Pub Date : 2022-08-19DOI: 10.1177/01634437221119021
Iliana Depounti, Paula M. Saukko, Simone Natale
There is extensive literature on how expectations and imaginaries about artificial intelligence (AI) guide media and policy discussions. However, it has not been considered how such imaginaries are activated when users interact with AI technologies. We present findings of a study on how users on a subreddit discussed ‘training’ their Replika bot girlfriend. The discussions featured two discursive themes that focused on the AI imaginary of ideal technology and the gendered imaginary of the ideal bot girlfriend. Users expected their AI Replikas to both be customizable to serve their needs and to have a human-like or sassy mind of their own and not spit out machine-like answers. Users thus projected dominant notions of male control over technology and women, mixed with AI and postfeminist fantasies of ostensible independence onto the interactional agents and activated similar scripts embedded in the devices. The vicious feedback loop consolidated dominant scripts on gender and technology whilst appearing novel and created by users. While most research on the use of AI is conducted in applied computer science to improve user experience, this article outlines a media and cultural studies lens for a critical understanding of these emerging technologies as they become embedded in communication and meaning-making.
{"title":"Ideal technologies, ideal women: AI and gender imaginaries in Redditors’ discussions on the Replika bot girlfriend","authors":"Iliana Depounti, Paula M. Saukko, Simone Natale","doi":"10.1177/01634437221119021","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/01634437221119021","url":null,"abstract":"There is extensive literature on how expectations and imaginaries about artificial intelligence (AI) guide media and policy discussions. However, it has not been considered how such imaginaries are activated when users interact with AI technologies. We present findings of a study on how users on a subreddit discussed ‘training’ their Replika bot girlfriend. The discussions featured two discursive themes that focused on the AI imaginary of ideal technology and the gendered imaginary of the ideal bot girlfriend. Users expected their AI Replikas to both be customizable to serve their needs and to have a human-like or sassy mind of their own and not spit out machine-like answers. Users thus projected dominant notions of male control over technology and women, mixed with AI and postfeminist fantasies of ostensible independence onto the interactional agents and activated similar scripts embedded in the devices. The vicious feedback loop consolidated dominant scripts on gender and technology whilst appearing novel and created by users. While most research on the use of AI is conducted in applied computer science to improve user experience, this article outlines a media and cultural studies lens for a critical understanding of these emerging technologies as they become embedded in communication and meaning-making.","PeriodicalId":18417,"journal":{"name":"Media, Culture & Society","volume":"23 1","pages":"720 - 736"},"PeriodicalIF":3.3,"publicationDate":"2022-08-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"83213078","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 : 2022-08-16DOI: 10.1177/01634437221117490
Francesca Sobande, A. Kanai, Natasha Zeng
From its origins in Black grassroots activist and political consciousness raising spaces, the term ‘woke’ has shifted in its significance. Now broadly synonymous with statements on social media that are assumed to indicate an investment in tackling social injustices, specifically, antiblackness and racial injustice, it has also become the subject of heated critique. Using key case studies such as the ‘I take responsibility’ and Instagram ‘blackout’ campaigns of 2020, this commentary clarifies how the cultural conventions and affordances of both social media and celebrity have shaped conceptualizations of ‘wokeness’. In its marketization, we suggest that ‘wokeness’ goes beyond the associations of progressive politics that advertisers attempt to attach to brands. Rather, we suggest that ‘wokeness’ is also conceptualized in terms of the quality of individual practices connected with antiracism and left politics more broadly. Observing that desires for ‘wokeness’ underpin its visibility and contestation, we explore the affective entanglements of ‘wokeness’ with whiteness, neoliberal identity culture, genres of social media content, and perceived expressions of sincerity. In doing so, we theorize the digital development, hyper-visibility, and marketization of ‘wokeness’, to grapple with how internet, consumer, and celebrity culture is implicated in contemporary understandings and expectations of social justice work.
{"title":"The hypervisibility and discourses of ‘wokeness’ in digital culture","authors":"Francesca Sobande, A. Kanai, Natasha Zeng","doi":"10.1177/01634437221117490","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/01634437221117490","url":null,"abstract":"From its origins in Black grassroots activist and political consciousness raising spaces, the term ‘woke’ has shifted in its significance. Now broadly synonymous with statements on social media that are assumed to indicate an investment in tackling social injustices, specifically, antiblackness and racial injustice, it has also become the subject of heated critique. Using key case studies such as the ‘I take responsibility’ and Instagram ‘blackout’ campaigns of 2020, this commentary clarifies how the cultural conventions and affordances of both social media and celebrity have shaped conceptualizations of ‘wokeness’. In its marketization, we suggest that ‘wokeness’ goes beyond the associations of progressive politics that advertisers attempt to attach to brands. Rather, we suggest that ‘wokeness’ is also conceptualized in terms of the quality of individual practices connected with antiracism and left politics more broadly. Observing that desires for ‘wokeness’ underpin its visibility and contestation, we explore the affective entanglements of ‘wokeness’ with whiteness, neoliberal identity culture, genres of social media content, and perceived expressions of sincerity. In doing so, we theorize the digital development, hyper-visibility, and marketization of ‘wokeness’, to grapple with how internet, consumer, and celebrity culture is implicated in contemporary understandings and expectations of social justice work.","PeriodicalId":18417,"journal":{"name":"Media, Culture & Society","volume":"65 1","pages":"1576 - 1587"},"PeriodicalIF":3.3,"publicationDate":"2022-08-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"87203255","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 : 2022-08-11DOI: 10.1177/01634437221117494
Domenico Napolitano, Silvio Ripetta, Vita Lasala
In this essay, three recently published books are reviewed: Diminished Faculties: A Political Phenomenology of Impairment, by Jonathan Sterne, Failure, by Neta Alexander and Arjun Appadurai, and In Case of Emergency, by Elizabeth Ellcessor. The essay argues that these three works contribute to the debate about media and disability by proposing a non ableist perspective – that is a perspective which doesn’t consider ability as a normative assumption – which affects both media theory and media practices. In this regard, the essay identifies three keywords which are potentially game changers in media studies: impairment, failure, emergency. Emphasizing the ‘normal’, ‘banal’ or ‘habitual’ character of these terms, the books here reviewed show how these keywords may enable us to go beyond the traditional idea of media as prostheses, and call for a different approach toward media and media studies: one which does not metaphorize disability but understands media as part of the sociocultural, political and economic context where a certain idea of ability and disability is both defined and materially enacted. An approach, therefore, that aims to deconstruct that idea.
{"title":"Impairment, failure, emergency: A review essay on recent trends in media and disability studies","authors":"Domenico Napolitano, Silvio Ripetta, Vita Lasala","doi":"10.1177/01634437221117494","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/01634437221117494","url":null,"abstract":"In this essay, three recently published books are reviewed: Diminished Faculties: A Political Phenomenology of Impairment, by Jonathan Sterne, Failure, by Neta Alexander and Arjun Appadurai, and In Case of Emergency, by Elizabeth Ellcessor. The essay argues that these three works contribute to the debate about media and disability by proposing a non ableist perspective – that is a perspective which doesn’t consider ability as a normative assumption – which affects both media theory and media practices. In this regard, the essay identifies three keywords which are potentially game changers in media studies: impairment, failure, emergency. Emphasizing the ‘normal’, ‘banal’ or ‘habitual’ character of these terms, the books here reviewed show how these keywords may enable us to go beyond the traditional idea of media as prostheses, and call for a different approach toward media and media studies: one which does not metaphorize disability but understands media as part of the sociocultural, political and economic context where a certain idea of ability and disability is both defined and materially enacted. An approach, therefore, that aims to deconstruct that idea.","PeriodicalId":18417,"journal":{"name":"Media, Culture & Society","volume":"24 1","pages":"1383 - 1393"},"PeriodicalIF":3.3,"publicationDate":"2022-08-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"83286879","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 : 2022-08-10DOI: 10.1177/01634437221117505
Johanna Arnesson
Though politics and promotion have never been completely separate, the convergence between the two spheres is increasingly prominent in today’s digital culture. To broaden our understanding of such promotional politics in social media, this paper examines commercial collaborations between four Swedish influencers and two private companies that offer services enabled by specific neoliberal reforms during recent decades, and how they strive to present these services in a way that attracts an affluent but socially conscious middle-class. It argues that the political potential of influencers might not always be as spokespersons for a cause or party, but rather as ‘ideological intermediaries’ who promote a lifestyle to be inspired by, and aspire to. The analysis identifies the discourses that influencers draw on to achieve the promotional and ideological outcomes of commercial collaborations, as well as the authenticity labour that they perform in the texts. Further, the paper analyses how notions of authenticity also impact audiences’ interpretation and politicization of the collaborations, in the comment sections to the sponsored blogposts.
{"title":"Influencers as ideological intermediaries: promotional politics and authenticity labour in influencer collaborations","authors":"Johanna Arnesson","doi":"10.1177/01634437221117505","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/01634437221117505","url":null,"abstract":"Though politics and promotion have never been completely separate, the convergence between the two spheres is increasingly prominent in today’s digital culture. To broaden our understanding of such promotional politics in social media, this paper examines commercial collaborations between four Swedish influencers and two private companies that offer services enabled by specific neoliberal reforms during recent decades, and how they strive to present these services in a way that attracts an affluent but socially conscious middle-class. It argues that the political potential of influencers might not always be as spokespersons for a cause or party, but rather as ‘ideological intermediaries’ who promote a lifestyle to be inspired by, and aspire to. The analysis identifies the discourses that influencers draw on to achieve the promotional and ideological outcomes of commercial collaborations, as well as the authenticity labour that they perform in the texts. Further, the paper analyses how notions of authenticity also impact audiences’ interpretation and politicization of the collaborations, in the comment sections to the sponsored blogposts.","PeriodicalId":18417,"journal":{"name":"Media, Culture & Society","volume":"5 1","pages":"528 - 544"},"PeriodicalIF":3.3,"publicationDate":"2022-08-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"85201581","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 : 2022-08-10DOI: 10.1177/01634437221117502
S. Carlton, Sylvia Nissen, J. Wong
This article examines the development and implications of positive news media coverage of a crisis volunteer group across a decade of disaster responses. We investigate the case of the Student Volunteer Army in Aotearoa New Zealand, a group that has been positioned as a potential blueprint for youth-led disaster response. Drawing on in-depth interviews and news media sources, we trace how a distinct framing of the group as ‘good news’ consolidated across successive disasters, initially in media reporting and then through active cultivation by the group. The findings demonstrate the potential for positive media coverage of disaster volunteerism to assist people’s recovery and provide crisis volunteer groups with important leverage to further their operational abilities and challenge exclusionary power structures in post-disaster environments. However, our analysis also warns that simplifying accounts of post-disaster collective action to create ‘good news’ can produce internal tensions within crisis volunteer groups and reinforce the hierarchies and inequities that characterize disaster response.
{"title":"Framing post-disaster collective action as ‘good news’: Possibilities and tensions","authors":"S. Carlton, Sylvia Nissen, J. Wong","doi":"10.1177/01634437221117502","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/01634437221117502","url":null,"abstract":"This article examines the development and implications of positive news media coverage of a crisis volunteer group across a decade of disaster responses. We investigate the case of the Student Volunteer Army in Aotearoa New Zealand, a group that has been positioned as a potential blueprint for youth-led disaster response. Drawing on in-depth interviews and news media sources, we trace how a distinct framing of the group as ‘good news’ consolidated across successive disasters, initially in media reporting and then through active cultivation by the group. The findings demonstrate the potential for positive media coverage of disaster volunteerism to assist people’s recovery and provide crisis volunteer groups with important leverage to further their operational abilities and challenge exclusionary power structures in post-disaster environments. However, our analysis also warns that simplifying accounts of post-disaster collective action to create ‘good news’ can produce internal tensions within crisis volunteer groups and reinforce the hierarchies and inequities that characterize disaster response.","PeriodicalId":18417,"journal":{"name":"Media, Culture & Society","volume":"134 1","pages":"511 - 527"},"PeriodicalIF":3.3,"publicationDate":"2022-08-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"73780003","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 : 2022-07-23DOI: 10.1177/01634437221111923
B. Duffy, Colten Meisner
While champions of the “new” creative economy consistently hype the career possibilities furnished by YouTube, Instagram, TikTok, and the like, critics have cast a spotlight on the less auspicious elements of platform-dependent creative labor: exploitation, insecurity, and a culture of overwork. Social media creators are, moreover, beholden to the vagaries of platforms’ “inscrutable” socio-technical systems, particularly the algorithms that enable (or – conversely – thwart) their visibility. This article draws upon in-depth interviews with 30 social media creators – sampled from historically marginalized identities and/or stigmatized content genres – to explore their perceptions of, and experiences with, algorithmic (in)visibility. Together, their accounts evince a shared understanding that platforms enact governance unevenly – be it through formal (human and/or automated content moderation) or informal (shadowbans, biased algorithmic boosts) means. Creators’ understandings are implicated in experiential practices ranging from self-censorship to concerted efforts to circumvent algorithmic intervention. In closing, we consider how the regimes of discipline and punishment that structure the social media economy systematically disadvantage marginalized creators and cultural expressions deemed non-normative.
{"title":"Platform governance at the margins: Social media creators’ experiences with algorithmic (in)visibility","authors":"B. Duffy, Colten Meisner","doi":"10.1177/01634437221111923","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/01634437221111923","url":null,"abstract":"While champions of the “new” creative economy consistently hype the career possibilities furnished by YouTube, Instagram, TikTok, and the like, critics have cast a spotlight on the less auspicious elements of platform-dependent creative labor: exploitation, insecurity, and a culture of overwork. Social media creators are, moreover, beholden to the vagaries of platforms’ “inscrutable” socio-technical systems, particularly the algorithms that enable (or – conversely – thwart) their visibility. This article draws upon in-depth interviews with 30 social media creators – sampled from historically marginalized identities and/or stigmatized content genres – to explore their perceptions of, and experiences with, algorithmic (in)visibility. Together, their accounts evince a shared understanding that platforms enact governance unevenly – be it through formal (human and/or automated content moderation) or informal (shadowbans, biased algorithmic boosts) means. Creators’ understandings are implicated in experiential practices ranging from self-censorship to concerted efforts to circumvent algorithmic intervention. In closing, we consider how the regimes of discipline and punishment that structure the social media economy systematically disadvantage marginalized creators and cultural expressions deemed non-normative.","PeriodicalId":18417,"journal":{"name":"Media, Culture & Society","volume":"8 1","pages":"285 - 304"},"PeriodicalIF":3.3,"publicationDate":"2022-07-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"87549986","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 : 2022-07-22DOI: 10.1177/01634437221111917
Taeyoung Kim
This paper analyzes how stakeholders in the Korean media industries understand the penetration of Netflix and other foreign streaming video-on-demand (SVoD) platforms and how they respond to global SVoD players. Based on interviews with cultural workers and bureaucrats, the findings of this paper explore how stakeholders in the media industries interpret Netflix as both an investor who would enable them to produce a variety of content and introduce their products worldwide and as a competitor that has the potential to threaten domestic media production. Considering structural asymmetries caused by disparities in technologies and financial strength between local and global players in the market, as well as the distribution power which streaming moguls have enjoyed for years, the growing presence of Netflix in the domestic market may reduce the position of Korean media production as mere subcontractors of the platform. The paper’s findings shed light on analyzing the relationship between global streaming platforms and local cultural producers.
{"title":"Cultural politics of Netflix in local contexts: A case of the Korean media industries","authors":"Taeyoung Kim","doi":"10.1177/01634437221111917","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/01634437221111917","url":null,"abstract":"This paper analyzes how stakeholders in the Korean media industries understand the penetration of Netflix and other foreign streaming video-on-demand (SVoD) platforms and how they respond to global SVoD players. Based on interviews with cultural workers and bureaucrats, the findings of this paper explore how stakeholders in the media industries interpret Netflix as both an investor who would enable them to produce a variety of content and introduce their products worldwide and as a competitor that has the potential to threaten domestic media production. Considering structural asymmetries caused by disparities in technologies and financial strength between local and global players in the market, as well as the distribution power which streaming moguls have enjoyed for years, the growing presence of Netflix in the domestic market may reduce the position of Korean media production as mere subcontractors of the platform. The paper’s findings shed light on analyzing the relationship between global streaming platforms and local cultural producers.","PeriodicalId":18417,"journal":{"name":"Media, Culture & Society","volume":"12 1","pages":"1508 - 1522"},"PeriodicalIF":3.3,"publicationDate":"2022-07-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"78654944","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 : 2022-07-22DOI: 10.1177/01634437221111930
A. Barbala
This article investigates how affective hashtags on Instagram can contribute to forming intimate feminist entanglements transcending the digital sphere, resulting in offline demonstrations and rallies. In tracing the use of three Swedish hashtags emerging in the wake of #metoo, all surrounding women’s experiences with sexual harassment and violence, it is argued that affective hashtags can be a central component for explaining how social media-based campaigns can surpass online spaces and transition into more traditional forms of non-mediated feminist activity. Drawing from a 3-year immersion in feminist communities on Instagram, the article shows how hashtags here are reconceptualized into ‘affect triggers’, intimately entangling human and nonhuman entities along the way. It is suggested that a combination of feminist affect theory and insights from science and technology studies (STS) may offer a fruitful methodology for providing insights into the political potential of affect in forming augmented feminist realities.
{"title":"Transcending Instagram: Affective Swedish hashtags taking intimate feminist entanglements from viral to ‘IRL’","authors":"A. Barbala","doi":"10.1177/01634437221111930","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/01634437221111930","url":null,"abstract":"This article investigates how affective hashtags on Instagram can contribute to forming intimate feminist entanglements transcending the digital sphere, resulting in offline demonstrations and rallies. In tracing the use of three Swedish hashtags emerging in the wake of #metoo, all surrounding women’s experiences with sexual harassment and violence, it is argued that affective hashtags can be a central component for explaining how social media-based campaigns can surpass online spaces and transition into more traditional forms of non-mediated feminist activity. Drawing from a 3-year immersion in feminist communities on Instagram, the article shows how hashtags here are reconceptualized into ‘affect triggers’, intimately entangling human and nonhuman entities along the way. It is suggested that a combination of feminist affect theory and insights from science and technology studies (STS) may offer a fruitful methodology for providing insights into the political potential of affect in forming augmented feminist realities.","PeriodicalId":18417,"journal":{"name":"Media, Culture & Society","volume":"41 1","pages":"3 - 18"},"PeriodicalIF":3.3,"publicationDate":"2022-07-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"80674536","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 : 2022-07-22DOI: 10.1177/01634437221111907
Barui K Waruwu
The growing phenomenon of transnational families where the mothers work abroad has reinvigorated the debate on the fluidity of contemporary families. Family is no longer defined as household-bound, and family obligations are constantly negotiated. Research shows migrant mothers utilize communication technologies, most recently smartphones, to (re)constitute family intimacy and maternal identity from afar through everyday family practices. However, most research has focused on the material reconfiguration of family practices, essentially sidelining the discursive workings of intimacy and identity via mobile media. To address this gap, this ethnographic study draws on the narrative theories, particularly the small stories approach, to examine the narratives of Indonesian mothers in Hong Kong as embedded in their smartphone communication. The participant observation and narrative interviews with 25 migrant mothers revealed that maternal storytelling on smartphones is routine, eclectic, and personalized. These enable migrant mothers to craft and tell family stories to (1) rationalize distance and (2) bolster family resilience. This article concludes by reflecting upon the authorial privilege in constructing family narratives on mobile media. The implications on our understanding of the contextualizing power of narrative and power dynamics underlying mediated family communication are discussed.
{"title":"The stories that tell us: smartphones and discursive reconstitution of transnational intimacy among migrant mothers","authors":"Barui K Waruwu","doi":"10.1177/01634437221111907","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/01634437221111907","url":null,"abstract":"The growing phenomenon of transnational families where the mothers work abroad has reinvigorated the debate on the fluidity of contemporary families. Family is no longer defined as household-bound, and family obligations are constantly negotiated. Research shows migrant mothers utilize communication technologies, most recently smartphones, to (re)constitute family intimacy and maternal identity from afar through everyday family practices. However, most research has focused on the material reconfiguration of family practices, essentially sidelining the discursive workings of intimacy and identity via mobile media. To address this gap, this ethnographic study draws on the narrative theories, particularly the small stories approach, to examine the narratives of Indonesian mothers in Hong Kong as embedded in their smartphone communication. The participant observation and narrative interviews with 25 migrant mothers revealed that maternal storytelling on smartphones is routine, eclectic, and personalized. These enable migrant mothers to craft and tell family stories to (1) rationalize distance and (2) bolster family resilience. This article concludes by reflecting upon the authorial privilege in constructing family narratives on mobile media. The implications on our understanding of the contextualizing power of narrative and power dynamics underlying mediated family communication are discussed.","PeriodicalId":18417,"journal":{"name":"Media, Culture & Society","volume":"59 1","pages":"471 - 486"},"PeriodicalIF":3.3,"publicationDate":"2022-07-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"77730502","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 : 2022-07-21DOI: 10.1177/01634437221111913
Seama Mowri, A. Bailey
This paper analyzes the role of print media in framing incidences of sexual harassment in public transport; particularly in the context of Bangladesh, where gender-based violence is highly prevalent in the public sphere. This article uses Douglas’ cultural theory to reflect on media practices and its institutional power to reframe the social problem through risk and blame attribution. We conducted a discourse analysis of 71 news articles extracted from four of the widely circulated and influential newspapers of Bangladesh. Our findings reveal that the hegemonic discourse of gender-based violence in public transport is systemic and/or primarily reliant on legal recourse. By contrast, discourses presenting sexual harassment as symptomatic of broader gender inequality is less frequent. Moreover, these media platforms belong to an assemblage of patriarchal social-power holders that collaborate with established law and order to facilitate a blame game, thereby relieving the same stakeholders of ownership and accountability. Given the power of news media in constructing meta-narratives of safety (and nudging policymakers), journalists must tread responsibly on issues of blame, women’s safety, and their rights to the city.
{"title":"Framing safety of women in public transport: A media discourse analysis of sexual harassment cases in Bangladesh","authors":"Seama Mowri, A. Bailey","doi":"10.1177/01634437221111913","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/01634437221111913","url":null,"abstract":"This paper analyzes the role of print media in framing incidences of sexual harassment in public transport; particularly in the context of Bangladesh, where gender-based violence is highly prevalent in the public sphere. This article uses Douglas’ cultural theory to reflect on media practices and its institutional power to reframe the social problem through risk and blame attribution. We conducted a discourse analysis of 71 news articles extracted from four of the widely circulated and influential newspapers of Bangladesh. Our findings reveal that the hegemonic discourse of gender-based violence in public transport is systemic and/or primarily reliant on legal recourse. By contrast, discourses presenting sexual harassment as symptomatic of broader gender inequality is less frequent. Moreover, these media platforms belong to an assemblage of patriarchal social-power holders that collaborate with established law and order to facilitate a blame game, thereby relieving the same stakeholders of ownership and accountability. Given the power of news media in constructing meta-narratives of safety (and nudging policymakers), journalists must tread responsibly on issues of blame, women’s safety, and their rights to the city.","PeriodicalId":18417,"journal":{"name":"Media, Culture & Society","volume":"46 1","pages":"266 - 284"},"PeriodicalIF":3.3,"publicationDate":"2022-07-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"80929917","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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