Critical and Cultural Studies Commons^™

The Alt-Right's Use Of President Donald Trump's Twitter Account As A Propaganda Device, Erin Nicole Jorden

Erin Jorden

The long campaign to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act situated President Donald J. Trump in a context where attacks on President Barack Obama’s signature legislation symbolized a broader repudiation of his legacy. Even more than mainstream Republican partisans, the altright blogosphere celebrated the demise of the law to symbolically cleanse the nation of Obama’s influence. Trump attempted to honor his pledge to end Obamacare in his first year of office with his support of the American Health Care Act (March 2017), Better Care Reconciliation Act (July 2017), and the Graham-Cassidy Bill (September 2017). Members of the alt-right reframed …

Feed: State Transparency Amidst Informational Surplus, Mark Fenster

Mark Fenster

Blue-Collar Work, Career, And Success: Occupational Narratives Of Sisu, Kristen Lucas, Patrice M. Buzzanel

Kristen Lucas

This study examined underground iron ore miners’ occupational narratives to uncover how their stories socialize miners into blue-collar careers and reinforce their work identities. Through the root theme of sisu (Finnish for inner determination), underground miners create a status hierarchy that is used to construct a sense of pride around their work and to establish milestones of success for themselves and others in their workgroup. Furthermore, they communicatively construct exemplars that guide their performance and decisions during the unfolding of their work experiences. Their discourses provide alternatives to white-collar conceptualizations and practices of careers and success.

A Brief History Of Fake News, Amy Fry

Amy Fry

Selective Amnesia And Racial Transcendence In News Coverage Of President Obama’S Inauguration, Casey R. Kelly, Kristen Hoerl

Casey R. Kelly

The mainstream press frequently characterized the election of President Barack Obama the first African American US President as the realization of Martin Luther King's dream, thus crafting a postracial narrative of national transcendence. I argue that this routine characterization of Obama's election functions as a site for the production of selective amnesia, a form of remembrance that routinely negates and silences those who would contest hegemonic narratives of national progress and unity.

Abstinence Cinema: Virginity And The Rhetoric Of Sexual Purity In Contemporary Film, Casey R. Kelly

Casey R. Kelly

Structural Pluralism And The Community Context: How And When Does The Environment Matter?, Leo Jeffres, Edward Horowitz, Cheryl Bracken, Guowei Jian, Kimberly Neuendorf, Sukki Yoon

Guowei Jian

Several long-standing theories intersect in discussing the impact of community characteristics and of the mass media. The structural pluralism model popularized by Tichenor and his colleagues says that social structure influences how mass media operate in communities because they respond to how power is distributed in the social system, whereas the linear model says that the increasing size of a community's population leads to more social differentiation and diversity and corresponding increases in subcultures with their own beliefs, customs, and behaviors. Recently, there has been a concern about how changes in society have led to a decline in organizational activity …

Capital, Consumption, Communication, And Citizenship: The Social Positioning Of Taste And Civic Culture In The United States, Mark Rademacher

Mark A. Rademacher

In this paper, we analyze the field of cultural consumption in the United States, drawing on the methods of correspondence analysis employed by Bourdieu (1979/1984). Using the 2000 DDB Lifestyle Study, we analyze a cross section of Americans (N=3,122) in terms of their occupational categories, media usage, consumption practices, social behaviors, and indicators of civic and political engagement. In doing so, we find many parallels to the determinants of taste, cultural discrimination, and choice within the field structure observed by Bourdieu in 1960s French society, though there are also some notable differences, consistent with Peterson and Kern's (1996) concept of …

Downshifting Consumer = Upshifting Citizen?, Mark Rademacher

Mark A. Rademacher

Critics suggest that contemporary consumer culture creates over-worked and over-shopped consumers who no longer engage in civic life. We challenge this conventional criticism against consumption within an individualistic lifestyle and argue instead that consumers who are "downshifting" do engage in civic life. In particular, this research examines downshifting attitudes among members of freecycle.org, a grassroots "gift economy" community. Results of an online survey show that downshifting consumers are indeed less materialistic and brand-conscious. They also tend to practice political consumption (e.g., boycotts, buycotts). Most importantly, they tend to engage in a digital form, but not a traditional form, of civic …

Habermas In The African E-Village: Deliberative Practices Of Diasporan Nigerians On The Internet, Farooq A. Kperogi

Farooq A. Kperogi

This chapter examines a many-to-many, collaborative, transnational, diasporic sphere of public discourse called the Nigerian Village Square, which over the years has functioned as an arena for the vigorous exchange of ideas among Nigerians both at home and in the diaspora and as a veritable locus for the initiation of online petition drives to change or influence state policies in the homeland. It is the reinvention, in an electronic form, of the deliberative content of the “village square” in the pre-colonial African social formation where “people from all corners [met] at the Village Square after a hard day's work to …

The Right Of Free Movement: A Story Of Securitisation And Control In The Uk Or The Story Of Ion Popescu, Konstanitinos Mitropoulos

Bahram Kazemian

Recently in Britain there has been an on-going discussion on the right of European citizens to move to, work and reside freely in any European Union member-state. British politicians and media, stepping on the significant number of Eastern Europeans who moved to the United Kingdom, articulated a securitising discourse representing them as ‘benefit tourists’ and criminals who threaten the integrity of the welfare system and social cohesion. However, this is only part of the securitisation story. This paper argues that the securitisation of mobile European citizens and, consequently of the right of free movement itself, is used as governmentality in …

Superman Needs You, Kirby Farrell

kirby farrell

A powerful leader in politics, business, or closer to home has “magnetism.” But leaders depend on followers, who follow because it’s rewarding. Consider the attention commanded by Donald Trump or even Adolf Hitler. Lives depend on it. Both figures use scripts centered on elimination of scapegoats as a technique of converting flight to fight emergency physiology in followers. Close attention can demytify euphemized homicidal ideation.

“We Are Not Free”: The Meaning Of In American Indian Resistance To President Johnson's War On Poverty, Casey R. Kelly

Casey R. Kelly

This essay examines how the ideograph was crafted through dialectical struggles between Euro-Americans and American Indians over federal Indian policy between 1964 and 1968. For policymakers, was historically sutured to the belief that assimilation was the only pathway to American Indian liberation. I explore the American Indian youth movement's response to President Johnson's War on Poverty to demonstrate how activists rhetorically realigned in Indian policy with the Great Society's rhetoric of “community empowerment.” I illustrate how American Indians orchestrated counterhegemonic resistance by reframing the “Great Society” as an argument for a “Greater Indian American.” This analysis evinces the rhetorical significance …

Exoticizing Poverty In Bizarre Foods America, Casey R. Kelly

Casey R. Kelly

No abstract provided.

Détournement, Decolonization, And The American Indian Occupation Of Alcatraz Island (1969–1971), Casey R. Kelly

Casey R. Kelly

On November 20, 1969, eighty-nine American Indians calling themselves the “Indians of All Tribes” (IOAT) invaded Alcatraz Island. The group’s founding proclamation was addressed to “the Great White Father and All His People,” and declared “We, the Native Americans, reclaim the land known as Alcatraz Island in the name of all American Indians by right of discovery” (2). Tongue-in-cheek, the IOAT offered to purchase Alcatraz Island for “twenty-four dollars in glass beads and red clothe.” In this essay, I illustrate how the IOAT engaged in a rhetoric of détournement, or a subversive misappropriation of dominant discourse that disassembles and imitates …

Bizarre Foods: White Privilege And The Neocolonial Palate, Casey R. Kelly

Casey R. Kelly

No abstract provided.

Selective Amnesia And Racial Transcendence In News Coverage Of President Obama’S Inauguration, Casey R. Kelly, Kristen Hoerl

Kristen Hoerl

The mainstream press frequently characterized the election of President Barack Obama the first African American US President as the realization of Martin Luther King's dream, thus crafting a postracial narrative of national transcendence. I argue that this routine characterization of Obama's election functions as a site for the production of selective amnesia, a form of remembrance that routinely negates and silences those who would contest hegemonic narratives of national progress and unity.

Managed Convictions: Debate And The Limits Of Electoral Politics, Ronald Walter Greene, Darrin Hicks

Ronald Walter Greene

In response to Kathleen Hall Jamieson’s proposed agenda for future Presidential debate research, we recall the troubled relation between debate and conviction, which has fueled disciplinary and public controversy throughout the last century. Following a brief genealogy of three such controversies, we describe four models of debate as a cultural technology for managing the economy of moral conviction: debate as critical deliberation, debate as civic virtue, debate as social justice, and debate as game. We claim that reading Jamieson’s proposal in light of these technologies reveals a potentially disturbing fault line: if we fail to distance the aims and methods …

Agency In Posthuman Ir: Solving The Problem Of Technosocially Mediated Agency, Michael Schandorf, Athina Karatzogianni

Athina Karatzogianni

Cold War Ii: Those Evil Russkie He-Men Are Making Us Frack Ourselves,, Michael I. Niman Ph.D.

Michael I Niman Ph.D.

You have to admit, the timing is convenient, both for us handsome free Americans and for the cursed Russians. If you’re Russian, forget about the regular jailing of protesters and musicians, your he-man government and its bizarre hatred of gay folks, the degradation of your environment and rape of your natural resources, and the rise of a billionaire mafioso class. You now have rude hubristic Americans to monopolize your hate and fear. Ditto for Americans. Forget every issue we were fretting about the day before masked, Russian-speaking troops swarmed over the border and “did not invade” Crimea, annexing it and …

Aune's Leadership: Hegemony And The Rhetorical Perspective On Argumentation, Ronald Walter Greene, Alexander Hiland

Ronald Walter Greene

No abstract provided.

The Politics Media Equation:Exposing Two Faces Of Old Nexus Through Study Of General Elections,Wikileaks And Radia Tapes, Ratnesh Dwivedi Mr

Ratnesh Dwivedi

The important identity of a responsible media is playing an unbiased role in reporting a matter without giving unnecessary hype to attract the attention of the gullible public with the object of making money and money only.After reporting properly the media can educate the public to form their own opinion in the matters of public interest. Throughout the centuries, the world has never existed without information and communication, hence the inexhaustible essence of mass media. The government has the power to either make or reject whatever that will exist within its environment. It also determines how free the mass media …

A Detailed Case Study Of Unusual Routines, Stephen Cooper

Stephen D. Cooper

Everyone working in organizations will, from time to time, experience frustrations and problems when trying to accomplish tasks that are a required part of their role. In such cases it is normal for people to find ways of completing their work in such a way that hey can get around, or just simply avoid, the procedure or system that has caused the problem. This is an unusual routine – a recurrent interaction pattern in which someone encounters a problem when trying to accomplish normal activities by following standard organizational procedures and then becomes enmeshed in wasteful and even harmful subroutines …

Story Of An Intern, Ratnesh Dwivedi Mr

Ratnesh Dwivedi

“Story Of an Intern” tells you the story of an young boy who manages to get an internship in a global media giant. His struggles and amazements begins when he finds himself out of internship and struggles to get a foothold in media. In the way he analyzes the odds and evens of Indian media industry and media tycoons while most of the time finding himself rejected. His experiences while in search of a job carries him to different places and allows him to meet some interesting people who makes an imprint on his life and he finds himself falling …

Mass Media And Communication In Global Scenario, Ratnesh Dwivedi Mr

Ratnesh Dwivedi

The idea behind putting these research papers and research articles in this book is to give various aspects of communication, a platform where from readers may go through them at one go. The book deals with the research articles and papers dedicated to core areas of Journalism and Mass Communication. The papers and articles compiled in this book touches the need of students,academicians and researchers on most challenging areas and topics.In the collection of these papers author has discussed about Community Radio,FM Radio,Communication Science, Organizational Communication,Media Accounatbility,Language Discourse,Higher Education,Tevision Studies,Traditional and Digital Media,Disaster Management and Media,Wikileaks and Social Media,Terrorism and …

Journalism In A Pr World, Michael I. Niman Ph.D.

Michael I Niman Ph.D.

Mike Niman discusses the future of journalism in a PR-dominated communication environment. In particular, he examines the migration of talent from journalism to the PR industry, the collapse of mainstream journalism and the role of an emergent alternative media as American journalism goes through metamorphosis from what it was to what it could become. Journalism is a social good that should equip people to understand and resist spin. Niman argues that mainstream American journalism, rather than rising to this challenge, has transparently succumbed to serving as an arm of the corporate PR industry, thus laying the groundwork for its own …

Journalism In A Pr World, Michael I. Niman Ph.D.

Michael I Niman Ph.D.

Mike Niman discusses the future of journalism in a PR-dominated communication environment. In particular, he examines the migration of talent from journalism to the PR industry, the collapse of mainstream journalism and the role of an emergent alternative media as American journalism goes through metamorphosis from what it was to what it could become. Journalism is a social good that should equip people to understand and resist spin. Niman argues that mainstream American journalism, rather than rising to this challenge, has transparently succumbed to serving as an arm of the corporate PR industry, thus laying the groundwork for its own …

“Human Relations Movement In View Of Interpersonal Relations With Emphasis On Mayo’S Work”, Ratnesh Dwivedi Mr

Ratnesh Dwivedi

Human relations movement refers to the researchers of organizational development who study the behavior of people in groups, in particular workplace groups. It originated in the 1930s' Hawthorne studies, which examined the effects of social relations, motivation and employee satisfaction on factory productivity. The movement viewed workers in terms of their psychology and fit with companies, rather than as interchangeable parts, and it resulted in the creation of the discipline of human resource management. An interpersonal relationship is an association between two or more people that may range in duration from brief to enduring. This association may be based on …

The Absent Adjunct, Brandon Hensley

Brandon O. Hensley

No abstract provided.

Was Blind But Now I See: Animal Liberation Documentaries’ Deconstruction Of Barriers To Witnessing Injustice, Carrie Packwood Freeman, Scott Tulloch

Carrie P. Freeman

Many pro-animal documentaries are built around footage taken by undercover animal activists uncovering abuses in industries such as agriculture and fishing, fur, marine parks, and biomedical research labs. This analysis explores the central role of undercover activist footage in recent documentaries: Earthlings, The Cove, The Witness, Peaceable Kingdom, Behind the Mask, Fowl Play, and Dealing Dogs. Considering both form and function, I investigate how this undercover footage works in terms of providing an inherent critique of power in our relationship with nonhuman animals – a sense of witnessing a crime that is an injustice both in terms of causing animal …