Media

The Aggressor as a Witness: The Case of Breaking the Silence

by Itay Gabay

Testimonies collected by the Israeli organization Breaking the Silence from soldiers participating in the Gaza war... more Testimonies collected by the Israeli organization Breaking the Silence from soldiers participating in the Gaza war provide a case study for examining the process and the effects of bearing witness by the aggressors. By analyzing the testimonies and their media coverage the study concludes that although these testimonies were collected from soldiers, there was no change in public discourse. Conversely, members of the organization were attacked by different institutions, describing them as traitors.

National Communication Policies: Genesis, reception and evolution of the concept in democratic Catalonia

by Josep Angel Guimera

In the 21st century, the field of communication policies studies has launched a timely process of revision of notions... more In the 21st century, the field of communication policies studies has launched a timely process of revision of notions of ‘communication policy’ and ‘media policy’ in the light of changes observed in their definition, scope and praxis. One of the central aspects of the discussion is the growing strength gained since the mid-1980s by private actors, supranational political organisations and independent bodies with regard to the definition, adoption and implementation of regulatory measures, to the detriment of state government leadership. This article aims to contribute to that debate in two ways. The first is to draw on 1970s’ Latin-American thought on national communication policies (NCPs) as cultural autonomy and development tools. The second is to present how these ideas were received by a number of scholars in Catalonia in the 1980’s and how they have re-elaborated the NCPs concept on the basis of the importance of public communication policies for national reconstruction in a stateless nation.

British pubs, decoder cards, and the future of intellectual property licensing in the European Union after Murphy.

by Anastasios Kaburakis

With Lindholm, J, and Rodenberg, R.

October 4, 2011 marked a new era in global sports media rights. On this day, the Grand Chamber of the European Court... more October 4, 2011 marked a new era in global sports media rights. On this day, the Grand Chamber of the European Court of Justice (ECJ) delivered its judgment in FA Premier League et al. v. QC Leisure et al. & Murphy v. Media Protection Services Ltd (“Murphy”). Murphy decided upon the legality of a scheme whereby the holder of intellectual property rights to a sporting event licenses the right to broadcast the event on a national exclusivity basis.

Polarized Political Communication, Oppositional Media Hostility, and Selective Exposure

by Chad Murphy

Co-authored with Kevin Arceneaux and Martin Johnson

Previous research has consistently documented a hostile media effect in which people see bias in balanced reporting on... more Previous research has consistently documented a hostile media effect in which people see bias in balanced reporting on political controversies. In the contemporary fragmented media environment, partisan news outlets intentionally report political news from ideological perspectives, raising the possibility that ideologically biased news may cause viewers to become
increasingly suspicious of and antagonistic toward news media – which we call oppositional media hostility. However, the fragmented media environment also gives television viewers
ample opportunities to tune out news outlets with which they disagree as well as the news altogether, and this should moderate oppositional media hostility. We investigate the effects of partisan news shows on media perceptions across six laboratory-based experiments. We find that counter-attitudinal news programming is more likely to induce hostile media perceptions than pro-attitudinal programming, but that the presence of choice blunts oppositional media hostility.
We explore possible mechanisms that underlie the moderating effects of selective exposure.

Writing the history of the victors? Discourse, social change and (radical) democracy.

by Felicitas Macgilchrist

Macgilchrist, F., & van Praet, E. (2013/in press). Writing the history of the victors? Discourse, social change and (radical) democracy.
In: Journal of Language and Politics.

Recently, interest in radical democracy and communism has increased dramatically among cultural theorists. This paper... more Recently, interest in radical democracy and communism has increased dramatically among cultural theorists. This paper draws attention to two other fields in which a similar shift is visible. First, popular scholarly writing on communism, anarchism and socialism. Second, curricular materials for history teaching. Drawing on ethnographic field work at an educational publishers in Germany, the paper analyses the production of a history textbook. Analysis identifies ambiguities and tensions in the way forms of political organisation and practice are discussed and changes made. One change involves the subtle revalorization of the 1918 revolution and the early days of the Weimar Republic, which could be considered an attempt at shaping a ‘radical democracy’. The study contributes to emerging work on discourse and social change which aims to not only critique dominant discourse but also explore fissures in hegemonic formations. By analysing the production of these history materials, we explore competing discursive possibilities – ways of understanding and enacting democracy – circulating today.

Key words: history, democracy, textbooks, discourse analysis, ethnography, editorial meetings, political theory

Translators of Data To Be Excluded

by Ebru Yetiskin

Wolf, Sonja. “Creating Folk Devils: Street Gang Representations in El Salvador’s Print Media.”

by Sonja Wolf

Journal of Human Security 8.2 (forthcoming 2012).

O homem nas teias da comunicação midiática: uma análise de O Show de Truman

by Vander Casaqui

This article’s object is constituted by the film The Truman Show (1998), directed by Peter Weir and starring Jim... more This article’s object is constituted by the film The Truman Show (1998), directed by Peter Weir and starring Jim Carrey. This text analyzes the cinematographic representation to discuss relative questions to the communication, the media and the consumption. Based on authors as Mikhail Bakhtin, Guy Debord, Michel de Certeau and Wolfgang Fritz Haug, the author develops a reflection about the relation between the man and the media, the language as mediation, the society of the spectacle and the everyday life.

Censorship and Revolt in the Middle East & North Africa: A Multi-Country Analysis

by Ed Webb

ISA Annual Convention, San Diego, 1-4 April 2012

Please do not cite without permission

I analyze data from two indexes of media freedom, by Freedom House and Reporters Without Borders, in order to test the... more I analyze data from two indexes of media freedom, by Freedom House and Reporters Without Borders, in order to test the plausiblity of connections between relative levels of censorship in states of the Middle East & North Africa and those states' proneness to regime-challenging uprisings. I then consider in more detail the trajectory of censorship and media manipulation in Egypt and Tunisia over the past few decades, drawing mainly on key-informant interviews conducted January-March 2012. I argue that the Ben Ali regime's highly repressive approach in Tunisia was an ineffective response to international developments, technological and otherwise, and that while Egypt's more adaptive approach failed to preserve the Mubarak family's hold on power, it makes for a more useful toolkit in sustaining authoritarian rule.

Book Review (R. Kozinets. "Netnography", Sage, 2010.)

by Francine Barone

Journal of the Anthropological Society of Oxford-online

In association with
School of Anthropology and Museum Ethnography (University of Oxford)
and
Oxford University Anthropology Society

New Series, Volume IV, no. 1 (2012)
JASO-online

(ISSN: 2040-1876)

Kozinets’ Netnography: Doing ethnographic research online is a strong introductory text for those seeking to conduct... more Kozinets’ Netnography: Doing ethnographic research online is a strong introductory text for those seeking to conduct Internet-based social research. It provides the reader with recommended steps to follow in formulating their own ‘netnographies’ (p. 4) from conception and design to implementation, making it a handy how-to-do guide geared towards students and practitioners who are mostly new to web-based ethnographic inquiry. Sections on research planning, methods and ethics serve to further ongoing debates among media ethnographers.

Spain’s economic crisis creates opportunity for Al Jazeera

by James M. Dorsey

By James M. Dorsey

A refusal by Spanish commercial television stations to bid at current rates for rights... more By James M. Dorsey

A refusal by Spanish commercial television stations to bid at current rates for rights to broadcast next season’s top league Spanish soccer matches creates an opportunity for the Qatar-owned Al Jazeera network to advance its push into Europe and to become the world’s premier global broadcaster.

A bid for Spanish rights would reaffirm Al Jazeera’s strategy of moving in behind other Qatar government institutions as they conclude sponsorship agreements and acquisitions such as the winning of the hosting the 2022 World Cup and in France. It would also fit with the broadcaster’s move into markets such as Egypt in anticipation that they will generate revenue at a later stage rather than immediately and Qatar’s strategy of employing sports and media to leverage its global influence.

More than anything else, Al Jazeera and the 2022 World Cup have put Qatar, a tiny city state, on the world map. With Al Jazeera, Qatar rewrote the Middle East and North Africa’s media landscape, which until then was dominated by heavily censored state-owned broadcasters. Qatar’s ruler, Emir Sheikh Hamad Bin Khalifa Al Thani, ignored with few exceptions the protests of Al Jazeera’s often freewheeling journalism by various Arab leaders as well as initial US government portrayals of Al Jazeera as an Al Qaeda mouthpiece.

Al Jazeera has spent an estimated $400 million in the last year for broadcast rights to France's soccer league, the Champions League and Europa League, as well as some top German and Italian matches. It also concluded a $225 million sponsorship deal with FC Barcelona and a member of the royal family has bought FC Malaga.

Al Jazeera’s opportunity in Spain emerged after the country’s major commercial television stations, Antena 3 de Television SA (A3TV) and Mediaset Espana Comunicacion SA (TL5), said that they would only bid in June for the soccer league broadcast rights if rates were dropped by half. Reduced rates however could put the financial future of the Spanish league in jeopardy with players worried that clubs may not be able to honour their contracts.

The Spanish League generates annual television revenues of approximately $600 million. Business Week quoted Antena 3 as saying that Rival La Sexta, with which it is merging, paid $78 million for last season’s rights or just under $2 million for each of the 38 matches. 

Antena 3’s net income fell 14 percent last year while Mediaset SpA (MS), the parent company of Mediaset Espana, cut its dividend in March after profit dropped more than estimated on lower advertisement sales, Business Week said.

“The problem with sports events is that it’s good for ratings but it’s a financial disaster,” Antena 3 Chief Executive Officer Silvio Gonzalez told the magazine.

Al Jazeera’s opportunity is bolstered by the fact that the economics of Spanish league broadcast rights are complicated by Spain’s economic crisis, which has seen media revenues decline and unemployment rise, as well as the fact that Spanish law requires one match a week to be aired on a free-to-air rather than a pay tv channel. Complicating a possible Al Jazeera push into the Spain is the fact that each Spanish club sells its own rights which strengthens the negotiating position teams like Real Madrid and FC Barcelona.

The potential crisis in Spanish soccer has fuelled calls for the dropping of the legal requirement of a free-to-air game amid a flurry of Spanish and British media reports about players getting ready to transfer abroad after this season ends.

Britain’s The Sun reported that Abu Dhabi-owned Manchester City might offer $67 million for Colombian striker Radamel Falcao, who scored more than 25 goals for Spain’s Atletico Madrid this season. Qatar-owned Paris Saint-Germain could also well try to exploit Spain’s dilemma.

Al Jazeera has not commented on whether it is considering bidding for next season’s Spanish league rights. A bid would however be in line with the Gulf state’s global soccer and media ambitions as well as Sheikh Hamad’s proven willingness to enable Al Jazeera to suffer multi-year losses as it builds its business.

The broadcaster, the most popular sports network in the Middle East and Africa with two free and 15 pay channels, has acquired the rights in 23 countries to the 2018 and 2022 World Cups as well as to the troubled premier league in Egypt, where the pay TV market is still underdeveloped.

Al Jazeera is expected to launch a new French channel in early June in time for the European soccer championships after acquiring French rights in the wake of Qatar’s acquisition of Paris Saint-Germain.

Al Jazeera, which shares the rights with free-to-air channels TF1 and M6, who as part of their package will broadcast those French matches which have to be shown on free TV under French law, sees France as its test case for establishing itself as a pay-TV broadcaster in Europe.

The broadcaster is also looking at challenging this spring Rupert Murdoch’s BskyB for British rights to the English Premier League, at approximately $3 billion the world’s most expensive soccer league broadcast rights, and could also bid for German Bundesliga rights.

James M. Dorsey is a senior fellow at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore and the author of the blog, The Turbulent World of Middle East Soccer.

Représentations sociales de l’euthanasie et des soins palliatifs dans la presse française

by Lionel Dany

Intervista a Hubert Godard

by Armando Menicacci

Article written with Emanuele Quinz published in : Armando Menicacci, Emanuele Quinz, La scene digitale. Nuovi media per la danza, Venezia, Marsilio, 2001, pp. 371-381

Covering Post-Conflict Elections: Challenges for the Media in Central Africa

by Marie-Soleil Frère

This paper attempts to show the many challenges faced by the media while covering post-conflict electoral processes in... more This paper attempts to show the many challenges faced by the media while covering post-conflict electoral processes in six Central African states. The polls that took place in Burundi (2005), the Central African Republic (2005), the Democratic Republic of the Congo (2006), Congo-Brazzaville (2002, 2007), Chad (1996, 2001, 2006) and Rwanda (2003) were crucial for peace-building. In some cases, they were widely supported and supervised by the international com- munity, being considered the last step of a peace process and the first step toward establishing a truly representative “post-conflict” regime. The media were expected to play a large part in supporting these elections, both to inform the citizens, so they could make an educated choice, and to supervise the way the electoral administration was organizing the polls. This paper attempts to show the many challenges faced by the media while covering these post-conflict electoral processes. In a context of great political tension, in which candidates are often former belligerents who have just put down their guns to go to the polls, the media operate in an unsafe and economi- cally damaged environment, suffering from a lack of infrastructure, inade- quate equipment and untrained staff. Given those constraints, one might wonder if the media should be considered actual democratic tools in Central Africa or just gimmicks in a “peace-building kit” (including “free and fair” elections, multipartism and freedom of the press) with no real impact on the democratic commitment of the elite or the political participation of the pop- ulation.

Reflections of the Other: Images of women in the Polish business press

by Monika Kostera

Published in: (2003) Human Resource Development International 6/ 3, p. 325 - 342.

After the fall of state communism, the business press in Poland became an active image designer for people involved in... more After the fall of state communism, the business press in Poland became an active image designer for people involved in management. Shaping the stereotypes about the market, enterprises and management, it also has an effect on gender related stereotypes and images. A study of a widespread Polish business magazine reveals a pretty flat picture: women managers are typically portrayed in traditional female social roles and the images of men are stripped of feelings and individuality. However, a trend toward the emergence of some variety can be noticed and perhaps can the presence of women contribute to a major change in management?

The budget as Logos: The rhetorics of the Polish press

by Monika Kostera

Co-authored with Beata Glinka
Published in: (2001) Organization 8/4, p. 647-682.

The aim of this paper is to portray the image of the state’s budget as depicted in the Polish press. We do this by... more The aim of this paper is to portray the image of the state’s budget as depicted in the Polish press. We do this by carrying out a rhetorical analysis of how the legislation of the bill was presented in the press before the shift of 1989, and after. We then look for the root metaphors of the idea of the budget. We conclude that this idea is based on ”structuralist” beliefs about change, still predominant in Polish society.

It takes a switch to turn off the spotlight

by Giovanni Innella

Co-authored with Paul A. Rodgers and Nick Spencer.

This article was first published at Take It or Leave It / Design Economics, editors: Hadas Zemer Ben-Ari and Freek Lomma, the Van Abbemusemu, Eindhoven, 2011

Published online in January 2012 Edition of Design Philosophy Politics, the allied online Journal of Design Philosophy Papers

Is Design today more concerned with profile than product, viewers than users and media than manufacturer and, if so,... more Is Design today more concerned with profile than product, viewers than users and media than manufacturer and, if so, what impact will this have on the next generation of designers and, indeed, the future of design?

This question forms the basis of a short essay recently published by Giovanni and has shaped Giovanni’s on-going research which explores the impact of the growing presence of design into media, and media into design.

La presse française face aux soins palliatifs et à l’euthanasie

by Lionel Dany

Media and Class-making: What lessons are learnt when a celebrity chav dies? Raisborough, J, Frith H and Klein O (forthcoming) Sociology

by Jayne Raisborough

forthcoming in Sociology

Class is often overlooked in sociological studies of death just as studies of class overlook death. The controversial... more Class is often overlooked in sociological studies of death just as studies of class overlook death. The controversial media coverage of the death of Jade Goody provides a useful focus for exploring contemporary class-making. Recent sociological analyses of class representations in popular culture have demonstrated how denigration and humiliation serve as mechanisms which position sections of the white, working class (chavs) as repositories of bad taste. We argue that these are not the only (or even the most prevalent) affective mechanisms for class-making. In this paper, we explore how cultural imperatives for ‘dying well’ intersect with what could be perceived as more positive or even affectionate representations of Jade to produce ‘good taste’ as a naturalised properties of the middle class. As such, we demonstrate that the circulation of inequalities through precarious and dynamic cultural representations involves more complex affective mechanisms in class boundary work than is often recognised.

Keywords: Celebrity. Chav. Class. Death. Jade Goody. Reality Television.

Is the IPad magazine here to stay?

by Zeta Zirogianni

Research in terms of my PG Cert Fashion in Fashion & Lifestyle Journalism