribution focuses on institutional and critical perspectives on audience representation, i.e., how audience experience is formally accounted for through institutional processes of research (media literacy indices for instance) or through representative bodies such as Audience Councils. In other words, an area of overlap between audience studies and public policy debates, advocating that researchers should try to make their findings more widely available and understood in professional media environments.

Not Seeing The Joke: The Overlooked Role Of Humour In Media Production Research, Edward Brennan

Conference Papers

This paper attempts to offer a methodological contribution to media production research. By reconsidering an earlier case study, and reviewing relevant literature, it illustrates how humour can fulfill several functions in media production. Importantly, humour is a central means of performing the ‘emotional labour’ that increasingly precarious media work demands. Methodologically, the everyday joking and banter of media workers can provide an important and, heretofore, overlooked means of accessing culture, meaning, consensus and conflict in media organisations. The article argues that humour’s organisational role should be considered when designing production research.

Blowing The Whistle On Bullying In The Workplace:The Aftermath Of Insider Research, Tom Clonan

Conference Papers

From 1996 to 2000, the author of this paper – then a Captain serving in the Irish Army - conducted doctoral research into the status and roles assigned female personnel in the Irish Defence Forces – Army, Navy and Air Corps. An unanticipated outcome of this equality audit of the Irish Defence Forces was the revelation of the widespread bullying, harassment, sexual harassment, sexual assault and rape of female soldiers by male colleagues. As a result of conducting this feminist research, the author was ostracised by his military colleagues and suffered from a campaign of vilification in the private and …

Developing Digital Radio For Ireland: Emerging Approaches And Strategies, Brian O'Neill

Conference Papers

Ireland’s experience of the transition from public service broadcasting to public service media has gathered pace within the last year with new legislative arrangements for media regulation, the awarding of digital terrestrial television licences and renewed attempts to introduce digital radio broadcasting on the DAB platform. The national public broadcaster, RTE, has played a central role in these developments as it attempts to manage a range of technology platforms and to provide media services for an increasingly diverse and complex market. This paper addresses the case of digital radio in Ireland and the prospects for a successful launch of DAB …

Dab Eureka-147: The European Vision For Digital Radio, Brian O'Neill

Conference Papers

The digitalisation of radio broadcasting has a long history and as a project has been under active consideration for at least 25 years. A number of different technical approaches to digital radio exist, the longest established of which is the so-called Eureka-147 or DAB (Digital Audio Broadcasting) system. This paper explores the ‘technological imaginary’ of DAB and its distinctly ‘European’ vision for new media and the future of broadcasting. It examines its origins in European R&D policy of the 1980s, and its affinity with European broadcasting practice, particularly within a public service tradition. Ironically, it was DAB’s failure to capitalise …

Back To The Future: The Emergence Of Contrasting European And Us Approaches To Digital Radio, Brian O'Neill

Conference Papers

Digital radio has been in development for over 25 years and yet is no nearer a point of successful adoption. This paper explores the emergence of contrasting European and American approaches to digital radio. The most established of these, Eureka-147 or Digital Audio Broadcasting (DAB), which originated in Europe, is contrasted with the so-called IBOC or /HD Radio approach, as alternative collective conceptualizations of how technology can bridge contemporary broadcasting practice to an ̳imagined‘ digital future. Drawing on the concept of ̳symptomatic technology‘ (Williams 1974), DAB‘s origins in European R&D policy of the 1980s and its affinity with established European …

Truth And War Reporting: Journalism In Hostile Environments, Tom Clonan

Conference Papers

Many journalists, whether reporting on domestic matters internally or on assignment abroad as foreign or development correspondents, may at some point find themselves reporting on violence and hostilities in a hostile environment. This paper examines the professional and personal dilemmas that confront journalists when reporting on violence and within hostile environments both at home and abroad. The author of the paper has participated in armed conflict as a professional soldier in Ireland, Lebanon and the former Yugoslavia. He has also reported on conflict and hostilities as the Irish Times Security Analyst since October 2001. In the last two years, the …

Baroque Glances At Society: The Appropriation Of Decoupage, The Long Take And Depth Of Field Photography In The Early Films By J.A. Bardem., Jesús Urda

Conference Papers

Bardem is often described as a Spanish Neorealist, as a director who followed closely the cinema of Italian directors like Fellini, Pietro Germi, Visconti and of course the early Antonioni. Except for Cómicos (1954), inspired by the reading of Joseph L. Mankievicz’s All About Eve (1950) all the films he made during the 1950s are inspired by an Italian source: Death of a Cyclist (1955) was inspired by Antonioni’s Cronnica di un Amore/Story of a Love Affair (1951); Calle Mayor (1956), shares similarities in plot and concept with Fellini’s I Vitelloni (1953); La Venganza (1957) with Pietro Germi’s Il Camino …

Digital Technologies And The Future Of Radio: Lessons From The Canadian Experience., Brian O'Neill

Conference Papers

This paper examines the position of digital radio in Canada. It examines the Canadian experience of digital radio development from its introduction in 1995 to the present and asks whether the approach adopted and the lessons learned provide useful models for application elsewhere. Three main strands form the background to digital radio’s current stage of development: firstly, the introduction and early support for Digital Audio Broadcasting or (DAB) in the mid 1990s; secondly, the response of the radio industry to the internet and new media as complementary to traditional radio broadcasting provision; and thirdly, the more recent experience of the …

Digital Radio Policy In Canada: Fragmentation Or Evolution Of The Medium, Brian O'Neill

Conference Papers

In December 2006, the Canadian Radio-Television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) issued its review of Digital Radio Policy. This replaced the transitional digital radio policy of 1995, and sought to implement a framework designed to support multi-platform digital radio broadcasting in an increasingly complex technological environment for the medium. Drawing on policy analysis, interviews and expert group perspectives, this paper traces the background to the legislative provision for digital radio development in Canada. While Canada was an early adopter of the Eureka-147 or Digital Audio Broadcasting (DAB), the policy of DAB as a replacement technology approach proved to be mistaken. Subsequent …