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Full-Text Articles in Social and Behavioral Sciences

Authenticity In The Skateboarding World, Becky Beal, Lisa Weidman Jan 2003

Authenticity In The Skateboarding World, Becky Beal, Lisa Weidman

Faculty Publications

The purpose of this chapter is to illustrate the values and norms that constitute legitimacy, or authenticity, in the skateboarding world. Both authors spent a considerable amount of time with the skateboarding world in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Lisa Weidman worked at a skateboarding magazine for several years, and Becky Beal did an extensive ethnographic study of skateboarders. Using our experiences and research, we describe the characteristics that skateboarders and the industry use to identify an authentic skateboarder. The first section, on the skaters' perspective, is based primarily on Beal's interactions with skateboarders; the second section, on the …


Pointing The Finger Of Blame: News Media Coverage Of Popular-­Culture Culpability, Erica Scharrer, Lisa M. Weidman, Kimberly Bissell Jan 2003

Pointing The Finger Of Blame: News Media Coverage Of Popular-­Culture Culpability, Erica Scharrer, Lisa M. Weidman, Kimberly Bissell

Faculty Publications

In the 1990s, three relatively high-profile tragedies occurred in which popular media products (including movies, recorded music, television talk shows, the Internet, tabloid newspapers, and video games) were argued to be the primary cause. This study analyzes the discourse surrounding the culpability that was placed on popular culture in major newspaper coverage of the car crash that killed Princess Diana, the murder associated with the “Jenny Jones” show, and the shootings at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado. The analysis reveals patterns in the assignment of blame—and relatively more rarely of exoneration—of popular culture, interpreting why and how popular culture …