Film and Media Studies Commons^™

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 …

Rationalising Public Service: Scheduling As A Tool Of Management In Rté Television, Ann-Marie Murray

Doctoral

Developments in the media industry, notably the increasing commercialisation of broadcasting and deregulation, have combined to create a television system that is now driven primarily by ratings. Public broadcast organisations must adopt novel strategies to survive and compete in this new environment, where they need to combine public service with popularity. In this context, scheduling has emerged as the central management tool, organising production and controlling budgets, and is now the driving force in television. Located within Weber’s theoretical framework of rationalisation, this study analyses the rise of scheduling as part of a wider organisational response to political and economic …

Not Seeing The Joke: The Overlooked Role Of Humour In Researching Television Production, Edward Brennan

Articles

This article argues that humour can provide researchers with a unique access point into the professional cultures of media producers. By reconsidering an earlier case study, and reviewing relevant literature, it illustrates how humour can fulfil several functions in media production. Importantly, humour is a central means of performing the ‘emotional labour’ that increasingly precarious media work demands. For production research, 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 organizations. The article argues that humour’s organizational role should be considered as a sensitizing …

Migration And Intercultural Cinema In Ireland: A New Contemporary Movement?, Agnes Kakasi

Books/Book chapters

Migration and Intercultural Cinema in Ireland: A New Contemporary Movement?

‘Accented cinema’ (Naficy, 2001) is a transnational cinematic genre shaped by the personal exilic and diasporic experience of the filmmaker, and the thematic and stylistic aesthetics of the film. Much as Third Cinema, it subverts the practices of classical (Hollywood) cinema and auteur (European) cinema by depicting the interstitial positionality of the exiled/diasporic/migrant/ethnic film, filmmaker, and production practice. In places where filmmaking belongs to a quasi-homogeneous privileged circle, representations of the ‘accented’ subject can be highly indicative of national ideologies, power relations, and cross-cultural interactions. This paper will introduce the …

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

Conference Papers

No abstract provided.

Media Effects In Context, Brian O'Neill

Books/Book chapters

The media effects tradition occupies a hugely influential and dominant role within mainstream communications research. It is unquestionably the longest running tradition within the field of audience studies, spanning nearly its entire history, yet it continues to divide opinion, both methodologically and with regard to its fundamental approach towards the study of media audiences.  Its influence extends well beyond the academy, and the powerful influence exerted by its research agenda on public and political understanding of the impact of media is perhaps one of its most significant achievements.

Restauration Und Ambivalenz: Maskulinitaet Im Deutschsprachigen Film Nach 1990 Im Lichte Des Neuen Deutschen Films, Sascha Harris

Articles

Restoration and Ambiguity: The Male in Post-Wall German Film

As the programmatic, if diverse tenets of the Neuer Deutscher Film began to lose their hold on German film-making in the eighties, filmic narratives and cinematography emerged which on the one hand draw on this tradition, especially in seemingly postmodern narratives of subversion, minority and subjectivity, but on the other combine these with conventional, even restorative film language and narrative construction. Reunification has set a development in motion which to a remarkable extent echoes the cultural metanarrative of the post-war period. The role and representation of male characters in a significant …

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.

A Political Economy Of Formatted Pleasures, Edward Brennan

Books/Book chapters

No abstract provided.

Through The Lens Of A "Branded Criminal": The Politics Of Marginal Cinema In India, Rashmi Sawhney

Books/Book chapters

Images of Adivasis (Indian tribal communities) being displaced by the building of industries and dams have been regularly flashing across our television screens for the last twenty years or so, yet, media scholars have shown very little interest in this constituency either as producers or as audiences. This chapter argues that, contrary to the mass media’s favourite stereotype of the forest-inhabiting ‘native’, India’s tribal communities exist in a complex constellation of modernities, both urban and rural, and that many of these communities have at least a nominal contact with media cultures. One such group, the Chharas of Ahmedabad, popularly branded …

A Political Economy Of Formatted Pleasures, Edward Brennan

Books/Book chapters

This chapter argues that, by promoting audience pleasures based in the pursuit of individual and materialistic goals, most television formats are consonant with a dominant orthodoxy which sees markets as the only way to organise society . This elective affinity between format pleasures and free market ideology, however, does not come about through deliberate design. Rather it is an unintended consequence of television production’s response to economic and practical necessity. In their form, content and production practices formats are pre-adapted to the demands of a globalised media market place. This commercial logic has given formats a peculiar signature in terms …

From Bruff To The Balkans: James David Bourchier, Michael Foley

Books/Book chapters

James Bouchier was an Irish journalist who served as the London Times correspondent in the Balkans and especially Bulgaria. Because of his championing of the Bulgarian nationalist interest he became a hero who is still remembered nearly 90 years after his death

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 …

Sounding The Future: Digital Radio And Cd-Quality Audio, Brian O'Neill

Books/Book chapters

Central to the early effort to win acceptance for DAB in the early 1990s was an extensive process of promotion of the many claimed advantages of the new broadcasting technology. Digital radio broadcasting under the Eureka 147 DAB project offered many technical enhancements – more efficient use of the spectrum, improved transmission methods, and lower running costs – features that were attractive to industry professionals, broadcasting organisations, regulators and spectrum planners. But digital radio was also designed as a consumer proposition offering audiences a new and improved listening experience with ease of tuning, reliable reception, text and data services, interactive …

Radio Broadcasting In Europe: The Search For A Common Digital Future, Brian O'Neill, Helen Shaw

Books/Book chapters

Europe’s radio is also characterised by a long history of being defined and driven by the state, in highly centralized fashion in the case of countries such as France (Meadel 1994), or indeed in former totalitarian regimes of Eastern Europe (Paulu 1974), and along more federal or devolved lines in countries such as Germany, Switzerland and the Netherlands (Kuhn 1985). The development of state broadcasting monopolies in most European countries, established in the early years of the twentieth century following the invention of sound broadcasting, has ensured that there is an enduring shared common ideological approach to radio broadcasting, which …

Beyond Europe: Launching Digital Radio In Canada And Australia, Brian O'Neill

Books/Book chapters

Eureka 147 was, as we have argued throughout this volume, a European technology designed within the very particular context of European public service broadcasting (see also Rudin 2006; O'Neill 2009). At the same time, the consortitum behind DAB technology had the ambition that Eureka 147 would become the world standard for digital radio. DAB was indeed the first such technological system to achieve standardisation at the European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI), and be recommended as a global standard for digital terrestrial sound broadcasting by the International Telecommunications Union (ITU).

Dislocations: Participatory Media With Refugees In Malta And Ireland, Anthony Haughey

Books/Book chapters

Malta is located in the Mediterranean Sea between North Africa and Europe, a receiving country for significant inward migration. For most migrants the goal is to reach mainland Europe. However, every year a significant number of smuggler boats inadvertently drift into Maltese territorial waters often in severe distress, resulting in rescue by the Maltese Navy and an uncertain future.

Whilst working in Malta I was struck by the similarities between Ireland and Malta. Both islands’ are peripheral locations on the western and southern edges of Europe. Historically both countries have experienced significant outward migration of its citizens who live all …

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.

Forty Years Of Movie Hacking: Considering The Potential Implications Of The Popular Media Representation Of Computer Hackers From 1968 To 2008, Damian Gordon

Articles

Increasingly movies are being produced which feature plots that incorporate elements of computer security and hacking, and cumulatively these movies are creating a public perception as to the nature of computer security. This research examines movies that feature hackers (and hacking) to identify if any common themes emerge from these movies in their representation of these issues. To achieve this, first a corpus of hacking movies is created, and then using a qualitative data analysis technique, guidelines are developed which distinguish those movies that actually have the potential to create a perception with the general public. The resultant dataset is …

Broadcasting Multiculturalism: Migrant Representation And Participation In Irish Radio, Kathleen Moylan

Doctoral

In the cultural context of recent inward migration to Ireland, this research focuses on migrant representation on Irish radio. Employing diverse approaches drawn from cultural studies and public sphere theory, this study examines radio programmes produced by and about new Irish migrant communities, and the ways in which 'diversity' is framed and managed by national and EU broadcast policy. This work incorporates analyses of programme content and broadcast policy in relation to Irish national public service broadcasting (Radio Telefis Eireann) and Dublin community radio.

Benefits Of Continuing Professional Development In The Visual Communications Sector In Ireland, Con Kennedy

Other resources

This research is concerned with identifying the benefits of Continuous Professional Development for the Visual Communications sector in Ireland, with the aim of establishing what benefits exist for both the employee and employer. Research is undertaken to identify CPD programmes that currently exist in other industries in Ireland for the purpose of establishing commonalities and how this may apply to the Visual Communications sector. This is achieved through a combination of literature review, desk research, surveys of employees and employers in the Visual Communications sector and a number of semi-formal interviews with representatives from various industry sectors with established CPD …

Media Literacy, Brian O'Neill, Ingun Hagen

Books/Book chapters

Across Europe and beyond, the promotion of media literacy, for children and adults, has acquired an important public urgency. Traditional literacy is seen to be no longer sufficient for participation in today’s society. Citizens need to be media literate, it is claimed, to enable them to cope more effectively with the flood of information in today’s highly mediated societies. As teachers, politicians and policy makers everywhere struggle with this rapid shift in media culture, greater responsibility is placed on citizens for their own welfare in the new media environment. Media literacy is therefore all the more essential in enabling citizens …

The Screenplays Of Robert Towne 1960-2000, Elaine Lennon

Doctoral

What follows is a study of Hollywood screenwriter Robert Towne. Theoretical notions of the screenplay have largely been cast in terms of screenwriting practice as an adjunct of studio production schedules. A popular cultural text in its own right, the screenplay is a procedurally central yet provisional document originated by a writer and subject to alteration within the production process. Auteurism has dominated film theory for over fifty years and is the point of departure for this study. While the critical method employed here is not rigidly anti-director, it seeks to enact an intervention into prior debates surrounding the attribution …

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 …

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 …

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 …

Media Literacy And The Public Sphere: A Contextual Study For Public Media Literacy Promotion In Ireland, Brian O'Neill, Cliona Barnes

Reports

This research documents the background to the development of media literacy as a matter of public policy, both within the European Union and internationally, and examines considerations that may be important in the emerging Irish debate on media literacy.