bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Pink Press
Authors: Szulc Lukasz
Published: July 2020

The term “pink press” refers to printed magazines created for, and most often by, lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans, and queer people, or LGBTQs. In the broadest sense, it includes a great diversity of publications, which could be amateur or professional, not‐for‐profit or commercial, personal or collective, and focused on art, activism, or private life. This entry discusses the emergence and development of the pink press at different historical moments in different geographical contexts. First, it presents the history of the pink press in the West, starting with the sexologist movement in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, moving on to the homophile movement in the 1950s and 1960s, gay liberation in the 1970s, and the HIV/AIDS activism in the 1980s and 1990s. Second, it emphasizes the transnational character of the pink press, pointing to the importance of traveling people and traveling content to the development of the network of LGBTQ magazines. In this section, different conceptualizations of globalization of LGBTQ culture, in which the magazines have played an important role, are discussed. Third, it zooms in on different trajectories of commercialization of the pink press in relation to different magazines published in different countries, highlighting the rise of the market research on gay and lesbian readership and the invention of the gay market. Finally, the entry reflects on the role of the so‐called digital revolution for the changing character of the pink press.
Women and Cinematography
Authors: Cortés‐Selva Laura
Published: July 2020

Although women have been part of the cinema industry since its origins, they have often experienced inequality, especially in taking up leading creative roles as directors, cinematographers, production designers, or producers. The picture for women cinematographers is even more discouraging. Cinematography or direction of photography is a subject that is closely related to the art and technique of cinema. As a field associated with technical and artistic issues, men have traditionally dominated the profession. Although there have been many women telling interesting stories through the language of cinema in genres such as documentary, animation, or fiction, they have remained more or less invisible in terms of being known by the audience. This entry brings them to life.
Women Filmmakers:StephanieRothman
Authors: Kozma Alicia
Published: July 2020

Director Stephanie Rothman made seven feature films between 1966 and 1974, was vice‐president for Creative Development at the independent Dimension Pictures, and was the first women to win the Director's Guild of America fellowship. Rothman broke new ground for women's contributions to, and labor in, Hollywood's changing landscape. However, she has been largely absent from media histories, emblematic of how women's labor and creative contributions are often obscured. This entry traces Rothman's career and filmmaking legacy, drawing on original research, personal conversations and interviews with the director, and the limited preexisting work on her career.
Women's Community Newspapers in India
Authors: Das Jayanta Vishnu
Published: July 2020

The community newspaper in India owes its birth to the resilience of women in some of the most deprived regions of the country. Very often, the attempts of the marginalized become the most powerful medium of change.
Mahila Dakiya
, launched in 1993, is considered to be the first community newspaper in India born out of the initiative of women's collectives in the villages of Uttar Pradesh. In one of the most disadvantaged districts of the country, Banda, under the aegis of the Mahila Samakhya program, women received critical hands‐on training to empower them to become self‐reliant. The second wave of community newspapers in India could be considered to emerge from the direct fallout of the
Mahila Dakiya
experience. Nirantar, the nongovernmental organization connected with the earlier initiative, launched
Khabar Lahariya
in 2002. This is a community newspaper which started publication in Chitrakoot with an eight‐member team to collect, edit, and publish news that would be of interest to marginalized sections of the society. Chitrakoot is among the poorest 200 districts of India, and
Khabar Lahariya
concerns itself mostly with issues concerning the Kols, Scheduled Castes, and Muslim communities. It publishes news in local dialects, such as Bundeli, Awadhi, Bhojpuri, and so on, reaching out to more than a million readers.
Aging, Media, and Communication
Authors: Bühring Lisa‐Nike
Published: July 2020

The marked demographic change in industrialized countries has increased cross‐disciplinary interest in exploring understandings of aging on a social as well as individual level. Qualitative research in aging studies predominantly views aging as socially constructed. It therefore aims at gaining a better understanding of grand narratives of aging disseminated by powerful sociocultural agents in the media, the legal and political system, medical sciences, and academic institutions, of individual identity constructions in higher age and of how older people incorporate narratives of aging into their life‐course narratives.

Neoliberal grand narratives of aging unfold within the binary of progress versus decline discourses. While representations linking aging to decline are characterized by a loss of control over mental and physical capabilities and resultant dependency on family, friends, or the state, the concept of successful aging is based on managing aging by staying autonomous, active, and youthful for as long as possible. Although the successful aging paradigm seems to support a positive view of aging, it not only reproduces gender hierarchies and heteronormativity but it also puts enormous pressure on those trying to meet the standards of successful aging and contributes to the marginalization of anyone who does not want or is not able to comply. An alternative to current sociocultural views of aging might be to approach aging outside of chronological homogenization and standardization and within the context of individual life‐course narratives in which each person constructs meaning, consistency and, ultimately, identity in one's life.
Crime Drama
Authors: Moorti Sujata
Published: July 2020

Despite their formulaic narratives, crime dramas continue to be staples on prime‐time television. Their ability to stage the restoration of the social order, identify who belongs to a community, and narrate contemporary social anxieties makes them a rich site of analysis. Although crime dramas tend to privilege male and masculine traits of detection, recent innovations have centered on making the genre more inclusive and diverse. The turn to forensic shows helps limn contemporary concerns about science and technology. Women and people of color have also moved away from the shadows to playing protagonists who solve crimes in new and innovative ways.
Disabled People on Film and Television
Authors: Wilde Alison
Published: July 2020

The first section of the entry draws on a British social model understanding of disability and impairment, to frame a brief examination of work on media and disability studies undertaken since the 1980s, focusing on the United Kingdom and the United States in particular. After outlining some of the major policies and initiatives for countering disability discrimination and shaping representational change, the second part of the entry examines 21st‐century representations of disabled people on television and in film, exploring issues such as: the employment of disabled actors—male and female; intersections of gender, “race,” and ethnicity within portrayals of disability; the differences between disabled and nondisabled writers and perceptions of “risk” in representation; the role of comedy/satire in challenging ableism; the depiction of particular impairments (e.g., autism, dwarfism, and learning difficulties); and continuing inequalities in representation and employment, including the marginalization of particular groups (particularly people who are not White).
Infertility and the Barren Woman
Authors: Feasey Rebecca D.
Published: July 2020

This entry provides an introduction to extant literature on infertility and the infertile female body, considering distinctions between social and medical infertility and shifting terminology from barren to sterile to infertile, before paying particular attention to the ways in which infertility is depicted in popular media culture.
Japanese Manga
Authors: Tanaka Hiromi
Published: July 2020

This entry introduces Japanese manga as a gendered form of contemporary popular media in terms of production, text, and audiences. The production of manga is characterized by a gendered segmentation of genres and hierarchical relations between male editors and female manga artists. Manga as a media text are characterized by stereotyped gender images and gender‐transgressive expressions such as cross‐dressing and male homosexuality, particularly in girls' manga. Some manga fans are stigmatized, given a lower social position due to their nonstandard tastes, but they act on their agency to pursue their pleasure, producing alternative ways of enjoying manga such as parody creation and cosplay. Overall, one can say that manga are gendered but some gender‐bending elements developed in manga show the potential for gender subversion.
Lads' Films
Authors: Webster Scott
Published: July 2020

There is a congested field of proposed genre labels applied to films that center on an objectified masculinity, comprising “lad flicks,” “homme‐coms,” “bromances,” “chuck flicks,” and “romantic sex comedies.” These experience varying levels of popular and critical uptake with bromance arguably the most prominent. However, these labels are not interchangeable and present different emphases in their look at screen masculinities. “Lad flicks” are a subgenre, aimed at male audiences, that explore masculinity as a troubled cultural category often as a source of humor. Narratives are typically “about” masculinity insofar as its definition is explored through the protagonist(s) and their ongoing struggles to fulfill it. David Hansen‐Miller and Rosalind Gill propose the phrase to emphasize the ambivalent negotiation of lad culture or “laddism” within these texts. Lad flicks are not necessarily “rom‐coms” whereas Tamar Jeffers McDonald's “homme‐coms” remain anchored to these conventions, albeit reconfigured for male viewers with “gross out” bodily humor and explicit, sometimes slapstick, sex scenes. Benjamin A. Brabon's “chuck flicks” focus on so‐called male singletons that find themselves adrift courtesy of late capitalism and the financial burden of hegemonic masculinity. These constructions bear an inverse relation with their economically liberated yet romantically unfulfilled female counterpart. Lauren Jade Thompson meanwhile proposes “romantic sex comedy” as a crucially ungendered umbrella term that, unlike these increasingly niche gendered partitions of genre, does not reify the continuing feminization of the macro “rom‐com” genre.
Male Characters on Television
Authors: Lotz Amanda D.
Published: July 2020

Male characters on television have dominated television storytelling despite rarely being considered by gender scholars. With nearly seven decades of television in some parts of the world, it is difficult to support comprehensive claims about male characters, but trends and trajectories of depictions can be traced, particularly in how male characters are depicted as fathers and husbands and in roles in which they are “public heroes”—most commonly those such as lawmen.
Mean Girls
Authors: Ralph Sarah
Published: July 2020

This entry accounts for the prevalence of the “mean girl” trope in news and entertainment media in the early 2000s. It demonstrates how, far from being a newly discovered threat, this media hype grew from a social anxiety about the alleged rise in the use of relational aggression by girls, whereby the bullying and victimization of girls was through indirect tactics such as meanness and manipulation. A key body of literature on this popular trope by feminist scholars is summarized, and the origins of this work from a range of research fields explained. As well as examining the prototype “mean girl” Regina George from the 2004 filmMean Girls(dir. Mark Waters), and the movie's significant impact as a cultural reference point, other examples of “mean girls” in film and television from outside of this period of cultural zeitgeist are noted.
Teens, Tweens, and In‐Betweens
Authors: Berridge Susan
Published: July 2020

Feminist scholarship on teen and tween film and television is an emerging field, largely developing in the 1990s and expanding in recent years. Teen and tween genres are often identified as being centrally concerned with issues of gender and sexuality as teen and tween characters negotiate the liminal stage between childhood and adulthood, or childhood and adolescence respectively. The field's emergence coincides with a proliferation of images of girls in popular culture more widely, often connected by scholars to the rise of postfeminism during the same period. Scholarship in this area has been dominated by a focus on representations of femininity, and the relationship between these depictions and feminism, particularly within US, and to a lesser extent, UK texts. There is a smaller body of work on representations of masculinity, gendered sexualities, gender inequalities, and sexual violence. This work is often interdisciplinary, drawing from various fields such as film studies, television studies, media studies, sociology, and the more nascent field of girls' studies. Teen film scholarship has the longest history, with feminist teen television scholarship developing in the 1990s at the same time as teen television cemented itself as a coherent genre. Feminist scholarship on tween film and television is even more recent, increasing in the early 21st century as tween media culture has become more pervasive.
Trans Men on Film
Authors: Conegatti Daniela
Published: July 2020

The purpose of this text is to present and discuss some of the characters in films that identify themselves as transgender or transsexual men (or just as men, but are born in a body that is yet considered to be female in society). Because of the lack of good representations of trans men in cinema, and also because of the only recently available history, only five characters are selected for discussion in this entry. The characters are: Brandon Teena, of
Boys Don't Cry
(dir. Kimberly Peirce, 1999), Shy and Valentine of
By Hook or by Crook
(dir. Harry Dodge & Silas Howard, 2002), Mikhael of
Tomboy
(dir. Céline Sciamma, 2011), Pierrot of
Pierrot Lunaire
(dir. Bruce LaBruce, 2014), and Lukas of
Romeos
(dir. Sabine Bernardi, 2011) all of them with some specificities that contribute to complexify self‐identification and hence trans representation.
Women and Drama in South
A
sian Television Culture
Authors: Cheema Munira
Published: July 2020

In South Asia, the relationship between women and television is nurtured through narrative genres that include teledramas, serials, series, soaps, and megas. With slight variation, each country has its own preference in the narrative form; however, the themes and storylines are strikingly similar throughout the region. This entry maps women‐oriented themes in the narrative genre on South Asian television. By and large, the stories covered in the genre largely migrated from literature (novels and digests) and other art forms. In postcolonial South Asia, gendered discourses were largely governed by nationalism and religion. In many instances, both nationalism and religion were conflated to resolve tensions in identity‐related issues. Therefore, the on‐screen image of an ideal woman was carefully crafted in the idiom of religion and nationalism.
Gender‐Role Portrayals in Advertising: State of the Art and Cross‐Cultural Differences
Authors: Koinig Isabell , Diehl Sandra , Terlutter Ralf
Published: July 2020

The topic of gender‐role portrayals in advertising has received considerable academic interest and has been subject to much debate—increasingly also from a cross‐cultural perspective. An aspect that has repeatedly been taken up concerns gender stereotyping, stressing certain beliefs that are found to be attributable especially to men or women. Aspects that are commonly prone to stereotyping are character traits, physical characteristics, and occupational status. A large number of cross‐cultural studies has looked at how gender representation compares across countries, including the United States, Europe, and Asian countries. Evidence attesting to the prevalence of gender stereotyping is contradictory as it is both claimed to increase and decrease, depending on the focus of investigation. Lately, gender‐role portrayals have been connected to the cultural dimensions of masculinity/femininity and gender egalitarianism. The topic of gender in advertising warrants discussion not only from the various angles mapped out here, but also with a special cross‐cultural focus, while also not disregarding present trends like gender mainstreaming and future developments.
Gender, Technology, and Political Communication
Authors: Cardo Valentina
Published: July 2020

Little has been written about the role that gender plays in online political communication strategies. Existing literature shows that digital technologies, once celebrated as the likely saviors of traditionally marginalized groups, have failed to deliver on their promise. Online, like offline, media are the preserve of existing elites and offer little space to counter mainstream narratives and frames. Among these, gender stereotypes still endure. Politicians wishing to oppose these stereotypes through digital technologies face several challenges around the content of the political message they wish to communicate, the style they might adopt and the consequences of their communication.
Gender and Political Communication
Authors: Bystrom Dianne G.
Published: July 2020

This entry summarizes the research findings on gender differences and similarities in the campaign communication of female and male political candidates running in mixed‐gender races primarily in the United States. Research has shown that the communication styles and strategies of female and male political candidates—including their use of negative attacks and issue and image emphasis—have become increasing similar in their advertising, websites, social media appeals on Twitter and Facebook, speeches, and debates. However, some gender differences still remain, both over time and within the context of election year cycles.
Gender and News
Authors: Bachmann Ingrid
Published: July 2020

The relationship between gender and news is a complicated one. This entry addresses the many challenges with regard to gender equality and news gathering, production, and interpretation, and new venues to better understand gender relations in the news industry. Despite important inroads toward gender equality, women and women's issues still struggle to have equal footing in the world of journalism, starting with pervasive gender gaps in news media use. In addition, news has been deemed a masculine genre—with news values, standards, and norms defined on men's terms—and there is a well‐documented underrepresentation of women in news content and newsrooms worldwide. Thus, the intricacies of gender dynamics shape news practices, news content, and news use, and impact the news industry itself, which is not serving women as well as it could.
Gendered Victims
Authors: Cavatorta Giovanna
Published: July 2020

Technologies of gender involve representations that, distinguishing between homosexual and heterosexual subjects, cast women and men, girls and boys differently as victims. The identification of a victim is a social, cultural, and political stake in which media have a key role. Media produce, mobilize, sell, justify, and challenge victimization in the realm of entertainment, news coverage, campaigning against gender‐based violence, humanitarian advocacy, self‐exposure, and storytelling. Media also constitute the social fields in which users can victimize and devictimize themselves, lose and gain voice, intertwining online and off‐line agencies. Particularly on digital media, feminist and LGBTIQ activism can arise in criticizing and subverting victim‐blaming and the reification of victimhood. In this way, the secondary victimization that the social response to gender‐based violence can entail could be highlighted and the lack of structural justice for eccentric subjects is denounced. Whereas, by broadcasting gendered politics, rights, cultural practices, ethnicized and racialized subjects, and humanitarian discourse, media can also convey suffering and victimhood in a way that depoliticizes vulnerability, corroborates social and moral hierarchies among lives, and displays neoliberal civilizing and victimizing regimes of meaning. As a result of content analysis, audience‐centered approaches, online and off‐line ethnography on media consumption and production, and media studies can articulate gender studies and account for the sociocultural implications and stakes of contextualized victimizations, disclosing the underlying gendered power relations and their historical shifting.
Social Media Influencers
Authors: Duffy Brooke Erin
Published: July 2020

Social media influencers represent a highly visible subset of digital content creators defined by their substantial following, distinctive brand persona, and patterned relationship with commercial sponsors. Despite widespread variance in influencer practices and economies across sites like Instagram, YouTube, and Facebook, most earn revenue by promoting branded goods and services to their community of followers. Accordingly, because these endorsements are integrated into creators' own arsenals of content, influencer marketing is deemed more “authentic” or “organic” than traditional paid advertising. Influencers also function as digital tastemakers, providing their followers with advice, inspiration, and aspiration. Such standards of emulation are often embedded within a wider system of consumer capitalism that casts women as both shoppers and loyal brand advocates. More broadly, the influencer system is marked by disparities in gender, race, class, and aesthetics—inequalities that challenge the democratic framing of the social media economy.
Media Representation of Rape and Sexual Assault
Authors: Cuklanz Lisa
Published: July 2020

This entry provides an overview of themes and patterns in media representation of rape and sexual assault. Rape and sexual assault have been frequently represented in mainstream media including news, fictional television, and a range of film genres including drama, horror, and documentary. Not only have these themes been commonly found, but many observers and scholars have noted that their presence is fundamental to a range of media products. Long understood historically as the most heinous crime, rape in fictional narratives has often been used to signal moral depravity, lack of human compassion, and social and cultural alienation on the part of perpetrators. Likewise, victimization, particularly through sexual violence, has been one of the central modes of representation of female characters. Depictions of sexual violence have been central to mainstream media genres and have been fundamental to character development over many decades. In recent media products, sexual violence has found a place in an ever‐widening range of genres and storylines. Modes of representation that were common in earlier decades have tended to be retained and reused in contemporary times, while newer modes of representation have been added.
The Women's Pages: Women, Journalism, and Mid‐20th‐Century Mainstream Newspapers
Authors: Chambers Deborah
Published: July 2020

Since the postwar period, the “women's pages” of mass circulation newspapers have been celebrated and scorned. Featuring fashion, recipes, household tips, celebrity gossip, and advice columns, these women's sections are dismissed as superficial and conservative, promoting gendered stereotyping that dominates much of popular culture. Yet the women's pages of mainstream daily newspapers provided an entrance into journalism for women during the mid‐20th century after the decline of the suffrage press. Against all probability, by the 1970s women's sections were regularly tackling serious feminist themes, from domestic violence to equal pay. With a focus on the British mainstream press, this entry traces some of the historical roots of the women's pages. It considers the part they played in feminizing mainstream news between the 1950s and 1970s.
Women, Men, and Elite Sport
Authors: Domeneghetti Roger
Published: July 2020

This entry explores the ways in which sports media has traditionally been used to articulate and reinforce national identities on a collective level and gendered identities on an individual level. It shows that because the media represents sport as a masculine endeavor, national identity becomes synonymous with dominant forms of masculinity, marginalizing both other forms of masculinity and all forms of femininity. By contrast, the manner in which coverage of women's sport adheres to the “rules” of media coverage of female athletes, which include persistent factors such as symbolic annihilation, compulsory heterosexuality, sexualization, and ambivalence, is also explored. Furthermore, in the discursive space around men's sport, female nonathletes (such as players' partners and female fans) are trivialized and sexualized. Thus, the coverage reinforces and conforms to Connell's relational theories of hegemonic masculinity and emphasized femininity.
Women, Media, and Sport
Authors: Bernstein Alina
Published: July 2020

Much of the academic research on sport media over the past decades has examined the amount and types of coverage received by female athletes and women's sport when compared with content on men's sport and male athletes. Hundreds of studies have shown that sport media generally devote considerably more space and provide greater emphasis to male athletes regardless of the type of sport, level or age of competitors, form of medium, or host country of the media outlet. To this day research shows that female athletes are given secondary status compared to male athletes. Moreover, even when positive shifts in the volume and type of coverage offered to women's sport are noted, studies have identified the emergence of more subtle ways of undermining female athleticism. Indeed, although in theory, the internet could be the medium that would level the playing field when it comes to coverage of women's sport, evidence suggests that many new media platforms in fact do not offer women's sport more extensive coverage or new ways of covering them. A possible reason for the importance placed on men's sport by the media is a hegemonic masculine cultural and organizational structure that not only permeates most sport organizations and franchises, but is also prevalent within the overall ranks and hierarchy of the sport media outlets that determine which athletes and sports are worthy of coverage in capitalist societies.
Clark,Helen
Authors: Williams Blair
Published: July 2020

Helen Clark became New Zealand's first elected woman prime minister after winning the 1999 Federal Election against then‐Prime Minister Jenny Shipley. In power from 1999 to 2008, Clark is renowned for being one of the longest‐serving prime ministers in New Zealand, as well as one of the longest‐serving women leaders elected in a “Western” democracy. Her electoral success and extensive time as prime minister provide an ideal opportunity for analyses of gendered media coverage, from her political career and time as Labour leader through to her election loss in 2008. Consequently, there is ample academic literature examining Clark's gendered media coverage. Key themes in the literature on Clark's gendered media coverage will be explored, with a large focus on the gendered reportage of Clark's ascension and subsequent elections, her “masculine” leadership style, and her sexualization.
Women and Sexuality inAfrican Cinema
Authors: Sendra Estrella
Published: July 2020

African cultures' views on intimacy and privacy have had an approach to sex, nudity, and eroticism that differs from the openness associated with that of most Western cultures. This is one of the factors that explains the relatively scarce displays of sexuality in African cinema. However, in the past two decades, an increasing number of films made by African filmmakers in the continent and the diaspora have featured stories by women with fluid sexual identities. In these films, women engage in same‐sex relationships as part of their assertion of freedom. The titles includeKarmen Geï(dir. Joseph Gaï Ramaka, 2001, Senegal),Les Saignantes(dir. Jean‐Pierre Bekolo, 2007, Cameroon),The World Unseen(dir. Shamim Sarif, 2007, South Africa), and, more recently,Stories of our Lives(dir. Jim Chuchu, 2014, Kenya) andRafiki(dir. Wanuri Kahiu, 2018, Kenya), whose lead actress, Samantha Mugatsia, won the best actress award in the 50‐year‐old film festival FESPACO (Pan‐African Film and Television Festival of Ouagadougou) in 2019. African scholars, and more specifically African women scholars, are revisiting gender theories and concepts, in search of a de‐Westernization of the academic terminology able to address the complexity and intersectionality of women's sexuality in African cultures. Similarly, African women filmmakers are contesting patriarchal representations of women in relation to violence, illness, and as victims, with self‐representations of sexuality and redefinitions of identity revolving around pleasure and as subversive to different forms of oppression experienced by African women.
Gender and Information Behavior
Authors: Marcella Rita
Published: July 2020

This entry reviews research into gender and information over the last 30 years, identifying the most significant themes to emerge. Gender and information behavior has received sporadic and patchy consideration to date, with most frequent attention being given to: (a) improving health information literacy in a context of wide acceptance that access to reliable information can improve health outcomes; and (b) the value of information access in opening up opportunities for women in situations of geographic or societal isolation. While both are worthy of attention, more might have been achieved in considering less pragmatic and more philosophical aspects of how women construe, interact with, and use information in all aspects of their lives.
Selfies and Postfeminism
Authors: Grindstaff Laura A.
Published: July 2020

Selfies are by now a taken‐for‐granted feature of global popular culture, made possible by the rise of digital technology, smartphones, and social media. This entry uses the selfie as a vehicle for exploring the Western concept of postfeminism as developed by feminist media scholars, particularly questions of sexualization and women's “empowerment.”
Mediated Intimacies
Authors: Thelandersson Fredrika
Published: July 2020

This entry reviews the ways in which “traditional” intimacy concerning sex and relationships have been transformed by communication technologies, as well as how these technologies have made a range of other connections “intimate.” It does so by discussing three different kinds of mediated intimacy as it is expressed in the Global North. The first meaning refers to work on the way in which discourses of sex and relationship advice are mediated in women's magazines and other kinds of self‐help literature. This concerns a more traditional understanding of intimacy as relating to one‐on‐one romantic relationships that involve sex and the family and explores how these relationships are portrayed in various media sites. The second meaning of mediated intimacy refers to intimacy and social media, and concerns how digital communication technologies have transformed personal relationships and added a level of intimacy to a wide range of relationships. Most of our friendships are now maintained through personalized networked publics on various social media platforms, in which we display intimate connections in front of imagined audiences. The last definition of mediated intimacy pertains to the way celebrities (self‐made microcelebrities or conventionally famous people) use social media to create intimate relationships with fans. Communication technologies have transformed the relation between celebrity and audience to make almost all contemporary interactions between famous person and fan inflected by intimacy.
L
ena
D
unham and Girls
Authors: Thelandersson Fredrika
Published: July 2020

When the television show
Girls
premiered in 2012 it reverberated far and wide in the media landscape of the Global North. It was equally celebrated for its body positive message and critiqued for its whiteness and privileged blindspots. The show's creator and star, Lena Dunham, became an essential part of its paratext, her persona as hotly contested as the show itself. Often compared to the “ur‐postfeminist” text
Sex and the City
,
Girls
differs starkly from its predecessors in its focus on failure and disappointment rather than empowerment and choice. A precarious job market and insecure future prospects are obvious backdrops for the stories being told, which is one reason why the series seemed to resonate so well with young millennials coming of age in a socioeconomic climate heavily affected by the financial crash of 2008.
Girls
received plenty of attention for its portrayals of sex, which were often uncomfortable and sometimes disturbing. Dunham was often at the center of controversy because of her willingness to put her own “nonconventional” body unclothed in front of the camera. The show also received a significant amount of critique for its lack of racial and ethnic diversity, which Dunham and her collaborators countered in flustered and sometimes offensive ways. This, coupled with Dunham's presence as creator and as a “new” kind of millennial feminist, contributed to consistent media attention being given to the show throughout its six season run.
The
A
rab Woman in Hollywood Cinema
Authors: Eissa Eiman A. , Hassan Rana S. , Guta Hala A.
Published: July 2020

This entry provides an overview of the portrayal of Arab women in popular Hollywood films. It builds on Said's concept of Orientalism and Western media representations of the “other” as inferior or exotic. The traits of characters are analyzed and compared to diverse Arab women's identities.
Community Media
Authors: Guyton Shelley Tuazon
Published: July 2020

Community media is a conceptual term that refers to media that are produced outside the major mass media and produced for a specific community that can be based on a variety of identifications, such as geographic location, language, interest, religion, gender, activism, and more. The term spans multiple mediums, technologies, communication styles, audiences, and purposes. Community media has been treated as a site for understanding groups marginalized by mass media—by gender, race, socioeconomic status, sexuality, literacy and educational level, and so on. Community media, then, is an important area to study how gender communities that are marginalized, underrepresented, or misrepresented in mass media create their own content, organizational structure, and purpose in community media forms. Yet, scholarship on gender remains a marginal consideration within community media, which is itself a marginalized field of study. Some of the major themes within existing scholarship on community media and gender deal with the feminist or alternative public sphere, making a space for alternative voices, and creating inclusive and participatory development projects.
Quantitative assessment of postural instability in spinocerebellar ataxia type 3 patients
Authors: Liu Xia‐Hua , Li Ying , Xu Hao‐Ling , Sikandar Arif , Lin Wei‐Hong , Li Gui‐He , Li Xiao‐Fen , Alimu Alimire , Yu Sheng‐Bin , Ye Xiang‐Hui , Wang Ning , Ni Jun , Chen Wan‐Jin , Gan Shi‐Rui
Published: July 2020

Objective

Spinocerebellar ataxia type 3 (SCA3) is one of the most common hereditary neurodegenerative diseases, with balance instability as main symptom. Balance quantification is crucial for evaluating the efficacy of therapeutic interventions. However, balance evaluation in SCA3 is often subject to bias. Here, we aimed to quantitatively evaluate postural instability and investigate the relationship between postural instability and clinical characteristics in SCA3 patients.

Methods

Sixty‐two SCA3 patients and 62 normal controls were recruited, and their postural balance was measured using a posturographic platform. Principal component analysis was performed as data reduction to identify postural instability factors. Multivariable linear regression was used to investigate potential risk factors for postural instability and to explore whether postural instability predicts the severity and progression of ataxia in SCA3 patients.

Results

We found SCA3 patients experience postural instability characterized by significant impairment in static and dynamic stability. The condition without visual feedback was the most sensitive measure in differentiating SCA3 from controls. Regression analyses revealed that ataxia severity predicted both static (P = 0.014) and dynamic stability (P = 0.001). Likewise, along with expanded CAG repeats (P < 0.001), both static (P < 0.001) and dynamic stability (P < 0.001) predicted ataxia severity, but not ataxia progression.

Interpretation

Our findings demonstrate the validity of using the Pro‐kin system for assessing postural instability in SCA3 patients. This type of quantitative assessment of balance dysfunction can contribute to clinical trials and balance rehabilitation in SCA3 patients.
Lanthanide‐Doped Near‐Infrared Nanoparticles for Biophotonics
Authors: Li Hui , Wang Xin , Ohulchanskyy Tymish Y. , Chen Guanying
Published: July 2020

Light in the near‐infrared (NIR) spectral region is increasingly utilized in bioapplications, providing deeper penetration in biological tissues owing to the lower absorption and scattering in comparison with light in the visible range. Lanthanide‐doped luminescent nanoparticles with excitation and/or emission in the NIR range have recently attracted tremendous attention as one of the prime candidates for noninvasive biological applications due to their unique optical properties, such as large Stokes shift, spectrally sharp luminescence emissions, long luminescence lifetimes, and excellent photostability. Herein, recent advances of lanthanide‐doped nanoparticles with NIR upconversion or downshifting luminescence and their uses in cutting‐edge biophotonic applications are presented. A set of efficient strategies for overcoming the fundamental limit of low luminescence brightness of lanthanide‐doped nanoparticles is introduced. An in‐depth literature review of their state‐of‐art biophotonics applications is also included, showing their superiority for high‐resolution imaging, single‐nanoparticle‐level detection, and efficacy for tissue‐penetrating diagnostics and therapeutics.
Nanopore‐Supported Metal Nanocatalysts for Efficient Hydrogen Generation from Liquid‐Phase Chemical Hydrogen Storage Materials
Authors: Sun Qiming , Wang Ning , Xu Qiang , Yu Jihong
Published: July 2020

Hydrogen has emerged as an environmentally attractive fuel and a promising energy carrier for future applications to meet the ever‐increasing energy challenges. The safe and efficient storage and release of hydrogen remain a bottleneck for realizing the upcoming hydrogen economy. Hydrogen storage based on liquid‐phase chemical hydrogen storage materials is one of the most promising hydrogen storage techniques, which offers considerable potential for large‐scale practical applications for its excellent safety, great convenience, and high efficiency. Recently, nanopore‐supported metal nanocatalysts have stood out remarkably in boosting the field of liquid‐phase chemical hydrogen storage. Herein, the latest research progress in catalytic hydrogen production is summarized, from liquid‐phase chemical hydrogen storage materials, such as formic acid, ammonia borane, hydrous hydrazine, and sodium borohydride, by using metal nanocatalysts confined within diverse nanoporous materials, such as metal–organic frameworks, porous carbons, zeolites, mesoporous silica, and porous organic polymers. The state‐of‐the‐art synthetic strategies and advanced characterizations for these nanocatalysts, as well as their catalytic performances in hydrogen generation, are presented. The limitation of each hydrogen storage system and future challenges and opportunities on this subject are also discussed. References in related fields are provided, and more developments and applications to achieve hydrogen energy will be inspired.
Site‐Selective, Multistep Functionalizations of CO2‐Based Hyperbranched Poly(alkynoate)s toward Functional Polymetric Materials
Authors: Song Bo , Zhang Rongyuan , Hu Rong , Chen Xu , Liu Dongming , Guo Jiali , Xu Xiaotian , Qin Anjun , Tang Ben Zhong
Published: July 2020

Hyperbranched polymers constructed from CO2 possess unique architectures and properties; however, they are difficult to prepare. In this work, CO2‐based, hyperbranched poly(alkynoate)s (hb‐PAs) with high molecular weights and degrees of branching are facilely prepared under atmospheric pressure in only 3 h. Because hb‐PAs possess two types of ethynyl groups with different reactivities, they can undergo site‐selective, three‐step functionalizations with nearly 100% conversion in each step. Taking advantage of this unique feature, functional hb‐PAs with versatile properties are constructed that could be selectively tailored to contain hydrophilic oligo(ethylene glycol) chains in their branched chains, on their periphery, or both via tandem polymerizations. Hyperbranched polyprodrug amphiphiles with high drug loading content (44.3 wt%) are also generated, along with an artificial light‐harvesting system with high energy transfer efficiency (up to 92%) and white‐light‐emitting polymers. This work not only provides an efficient pathway to convert CO2 into hyperbranched polymers, but also offers an effective platform for site‐selective multistep functionalizations toward functional polymeric materials.
Does the distribution of ratings affect online grocery sales? Evidence from Amazon
Authors: Etumnu Chinonso E. , Foster Kenneth , Widmar Nicole O. , Lusk Jayson L. , Ortega David L.
Published: July 2020

Understanding the distribution of online consumer ratings for food products can provide insights that aid supply chain decisions. Using a researcher‐collected web‐scraped panel data set from Amazon, this article quantifies the effect of number of ratings, average rating, variance of ratings, and skewness of the rating distribution. Results show that the number of ratings and each of these moments of the distribution of online consumer ratings affect ground coffee sales ranking. The size of the effect of the distribution of ratings was found to vary with respect to the sales level of the coffee products. The results suggest that the distribution of online ratings plays an important informational role in e‐commerce platforms. As online grocery shopping continues to increase in popularity, a greater understanding of how online ratings and reviews may impact sales or products are needed by those in the agricultural and food supply chain. In particular, these results provide retail managers with an array of online consumer rating attributes to use in their demand forecasts. [EconLit citations: D12, D83, L81, M31, Q11].
Locomotion, posture, and the foramen magnum in primates: Reliability of indices and insights into hominin bipedalism
Authors: Landi Federica , Profico Antonio , Veneziano Alessio , De Groote Isabelle , Manzi Giorgio
Published: July 2020

The position (FMP) and orientation (FMO) of the foramen magnum have been used as proxies for locomotion and posture in extant and extinct primates. Several indices have been designed to quantify FMP and FMO but their application has led to conflicting results. Here, we test six widely used indices and two approaches (univariate and multivariate) for their capability to discriminate between postural and locomotor types in extant primates and fossil hominins. We then look at the locomotion of australopithecines and Homo on the base of these new findings. The following measurements are used: the opisthocranion–prosthion (OP–PR) and the opisthocranion–glabella (OP–GL) indices, the basion–biporion (BA–BP) and basion–bicarotid chords, the foramen magnum angle (FMA), and the basion–sphenoccipital ratio. After exploring the indices variability using principal component analysis, pairwise comparisons are performed to test for the association between each index and the locomotor and postural habits. Cranial size and phylogeny are taken into account. Our analysis indicates that none of the indices or approaches provides complete discrimination across locomotor and postural categories, although some differences are highlighted. FMA and BA–BP distinguish respectively obligate and facultative bipeds from all other groups. For what concerns posture, orthogrades and pronogrades differ with respects to OP–PR, OP–GL, and FMA. Although the multivariate approach seems to have some discrimination power, the results are most likely driven by facial and neurocranial variability embedded in some of the indices. These results demonstrate that indices relying on the anteroposterior positioning of the foramen may not be appropriate proxies for locomotion among primates. The assumptions about locomotor and postural habits in fossil hominins based on foramen magnum indices should be revised in light of these new findings.
Borane‐Catalyzed Chemoselective and Enantioselective Reduction of 2‐Vinyl‐Substituted Pyridines
Authors: Tian Jun‐Jie , Yang Zhao‐Ying , Liang Xin‐Shen , Liu Ning , Hu Chen‐Yu , Tu Xian‐Shuang , Li Xiang , Wang Xiao‐Chen
Published: July 2020

Herein, we report that highly chemoselective and enantioselective reduction of 2‐vinyl‐substituted pyridines has been achieved for the first time. The reaction, which uses chiral spiro‐bicyclic bisboranes as catalysts and HBpin and an acidic amide as reducing reagents, proceeds through a cascade process involving 1,4‐hydroboration followed by transfer hydrogenation of a dihydropyridine intermediate. The retained double bond in the reduction products permits their conversion to natural products and other useful heterocyclic compounds by simple transformations.
Ozone treatment for improving the solubility of cellulose extracted from palm fiber
Authors: Pujokaroni Agustu Sholeh , Ohtani Yoshito , Ichiura Hideaki
Published: July 2020

We investigated effects of ozone treatment on solubility of cellulose and chemical composition in cellulose extracted from palm fiber. The initial holocellulose, α‐cellulose, and lignin contents of the extracted cellulose were 88.0, 81.9, and 8.75%, respectively. The extracted cellulose was treated with ozone and NaOH solution. Ozone treatment for 5 hr at 40°C using 3% citric acid decreased the lignin content from 8.75 to 2.71%. Under these conditions, the degree of polymerization (DP) of the cellulose decreased to 29 from 160 and the carboxyl content increased to 2.05 mmol/g. When the solid phase was treated with NaOH after ozone treatment, the mass of the solid phase decreased as the ozone treatment time increased. The lowest mass was 0.43 g. Additionally, the mass of cellulose regenerated from the liquid phase increased with increasing treatment time. The highest mass of regenerated cellulose was 0.54 g. The masses of the solid phase and regenerated cellulose obtained without ozone treatment under the same conditions were 0.76 and 0.18 g, respectively. These results suggest that ozone treatment improves the solubility of cellulose by converting hydroxyl groups in the cellulose to carboxyl groups and reducing the DP.