This article proposes a new typology for understanding events or programs that represent exceptions to the norm in that they interrupt media schedules and/or monopolize coverage across numerous platforms and capture public attention for short periods of time. First the master category of exceptional mediated event is introduced and four main categories identified, media events, media disasters, news events and pseudo-events. Then, a primary distinction is drawn between those that interrupt mainstream programming and those that interrupt specialist news channels or are staged for publicity purposes by media producers. This typology builds on recent responses to Dayan and Katz’s (1992) classic study of Media Events but argues that rather than expanding conceptual categories, specific analytical tools—that focus on temporality, organization, scale, liveness and genre—are required to make sense of an increasingly complex, and competitive, media landscape
{"title":"W(h)ither Media Events? Building a Typology for Theorizing Exceptional Events that Break with the Norm in a Complex Media Landscape","authors":"Michael Skey","doi":"10.1093/ct/qtaa034","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/ct/qtaa034","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 This article proposes a new typology for understanding events or programs that represent exceptions to the norm in that they interrupt media schedules and/or monopolize coverage across numerous platforms and capture public attention for short periods of time. First the master category of exceptional mediated event is introduced and four main categories identified, media events, media disasters, news events and pseudo-events. Then, a primary distinction is drawn between those that interrupt mainstream programming and those that interrupt specialist news channels or are staged for publicity purposes by media producers. This typology builds on recent responses to Dayan and Katz’s (1992) classic study of Media Events but argues that rather than expanding conceptual categories, specific analytical tools—that focus on temporality, organization, scale, liveness and genre—are required to make sense of an increasingly complex, and competitive, media landscape","PeriodicalId":48102,"journal":{"name":"Communication Theory","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":3.7,"publicationDate":"2020-12-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1093/ct/qtaa034","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48319282","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}
The current pandemic-imposed reliance on media-centered forms of civic engagement underscores the need for empirical mediatization research on the relationship between media, partisan conflict, and political culture. Drawing from critical Latin American media scholarship, mediatization theory, and Cultural Historical Activity Theory (CHAT), this article proposes a framework for comparative political communication research that centers on media practices and sociocultural change. By analyzing how a 1988 political advertising campaign in dictatorial Chile instantiated a peculiar vision of democratic transition, this article provides an examination of the disjuncture between televised representations of cheerful political reconciliation and abominable human rights abuses as the initial stage in the mediatization of Chilean human rights memory (HRM).
{"title":"The Mediatization of Human Rights Memory in Chile","authors":"Harry Simón Salazar","doi":"10.1093/ct/qtaa017","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/ct/qtaa017","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 The current pandemic-imposed reliance on media-centered forms of civic engagement underscores the need for empirical mediatization research on the relationship between media, partisan conflict, and political culture. Drawing from critical Latin American media scholarship, mediatization theory, and Cultural Historical Activity Theory (CHAT), this article proposes a framework for comparative political communication research that centers on media practices and sociocultural change. By analyzing how a 1988 political advertising campaign in dictatorial Chile instantiated a peculiar vision of democratic transition, this article provides an examination of the disjuncture between televised representations of cheerful political reconciliation and abominable human rights abuses as the initial stage in the mediatization of Chilean human rights memory (HRM).","PeriodicalId":48102,"journal":{"name":"Communication Theory","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":3.7,"publicationDate":"2020-12-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1093/ct/qtaa017","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49206411","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}
Small data theorizing encompasses the ways communities of collaborators deliberate over the status of data through a set of three mediational logics that pose alternatives to datafication. Small data theorizing is a way of generalizing a framework for understanding the role of the collaborators in digital archiving and database design processes, which often involve both communication researchers and ordinary institutions, such as universities and museums. This framework for mediational logics extends the critiques of big data theory, and its monolithic claims about autonomous technologies and power in society, by elaborating the ways people actively maintain their connectedness to data in archival design. At the same time, it joins critical communication theory’s central concerns about power with a praxis. This can help all communication researchers in seeing how communities are theorizing practical alternatives to archives that are designed for big data and their ecosystems.
{"title":"Small Data Theorizing","authors":"Vicki Mayer","doi":"10.1093/ct/qtaa029","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/ct/qtaa029","url":null,"abstract":"Small data theorizing encompasses the ways communities of collaborators deliberate over the status of data through a set of three mediational logics that pose alternatives to datafication. Small data theorizing is a way of generalizing a framework for understanding the role of the collaborators in digital archiving and database design processes, which often involve both communication researchers and ordinary institutions, such as universities and museums. This framework for mediational logics extends the critiques of big data theory, and its monolithic claims about autonomous technologies and power in society, by elaborating the ways people actively maintain their connectedness to data in archival design. At the same time, it joins critical communication theory’s central concerns about power with a praxis. This can help all communication researchers in seeing how communities are theorizing practical alternatives to archives that are designed for big data and their ecosystems.","PeriodicalId":48102,"journal":{"name":"Communication Theory","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":3.7,"publicationDate":"2020-12-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1093/ct/qtaa029","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44250161","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}
Participation in user-generated content (UGC) consistently relates to participation in various forms of online and offline politics, suggesting that it is likely to complement or even serve as a gateway to instrumental engagement. Yet, there has been little attempt to offer a comprehensive account of the mechanisms that explain these relationships. We address this gap in the literature by theorizing how participation in UGC contributes to civic readiness. Specifically, we advance a conceptual model relating the attributes of UGC involvement to civic readiness through two concurrent processes: a civic learning process that relates the attributes to civic ability and a self-determination process that relates them to civic motivation. In doing so, we suggest that in addition to the development of civic skills, participation in UGC also contributes to civic readiness by promoting the perception that such participation is self-determined. The result is the development of competent and engaged citizens.
{"title":"Civic Learning and Self-Determination: A Model of User-Generated Content and Civic Readiness Among Actualizing Citizens","authors":"Melissa R. Gotlieb, Melanie A. Sarge","doi":"10.1093/ct/qtaa032","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/ct/qtaa032","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 Participation in user-generated content (UGC) consistently relates to participation in various forms of online and offline politics, suggesting that it is likely to complement or even serve as a gateway to instrumental engagement. Yet, there has been little attempt to offer a comprehensive account of the mechanisms that explain these relationships. We address this gap in the literature by theorizing how participation in UGC contributes to civic readiness. Specifically, we advance a conceptual model relating the attributes of UGC involvement to civic readiness through two concurrent processes: a civic learning process that relates the attributes to civic ability and a self-determination process that relates them to civic motivation. In doing so, we suggest that in addition to the development of civic skills, participation in UGC also contributes to civic readiness by promoting the perception that such participation is self-determined. The result is the development of competent and engaged citizens.","PeriodicalId":48102,"journal":{"name":"Communication Theory","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":3.7,"publicationDate":"2020-12-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45419913","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}
In probing how journalists negotiate the perceived discrepancy between their social role orientation and role performance, we arrive at a negotiative theory of roles. The theory is based on an inductive study where we combine classic theoretical frameworks of role theory with conceptual approaches of discursive institutionalism and Hochschilds’ theory of feeling rules. We examined journalists’ narratives from qualitative in-depth interviews with 20 Swiss newspaper journalists, who were asked to interpret the perceived gap—found in previous studies—between journalism ideals and journalism practice. The results compelled us to revisit role theories and to consider a number of overlooked or under-utilized analytic features of social roles to propose refinements to the concepts of journalistic roles and role performance. This resulted in a negotiative theory of roles that focuses attention on intra- and interpersonal discourse as well as what we call “role work.”
{"title":"A Negotiative Theory of Journalistic Roles","authors":"Patric Raemy, Tim P. Vos","doi":"10.1093/ct/qtaa030","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/ct/qtaa030","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 In probing how journalists negotiate the perceived discrepancy between their social role orientation and role performance, we arrive at a negotiative theory of roles. The theory is based on an inductive study where we combine classic theoretical frameworks of role theory with conceptual approaches of discursive institutionalism and Hochschilds’ theory of feeling rules. We examined journalists’ narratives from qualitative in-depth interviews with 20 Swiss newspaper journalists, who were asked to interpret the perceived gap—found in previous studies—between journalism ideals and journalism practice. The results compelled us to revisit role theories and to consider a number of overlooked or under-utilized analytic features of social roles to propose refinements to the concepts of journalistic roles and role performance. This resulted in a negotiative theory of roles that focuses attention on intra- and interpersonal discourse as well as what we call “role work.”","PeriodicalId":48102,"journal":{"name":"Communication Theory","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":3.7,"publicationDate":"2020-12-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1093/ct/qtaa030","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42934440","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}
This article presents a new approach to the study of public contestation through social media. Developing this approach, we make three conceptual moves. First, to capture the dynamic character of contemporary contestation, we shift attention from publics to publicness as an interactive process. Second, we turn the focus from the “counter,” as a public or space distinct from the dominant sphere, towards distributed forms of contention. Finally, instead of considering media as arenas of claims, we investigate how media are constitutive of contentious publicness, which can be studied along its material, spatial, and temporal dimensions. These moves lead to an analytical framework through which trajectories of contentious publicness can be systematically traced and evaluated. Through case studies on the 2011 Egyptian uprising and the Occupy protests, we demonstrate how this framework can be employed to examine the construction of new contentious actors and evaluate their democratic legitimacy as claim-makers.
{"title":"From Counterpublics to Contentious Publicness: Tracing the Temporal, Spatial, and Material Articulations of Popular Protest Through Social Media","authors":"A. Kavada, T. Poell","doi":"10.1093/ct/qtaa025","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/ct/qtaa025","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 This article presents a new approach to the study of public contestation through social media. Developing this approach, we make three conceptual moves. First, to capture the dynamic character of contemporary contestation, we shift attention from publics to publicness as an interactive process. Second, we turn the focus from the “counter,” as a public or space distinct from the dominant sphere, towards distributed forms of contention. Finally, instead of considering media as arenas of claims, we investigate how media are constitutive of contentious publicness, which can be studied along its material, spatial, and temporal dimensions. These moves lead to an analytical framework through which trajectories of contentious publicness can be systematically traced and evaluated. Through case studies on the 2011 Egyptian uprising and the Occupy protests, we demonstrate how this framework can be employed to examine the construction of new contentious actors and evaluate their democratic legitimacy as claim-makers.","PeriodicalId":48102,"journal":{"name":"Communication Theory","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":3.7,"publicationDate":"2020-10-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1093/ct/qtaa025","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47612703","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}
This article provides a comparative map of the outstanding discursive features and shared underpinnings of the Limits and Transition discourses (TDs) by examining how they have been communicated to reshape the public sphere. Though both are deeply implicated in globalization, the formation of these environmental discourses responds to distinct sets of social agents and interests and to different but complementary ontological and epistemological grounds. In the Global North, the Limits discourse challenged the assumption of unmitigated growth yet has remained anthropocentric. Environmental TDs associated with the Global South present more contestatory positions on the notion of growth by problematizing human-centeredness and embracing a radical ethics of care. Limits and TDs represent paradigmatic shifts in the history of environmentalism. Accordingly, communication scholars should consider the lessons that can be taken from these discursive fields to foster regenerative ecocultural identities and animate progressive thinking on environmental governance and its communication practices that serve both human and non-human wellbeing.
{"title":"From Limits to Ecocentric Rights and Responsibility: Communication, Globalization, and the Politics of Environmental Transition","authors":"P. Murphy, José Castro-Sotomayor","doi":"10.1093/ct/qtaa026","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/ct/qtaa026","url":null,"abstract":"This article provides a comparative map of the outstanding discursive features and shared underpinnings of the Limits and Transition discourses (TDs) by examining how they have been communicated to reshape the public sphere. Though both are deeply implicated in globalization, the formation of these environmental discourses responds to distinct sets of social agents and interests and to different but complementary ontological and epistemological grounds. In the Global North, the Limits discourse challenged the assumption of unmitigated growth yet has remained anthropocentric. Environmental TDs associated with the Global South present more contestatory positions on the notion of growth by problematizing human-centeredness and embracing a radical ethics of care. Limits and TDs represent paradigmatic shifts in the history of environmentalism. Accordingly, communication scholars should consider the lessons that can be taken from these discursive fields to foster regenerative ecocultural identities and animate progressive thinking on environmental governance and its communication practices that serve both human and non-human wellbeing.","PeriodicalId":48102,"journal":{"name":"Communication Theory","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":3.7,"publicationDate":"2020-10-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1093/ct/qtaa026","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48597912","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}
André Jansson, Stina Bengtsson, Karin Fast, Johan Lindell
Based on a literature review, this article shows that current mediatization scholarship is characterized by what Pike (1967) refers to as etic accounts. These accounts forward theoretical categories on media-related social change to conclude that our age is characterized by deepened and expanded media reliance. However, such theoretical extrapolation takes place not from, but at the expense of, people’s lived experiences, that is, emic accounts of mediatization in everyday life. This article is an attempt to insert the etic/emic distinction to mediatization research in order to develop more reflexive and composite accounts. Drawing on examples from a representative survey and qualitative interviews conducted over twenty years, the article problematizes etic-oriented conceptions of mediatization. Emic analyses expose how perceptions of media reliance shift over time and thus underscore the need to develop research strategies that simultaneously consider the objective structures of the social (mediatized) world and subjective meaning-making structures.
{"title":"Mediatization from Within: A Plea for Emic Approaches to Media-Related Social Change","authors":"André Jansson, Stina Bengtsson, Karin Fast, Johan Lindell","doi":"10.1093/ct/qtaa021","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/ct/qtaa021","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 Based on a literature review, this article shows that current mediatization scholarship is characterized by what Pike (1967) refers to as etic accounts. These accounts forward theoretical categories on media-related social change to conclude that our age is characterized by deepened and expanded media reliance. However, such theoretical extrapolation takes place not from, but at the expense of, people’s lived experiences, that is, emic accounts of mediatization in everyday life. This article is an attempt to insert the etic/emic distinction to mediatization research in order to develop more reflexive and composite accounts. Drawing on examples from a representative survey and qualitative interviews conducted over twenty years, the article problematizes etic-oriented conceptions of mediatization. Emic analyses expose how perceptions of media reliance shift over time and thus underscore the need to develop research strategies that simultaneously consider the objective structures of the social (mediatized) world and subjective meaning-making structures.","PeriodicalId":48102,"journal":{"name":"Communication Theory","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":3.7,"publicationDate":"2020-10-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1093/ct/qtaa021","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48932651","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}
Despite widespread concern over the alleged rise of conspiracy theories, scholars continue to disagree whether it is possible to distinguish specific kinds of conspiracist accounts that can justifiably be denounced as objectionable. In this article, we review scholarship from multiple disciplines to develop a composite definition of “conspiracy theories proper” (CTP) that violate fundamental norms of democratic discourse. Besides referring to grand conspiracies to account for social phenomena, we argue, such conspiracy theories: (a) assume conspirators’ pervasive control over events and information, (b) construct dissent as a Manichean binary, and (c) employ an elusive, dogmatic epistemology. We discuss the operational potential and limitations of our definition using news user talkbacks on the U.S., British and German online editions of Russia Today (RT), a popular platform among proponents of out-of-mainstream political views. Identifying key operational challenges in the classification of natural discourse, we sketch avenues toward a more rigorous study of contentious political talk.
{"title":"BLINDED BY THE LIES? Toward an integrated definition of conspiracy theories","authors":"C. Baden, Tzlil Sharon","doi":"10.1093/ct/qtaa023","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/ct/qtaa023","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 Despite widespread concern over the alleged rise of conspiracy theories, scholars continue to disagree whether it is possible to distinguish specific kinds of conspiracist accounts that can justifiably be denounced as objectionable. In this article, we review scholarship from multiple disciplines to develop a composite definition of “conspiracy theories proper” (CTP) that violate fundamental norms of democratic discourse. Besides referring to grand conspiracies to account for social phenomena, we argue, such conspiracy theories: (a) assume conspirators’ pervasive control over events and information, (b) construct dissent as a Manichean binary, and (c) employ an elusive, dogmatic epistemology. We discuss the operational potential and limitations of our definition using news user talkbacks on the U.S., British and German online editions of Russia Today (RT), a popular platform among proponents of out-of-mainstream political views. Identifying key operational challenges in the classification of natural discourse, we sketch avenues toward a more rigorous study of contentious political talk.","PeriodicalId":48102,"journal":{"name":"Communication Theory","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":3.7,"publicationDate":"2020-10-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1093/ct/qtaa023","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46958488","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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