Pub Date : 2023-11-08DOI: 10.1177/01634437231210439
Jean K Chalaby
As television is embracing a new set of internet-related technologies, the medium is transitioning from broadcasting to streaming. With it, a new mode of distribution has emerged: the streaming platform. This research makes a three-pronged effort to assess their impact on the TV industry: it analyses the way platforms monetize content; it distinguishes types of streaming platforms based on a set of criteria that includes supply-chain arrangements and the way they structure commercial transactions among different sets of participants, and it considers the ownership of streaming services. This article contributes to media and communication studies by combining the platform literature with global value chain (GVC) theory in order to foster our understanding of streaming platforms. It contextualizes streaming platforms in the history of television and analyses how they are transforming the medium.
{"title":"The streaming industry and the platform economy: An analysis","authors":"Jean K Chalaby","doi":"10.1177/01634437231210439","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/01634437231210439","url":null,"abstract":"As television is embracing a new set of internet-related technologies, the medium is transitioning from broadcasting to streaming. With it, a new mode of distribution has emerged: the streaming platform. This research makes a three-pronged effort to assess their impact on the TV industry: it analyses the way platforms monetize content; it distinguishes types of streaming platforms based on a set of criteria that includes supply-chain arrangements and the way they structure commercial transactions among different sets of participants, and it considers the ownership of streaming services. This article contributes to media and communication studies by combining the platform literature with global value chain (GVC) theory in order to foster our understanding of streaming platforms. It contextualizes streaming platforms in the history of television and analyses how they are transforming the medium.","PeriodicalId":18417,"journal":{"name":"Media, Culture & Society","volume":"122 2","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-11-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135341740","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-10-28DOI: 10.1177/01634437231207758
Aslı İkizoğlu Erensü
This paper seeks to question whether and how instrumentalization of refugees by states impacts their media representations, based on the example of a border spectacle that took place in March 2020, when Turkey unilaterally opened its borders to the West, causing hundreds to flock to the land border with Greece and to the coasts of the Aegean Sea. In many ways, this ended up as a failed border spectacle, especially for international publics: Turkey appeared neither as a strong state nor as a benefactor of asylum-seekers. Yet, the paper claims, the spectacle nonetheless led to an ordering of the visibility of asylum-seekers that cannot be captured on the victim-threat spectrum across which they are usually represented. Examining Turkish mainstream TV evening news as well as state agencies’ Twitter accounts, the paper traces how Greece was made hypervisible through the use of three frames (humanitarian, legalistic and moralistic) and asylum-seekers were reduced to extras ( figurants) in the process. Such an ordering of visibility facilitated the re-moralization of instrumentalization of refugees and may have accordingly shaped the response-ability of citizens. The figure of the extra enables us to link refugee visibilities to splintering moral geographies of asylum.
{"title":"Appearing to disappear: Ordering visibility in a Turkish border spectacle","authors":"Aslı İkizoğlu Erensü","doi":"10.1177/01634437231207758","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/01634437231207758","url":null,"abstract":"This paper seeks to question whether and how instrumentalization of refugees by states impacts their media representations, based on the example of a border spectacle that took place in March 2020, when Turkey unilaterally opened its borders to the West, causing hundreds to flock to the land border with Greece and to the coasts of the Aegean Sea. In many ways, this ended up as a failed border spectacle, especially for international publics: Turkey appeared neither as a strong state nor as a benefactor of asylum-seekers. Yet, the paper claims, the spectacle nonetheless led to an ordering of the visibility of asylum-seekers that cannot be captured on the victim-threat spectrum across which they are usually represented. Examining Turkish mainstream TV evening news as well as state agencies’ Twitter accounts, the paper traces how Greece was made hypervisible through the use of three frames (humanitarian, legalistic and moralistic) and asylum-seekers were reduced to extras ( figurants) in the process. Such an ordering of visibility facilitated the re-moralization of instrumentalization of refugees and may have accordingly shaped the response-ability of citizens. The figure of the extra enables us to link refugee visibilities to splintering moral geographies of asylum.","PeriodicalId":18417,"journal":{"name":"Media, Culture & Society","volume":"17 4","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-10-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"136158874","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-10-27DOI: 10.1177/01634437231207760
Valentina Proust
This essay explores the potential of digital mourning for activists and social movements, enabling them to navigate the injuries inflicted by hegemonic powers and harness these experiences as a meaningful force for social change. Through a literature review of scholarly works on mourning within digital platforms, the article identifies theories and characterizations that foster critical reflections on the significance of these online instances. Moreover, by presenting three examples of digital mourning activism (Black Lives Matter, COVID-19 protests, and the Arab Spring), the paper highlights the significance of digital platforms as spaces for collective mourning, shaping public opinion, building collective memory, and driving activism beyond the digital realm. Overall, this essay aims to contribute to a deeper understanding of digital mourning as an empowering tool for activism, shedding light on its role in facilitating meaning-making processes and fostering the potential for profound social change in the face of systemic challenges and injustices.
{"title":"By sharing our loss, we fight: Collective expressions of grief in the digital age","authors":"Valentina Proust","doi":"10.1177/01634437231207760","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/01634437231207760","url":null,"abstract":"This essay explores the potential of digital mourning for activists and social movements, enabling them to navigate the injuries inflicted by hegemonic powers and harness these experiences as a meaningful force for social change. Through a literature review of scholarly works on mourning within digital platforms, the article identifies theories and characterizations that foster critical reflections on the significance of these online instances. Moreover, by presenting three examples of digital mourning activism (Black Lives Matter, COVID-19 protests, and the Arab Spring), the paper highlights the significance of digital platforms as spaces for collective mourning, shaping public opinion, building collective memory, and driving activism beyond the digital realm. Overall, this essay aims to contribute to a deeper understanding of digital mourning as an empowering tool for activism, shedding light on its role in facilitating meaning-making processes and fostering the potential for profound social change in the face of systemic challenges and injustices.","PeriodicalId":18417,"journal":{"name":"Media, Culture & Society","volume":"15 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-10-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"136261671","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-10-25DOI: 10.1177/01634437231209203
Jian Lin, Jeroen de Kloet
In this special issue, we explore the geopolitics, aesthetics and future potentiality surrounding TikTok to assess the possibility and implications of a new phase of digital globalisation. A phase in which China-based innovative platform technologies, infused with state power, generate and potentially disrupt digital cultures in places outside China. We will further explore this in the next part of this introduction, showing how the global rise of TikTok is feeding into increasing geopolitical anxieties worldwide. At the same time, we argue for the need to diversify our approaches to TikTok and platform studies – the latter field is very much dominated by questions around production, monetisation, data and political economy. More approaches, focusing on aesthetics, visual culture and users, are needed. In the second part of this introduction, we mobilise the notion of repetitive creativities as a way to engage with the aesthetic affordances of TikTok. This brings us to our conclusion, in which we allude to the possibility that TikTok can be seen as a kind of silly archive, offering glimpses of a future that is not yet here, but that may well come.
{"title":"TikTok and the platformisation from China: Geopolitical anxieties, repetitive creativities and future imaginaries","authors":"Jian Lin, Jeroen de Kloet","doi":"10.1177/01634437231209203","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/01634437231209203","url":null,"abstract":"In this special issue, we explore the geopolitics, aesthetics and future potentiality surrounding TikTok to assess the possibility and implications of a new phase of digital globalisation. A phase in which China-based innovative platform technologies, infused with state power, generate and potentially disrupt digital cultures in places outside China. We will further explore this in the next part of this introduction, showing how the global rise of TikTok is feeding into increasing geopolitical anxieties worldwide. At the same time, we argue for the need to diversify our approaches to TikTok and platform studies – the latter field is very much dominated by questions around production, monetisation, data and political economy. More approaches, focusing on aesthetics, visual culture and users, are needed. In the second part of this introduction, we mobilise the notion of repetitive creativities as a way to engage with the aesthetic affordances of TikTok. This brings us to our conclusion, in which we allude to the possibility that TikTok can be seen as a kind of silly archive, offering glimpses of a future that is not yet here, but that may well come.","PeriodicalId":18417,"journal":{"name":"Media, Culture & Society","volume":"35 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-10-25","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135111751","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-10-24DOI: 10.1177/01634437231203880
Marie Heřmanová
The article explores legitimization strategies related to cultural consumption in the Czech media space by comparing the representations of cultural products in influencer communication on social media and in legacy (print and online) media outlets. Departing from the theoretical debate on the intersection of cultural omnivorousness and the emergence of algorithmic culture, the article poses the question: what strategies do influencers on social media and journalists in legacy media outlets employ to present consumption of cultural products as legitimate, interesting, and cool? Based on qualitative content analysis of 10 Instagram profiles of prominent Czech influencers and culture sections of 10 Czech legacy media, it discusses two main discursive legitimization strategies: (1) the notion of authenticity, used by social media influencers and (2) the notion of cult, used by legacy media in two distinctive ways – as (a) legendary, part of the pop cultural canon and (b) new, contemporary, part of up-to-date cultural savviness.
{"title":"Authentic cult: media representations of cultural consumption and legitimization of cultural hierarchies","authors":"Marie Heřmanová","doi":"10.1177/01634437231203880","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/01634437231203880","url":null,"abstract":"The article explores legitimization strategies related to cultural consumption in the Czech media space by comparing the representations of cultural products in influencer communication on social media and in legacy (print and online) media outlets. Departing from the theoretical debate on the intersection of cultural omnivorousness and the emergence of algorithmic culture, the article poses the question: what strategies do influencers on social media and journalists in legacy media outlets employ to present consumption of cultural products as legitimate, interesting, and cool? Based on qualitative content analysis of 10 Instagram profiles of prominent Czech influencers and culture sections of 10 Czech legacy media, it discusses two main discursive legitimization strategies: (1) the notion of authenticity, used by social media influencers and (2) the notion of cult, used by legacy media in two distinctive ways – as (a) legendary, part of the pop cultural canon and (b) new, contemporary, part of up-to-date cultural savviness.","PeriodicalId":18417,"journal":{"name":"Media, Culture & Society","volume":"25 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-10-24","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135274059","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-10-15DOI: 10.1177/01634437231202151
Azi Lev-On
Social media platforms evolved into significant arenas for comprehending crises, hardships, violence, and murder. This paper contributes to the discourse within the intersection of social media and crime by delving into the narratives through which people pour meaning online into tragedies with personal significance. When people experience life-changing events, some go through a process of “sense-making” to fully understand the events and their implications, and reach closure. Processes of “sense-making” become increasingly public and collaborative through stories people tell on social media. Still, a dearth of literature exists that systematically examines these stories as conduits for infusing meaning into tragedies. This article bridges this gap by analyzing the narratives emanating from Facebook groups commemorating Tair Rada and advocating for justice for Roman Zadorov, who was convicted with her murder. These narratives not only challenge Zadorov’s culpability but also recount the sequence of events leading to the tragedy. Furthermore, they delve into the identity and motivations of the perpetrator(s), resuscitating neglected lines of police investigation and occasionally introducing alternative narratives. To establish their narratives’ credibility, authors employ a range of strategies such as integrating source materials, employing categorical language, and cultivating an atmosphere of personal witnessing or knowledge acquisition.
{"title":"Making sense of murder: Characterizing stories in social media groups","authors":"Azi Lev-On","doi":"10.1177/01634437231202151","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/01634437231202151","url":null,"abstract":"Social media platforms evolved into significant arenas for comprehending crises, hardships, violence, and murder. This paper contributes to the discourse within the intersection of social media and crime by delving into the narratives through which people pour meaning online into tragedies with personal significance. When people experience life-changing events, some go through a process of “sense-making” to fully understand the events and their implications, and reach closure. Processes of “sense-making” become increasingly public and collaborative through stories people tell on social media. Still, a dearth of literature exists that systematically examines these stories as conduits for infusing meaning into tragedies. This article bridges this gap by analyzing the narratives emanating from Facebook groups commemorating Tair Rada and advocating for justice for Roman Zadorov, who was convicted with her murder. These narratives not only challenge Zadorov’s culpability but also recount the sequence of events leading to the tragedy. Furthermore, they delve into the identity and motivations of the perpetrator(s), resuscitating neglected lines of police investigation and occasionally introducing alternative narratives. To establish their narratives’ credibility, authors employ a range of strategies such as integrating source materials, employing categorical language, and cultivating an atmosphere of personal witnessing or knowledge acquisition.","PeriodicalId":18417,"journal":{"name":"Media, Culture & Society","volume":"6 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-10-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"136183485","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-10-11DOI: 10.1177/01634437231203875
Catherine Johnson, Lauren Dempsey
This article asks how the rise in use of SVOD in the United Kingdom during 2020 impacted people’s expectations of public service television (PSTV). Drawing on 56 qualitative interviews with 28 UK participants conducted in 2019 and 2020, the article uses the COVID-19 lockdown to explore how disruption to the context of viewing might shape the cultural meanings people attach to PSTV. Challenging dominant approaches that measure audience assessments of public service media (PSM) against normative criteria, this article focuses instead on the processes through which people’s cultural meanings about PSTV are formed. Examining the interplay of their encounters with, expectations and evaluations of television, it reveals the divergent meanings our participants brought to linear and on-demand television. The article concludes by examining the implications of these expectations for PSM policy and for the ways in which we research people’s viewing experiences and choices amidst the rise of VOD.
{"title":"Public service television in the age of subscription video on demand: Shifting TV audience expectations in the UK during COVID-19","authors":"Catherine Johnson, Lauren Dempsey","doi":"10.1177/01634437231203875","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/01634437231203875","url":null,"abstract":"This article asks how the rise in use of SVOD in the United Kingdom during 2020 impacted people’s expectations of public service television (PSTV). Drawing on 56 qualitative interviews with 28 UK participants conducted in 2019 and 2020, the article uses the COVID-19 lockdown to explore how disruption to the context of viewing might shape the cultural meanings people attach to PSTV. Challenging dominant approaches that measure audience assessments of public service media (PSM) against normative criteria, this article focuses instead on the processes through which people’s cultural meanings about PSTV are formed. Examining the interplay of their encounters with, expectations and evaluations of television, it reveals the divergent meanings our participants brought to linear and on-demand television. The article concludes by examining the implications of these expectations for PSM policy and for the ways in which we research people’s viewing experiences and choices amidst the rise of VOD.","PeriodicalId":18417,"journal":{"name":"Media, Culture & Society","volume":"28 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-10-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"136211166","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-10-09DOI: 10.1177/01634437231202154
Kusha Sefat
Recent works in media and communications studies have increasingly embedded the analysis of publicness within Science and Technology Studies (STS) and, interrelatedly, the new materialism. The result has emphasized the significant role that everyday objects play in engendering various publics. Yet, the uncritical incorporation of the new materialism and its bias toward present forms of materiality has led many scholars of the media to ignore the relationships between absent material objects and publicness. This is a key shortcoming since absent material realities are actively, and not so innocently, produced as non-thinkable alternatives to what exists, impeding externalized material worlds from becoming pronounceable as a need or an aspiration within the contexts of hegemonic globalization. In this essay, I draw on emerging works in media and communications studies, along with the social and political history of revolutionary Iran, as touchstones for a critical discussion on the linkages between publicness, materiality, and absence. I conclude with some observations and questions on publicness amid emergency climate change.
{"title":"(Dis)Affordances: Publicness and the Question of Absence","authors":"Kusha Sefat","doi":"10.1177/01634437231202154","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/01634437231202154","url":null,"abstract":"Recent works in media and communications studies have increasingly embedded the analysis of publicness within Science and Technology Studies (STS) and, interrelatedly, the new materialism. The result has emphasized the significant role that everyday objects play in engendering various publics. Yet, the uncritical incorporation of the new materialism and its bias toward present forms of materiality has led many scholars of the media to ignore the relationships between absent material objects and publicness. This is a key shortcoming since absent material realities are actively, and not so innocently, produced as non-thinkable alternatives to what exists, impeding externalized material worlds from becoming pronounceable as a need or an aspiration within the contexts of hegemonic globalization. In this essay, I draw on emerging works in media and communications studies, along with the social and political history of revolutionary Iran, as touchstones for a critical discussion on the linkages between publicness, materiality, and absence. I conclude with some observations and questions on publicness amid emergency climate change.","PeriodicalId":18417,"journal":{"name":"Media, Culture & Society","volume":"2016 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-10-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135095556","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-10-06DOI: 10.1177/01634437231202167
Jian Lin, Joëlle Swart, Guohua Zeng
Instead of viewing TikTok as a platform, in this article we borrow Dutch film theorist Patricia Pisters’s concept of neuro-images to approach TikTok as a cultural form that is deeply participatory, platform contingent, and algorithmically engraved. In the co-production between algorithms and users, TikTok becomes an enormous database and generates personalised narratives about individuals and the world onto and through its ‘brain-screen’ interfaces, which simulate our conscious and unconscious mind, and actualise the idea of creativity based on repetition. TikTok thus enables a quasi-automated cinema, whose non-stopping filming of everyday lives does not seek to reduce desires and tastes into a singular and coherent structure, but instead uncovers, releases and contains them in its vast database and interfaces, leading to a fluid and modulating categorisation of identities. It is within this quasi-automated, deeply participatory digital cinema that TikTok constitutes neuro-images, producing a distinctive experience of time, and unpredictable and unstable futures.
{"title":"Theorising TikTok cultures: Neuro-images in the era of short videos","authors":"Jian Lin, Joëlle Swart, Guohua Zeng","doi":"10.1177/01634437231202167","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/01634437231202167","url":null,"abstract":"Instead of viewing TikTok as a platform, in this article we borrow Dutch film theorist Patricia Pisters’s concept of neuro-images to approach TikTok as a cultural form that is deeply participatory, platform contingent, and algorithmically engraved. In the co-production between algorithms and users, TikTok becomes an enormous database and generates personalised narratives about individuals and the world onto and through its ‘brain-screen’ interfaces, which simulate our conscious and unconscious mind, and actualise the idea of creativity based on repetition. TikTok thus enables a quasi-automated cinema, whose non-stopping filming of everyday lives does not seek to reduce desires and tastes into a singular and coherent structure, but instead uncovers, releases and contains them in its vast database and interfaces, leading to a fluid and modulating categorisation of identities. It is within this quasi-automated, deeply participatory digital cinema that TikTok constitutes neuro-images, producing a distinctive experience of time, and unpredictable and unstable futures.","PeriodicalId":18417,"journal":{"name":"Media, Culture & Society","volume":"17 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-10-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135350782","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-10-06DOI: 10.1177/01634437231203883
Lizhen Zhao
With promotional livestreaming transforming the digital culture and e-commerce landscape in China, rural streamers take this opportunity to not only harvest economic rewards but also construct rural identities and associated imagery. Employing a digital ethnographic approach, this article closely explored how rural spaces and rural labor activities are constructed and commodified in Chinese promotional livestreaming. I argue that although rural streamers’ creative use of platform-afforded liveness and interactivity enriches Chinese digital culture by making everyday life in rural spaces visible, this constructed rurality is, however, flattened, decontextualized, and romanticized – thus, ready to be commodified and sold to the audience. In addition, agricultural labor is made hyper-visible, generating the possibility for demystifying said labor process, while other forms of labor, mainly affective labor and labor for negotiation with the platforms, are made invisible, undervalued, and exploited, deepening the precarious condition of such platform-dependent labor.
{"title":"Selling rural China: The construction and commodification of rurality in Chinese promotional livestreaming","authors":"Lizhen Zhao","doi":"10.1177/01634437231203883","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/01634437231203883","url":null,"abstract":"With promotional livestreaming transforming the digital culture and e-commerce landscape in China, rural streamers take this opportunity to not only harvest economic rewards but also construct rural identities and associated imagery. Employing a digital ethnographic approach, this article closely explored how rural spaces and rural labor activities are constructed and commodified in Chinese promotional livestreaming. I argue that although rural streamers’ creative use of platform-afforded liveness and interactivity enriches Chinese digital culture by making everyday life in rural spaces visible, this constructed rurality is, however, flattened, decontextualized, and romanticized – thus, ready to be commodified and sold to the audience. In addition, agricultural labor is made hyper-visible, generating the possibility for demystifying said labor process, while other forms of labor, mainly affective labor and labor for negotiation with the platforms, are made invisible, undervalued, and exploited, deepening the precarious condition of such platform-dependent labor.","PeriodicalId":18417,"journal":{"name":"Media, Culture & Society","volume":"18 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-10-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135350630","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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