Communication Technology and New Media Commons^™

Live Life To The Power Of Ps2: Locating The Digital Games Industry In The New Media Environment, Aphra Kerr

Irish Communication Review

The digital games industry is a global entertainment business stretching from Tokyo to San Francisco to London. In May each year, game developers from around the world meet in Los Angeles to pitch their ideas to publishers, sneak a preview of other games and do licensing deals with hardware companies and Hollywood studios. The show has much in common with Melia and Cannes: it has all the glitz, the hype and the stars. The main difference is that the stars are non-human, the digital game producers are relatively unknown and this form of popular culture has been largely ignored by …

New Media As Social Facts: Researching As Shaping The Digital Landscape, James Cornford

Irish Communication Review

The emergence of new media (or digital media, or perhaps even ‘the new economy’) has certainly had some salutary effects on media studies. The advent of the Web has raised (or re-raised) a whole set of interesting questions for those concerned with researching various aspects of the media from those concerned with political economy and industrial organisation to those concerned with reception, interpretations and texts. Digital media frequently appear, even in the most sober accounts, to be some unstoppable tidal wave of change, a complex and multi-layered landscape moving so fast that researchers can only rush to try to keep …

Book Reviews: Volume 8

Irish Communication Review

Chris Frost Media Ethics and Self Regulation, reviewed by Michael Foley

Damien Kiberd (ed.) Media in Ireland: The Search for Ethical Journalism, reviewed by David Quin

Peter Mason and Derrick Smith Magazine Law: A Practical Guide, reviewed by Eavan Murphy

Global Theory And Touristic Encounters, Gavan Titley

Irish Communication Review

According to the World Travel and Tourism Council, the tourist industry is providing one in nine jobs and eighty per cent of travellers come from just twenty countries. In other words, in a changing global economy, tourism is a matter of economic imperative for the Majority World, and privileged mobility for the Minority.

Fear Of Social Isolation: Testing An Assumption From The Spiral Of Silence, Pamela J. Shoemaker, Michael Breen, Marjorie Stamper

Irish Communication Review

This study is designed specifically to test the fear of isolation assumption and to explore its position in the Spiral of Silence model. It has been unclear from the literature whether fear of isolation is antecedent to opinion formation and dominant opinion assessment or an intervening variable between opinion formation and willingness to voice the opinion. Path analyses are used to empirically investigate the relationship of the fear of isolation variable to other variables in the model.

Media Education In Ireland: An Overview, Brian O'Neill

Irish Communication Review

The Irish educational system is frequently celebrated as a world class system that is held in high domestic esteem, has contributed substantially to Ireland’s economic success and been compared very favourably with our counterparts elsewhere in the European Union. Such contentment belies the fact that it has also been a system very slow to change, is notoriously centralised and has only in the last decade instituted significant legislative reform that will enable and facilitate the growth of new curricular areas such as media studies – the topic of this article – an area in which Ireland lags substantially behind our …

The Case For Irish Newspapers Entering The Interactive Digital Market, Colm Murphy

Irish Communication Review

For over 300 years the newspaper business has been inseparable from ink on a page. But the growing use of digital distribution technology such as the world wide web, wireless application protocol for mobile phones and the potential for interactive digital television makes readers simultaneously easier to reach but harder to retain. Newspaper readership is no longer confined to the technology of print. This opens new opportunities for publishers but aggressive players from the software, telecommunications and retailing sectors are also exploiting this new technology and encroaching on newspapers’ traditional market.

Driving Ireland Past The Chequered Flag: Jordan Grand Prix, Formula One And National Identity, Eoin Kirk

Irish Communication Review

Sport has changed. The nineteenth century rationale of amateurism, fair play and recreational participation has given way in the age of mass media and late capitalism to the staging of sport as commercial entertainment (Wenner, 1998; Whitson. 1998). While televised sport may work to create connections between people who have not yet met and are not likely to do so, it too, has slowly transformed these very relationships between sporting individuals and teams and the communities they supposedly represent (Whitson, 1998; Rowe et. aI, 1998). Can the needs of national and international television, global commercial forces, transnational fans and audiences …

Anti-Communism And Media Surveillance In Ireland 1948-50, John Horgan

Irish Communication Review

Ireland in the immediate post-war period offers, to the student of Cold War politics and intrigues, some unusual insights into the nature of political surveillance in general and to the surveillance of the press in particular, according to documents recently released by the US State department and made available in the US National Archives in Washington.1 Politically, the situation was becoming more volatile. Fianna Fáil, which had been in power continuously since 1942 and had won its most recent election in 1944, was coming under increasingly vocal criticism from two key groups of erstwhile supporters: urban workers, who had been …

Escaping The Evil Avenger And The Supercrip: Images Of Disability In Popular Television, Alison Harnett

Irish Communication Review

This article examines the extent and significance of the under-representation of the disabled community in fictional film and television, arguing that when it is portrayed onscreen, the images are often inaccurate or unfair. Whereas media treatment of women, the gay community, or ethnic minorities has received considerable academic attention, no such priority has been given to the nature of the portrayal of the disabled, or the lack of proportional visibility on our screens.

Race To The Park: Simmel, The Stranger And The State, Tanya M. Cassidy

Irish Communication Review

In 1909, Georg Simmel opens his essay entitled ‘Bridge and Door’ in the following way, ‘[t]he image of external things possesses for us the ambiguous dimension that in external nature everything can be considered to be connected, but also as separated’ (Simmel, 1997: 170). Ambivalence, meaning occupying two spaces at one and the same time, provides a stabilising social paradigm, and not a provisional condition of uncertainty. This paper discusses a socio-political drama in Ireland which makes active use of an ambivalent rhetoric, specifically linking notions of transcending boundaries.

Cultural And Structural Change In Irish Television Drama, Edward Brennan

Irish Communication Review

According to Devereux (1998), RTÉ drama, and RTÉ television in general, excludes society’s powerless. This is, in his view, a result of the ideology of RTÉ drama producers. Devereux’s research on RTÉ drama concentrates on Glenroe1. It states that Glenroe fails to represent adequately those who are marginalised in Irish society. In passing, Devereux mentions some material and organisational constraints which may help to explain why this is so.

Book Reviews: Volume 7

Irish Communication Review

Quality Assessment of Television, reviewed by Adrian Moynes

Communication Concepts 6: Agenda-Setting, reviewed by David Quin

News on a knife-edge: Gemini journalism and a global agenda, reviewed by David Quin

Teilifís Na Gaeilge As A Public Sphere, Iarfhlaith Watson

Irish Communication Review

This paper employs the Irish language media to argue for a normative ideal of public access using the concept 'public sphere'. Public sphere as an ideal type contains a democratic potential which allows for universal participation in the formation of public opinion. Two problems exist with the public sphere as a concept in so far as the ideal does not correspond to the reality. On the one hand, it can be argued that the market dominates the public sphere and hampers the democratic, spontaneous and autonomous formation of public opinion. On the other, it can also be argued that the …

New Toys For Boys, Paul O'Brien

Irish Communication Review

In 'Out of Time: Reflections on the Programming Life', Ellen Ullman writes that a senior (male) engineer once asked her why she left full-time engineering for consulting. She replied that she found the engineering culture very 'teenage-boy puerile'. The engineer replied to the effect that such loss of talent was too bad.

Content Matters: The Media And Cultural Industries In Ireland's National Information Strategy, Paschal Preston

Irish Communication Review

When, in the spring of 1996, the Irish government appointed an official Information Society Steering Committee (ISSC) with a brief to develop a national 'information society strategy and action plan' it was following a significant international policy trend. In so doing, Ireland became the latest member of the OECD to launch a policy and research initiative focused on the economic and social implications of new information and communication technologies (ICTs). This latest wave of official policy and research interest

Dancing About Architecture : Postmodernism And Irish Popular Music, Stephen Ryan

Irish Communication Review

Listening to Bono of U2 in a recent radio interview, I was struck by a comment he made. He was talking about contemporary and past musics, and how the past and the present are tied up with hopes and fears about the future. It was, he argued, a case of the difference between yesterdays tomorrow and todays tomorrow. Yesterday's tomorrow was about a confidence for the future, a belief that progress was more or less inevitable and, for music, that artistic creativity would continue to blossom and produce great works.

Ireland's Alternative Press: Writing From The Margins, Lance Pettit

Irish Communication Review

Given the relative scarcity of published sources on the press in Ireland, it is perhaps not surprising that there is little writing on alternative publications. An Phoblacht/Republican News (AP) Gay Community News (GCN) and The Big Issues (BI) might appear to exemplify O'Sullivan's definition of 'alternative media'. This article provides an examination of the term using examples that are specific to the social and political context of Ireland in the 1990s.

Maple And Shamrock: Seeking A Strategy For Survival In The Audiovisual Jungle, Colum Kenny

Irish Communication Review

Attempting to assess what the future might hold for Irish broadcasters and producers, especially in the light of digital and multimedia developments and of increasing competition, I recently paid a visit to Ontario and Quebec, two adjacent provinces of Canada. It is a country where audiovisual matters have long been taken seriously. Canada's proximity to the U.S. 'elephant', as that neighbour is sometimes known, concentrates the northern state's collective mind on survival strategies. Previous trips to Canada, including attendance at the Toronto Film Festival and participation as a guest in the Banff Television Festival in Alberta, had induced in the …

Book Reviews: Volume 6

Irish Communication Review

S. Hornig Priest Doing Media Research, reviewed by Eoin Devereux

Groombridge and J. Hay (eds.) The Price of Choice - Public service broadcasting in a competitive European market place, reviewed by Amanda Dunne

I. Ang Living Room Wars - Rethinking Media Audiences for a Postmodern World, reviewed by Ciaran McConaghy

S. Aronowitz, B. Martinsons and M. Menser (eds.) TechnoScience and Cyber Culture, reviewed by Brian Torode

Is Advertising On Television To Children A Problem?, Brian Young

Irish Communication Review

Why are people concerned about television advertising and its influence on children? Is this concern justified? These are the two main points I want to consider in this paper.

View Of Advertising Practitioners, Peter O'Keeffe

Irish Communication Review

I am concerned to make the case for the rights and liberties to communicate commercial advertising messages to children. Consequenlly, I am amused by the identification of advertising with witchcraft; witches ceased to be burned a long time ago. However, this comparison, illustrates the excessive concern shown about how strangely influential advertising is.

Children And Television Advertising, Farrell Corcoran

Irish Communication Review

I am particularly frustrated by the lack of debate on issues concerning the media and children in this country. That may be a sweeping statement but we tend to react rather than take an active interest in trying to influence things. These reactions tend to be shaped by moral panics. There is nothing as depressing as a moral panic that arises, usually in the area of violence, every year or two, in response to something happening near us, for example in Manchester, Liverpool or perhaps closer to home. The same tired old arguments and positions are taken with little sign …

Eu Media Policy: Recent Features, Josef Trappel

Irish Communication Review

EU media policy has to be considered as an element of the overall economic goals of the EU: it pursues those goals rather than genuine media policy objectives such as freedom of expression, pluralism and diversity, democratic function of media, equal access to information or the notion of programme or content quality. Any meaningful evaluation of media policy of the European Union needs to distinguish between two different concepts: the economic objectives of the EU, the adherence of member state's legislation to EU standards, the completion of the single market, the degree of legislative alignment to harmonized media matters, the …

People's Home To Home And Away: The Growth And Development Of Soap Opera In Sweden, Hugh O'Donnell

Irish Communication Review

This paper is part of a larger study analyzing domestic soap operas and telenovelas in seventeen European countries, comparing their performance with that of imported products of the same kind, and examining their place not only within the televisual culture, but also within the broader social and political culture of their country.

All Dressed Up With Nowhere To Call: Fashion Victims In The New Look Telecom Industry, Maria Lohan

Irish Communication Review

The Telecom industry In Ireland is currently in training to tone itself up in preparation for both convergence and competition In the new look telecommunications Industry. Only those companies who have completed extenslve tummy tucks on staffing and removed the weight of subsidized charging may enter this new telecommunications club. Not only this, but you must of course have the right personality to attract partners with dowries of infrastructure. An important characteristic is a willingness to invest In anything electronic - but property will do too. And what should the fashion conscious Telecom player be sporting this season? Well POTS …

Hypertext Theory And Narrative, Eoin Kilfeather

Irish Communication Review

The title of this essay may at first glance seem strange. The linkage of a computer based technology with a theory of narrative might seem incongruous; however, hypertext and what George Landow has called the 'convergence of critical theory and technology' has stimulated interest in new theories and problematics of the text and of narrative. Interest in studying the textual implications of hypertext systems has grown almost as rapidly as these systems themselves. It is not an overstatement to say that of all the technological developments of the twentieth century, the emergence of hypertext and the internet has been the …

New Technologies And Changing Work Practices In The Media Industry: The Case Of Lreland, Ellen Hazelkorn

Irish Communication Review

The broadcasting environment in Ireland is the most competitive in Europe. RTE's revenue is strictly limited. The licence fee has not increased since 1986. Advertising revenue is controlled by law. The preservation of a comprehensive and effective radio and television service can only be sustained by the most efficient and cost effective approach to the production of programmes of quality.

Problems Of Broadcast Funding: Crimeline And Sponsorship, Amanda Dunne

Irish Communication Review

In recent years, the dominant trend in broadcast regulation in Europe has been to place the consumer not the citizen at the centre of policy. While technological change has also provoked phenomenal changes in broadcasting and its marketplace, the irrefutable tension between the interests of the citizen and those of the consumer, between 'quality' programming and 'mass' audiences, and between the 'public service' ethos and the interests of commercial broadcasting is more directly a function of policy (Dahlgren, 1995).

Fianna Fail And The Origins Of The Irish Press, Catherine Curran

Irish Communication Review

In order to win political support for its programme of economic self-sufficiency in the 1930s, Fianna Fail appealed to a number of constituencies: Irish manufacturers, the smaller farmers, and the urban working class. The success of this appeal depended on a number of factors, one of the principal being that an effective means of communication should be established. The Irish Press was founded in response to an immediate and pressing need for a mass circulation daily to assist in Fianna Fail's struggle for hegemony against the ideas of the ruling party, Cumann na nGaedheal. Manning (l972:42) remarks that the significance …