bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Representing National Culture, Values and Identity in the Brazilian Television Mini-series
Authors: Brennan Niall
Published: February 2020

The telenovela is a significant indicator of social and cultural representation on Brazilian nightly television. In this context, however, representations of Brazil are not entirely limited to the telenovela, but incorporate other devices that represent a broader spectrum of Brazil’s diverse societies and cultures. In this article, I discuss how the Brazilian television mini-series provides such a unique and unacknowledged ambit, reflecting discernible continuities and changes in Brazilian national cultures, values and identities. The concept of hybridity forms a theoretical framework for the following discussions. Methodologically, I relate data from textual, press and interview analyses to the research question and discuss how this reveals additional discourses of representation. As a result, the mini-series, rather than implicitly mirroring the production and viewing characteristics of the telenovela, explicitly engages with pedagogical devices such as imagination, perception and (un)familiarity, greatly expanding Brazilian television’s social-cultural representations of Brazil.
Screen Acting and Performance Choices
Authors: Rawlins Trevor
Published: February 2020

This paper starts from the premise that screen acting has taken a dominant place in the working life of the professional actor at the beginning of the 21st century. With the implications for the training of professional actors for the commercial sector in mind, I want to use close analysis of two scenes from one television drama series, "Burn Up" (Global Television/BBC 2008), to examine actors’ performance choices and the ways in which some key concepts of Stanislavskian actor training operate specifically in screen performance. In doing so I will make comparison between British and American styles and traditions of acting, again with reference to the work of Stanislavsky, the dominant theorist underpinning much British and American actor training.
Representations of the Irish in American Vaudeville and Early Film
Authors: Mooney Jennifer
Published: February 2020

The emergence of vaudeville and, later, moving pictures coincided with a period of increased immigration to the United States and both relied heavily on ethnic stereotypes for material. This paper will examine some of the ways in which one particular ethnic group, the Irish, were represented on stage and screen in late nineteenth and early twentieth century America. It will attempt to tie the portrayal of Irish ethnicity into wider debates around the nature of audiences for vaudeville and early cinema, and the impact which these mass media may or may not have had on urban, working class, immigrant audiences. I will consider the extent to which vaudeville and early cinema might have functioned as assimilationist tools, not only in relation to newly-arrived Irish immigrants but also those joining the steadily increasing numbers of middle class Irish Americans.
Postdramatic Musicality in "The Black Rider"
Authors: Rambo-Hood Markee
Published: February 2020

With the English publication of Hans-Thies Lehmann’s book "Postdramatic Theatre" in 2006, Theatre Studies has been confronted with a profound and controversial categorisation of a method of theatre which emerged in the 1970s and aimed to challenge the foundations of the dramatic form. This paper

discusses the supposed binary opposition between dramatic and postdramatic theatre as purported by Lehmann. Further to this it aims to challenge this assumption through an appropriation of Catherine Bouko’s ideas of musicality as set out in her newly published article “Jazz musicality in postdramatic theatre and the opacity of auditory signs.”
Deviating from the Deviant: The Masculinity of Brando in "Julius Caesar" (1953)
Authors: Kelly Rachael
Published: February 2020

The cultural iconography of Mark Antony has, in the two millennia since his death, been heavily informed by the revisionist historiography of his political rival (and conqueror) Augustus Caesar. Political expediency in the early principate reconfigured Marcus Antonius’ actions in the final years of his life in such a negatively gendered light that the projection of Antonius into Antony-on-screen can be considered a vehicle for the negotiation and exorcism of socio-cultural anxiety surrounding the performance of masculinity. So predictable and repetitive is the iconography of Antony-on-screen that its absence – indeed, its inversion – in Joseph Mankiewicz’ "Julius Caesar" (1953) requires detailed investigation. This essay interrogates the non-diegetic discourse of masculine performance brought to Mankiewicz’ movie through its star, Marlon Brando, and situates the movie in line with the socio-cultural and socio-political anxieties enacted in the Hollywood historical epic of the 1950s.
PGN Matters: Getting Involved
Authors: Sanz Sabido Ruth
Published: February 2020

-
Space-age Hornblowers, or why Kirk and co. are not space cowboys: The Enlightenment mariners and transatlanticism of Star Trek
Authors: Rabitsch Stefan
Published: February 2020

Many mistakenly perceive Star Trek to be, simply, a “Wagon Train to the stars,” a space western/opera that projects the U.S. American frontier into outer space. However, by introducing his starship captain in archetypal terms as a ‘space-age Captain Horation [sic] Hornblower,’ and by making him a descendant of ‘similar [naval] men in the past,’ Star Trek (1966-1969) creator Gene Roddenberry makes it clear that his starship captain is not based on the quintessential cowboy hero found in the U.S. American national imagination (Roddenberry, 1964: 5). In this article, I seek to (re)map the character contours of the principle Star Trek captains and compare them with C. S. Forester’s ‘man alone,’ Horatio Hornblower, as well as with Hornblower’s romanticised predecessors. I will demonstrate how ‘Starfleet’s finest’ fit the role of the sentimental naval officer/hero of the Romantic period. Ultimately, it will become clear that Roddenberry used Horatio Hornblower as an archetypal blueprint to craft the Star Trek captains as interstellar masters and commanders, as well as spaceborne naturalists and scientists, extending the historio-mythical continuum of British maritime heroes into Star Trek’s fictional, yet “historical” future. The “Hornblowers in space” represent the central node in the decidedly transatlantic double consciousness of the Star Trek continuum - a maritime endowment which has largely escaped scholarly attention.
Star Trek and Gene Roddenberry’s “Vision of the Future”: The Creation of an Early Television Auteur
Authors: Kmet Michael
Published: February 2020

Gene Roddenberry propagated a narrative of himself as a “visionary” writer-producer and the primary author of Star Trek in the 1960s.  From the 1970s onwards, Paramount Pictures (and later, CBS) co-opted that narrative to market what would become the Star Trek franchise.  This paper will examine to what extent this narrative can be substantiated, and to what extent certain aspects can be contested.
Value in brokenness: fractured subjectivities in contemporary American Telefantasy
Authors: Howell Charlotte
Published: February 2020

This paper analyses the articulation of diegetic value in broken subjectivities represented in recent American Telefantasy programmes.  In Fringe (2008- ) and Dollhouse (2009-2010), protagonists and main characters articulate a sense of worth in their fractured, multiple, and/or cyborg identities, though this narratively articulated value is often couched in an ambivalence created by the narrative.  This article attends to the questions of gender and agency in these shows’ post-humanist configurations of subjectivities.
Blurring Gender Boundaries – Masculine Confessional in Celebrity Auto/biographies
Authors: Kylloen Hanna
Published: February 2020

This paper examines the representation of masculinity within the feminine genre of auto/biography through an analysis of biographical discourses used in the construction of star personas. Auto/biographies have the potential to reverse gender roles with male stars’ confessionals often discursively constructed as feminine, blurring gender distinctions within auto/biographical writing. The compulsion to confess has traditionally been seen as a feminine preoccupation but the intensification of celebrity culture would appear to have extended this compulsion to male stars. This paper examines two authorised biographies written about pop star Robbie Williams: Robbie Williams – Somebody Someday (McCrum, 2002) and Feel: Robbie Williams (Heath, 2005) and comedian and actor Russell Brand’s two autobiographies: My Booky Wook (2008) and My Booky Wook 2 – This Time It’s Personal (2010). The paper analyses how in these auto/biographical narratives male stars are represented as using masquerade and role-play, as well as descriptions of mental illness and addictions to construct masculine personas. Masculinity is asserted by representing male stars through the myth of the creative genius whose talents and artistic sensitivities make them vulnerable to mental illness. Part of the masculine persona is constructed through drug/alcohol addiction and re-asserts masculinity through descriptions of promiscuous sexual adventures. There is a tension between the feminine nature of celebrity discourse and the discursive construction of a masculine persona, which appears to blur any rigid or traditional gender boundaries in these biographical narratives, and in the process of doing so, to ‘prove’ the ‘authenticity’ of the star persona.
Digital Lives: Refiguring the recent and distant pasts in new biographical forms
Authors: Gallimore Adam
Published: February 2020

In the past decade digital media have progressively become the major forms of memorialising figures and events of the past. Memory itself, in the manner by which it is encoded, stored and accessed, has developed into an increasingly digitised medium due to advancing technologies and the proliferation of digital archiving. This article considers the impact of digital filmmaking and digital media forms on contemporary biographical narratives, as well as how digital filmmaking practices have been applied to the biographical film for unique aesthetic, thematic and narrative purposes. The examination of divergent applications of digital techniques in the representation of both recent and distant pasts will allow for greater insight into the modern biographical subject. I focus on The Social Network (2010) in order to investigate the framing of a biographical subject within events of the recent past. I consider the manner in which the film exploits its pastness for unique aesthetic and narrative purposes, highlighting particularities of the generational zeitgeist through its non-linear narrative structure and its employment of what I describe as an “internet aesthetic” that serves to memorialise a previous technological era. This approach examines the film’s emphasis on visual composition and engagement with technology in its representation of its biographical subject. In this manner, the digital can be viewed as adding further forms of stylistic expression as well as having the potential to involve viewers more directly with figures and events of the past. This article also examines how digital representational strategies allow for a more temporally-specific engagement, reflecting the development of new ways in which audiences access and interact with history through biographical narratives. Viewing The Social Network alongside films such as Che (2008), Public Enemies (2009) and 127 Hours (2010) I illustrate how contemporary biopics construct different ways of experiencing their historical figures, with digital aesthetics lending qualities of presentness and propinquity to past events. Digital is frequently employed to enhance the immediacy of the past in order to align the spectator more closely with the experiences of a film’s subject(s), and the issues raised by these representational strategies need to be considered when looking to the future of the biographical film.
Depicting a Life Less Ordinary: Fantasy as Evidence for Deconstruction in the Contemporary Film Biopic
Authors: Ellam Carolyn
Published: February 2020

This article evaluates the utilisation of fantasy in the contemporary, mainstream biopic as evidence for deconstruction from the classical generic form. By using Miss Potter (2006) as an illustrative case study, this paper interrogates the inclusion of fantasy in relation to wider trends in the biopic’s development. Drawing on James Walters’ definition of ‘interior fantasy’, I examine the representation of ‘real’ animated characters in Miss Potter that the central protagonist both talks to and interacts with. Through a combination of narrative and production analysis, I explore how and why fantasy elements are included in a film which, in all other aspects, represents a realist, albeit dramatised, depiction of the well-known British author Beatrix Potter. Central to this is a consideration of whether the use of fantasy conflicts with historical accuracy and factual account in portraying the subject’s ‘real-life’ story. It finds that the ‘interior fantasy’ as seen in Miss Potter ultimately represents an extension of the formal components typically associated with the biopic. More broadly, this article contributes to recent, revisionist critiques, by assessing the deconstructive tendencies of the modern mainstream biopic and re-considering its place within contemporary cinema.
“Sex doesn’t dominate my life at all, really. I think painting does” (David Hockney): the emergence of the queer artist biopic
Authors: Bovey David
Published: February 2020

In the classic tradition of artist biography there has grown up a number of myths and tropes that have encouraged a pre-ordained pattern for the portrayal of an artistic life, whether literary or cinematic. Within the sub-genre of the artist biopic must now be added the category of queer artist as already distinct tropes have emerged in this relatively new field. Where discussion of Michelangelo’s sexuality was deliberately avoided in The Agony and the Ecstasy (1965), within ten years there was a sexually explicit exploration of the gay lifestyle in 1960’s London in A Bigger Splash (1974). This openness and an aggressive style continued in subsequent British artist biopics though not without provoking censorship challenges and some outspoken critiques in the media. To make the filmic representations acceptable to cinema audiences, and to convey the feel of the artist’s paintings, the directors used very innovative techniques to present their story. The auteurs behind these films, such as Derek Jarman, saw them as distinctly political in intent. Overall the queer artist biopic has shown more interest in exploring the private sex life of the artist than in the creation of his artistic output, but through such controversial content the artist biopic finds its place within the development of both a gay and a queer cinema.
Why PGN Matters: PGN, Our Family
Authors: Jin Xuelian
Published: February 2020

xxx
Porn 2.0 Utopias – Authenticity and Gay Masculinities on Cam4
Authors: Henze Patrick
Published: February 2020

The article discusses how the pornographicdesire for authenticity is realised on porn 2.0 websites like Cam4. Againstthis background the analysis focuses on gay masculinities and theirrepresentational politics within gay mainstream pornography. Gaying, asthe tradition of staging a utopian gay world without discrimination, as well asporning, the possible transformations of gay subjectivities throughporn, are presented as central concepts of gay pornography. The author connectsrecent developments of online pornography with analytical approaches of LindaWilliams' Porn Studies and locates porn 2.0 in the trajectory of gaypornography.
Feminist and Queer Practices in the Online and Offline Activism of Occupy Wall Street
Authors: Ng Eve , Toupin Sophie
Published: February 2020

While the Occupy movement has attracted popular and academic interest since 2011, there has been relatively little attention to the significance of feminist and queer practices and discourses to the movement. Drawing from feminist theory, social movement studies, and digital media studies, this paper presents empirical research conducted at Occupy Wall Street (OWS) that highlights feminist, queer, and trans contributions to OWS from its inception, with a focus on the Trans World Order Affinity Group (TOAG). Through its activities at Zuccotti Park as well at its website and on social media, TOAG has challenged gender norms, heteronormativity, and transphobia in both the physical and virtual domains of OWS, and been a key contributor to its online prominence. As such, the group offers an illuminating case study of the challenges and successes of realizing feminist and queer agency during key developments of a major social movement. More generally, this project provides an important corrective to the prominence of class in how Occupy has been discussed and conducted, pointing out how other axes of inequality have also stratified Occupy itself. In addition, it addresses central issues about new media and participation, including negotiating differences between diverse activist groups, the efficacy of digital activism, and the relationship between online and offline strategies.
Children and Horror after PG-13: The Case of The Gate
Authors: Antunes Filipa
Published: February 2020

The paper analyses the tensions in the text, production and reception of the children’s horror film The Gate (Tibor Takács, 1987) relating to the sustained ambiguity around the Motion Picture Association of America's PG-13 classification. I suggest that the late 1980s was a moment of transition toward new attitudes about the horror genre and children. To develop this argument, the paper explores the main issues raised in critical opinion about the film at the time of its release: notions on what the horror genre is or should be; the changing assumptions about its audiences (namely the shift away from an adults-only perspective); and moral panics triggered by transitioning social values. These struggles are suggested also in the creative clashes between the writer and director of The Gate: where one wanted to make a traditional R-rated horror, the other was adamant about it being a positive fairy-tale for pre-teens. The paper analyses the way this conflict is reflected in the film’s representations of children and suggests that its resolution in a vision of child empowerment (narratively and critically) indicates a move away from traditional assumptions about the horror genre, as well as childhood. Through this analysis, the paper also seeks to understand how PG-13 was perceived in the late 1980s, particularly in terms of its implied audience and its relationship with the genre of horror. Through this focus on the relationship between ratings, creative choices and conflicting attitudes, the paper proposes the idea of two intertwined cultural shifts: toward a more segmented view of childhood, in the emergence of the pre-teen as a demographic, and a more open definition of horror and its audiences.
Pretty Little Liars: Teen Mystery or Revealing Drama?
Authors: Bingham Patrick
Published: February 2020

Teen television scholarship foregrounds debates surrounding representation, maturation anxieties, and the inclusion of all types of programmes geared towards teenaged viewers into one overarching genre: Teen Television (Davis and Dickinson 2004; Ross and Stein 2008). However, little work has been done on the prevailing sub-genres within this classification. This exclusion runs parallel to the minute amount of scholarship available on mystery television, a genre identified by Ira O. Glick and Sidney J. Levy in 1962, yet which remains seemingly unmentioned, or forgotten rather, in contemporary television genre studies. Consequently, the exclusion of mystery, much like the focus on redefining a corpus of programmes into a new, broader genre Teen TV, undermines the potential of those forgotten genres to negotiate socio-cultural issues. In this case study, I identify mystery programming as one of those genres elided by another. Thus, my argument is that through undermining the importance (here, cultural relevance) of one genre over another, a system of genre hierarchisation emerges that is closely related to the ability (or lack thereof) to address socio- cultural issues. In other words, if a particular social issue, such as teen (homo)sexuality, is not present in this genre but in other lesser genres, then there is limited attention paid to those genres that are actually engaging with important socio-cultural concerns. To illustrate this, I explore Pretty Little Liars (ABC, 2010- ) as a teen television programme because of its narrative arc surrounding teen homosexuality and how it uses mystery to explore, develop and negotiate this contemporary cultural issue.
Introduction: Transmedia Practices: A Television Branding Revolution
Authors: Derhy Kurtz Benjamin W. L.
Published: February 2020

The television world is changing, having been impacted by mutations of three different natures: technological, narrative and participatory. Productions now use technology to enhance their content as television series and movie franchises are, increasingly, basing their narratives on principles of narrative complexity since active audiences do not only consume, but also engage with the said texts. These efforts made by the industry to target involved audiences demonstrate how transmedia practices have impacted not only on storytelling processes, but the text – and brand – itself, the latter no longer being a mere programme with a limited duration, but a whole, composed of numerous elements spread across media. The goal of the different players involved is, nevertheless, quite different. While fans’ activities represent a way to empower themselves and engage with this universe, the teams behind institutional transmedia strategies seek to secure more (faithful) customers and, incidentally, a higher financial return.Rather than reducing transmedia storytelling to the augmenting effect it had on the concept of narrative resulting from its ability to create an immersive environment, this issue seeks to discuss the wide range of economic perspectives available to film and television brands due to this very immersive environment. The transmedia phenomenon has, so far, mostly been approached from an either textual or participatory standpoint, but rarely so from a multidisciplinary perspective encompassing the marketing aspect. Providing insight on this topic – so far not discussed in Networking Knowledge – through contributions from researchers in media, communications, cultural studies and marketing, the issue seeks to enrich our collective understanding of transmedia practices, in the hope of offering a more holistic approach. In doing so, the various pieces presented in this edition clearly demonstrate that transmedia practices have revolutionised television branding.. and that it’s just getting started.
Introduction: Time and Technology in Popular Culture, Media and Communication
Authors: Gallimore Adam
Published: February 2020

This special issue of Networking Knowledge addresses several aspects of change in the media by exploring a range of debates about the temporal and the technological across several disciplines and research areas. In doing so, it contributes to the ever-increasing scholarship concerning technological advancement and application, as well as how time is viewed, constructed and experienced.
Photo Filter Apps: Understanding Analogue Nostalgia in the New Media Ecology
Authors: Caoduro Elena
Published: February 2020

As digital media have become more pervasive and entrenched in our daily routines, a nostalgic countertrend has increasingly valued the physical and tactile nature of the analogue image. In the past few years, technologically obsolete devices, such as lo-fi cameras and vinyl records, have not faded out of sight completely but are instead experiencing a comeback. At the same time, digital media capitalise on the nostalgia for the analogue and fetishise the retro aesthetics of old technologies. This article explores the emergence of photo filter and effect applications which allow users to modify digital photos, adding signifiers of age such as washed-out colours, scratches and torn borders. It is argued that these new technologies, with programs such as Instagram, Hipstamatic and Camera 360, bring back the illusory physicality of picture-taking through digital skeuomorphism. Drawing on media archaeology practice, this article interrogates the limits of the retro sensibility and the fetishisation of the past in the context of digital media, in particular by focusing on the case study of the start-up Instagram. This photo filter application neither merely stresses the twilight nature of photography nor represents the straightforward digital evolution of previous analogue features. Rather, it responds to the necessity to feel connected to the past by clear and valued signs of age, mimicking a perceived sense of loss. Faced with the persistent hipster culture and the newness of digital media, photo filter apps create comfortable memories, ageing pictures and adding personal value. As such, it will be argued that this phenomenon of nostalgia for analogue photography can be linked to the concepts of ritual and totem. By providing a critical history of Instagram as a photo-sharing social network, this article aims to explain new directions in the rapidly changing system of connective media.
Italian-Americans’ Contested Whiteness in Early Cinematic Melodrama
Authors: Coladonato Valerio
Published: February 2020

The concept of ‘whiteness’ has acquired a central role in race studies. The historical process through which the Italian-American community became ‘white’ is a relevant case study for showing the constructedness of this category and the power relations that underpin it. This paper focuses on the role played by early cinematic melodrama in light of wider social and political transformations that led to the assimilation of Italian immigrants into American racial discourse. In early twentieth-century United States, mass immigration and the institutionalisation of cinema were two inter-related phenomena. Cinema became a ‘respectable’ medium by assigning itself a moral and didactic role. Attending film screenings was, for millions of immigrants, a way to become ‘Americanised’. In the same period, wider socio-political discourses contributed to the re-signification of ‘whiteness’ in American society. In order to accommodate both the need of cheap immigrant labour and nativist ideologies concerned with the purity of the ‘white’ (e.g. Anglo-American) core of society, ‘whiteness’ became fragmented into an array of racially inflected ‘national types’. Among them, Italian-Americans were only provided with ‘probationary whiteness’, and were still deemed as racially inferior and ‘unfit for self-government’. US cinema deployed melodramatic narratives to negotiate the ‘white’ status of Italian-Americans through the polarised moral discourse that characterised this particular genre. It is possible to trace different stylistic paradigms of early American cinema by comparing several melodramas directed by D.W. Griffith and later movies, such as Reginald Barker’s The Italian (1915). The representations of Italian-Americans as Others in cinematic melodrama, and their subsequent assimilation into dominant racial ideology, reveals the variable and complex meanings of the social category of whiteness.
The Othering of Palestinians in Film: Munich (2006) and Waltz with Bashir (2009)
Authors: Bennett Stephen
Published: February 2020

This paper is a critical textual analysis of two of the most popular and critically acclaimed non-documentary films on the Arab-Israeli conflict. The wide array of popular films on Israel and Palestine released in the past two decades, and the myriad perspectives they present, call for a more current critical textual analysis, as some of these films have been very well-received by audiences worldwide and have garnered numerous international film awards. These films include Divine Intervention (2002), Munich (2006), Miral (2010), Ajami (2010), and Waltz with Bashir (2009), to name a few. Film provides a popular medium through which we find an active Othering of Palestinians, sometimes even in films that have set out to upend dominant narratives. By undertaking a textual analysis of two of these films, Munich and Waltz with Bashir, and utilising works on collective memory along with elements of critical race theory, this paper discusses some problematic aspects of modern film representations of Arabs in relation to the Arab-Israeli conflict. This study carries implications for both historical and political studies of this conflict, and for communications theory by delving more deeply into media depictions of race, ethnicity, and nationality amidst the Arab-Israeli conflict. It also raises questions as to the dominance of Orientalism and neo-Orientalism in media depictions of Palestine and Palestinians and how that may be changing due to an emerging ‘Palestinian narrative’ in recent films. Furthermore, by lending a critical eye towards these films, we can take a more accurate look at the larger historiography and media landscape surrounding the Arab-Israeli conflict and observe how recent political developments ‘on the ground’ have, or have not, influenced depictions of the conflict and the region.
Binary Representations: British Press Reporting of the Muslim/Asian Other Outside the Context of Terrorism (1989-2007)
Authors: Atkinson Matt
Published: February 2020

This paper explores the ways in which the coverage of the Muslim Other has changed over time outside the specific context of ‘Islamic’ terrorism. Three case-studies are examined: the Satanic Verses incident of 1989, the Bradford Riots of 2001, and the Gillian Gibbons incident of 2007. The analysis indicates that the British press tends to conflate British Asians and British Muslims, although this was mainly evidenced in the 2001 Bradford Riots sample. However, comparing the coverage of the 2007 Gillian Gibbons incident to that of the 1989 Satanic Verses, suggests that the representation of Muslims may have become more positive between 1989 and 2007. Although this finding may appear to be counter-intuitive given that this period included events such as 9/11 and 7/7, which are generally regarded as having worsened negative stereotypes of Muslims, this data is in keeping with existing studies, such as Featherstone et al.  (2010), who argue that during this period the British press struggled to reconcile the need to ‘represent Britain as a unified multicultural imagined community’ with ‘“othering” the bombers as Islamic radicals who were nonetheless normal British citizens’ (179). This has led to a duality in coverage of Muslims in the British press, where Muslims can be either ‘good’ or ‘bad’, but nothing in between.
The Golden [Statuette] Age: How Miramax Sold Shakespeare to the Academy
Authors: Martindale Sarah
Published: February 2020

This article revisits the 71st Academy Award Ceremony in 1999 when Shakespeare in Love picked up seven Oscars from thirteen nominations, controversially beating Saving Private Ryan to be named Best Picture. It is rare for a romantic comedy to win this coveted award, but then this is not just a film about love; it is a film about Shakespeare in love. In its depiction of cultural heritage Shakespeare in Love foregrounds ‘the very business of show’, remaking the playwright and his theatre in the image of millennial Hollywood. By reducing the distance between the two, the film makes claims to cultural quality worthy of recognition and reward. Shakespeare in Love reflected and capitalised on taste culture of the time and cemented Miramax's reputation as a purveyor of ‘Oscar-bait’. This article looks closely at a production context of which this film represents an epitome. Peter Biskind has christened the period between Disney’s purchase of Miramax in 1993 and Shakespeare in Love’s Best Picture Oscar as a ‘Golden Age’, in which the company profited from the benefits of being a studio subsidiary while still enjoying the kudos they had cultivated as an indie. Thanks to the financial weight lent by their parent studio, Miramax was able to market and distribute the film widely – it played on nearly two thousand screens in America at the peak of its theatrical run, during Oscar season – and to forcefully promote it among the ranks of the Academy voters. Complementing the authoritative cultural pedigree of the film’s subject matter was Miramax’s own reputation for ‘quality filmmaking’, which the film simultaneously drew upon and sought to perpetuate. In this way Shakespeare in Love offered mainstream studio production and romantic comedy content, while also projecting an aura of superior substance thanks to the connotations of the names Shakespeare and Miramax. Cultural hybridity is at the root of the film’s Oscar-winning success.
The New Broadcasting Ethos and Motivations for Interactive Technology Use in a Nigerian Radio Station
Authors: Oni 'Wale
Published: February 2020

I examine in this study what constitute the motivations/gratifications for the pervasiveness of interactive technology (mobile phone and Internet) use for participatory programming among broadcast journalists. A survey was modelled after similar studies on motivations for citizen journalism (Jack, 2009), against extant theoretical frameworks of technology adoption, including adaptive structuration and uses and gratification theories. A matrix was also constructed to pre-test what constitute the motivations/gratifications for the use of interactive technology in the production of dissemination of participatory programming. Hence, broadcast journalists in a purposively selected FM radio station in southwest Nigeria were sampled. Findings showed that broadcast journalists’ motivation to use interactive technology for participatory programming is geared toward information dissemination. In achieving this, broadcast journalists rely more on text-based (quasi-synchronous) new media platforms rather than a more convenient but costlier voice call channel to act the social responsibility (information dissemination and mobilization) roles. Poor telecom connectivity is a significant threat. The study, while contributing to the current discourse on the convergence of radio, also practically advances the concept of participatory communication and newsroom technology adoption beyond the theoretical and speculative dimensions.
A Discursive Analysis of the Gaza Conflict of 2008-09: Provocation and Proportionality in War Reporting
Authors: Shreim Nour
Published: February 2020

The paper employs an interpretative discourse analysis, to investigate the cultural ideas evoked linguistically throughout the coverage of the Gaza War of 2008-09 (Operation Cast Lead). It aims to provide a historical context to better understanding Operation Protective Edge. To allow for a comparative dimension, the paper develops two ‘frames’ of analysis that systematically look at two recurring themes and scrutinise their discursive strategies and functions in the construction of meaning and ideology. These include Provocation, which examines questions of responsibility and culpability; and Proportionality, which embraces matters of legitimacy and authority in relation to the humanitarian aspect of the war. The findings indicate that the actions of a protagonist may be deemed legitimate with regard to provocation, but illegitimate with regard to their proportionality. The peculiar circumstances of the war pushed the media in the direction of greater separation from the predominant ideologies ensued by the Israeli Army. It suggests that BBC World Service lack a coherent discursive strategy at the level of the lexical in their reporting of Gaza.
‘Victims vs Terrorists?’ The Discursive Construction of Palestinians in Two Online Israeli Newspapers during the 2014 Gaza War
Authors: Qawariq Rami
Published: February 2020

This article is a critical discourse analysis (CDA) of the representation of Palestinians in two online Israeli newspapers published in English during the 2014 Gaza War. The study attempts to conduct a language-based analysis of the political and ideological workings that underpin the representation of social actors. It employs tools from the Discourse Historical Approach (Reisigl & Wodak 2001) to explain the discursive characterization of fighters/ Hamas and civilians. Since the huge number of Palestinian civilian fatalities was a major aspect of controversy in the last war, this article tries to reveal the linguistic choices and discursive strategies used in representing each group of social actors. More importantly, the article detects the linguistic and discursive differences between two newspapers and explains how they may reflect different political orientations.
The Palestine Solidarity Movement, Human Rights and Twitter
Authors: Abu-Ayyash Shadi
Published: February 2020

This paper examines the reaction of the Palestine Solidarity Movement in Ireland and the UK to the recent Israeli war on Gaza. It studies how the major solidarity groups used Twitter in their endeavour to show online audiences the Palestinian narrative, along with providing information on local solidarity activities. The paper suggests that the Twitter platform was used by major solidarity groups during the war as a tool to connect with Palestinian activists, to inform online followers about human stories of the Palestinian victims and to organise local supporting activities. Results suggest that the text and images used, support the movement’s emphasis on human rights discourse.
A Virtual Body Politic on #Gaza: The Mobilization of Information Patterns
Authors: Shereen Sakr Laila
Published: February 2020

From Walter Benjamin and Dziga Vertov to Instagram and machine vision: new strategies of seeing and representation in modern and software societies constantly emerge and reshape our field of phenomenological, affective, and discursive vision. Social media’s use of images and representations of the body, within the highly securitized and militarized networks and landscapes that we traverse, focuses attention on the body as a site of contested political control and capitalist consumerism. This study of a virtual body politic provides a close reading of two data visualizations from Twitter conversations on Egypt in 2011 and Gaza in 2014 in order to analyze the mobilization of information patterns over time. These visualizations of Internet data are not about claims about material bodies or the intentions of communicators, but traces of an embodied moment of intentional use of digital media. Every data point has an embodied analogue at some moment. And tweets have a very particular (historically specific, geo-specific) moment of origin that is exceedingly tangled with materials bodies. My aim here is to determine what the emerging patterns tell us about a virtual body politic.
Distinguishing Mediality: The Problem of Identifying Forms and Features of Digital Comics
Authors: Wilde Lukas
Published: February 2020

Do digital comics constitute a different “medium” than print comics? Many researchers have discussed whether comics make up a medium at all. The problem seems to be, in contrast to films or video games, the absence of a defining technology. Whatever separates a given “medium” in a conventional sense from others, however, doesn’t actually lie in its technological, material or semiotic properties, but in its culturally qualifying aspects: recognizable medial forms, for instance, that distinguish a medial configuration sufficiently for given observers. This article understands the mediality of (digital) comics as partly produced by rhetorical effects, based on contested discussions and discourses surrounding the alleged differences and similarities between digital and print comics. It aims to show how we can not only observe digital comics as new objects of inquiry, but actually observe said distinctions in order to learn something about the changing cultural implications of “comicness” in general, as well as about the interplay between material and technological properties on the one hand and compositional aspects on the other.
Introduction: Reframing Cinematic Space and Audience Practice in the Digital Age
Authors: Llinares Dario , Arnold Sarah
Published: February 2020

KEYWORDS Spectatorship, Cinema, Digital Culture, Film History, Dispositif
Re-centering the Cinema Experience in a Multi-Platform, Digital Age
Authors: Nikdel E. W.
Published: February 2020

With the advent of online distribution and the rise of multiple media devices, claims of the cinema’s imminent death have surfaced with greater intensity than ever before. Of course, with an ever-widening array of platforms these accounts have placed a newfound emphasis on the cinema as a distinctive physical space, one that plays host to a very particular and much cherished cultural activity. This article considers the substance of these claims by tracing a very particular historical route. Firstly, be revisiting Baudry’s notion of the dispositif, this article detects the importance of the physical environment in the process of film consumption. Secondly, I relate this emphasis on the physical to the traditional notion of the cinephile, a practice that ritualises the cinema experience. Many accounts across the spectrum of film history will attest to the profound ways in which the physical experience of the cinema summons a rich emotional response. Lastly, I consider how the cinema and the collective nature of film consumption provides an authentic trace to the past and a very certain time and place in history. In turn, despite competition from cheaper and more convenient platforms, this article will endeavour to show how the cinema retains its place at the centre of contemporary film culture. KEYWORDS Cinema, dispositif, cinephilia, cultural memory.
Watch the Birdie: The Star Economy, Social Media and the Celebrity Group Selfie
Authors: Wright Ellen
Published: February 2020

This work will explore some of the broader implications of celebrity group selfies, through the example of Ellen DeGeneres’ star-studded group shot, taken during the 2014 Academy Awards ceremony, Joan Collins’ 2014 Prince’s Trust Award selfie, just days after, and Collins’ subsequent ‘view from the other side’ tweet; exploring notions of authenticity, performance, intimacy, self-promotion, public visibility, identification, imitation, vicarious consumption and audience participation. Engaging with existing work upon celebrity tweeters, Twitter and other online fandom, photographic theory, star studies and, in particular, Bourdieu’s theories surrounding cultural capital, taste formation, and cultural distinctions, this work not only explores some of the reasons behind the frequently negative judgements of celebrity group selfies, but also seeks to identify some of the very real social functions and more personal gratifications, both for celebrity and fan, that the celebrity group selfie, as a communication and a self-promotional tool, may actually satisfy. More specifically, it is this paper’s contention that selfies offer an ostensibly unmediated, accessible and virtually instantaneous means of articulating and disseminating a coherent, identifiable, aspirational (yet bizarrely, also, seemingly ‘ordinary’) and eminently marketable star image, via a popular and up-to-date medium. With celebrity group selfies this is also the case, but here the photographer subject presents an image of themselves to the world, in relation to a specific group of peers (who themselves also function as signifiers and commodities); perpetuating the notion of a pantheon of star ‘gods’ and the myth of a coherent celebrity community; reinforcing the divide between ‘famouses’ and ‘normals’ and participants and observers; prompting an exponential rise in fan/public interest as more stars enter the equation and allowing the celebrity participants within the image to either borrow some of the greater ‘worth’, ‘status’ or cultural capital of other, more eminent, celebrity subjects also pictured or alternatively, lend their superior cultural capital to less successful celebrities within the image. As such, this work seeks to move beyond a hasty dismissal of such images, their subjects, and their audiences and instead, hypothesise a coherent set of reasons why the most-photographed individuals on the planet (not just film stars, but heads of state and religious leaders) might feasibly choose to create, appear in and/or disseminate such images (or, indeed, decline to participate as did Prince Charles in Joan Collins’ group shot) and why the public may find these images of such interest.
Through the Google Glass: Configurations of Attention in the Age of Digital Media
Authors: Zekany Eva
Published: February 2020

In this paper, I discuss a recently documented case of media addiction, that of the first person ever to be treated for internet addiction induced by the use of Google Glass. Taking this case as a starting point, I draw together strands from new materialism and N. Katherine Hayles’ work on attention in order to argue that the contemporary debate on media addiction translates into a reconfiguration of attention as an embodied, embedded and finite resource. Google Glass thus occupies a precarious and paradoxical place in today’s attention economy: as both a gateway to a technical wonderland, and as a corrosive agent that disrupts the proper workings of the social.
Photography and the Visual Particularities of Young People on the Autism Spectrum
Authors: Klein Uschi
Published: February 2020

Photographs are created, recreated and shared extensively and repeatedly, suggesting that people have little choice but to look at them. Nonetheless, the diverse ways of seeing in contemporary visual culture entail different visions, experiences and practices of visuality. This article suggests autistic people approach photography in their own ways to visually express their everyday lives. While sensory experiences differ in autistic individuals, they appear to embody visuality with their sensory modalities, using primarily their vision, but also their kinaesthetic experience and proprioceptive awareness to photograph the world around them.   Drawing from findings from an empirical study on the photographic practices of young people on the autism spectrum, this paper discusses how two participants use photography to capture the ways they see the world. Photography provides a context in which individuals can illustrate their visual experiences, and specific and diverse social and personal realities. The medium encourages them to make, use and discuss their own photographs, which, in turn, generates thoughts of lived experiences on which they may otherwise never reflect. While offering new insights into how photography mediates autistic individuals’ sensory perceptions of their visual world, this paper will further consider the contributions photography makes to the everyday lives of autistic people.
Building a Digital Park: Recontextualising Lived Experiences at Towneley Park, Burnley
Authors: McDonagh Alex
Published: February 2020

This paper discusses a research project exploring the effect of digital heritage creation and interpretation on park space meanings. Adopting a multidisciplinary and practice-based approach, this project engaged directly with local park users through interviews, field visits and the development of a website. The aim of this project was to explore how the research process and website development affected the participant’s perspectives on the park space.   The paper will discuss the key themes of the data and how the multiple participant narratives traverse space and time within the park. The thematic structure and premise of the website will be detailed before discussing some of the issues which arose during the digital development process. Finally, participant’s reactions to the project will be explored showing that space and time in the park, and the website representation of it, are related less to linearity than to the habitus and rhizomatic forms.