bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
Queer Gazing and the Popular
Authors: Van Bauwel Sofie , Dhaenens Frederik , Biltereyst Daniel 
Published: January 2013

AbstractIn this chapter, we elaborate on the construction of queer representations in popular television fiction. In spite of the critical and commercial success of “queer” television fiction series (e.g.,Queer as Folk,The L Word,Six Feet Under), queer representations are sometimes still seen as controversial. The aim of this chapter is to obtain a better insight into the social and emancipating role of queer representations in contemporary popular culture. A theoretical integration and a translation of the concept of queer theory offer a conceptual framework for this study on media representations. In particular, this chapter relies on this framework for the analysis of television as a popular discourse machine in relation to the production of queer representations in global popular television series. Our textual analysis stresses the different strategies of queer representation in popular television fiction. We discuss the potentiality, limits, and restraints of this diversity of strategies and explore the limits of representing queer within the realm of contemporary popular culture.
Mediated Portrayals of Masculinities
Authors: Hundley Heather L. 
Published: January 2013

AbstractThe focus of this chapter is specifically on how researchers have studied and written about the portrayal of masculinities in US media. The chapter opens by tracing the evolution of academic study of masculinities in US media beginning with stereotypical representations that led into identifying three key types: hegemonic masculinity, hypermasculinity, and metrosexual masculinity. The chapter then reviews how scholars have written about the portrayals of masculinities in specific US media such as film, television, and print. While this literature review is by no means exhaustive, it demonstrates the range of research in the past four decades, illustrating media's increased portrayals of masculinities over time, and offers suggestions for future directions.
Portrayals of Female Scientists in the Mass Media
Authors: Steinke Jocelyn 
Published: January 2013

AbstractScholarly interest in media portrayals of female scientists has emerged as a focus of media studies research because such portrayals (1) reflect cultural views and trends related to the status and roles of women in the workforce and society, and (2) are potential sources of information and influence about future professional roles for children and young adults. This chapter traces the historical underrepresentation and gender stereotyping found in portrayals of women scientists in the mass media and describes the role these media portrayals play as factors that can limit the representation and status of women in the science, engineering, and technology (SET) workforce. This chapter also explores contemporary portrayals of female scientists that challenge gender‐stereotyped claims of science as a masculine domain and examines the potential of these more progressive portrayals to broaden the participation of women in SET.
“She's the Real Thing”
Authors: Bui Diem‐My T. 
Published: January 2013

AbstractThis chapter examines three US‐produced films about Vietnam released post‐embargo:Heaven and Earth(1993),The Quiet American(2002), andThree Seasons(1999). By considering the discursive construction of the films, including how the actresses participate or are represented in them, I explore variations on Trinh T. Minh‐ha's question on the Other: Who speaks? What speaks? How does the speaker establish knowledge about Vietnamese women when “speaking about” a story? Following the films' releases, the United States and Vietnam underwent economic and political changes in their relationship that made Vietnam more accessible to multinational corporations and tourists. By constructing Vietnamese womanhood and women as available for discovery by the West in these films, Vietnam and Vietnamese women became part of the renewed accessibility and the reenactment of transnational mobility stories. The films suggest that the women's bodies are the means of returning to an idyllic past untainted by war and global capitalism.
Blogging Culture
Authors: Papacharissi Zizi , Meraz Sharon 
Published: January 2013

AbstractThis chapter examines the evolution of blog content, from the early stages of personal home pages, to the development of the blog format, to A‐list blogs that influence other media and public opinion. Blogging content is examined, with a focus on blogging norms, patterns, and dominant trends the form of blogging takes on. As the blogosphere is vast and diverse, the authors consider the plurality of blog content and the functions it serves for multiple bloggers and potential audiences. Blogging content is examined as a form of sociocultural expression, with an analysis of its function and place in contemporary societies. The chapter concludes with a look at what the future holds for blogs and associated, emerging web platforms, in the context of converging media and reflexive societies.
Videogame Content
Authors: Consalvo Mia 
Published: January 2013

AbstractThis chapter surveys the most recent scholarly work done on videogame content. It identifies several lines of research that have emerged in this area, including debates over the best methods for studying game content, representation‐based versus gameplay‐based approaches, and theoretical foundations for studying games. In addition to providing a broad overview of recent work in such areas, the essay also provides a more detailed account of how such research works, through an examination of the author's past videogame studies. These include studies that have examined titles such asThe SimsandPhoenix Wright: Ace Attorney, among other examples. These studies demonstrate how theory may and may not be useful in studying games, how methods must be adapted to best scrutinize dynamic content, and the many meanings that can be taken from contemporary games. The essay ends with a discussion of how future research on games should proceed, and the identification of the areas most pressing in terms of investigation.
Rethinking Violent Videogame Content
Authors: Lachlan Kenneth A. 
Published: January 2013

Abstract
Numerous empirical studies have attempted to quantify the frequency and context of violence in popular videogames. While these studies have proven valuable, they overlook recent research suggesting that videogame content is far more complicated than that found in linear media. In particular, individual user characteristics, varying levels of gameplay, familiarity with the gaming environment, and length of time immersed in the game have been overlooked. But research suggests that these factors will play a critical role in how players use and respond to videogame violence. This chapter synthesizes the videogame content literature with recent behavioral research. It concludes by offering an updated conceptual model of violent content that includes not only the game, but also user and situational variables that may mitigate this content. Suggestions for future content‐analytic methods are discussed in light of this conceptual model.
Transmedial Aesthetics
Authors: Krzywinska Tanya 
Published: January 2013

Abstract

Videogames may offer new ways of telling stories and engaging players by virtue of their interactive characteristics, but do they offer any differences from cinema in terms of content and representation? While videogames are formally distinctive, this chapter shows that, to a lesser or greater degree, they nonetheless draw on vocabularies developed within cinema. Through an examination of
Final Fantasy XII
, as well as with reference to a range of other games, this chapter analyzes how, through an interlacing of form, content, and representation, videogames work in convergent and divergent ways to create for the player an emotionally resonant aesthetic experience.
Recent Trends in Research on Health Portrayals in the Media
Authors: Robinson James D. , Thompson Teresa L. , Turner Jeanine Warisse , Agne Robert R. , Tian Yan 
Published: January 2013

Abstract
Health information may be obtained in a variety of ways, but the data indicate that the media are a key source for most people. Key topics related to health information in the media include those focusing on various addictions (drugs, alcohol, tobacco), cancer information (focusing on screening, treatment, and coping), direct‐to‐consumer ads, coronary heart disease, weight concerns, misdiagnosis, mental health portrayals, seizures, steroids, asthma, and genetic issues. Much work examines the accuracy of health information reporting as well as the usability/accessibility/readability of health information. Risk issues are an important component of work in this area. Additionally, nutrition and food safety information is frequently featured. More recent research is most likely to be theoretically based, to focus on unusual health concerns or unusual media, and to provide an international focus. This essay addresses these issues as well as differences amongst various media in the presentation of health information. It concludes with innovative directions for research on health portrayals in the media.
Canadian (Re)Presentation
Authors: Brady Miranda J. 
Published: January 2013

AbstractThis chapter explores relationships between media and Indigenous identity construction in the Canadian Museum of Civilization's (CMC) First Peoples Hall (FPH) through an analysis of place‐based media and archival research. It explores the specific historical, economic, and pedagogic contexts influencing media adoption in the CMC and FPH, and argues that while the museum attempts to forward a progressive curatorial agenda through Indigenous collaboration and new media adoption, the CMC has yet to fully explore the contemporary implications of Indigenous representation. Finally, this chapter questions celebratory discourses of new media as a panacea for representational maladies and the idea of representation itself as a panacea for Indigenous concerns.
Fostering Surprise and Productive Discomfort in Audience Studies through Multi‐Sited Ethnography
Authors: Trager‐Bohley Kim 
Published: January 2013

AbstractCan an increased engagement with multi‐sited ethnography invigorate audience studies? Yes. Too often, media and audience studies scholars have tended to hamstring ethnographic methods by predetermining their audiences, their activities, their research sites, and the temporal sequence of their research. This chapter argues that multi‐sited ethnography has the potential to enlarge the boundaries that have circumscribed and enclosed media/audience studies if researchers can avail themselves of its central strengths – its unpredictability and flexibility. I urge audience studies scholars to embrace a flexible research imaginary that can be open to surprise, modification, and productive discomfort while tracking mobile social formations that crisscross multiple and unexpected sites and local–global dichotomies. Drawing on my fieldwork on global sponsors of literacy in the United States and Singapore, this chapter discusses several overlapping elements of multi‐sited ethnographies: (1) its tracking strategies; (2) its emphasis on complicitous relationships; (3) its greater exposure to multiple perspectives, including multi‐level power dynamics; and (4) its unbounded, open‐ended notions of the field, which are not limited or constrained by place.
Mythic Viewing
Authors: Juluri Vamsee 
Published: January 2013

Abstract

This chapter examines the different ways in which media audiences think about reality, particularly in postcolonial contexts. Using data and findings from three studies of Indian audiences, the reception of a popular Hindi movie (
Hum Aapke Hain Koun
), the reception of music television (mainly MTV and Channel V), and an ongoing study of the reception of the mythological genre (covering recent animation films as well as older Telugu black and white classics), the chapter shows how audience readings of important issues like family, nation, and religion may be underpinned by deeper assumptions about human nature and reality. Finally, it explores some of the ways in which audience investments in commonsense ideas about what is “real” may illuminate the politics and possibilities of media audiencehood in postcolonial modernity.
A Framework for Audience Study of Transnational Television
Authors: Chua Beng Huat 
Published: January 2013

AbstractIn the past two decades, television in East Asia has become progressively integrated to constitute a regional cultural economy juxtaposed against the programs imported from the globally dominant US. In terms of popular reception, audience formation, and attendant social and political process, East Asian television programs have far greater regional impact than their US counterpart. Consequently East Asia television audience reception research has emerged in the past decade as a field that engages a new community of Asian media scholars. Drawing on this expanding field of research, the present chapter will attempt to develop the beginning of a conceptual framework that focuses on the reception of imported programs in different regional locations. Such a conceptual framework holds transnationality as the central problematic in a whole range of issues – such as the content transforming practice of dubbing, the generation of audience identification with foreign content and artistes, the politics of transnational fandom, and the possibility of a pan‐East Asian identity. In addition to its heuristic value for other investigations of regional audience formations, this preliminary analysis, which has identified a small set of necessary components, invites further research to develop a more fully fleshed out framework for the analysis of transnational audience practices.
Using Ethnography to Understand Everyday Media Practices in Australian Family Life
Authors: Holloway Donell , Green Lelia 
Published: January 2013

AbstractThis chapter discusses the use of ethnography within a media and cultural studies framework to investigate media practices within Australian families. It begins by outlining the theory and practice informing audience ethnography research, and then it provides an overview of audience studies research in Australia over the past quarter‐century. The chapter then draws specifically upon the authors' audience ethnographies, to illuminate how complex behaviors such as those associated with media consumption are best investigated from a suite of different perspectives: participant observation, interview, field notes, and an engagement with a number of informants within each household. The production of cultural value through engagement with such media as the television and the Internet crosses the boundary between the household and the wider world and requires self‐reflection and analysis on the part of interviewees. In addition to this, media practices within the family are both an indication of and a constituent influence upon the family's social and cultural norms. Issues about “who lets whom use what and when” are major sites of negotiation for autonomy and independence as children mature within the family context. Thus, by studying media audiences via ethnography, researchers are offered a privileged insight into people's everyday lives.
Always at Crossroads
Authors: Gajjala Radhika 
Published: January 2013

Abstract
This chapter explores the transition from audience studies to cyberethnography on the basis of the author's own experience in doing research in computer‐mediated communication and in teaching in online environments. The chapter describes her experience in developing methodologies for studying Internet interactions through theoretical perspectives by drawing on postcolonial feminist theories and critical cultural studies. Doing ethnography at online/offline intersections requires a hands‐on approach, whereby the researcher works to build techno‐mediated contexts while simultaneously living in them and also staying connected to related contexts offline. Such an immersive methodology allows the researcher to understand computer‐mediated communication in global environments. In particular, the author refers to her experience of the “South Asian Women's network (SAWnet) refusal,” as she developed her cyberethnographic methodologies in the early 1990s. She describes her experience in developing appropriate research methods to study such Internet‐based global media.
Mapping the Psychology of Agenda Setting
Authors: McCombs Maxwell , Lee Jae Kook 
Published: January 2013

AbstractIn the decades since the seminal Chapel Hill study, agenda setting has evolved into a broad theory and set of hypotheses encompassing five theoretical areas. Characterized by two major trends, all five of these areas remain active research arenas. There is acentrifugal trend, the expansion into new domains and settings far beyond the original realm of public issues. Their counterpoint is acentripetal trendin which scholars have turned their attention inward to further explication of the theory's basic concepts. Much of this work concentrates on the psychology of the agenda‐setting process. This chapter examines the role of incidental learning and of moderator and mediating variables in the agenda‐setting process, and the impact of agenda‐setting effects at both the first and second level on the formation of attitudes and opinions and on subsequent behavior.
Examining Media Effects
Authors: Barlett Christopher P. , Anderson Craig A. 
Published: January 2013

AbstractThe study of screen media effects is becoming especially important because people spend increasing amounts of time on visually realistic entertainment media. This chapter applies two related theoretical frameworks to the study of media effects: the general aggression model (GAM) and the general learning model (GLM). Both theories posit relations between media exposure and internal processes, behavior, and the development of long‐term knowledge structures and attitudes. GAM focuses on the development of aggressive knowledge structures and attitudes derived from exposure to violent media depictions (amongst other aggression‐related stimuli), and their relation to aggressive behavior. GLM, a broad extension of GAM, posits how long‐term attitudes and knowledge structures are formed with continued exposure to any type of media (violent or nonviolent), and how “media‐trained behavior” can ensue. How these processes operate, the role of individual differences, and short‐ and long‐term consequences of media exposure are discussed.
Media Entertainment as a Result of Recreation and Psychological Growth
Authors: Hartmann Tilo 
Published: January 2013

AbstractMedia entertainment refers to users' enjoyment of media‐induced sensations. This chapter argues that users feel entertained to the extent that media supports their adaptive tendencies to recreate and grow psychologically. Within the boundaries of their physiological regulation, users are believed to engage actively in cognitive, affective, and behavioral challenges imposed by media, in order to grow psychologically. However, a lack of physiological resources may limit users' engagement in challenges and consequently strengthen their enjoyment of more recreational and supportive media content.
Selective Exposure to Violent Media
Authors: Krcmar Marina 
Published: January 2013

AbstractThis chapter reviews the research that has examined individuals' interest in media violence. It reviews definitions of media violence, as well as affect‐based approaches to attraction to media violence (i.e., mood management and mood adjustment) and reviews the research findings that use this approach. Next, it reviews disposition‐based theories that focus on how individuals evaluate media characters, form affiliations with them, and affectively respond to them. Disposition‐based theories offer one possible explanation for attraction to media violence. Functional approaches (e.g., threat mastery) and psychological correlates of interest in media violence are also explored. Lastly, it proposes that social cognitive theory, when viewed as a meta‐theory or meta‐approach to interest in media violence, may offer an over‐arching model to integrate the various perspectives reviewed in the chapter.
Gender‐Role Socialization in the Twenty‐First Century
Authors: Signorielli Nancy 
Published: January 2013

AbstractGender‐role socialization has been a critical element in the study of mass communication since the late 1960s. This chapter will review our knowledge of this topic looking specifically at gender‐role images on television, including broadcast programs and commercials, children's TV, and teen movies. The chapter focuses specifically on research conducted during the first decade of the twenty‐first century examining images related to age, race, and occupation. A critical and key finding is that women continue to be underrepresented in most venues. The chapter also discusses the influence of these gender‐role media images on people's conceptions about being men and women, particularly the continued relationship between viewing and expressing more stereotypical conceptions about gender roles.
The Influence of Media Exposure on the Formation, Activation, and Application of Racial/Ethnic Stereotypes
Authors: Mastro Dana , Tukachinsky Riva 
Published: January 2013

AbstractAlthough exposure to mass media content represents only one of a number of factors associated with the construction and application of racial/ethnic stereotypes, its influence should not be trivialized. Both theory and empirical research on media and stereotyping indicate that stereotypes arise from and are maintained via interaction with the messages offered in mass media fare – including exposure to both thematic messages as well as more uncommon messages stemming from idiosyncratic media use. Accordingly, to understand the role of the media in issues pertaining to stereotyping it is essential to consider: (a) how diverse groups are represented across the media landscape; (b) the manner in which exposure to these characterizations influences stereotype‐based processes; and (c) the features of consumers and media messages themselves that may moderate stereotype‐related outcomes. The present chapter highlights the existing research in each of these areas and offers suggestions for further study.
Sex on Television
Authors: Farrar Kirstie M. 
Published: January 2013

AbstractAdolescents and emerging adults watch a great deal of television and research shows that they are exposed to a steady stream of messages about sex and sexuality, the vast majority of which do not contain important messages about safe and healthy sexual behavior. Research finds that young people learn information about sex from watching television and that their attitudes about sexual topics, including sexual health, can be influenced. Evidence is mounting that watching sex on television is linked to both initiation of and advancement in sexual behaviors. This chapter will review the evidence on sexual socialization effects with an emphasis on the role of the context of a sexual portrayal in the effects process. The importance of gender and race in the effects process will also be highlighted and potential positive effects of sexual content in the media will also be discussed.