Sarah Bachleda Fioroni, A. Lotz, S. Soroka, Dan Hiaeshutter-Rice
{"title":"Political sorting in U.S. entertainment media","authors":"Sarah Bachleda Fioroni, A. Lotz, S. Soroka, Dan Hiaeshutter-Rice","doi":"10.1080/15405702.2021.1995607","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/15405702.2021.1995607","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT Analysis of public opinion, news consumption, and social media has examined increasing political polarization and/or partisan sorting; however, few have explored the potential connection between entertainment programming and political sorting. This paper examines viewership of U.S. television entertainment from 2001 to 2016 and finds increasing differentiation in the shows watched in primarily Democratic versus primarily Republican markets. Notably, these years coincide with partisan sorting in news consumption and enhanced fracturing of the U.S. television landscape. The article confirms growing differences in the most-watched shows in heavily Democratic versus Republican regions, a finding that provides uncommon evidence of suspected differentiation by political view and of the need to adapt theories of the “mass” media function of entertainment television to a context of greater fragmentation and choice.","PeriodicalId":45584,"journal":{"name":"Popular Communication","volume":"20 1","pages":"117 - 132"},"PeriodicalIF":1.1,"publicationDate":"2021-10-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44653288","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":"“Fact-based dreaming” as climate communication","authors":"E. Hawley, G. Mocatta","doi":"10.1080/15405702.2021.1994576","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/15405702.2021.1994576","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT Documentaries have become an important avenue for climate change communication due to their ability to galvanize social change. Environmental documentaries have traditionally sought to motivate audiences through fear appeals, shock tactics, and a mode of address that is enraged, gloomy, chiding or disappointed. More recently, communication strategies for environmental documentary-makers have diversified, with positivity, playfulness, and solution-focused storytelling emerging as new possibilities for filmmakers seeking to inspire environmental change. The Australian documentary 2040 represents one such effort to “tell a new story” about climate change. In this article we explore 2040’s unique communication strategy of “fact-based dreaming”: a process which involves mobilizing the creative power of imagination to subvert established thought patterns while anchoring such imagination in present-time reality. We assess this strategy and argue that fact-based dreaming, itself a “childlike” strategy, is most productive when it incorporates the voices, imaginings and perspectives of children and young people.","PeriodicalId":45584,"journal":{"name":"Popular Communication","volume":"20 1","pages":"91 - 104"},"PeriodicalIF":1.1,"publicationDate":"2021-10-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42692267","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":"Istanbul Greek identities in film discourse","authors":"Anastasia G. Stamou, Kornilia P. Petraki","doi":"10.1080/15405702.2021.1994575","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/15405702.2021.1994575","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT Considering the prominent role of popular culture in forming our perceptions about national/ ethnic identities and historical memory, in the present study, we explore the way in which Greek-Turkish relationships as well as the ethnic identities implicated are depicted in the Greek blockbuster film Α Touch of Spice/ Politiki Kouzina, which deals with the Greek community of Istanbul in the 1950s and the 1960s. For the study of ethnic identities in the cinematic text, a social constructionist framework for the analysis of identities in discourse is adopted. The analysis suggests that the film maker, being part of the ethnic group, adopts an ingroup Istanbul Greek gaze. In this way, the emphasis placed on the similarities with the Istanbul Greek self and on the distinctions from the Greek and the Turkish other could be seen as an ideological strategy, through which an ethnic “body” is constituted.","PeriodicalId":45584,"journal":{"name":"Popular Communication","volume":"20 1","pages":"77 - 90"},"PeriodicalIF":1.1,"publicationDate":"2021-10-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42440921","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":"Illusion of life in Bob Dylan’s “murder most foul”","authors":"Noah Franken, Trudy L. Hanson","doi":"10.1080/15405702.2021.1994577","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/15405702.2021.1994577","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT This article examined the Bob Dylan song, “Murder Most Foul,” using the illusion of life rhetorical perspective. The song’s music and lyrics together speak to an American experience defined by the fallout of the JFK assassination: a public consumed with doubt, distrust, and conspiracy; however, a public that can perhaps still spark change. Overall, the song presents an incongruity between music and lyrics whereby the quietness of the music is at odds with the horrible scene recreated for the listener lyrically. In the song, the dramatic illusion is overtaken by the poetic, and the comic rhythm is flooded by the tragic. Concurrently, in the virtual time, optimism is overtaken by tragedy, life gives way to death, and death becomes release and transformation. The song, without a chorus and 17-minutes long, represents an unfamiliar form of song containing elements of the murder and apocalyptic ballad as well as protest music.","PeriodicalId":45584,"journal":{"name":"Popular Communication","volume":"20 1","pages":"105 - 116"},"PeriodicalIF":1.1,"publicationDate":"2021-10-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43561578","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":"Headlocks in lockdown: working the at-home crowd","authors":"Jessica Fontaine","doi":"10.1080/15405702.2021.1985503","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/15405702.2021.1985503","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT This article draws on media studies and professional wrestling studies to examine how the major American wrestling company All Elite Wrestling (AEW) renegotiated the “liveness” and affective “excess” of crowded, live events during the COVID19 pandemic. I demonstrate how affective and physical work expanded for wrestlers in the pandemic, as AEW developed production strategies to engage at-home audiences without paying in-house crowds. I analyze how AEW employed mediation techniques, such as “canned” crowd sounds and replays, and “cinematic matches” to produce liveness at the same time as wrestlers increased their labor roles, work hours, bodily effort, and physical precarity as they sought to produce the spectacle of excess. This article contributes insights into how producing feelings of being “together-at-a-distance” for television broadcasts required new forms of mediation and additional precarity and labor from professional wrestlers during COVID19.","PeriodicalId":45584,"journal":{"name":"Popular Communication","volume":"20 1","pages":"292 - 304"},"PeriodicalIF":1.1,"publicationDate":"2021-10-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44611006","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":"“Only in theaters” in an on-demand culture: Event movies as media events","authors":"Carter Moulton","doi":"10.1080/15405702.2021.1967956","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/15405702.2021.1967956","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT What is so eventful about an event movie’s arrival to the multiplex, and how does this eventfulness function as both an industry strategy and audience experience? Synthesizing an analysis of trade discourses, promotional campaigns, and manually-curated box office data, this article considers how the concept of eventfulness emerged as a discursive construction and spatiotemporal formation used by the industry to promote moviegoing as more meaningful than other forms of media experience in today’s “anywhere-anytime” and “on-demand” culture. Eventfulness situates the movie theater at the center of a specific, layered structure of time – a stretched sense of promotional anticipation and cultural nostalgia which climaxes during an ephemeral moment – and space – a discursive space of cultural buzz leading up to the event, a local experience community marked by fan participation, and an imagined global audience which takes shape through the synchronization of the event as it simulates “live” broadcasting and connects audiences in time.","PeriodicalId":45584,"journal":{"name":"Popular Communication","volume":"20 1","pages":"305 - 323"},"PeriodicalIF":1.1,"publicationDate":"2021-08-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44000042","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":"The converged promoter, the calculating professional, and the autonomous critic – the presentation of musical authority on social media","authors":"Madis Järvekülg","doi":"10.1080/15405702.2021.1964081","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/15405702.2021.1964081","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT This article examines how Estonian music critics and journalists present their selves on social media. Based on in-depth interviews and observations of their social media activities, it proposes a typology of overlapping positions that music critics can adopt on Facebook: the converged promoter, the calculating professional, and the autonomous critic. These positions illustrate how musical authority is disclosed or concealed in specific social media situations and highlight the social complexities involved in music criticism in small societies such as Estonia. The findings suggest that the intimate social environment and the blurring of personal and professional spheres on Facebook favor the expression of standardized positive reactions and promotional content while downplaying autonomous critical judgments in music discussions.","PeriodicalId":45584,"journal":{"name":"Popular Communication","volume":"21 1","pages":"1 - 14"},"PeriodicalIF":1.1,"publicationDate":"2021-08-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41918202","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":"Extraordinarily ordinary: Us Weekly and the rise of reality television celebrity","authors":"Shannon O’Sullivan","doi":"10.1080/15405702.2021.1939876","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/15405702.2021.1939876","url":null,"abstract":"In Extraordinarily Ordinary, Erin A. Meyers excavates the preeminent place of the most popular celebrity gossip magazine of the 2000s, Us Weekly, in driving the construction of reality television c...","PeriodicalId":45584,"journal":{"name":"Popular Communication","volume":"19 1","pages":"321 - 324"},"PeriodicalIF":1.1,"publicationDate":"2021-07-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/15405702.2021.1939876","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45481617","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":"Celebrity migrants and the racialized logic of integration in Germany","authors":"Kate Zambon","doi":"10.1080/15405702.2021.1892692","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/15405702.2021.1892692","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT Since the turn of the millennium, “integration” has become a predominant floating signifier in discourse and policy regulating the place of immigrants and minorities in European societies. This study analyzes a self-described “integration campaign” that used celebrity exemplars to promote the German language to immigrants and their descendants. This case demonstrates the interrelationship between celebrations of new German diversity and discourses that frame immigrants-and especially Muslims-as a potential threat to national life. This campaign combines two potent sites of symbolic cultural politics: language and the body. It uses racialized celebrity exemplars to articulate normative whiteness symbolized by standardized German. The campaign targets the imagined figure of the perpetual migrant who is beyond the reach of the German language and, thus, outside the regulatory and disciplinary control of majority society. While it is self-styled as a playful invitation to learn German, the content of the campaign, its theme song, and the press discourse about it use racialized celebrity bodies to affirm colorblind meritocracy while devaluing the lives of racialized “migrants”who are unable or unwilling to conform.","PeriodicalId":45584,"journal":{"name":"Popular Communication","volume":"19 1","pages":"207 - 221"},"PeriodicalIF":1.1,"publicationDate":"2021-07-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/15405702.2021.1892692","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46601996","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}