{"title":"Book Review of Pettini, S Silvia (2021) The Translation of Realia and Irrealia in Game Localization: Culture-Specificity between Realism and Fictionality, New York: Routledge, 244 pp., USD $39.71 (paperback), USD $127.50 (hardcover), ISBN: 9780367432324","authors":"Masood Khoshsaligheh, Amir Arsalan Zoraqi","doi":"10.1080/15405702.2023.2287731","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/15405702.2023.2287731","url":null,"abstract":"Published in Popular Communication: The International Journal of Media and Culture (Ahead of Print, 2023)","PeriodicalId":45584,"journal":{"name":"Popular Communication","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.1,"publicationDate":"2023-11-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"138539505","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Book Review of Pettini, S Silvia (2021) The Translation of Realia and Irrealia in Game Localization: Culture-Specificity between Realism and Fictionality, New York: Routledge, 244 pp., USD $39.71 (paperback), USD $127.50 (hardcover), ISBN: 9780367432324","authors":"Masood Khoshsaligheh, Amir Arsalan Zoraqi","doi":"10.1080/15405702.2023.2287731","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/15405702.2023.2287731","url":null,"abstract":"Published in Popular Communication: The International Journal of Media and Culture (Ahead of Print, 2023)","PeriodicalId":45584,"journal":{"name":"Popular Communication","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.1,"publicationDate":"2023-11-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"138539538","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"‘Experimentation will be at the forefront’: Industrial reflexivity and data science on Disney Streaming’s The Art of Possible blog","authors":"James N. Gilmore","doi":"10.1080/15405702.2023.2280649","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/15405702.2023.2280649","url":null,"abstract":"As media companies develop dedicated streaming platforms, they rely on teams of data scientists and engineers to operate, iterate, and maintain those platforms. At the same time, the data users gen...","PeriodicalId":45584,"journal":{"name":"Popular Communication","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.1,"publicationDate":"2023-11-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"138539506","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"‘Experimentation will be at the forefront’: Industrial reflexivity and data science on Disney Streaming’s The Art of Possible blog","authors":"James N. Gilmore","doi":"10.1080/15405702.2023.2280649","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/15405702.2023.2280649","url":null,"abstract":"As media companies develop dedicated streaming platforms, they rely on teams of data scientists and engineers to operate, iterate, and maintain those platforms. At the same time, the data users gen...","PeriodicalId":45584,"journal":{"name":"Popular Communication","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.1,"publicationDate":"2023-11-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"138539539","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"#mamanblogeuse and #mamablogger_de. A cross-country comparison on the concept of mothers and motherhood on Instagram","authors":"Helen Knauf, Annamareike Schramme","doi":"10.1080/15405702.2023.2280683","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/15405702.2023.2280683","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACTIn social networks such as Instagram, many mothers present themselves together with their children („sharenting“). The present study investigates how this (self-) presentation takes place and which visual messages play a role in it. Using visual analysis, we compared pictures of German- and French-language Instagram posts. It turns out that both national contexts are dominated by images that can be interpreted as visualizations of intensive motherhood. The visual analysis brings out the intimate connection between the mothers and their children, and at the same time a professional understanding of motherhood. Despite different national traditions and frameworks of motherhood in France and Germany, there are great similarities in the visual representation of mothers on Instagram. This finding suggests that the growing use of social media may be accompanied by an internationalization of social and visual norms.KEYWORDS: Social mediaInstagramfamilymotherhoodvisual analysis Disclosure statementNo potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).Additional informationNotes on contributorsHelen KnaufHelen Knauf is Professor for education and socialization in childhood at University of Applied Sciences and Arts Bielefeld. She has worked on the representation of children on Instagrm and the use of social media by early childhood education centres.Annamareike SchrammeAnnamareike Schramme has a Master's degree in Gender Studies and has focussed in particular on family blogs. She worked as a research assistant at the University of Applied Sciences and Arts Bielefeld.","PeriodicalId":45584,"journal":{"name":"Popular Communication","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-11-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135137124","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Inculcative address, commercial worldbuilding, and transmedia economy in the children’s franchise <i>Bamse</i>","authors":"Johan Nilsson","doi":"10.1080/15405702.2023.2268043","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/15405702.2023.2268043","url":null,"abstract":"Capitalist enterprises continuously push consumption of commercial products on children, for instance in the form of transmedial worlds in which multiple stories can play out across media and over time. The popular Swedish children’s franchise Bamse has undergone an obvious capitalist expansion over time, with more and more commodities being made available for purchase. At the same time the brand continues to be promoted as a force for spreading good values and thus provides a valuable service to its audience of Swedish children. The present article explores, through a combination of paratextual analysis and political economy, how these inculcative and commercial goals coexist in a tense but seemingly functional configuration.","PeriodicalId":45584,"journal":{"name":"Popular Communication","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-10-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"136114657","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Colonial comedy: scale inversion and minority dislocation in the domesticated terrorism of <i>Derry Girls</i>","authors":"June Deery","doi":"10.1080/15405702.2023.2268046","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/15405702.2023.2268046","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACTCan the sitcom allude to violence and ethnic hatred? Can it engage a global audience with localized history? If so, what does this reveal about the parameters of political comedy? Broadcast by UK’s Channel 4 and streamed internationally by Netflix, Derry Girls (2018–22) illustrates gains and losses in the comic treatment of political discord. My textual analysis assesses techniques that leaven potentially tragic material, focusing on psycho-political dislocation and its generation of a variety of Incongruity Comedy. In particular, I use the concept of scale inversion to identify a fundamental element of comedy which in this series is linked to internalized political conflicts in a settler colony. Scale inversion is the mechanism behind what might be termed aberrant normalization, extreme localism, and even to some extent stereotyping, all found in a series depicting the geopolitically displaced Catholic minority living through the Northern Ireland “Troubles.”KEYWORDS: Comedy theorypolitical fictionclassracecolonialismIrish stereotypes Disclosure statementNo potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).Notes1. My analysis draws in part from my experience growing up Catholic, near Derry, during the Troubles. For a more collective ethnographic assessment of the experience of living through this period, and since, see e.g., Waller (Citation2021).2. For well-regarded histories of Northern Ireland, see Bardon (Citation2005) and O’Leary (Citation2019).3. For a critical overview of academic research on Northern Irish history and politics, see Miller (Citation1998).4. Some scholars argue for less focus on negative/positive media stereotypes as the site for understanding and reshaping cultural politics, e.g., Herman Gray (Citation2005). However, I argue that distinctive Irish types, hardened over centuries, remain operational and highly significant in such projects.5. Analyses of Irish settings have focused more on film than television, more on British and American than Irish productions, and more on Irish than Northern Irish representations. Irish film studies with more than one chapter on Northern Ireland include: MacKillop (Citation1999), McLoone (Citation2008), and Monahan (Citation2015). Books dedicated to Northern Irish film and media include Hill (Citation2006), McIlroy (Citation2001), and McLaughlin and Baker (Citation2010). Analyses of Northern Irish entertainment television are rare (as opposed to news or documentary), but recently Derry Girls has generated some interest: e.g., Alvarez (Citation2022), Coulter (Citation2020), McIntyre (Citation2022), Schwetman (Citation2021).6. The zany sketch comedy Give My Head Peace (BBC NI, 1995–2005) bore some resemblance to McGee’s series, but its appeal was largely confined to Northern Irish audiences.7. For an account of the collective transgenerational trauma in Northern Ireland following the end of the Troubles, see Long (Citation2021).8. Some of this simian iconography persists i","PeriodicalId":45584,"journal":{"name":"Popular Communication","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-10-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"136112574","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Animating infrastructures, or how an illicit tunnel becomes a global media spectacle","authors":"Juan Llamas-Rodriguez","doi":"10.1080/15405702.2023.2268106","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/15405702.2023.2268106","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACTThis article explains the affordances of animation to create compelling and emotionally resonant stories for global consumption by analyzing the animated depictions of the tunnel used by Mexican cartel leader Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán to escape prison in 2015. Animation contributed to the international recognition of the tunnel and El Chapo’s escape story by rendering select characteristics from this otherwise illegible structure into easily communicative excerpts across popular culture sites and journalistic outlets. This analysis considers several features of animation as a communication medium that make it appealing for globally resonant stories: lack of linguistic markers, scalability, vividness. Finally, the article concludes with a critique of the obfuscations that may result from centering animated depictions of illicit infrastructures in journalistic and government reports, particularly the erasure of broader political implications in favor of visual spectacle.KEYWORDS: AnimationtunnelsCNNMexiconarcotraffickinginfrastructures Disclosure statementNo potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.Notes1. The italics in this quote are my own, to signal the moments where the journalist’s voice rises to express admiration.2. Officials took down the video and uploaded an updated one hours later after realizing the first version erroneously stated El Chapo’s arrest date as January 9.Additional informationNotes on contributorsJuan Llamas-RodriguezJuan Llamas-Rodriguez is assistant professor in the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania. He is the author of Border Tunnels: A Media Theory of the U.S.-Mexico Underground (University of Minnesota Press, 2023).","PeriodicalId":45584,"journal":{"name":"Popular Communication","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-10-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"136358364","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"In rhetorical sense(s): exploration of difference reflected through <i>Black Mirror</i>","authors":"Akie Fukushige Wenk","doi":"10.1080/15405702.2023.2262982","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/15405702.2023.2262982","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACTThis article attempts to expand the world in which rhetorical scholarship exists in general, and the positionality and subjectivity of the rhetorical scholar who engages in theory building specifically. Aiming to create a decolonial space to imagine a better world, I explore the tempo-spatial opening between epistemology and subjectivity as the space to realize our ontological potential. I employ the conception of Otherwise—those different ways of knowing and being – in order to enter into and grapple with this liminal space. An episode of the Netflix series, Black Mirror was used both to analyze and to illuminate one way in which rhetorical scholars can engage in liberatory rhetorical theorizing. This article, thus, ultimately offers a different way of thinking and being rhetorical scholars.KEYWORDS: DecolonizationsubjectivitydifferenceBlack Mirrorobjectivityliminality Disclosure statementNo potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).Additional informationNotes on contributorsAkie Fukushige WenkAkie Fukushige Wenk, PhD, Department of Communication Studies at Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge LA embraces an interdisciplinary approach to her scholarship, and her research interests range from decolonial scholarship to liberatory pedagogy, from the rhetoric of race to interracial friendships.","PeriodicalId":45584,"journal":{"name":"Popular Communication","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-09-24","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135926489","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}