{"title":"Press Freedom, State Interests, and a Murder Case: Editorial Coverage of Jamal Khashoggi in the Washington Post","authors":"Amani Ismail, Gayane Torosyan","doi":"10.1177/01968599241260809","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/01968599241260809","url":null,"abstract":"The October 2018 killing of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi was a highly publicized event worldwide, shedding light on critical issues such as journalists’ safety, US-Saudi relations, press freedom, and democratic values. This study is a critical discourse analysis of editorials published in the Washington Post after Khashoggi's disappearance. Key themes emerging from the analysis include the dilemma between press freedom and the strategic interest in preserving good U.S. – Saudi relations, detecting the political motive behind Khashoggi's murder, and the role of media as fourth estate.","PeriodicalId":45677,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Communication Inquiry","volume":"6 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2024-08-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141880469","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 Bed With Bob Guccione: Me, #MeToo, and the Ethical Challenges of Writing Porn History","authors":"Carolyn Bronstein","doi":"10.1177/01968599241260810","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/01968599241260810","url":null,"abstract":"Can we separate art from the artist who created it? This essay discusses the debate over art created by morally problematic men, especially those revealed through the lens of #MeToo activism as sexual abusers. From a historical perspective, how should we regard the pornography produced by men like Bob Guccione, whose Penthouse magazine reached millions of readers from 1965 on and became one of the most important texts shaping 20th-century post-war American sexual discourse? What are the ethics of engaging with media texts built on the objectification of women's bodies, and do we cause new injury by bringing those long-hidden historical publications into current discourse? I share my experiences studying Guccione's life and the magazines he published, emphasizing the case of Viva, a lushly photographed, high-end title that blended radical feminism with full-frontal male nudity in an adventurous 1970s magazine for women. Viva complicates the idea, drawn from contemporary cancel culture, that art produced by abusive creators should be ignored.","PeriodicalId":45677,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Communication Inquiry","volume":"72 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2024-07-25","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141783500","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":"On “Othering” Cuties: The Politicization of Contemporary Black Girlhood in The Digital Era","authors":"Lisa D. Lenoir, Raquel S. Arias Labrador","doi":"10.1177/01968599241255634","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/01968599241255634","url":null,"abstract":"Senegalese-French filmmaker Maïmouna Doucouré's resistance project, Cuties (2020), aimed to alert adults about the dangers of hypersexualization on social media and its harm to young girls. However, the film content and its suggestive Netflix marketing campaign led to it being misinterpreted and maligned as “child pornography.” This study examines these controversies, arguing that the heightened gaze stems from “othering” Black girlhood and polarizing views circulating in the digital space. We contend these occurrences, evident in our selected data sources, speak to a larger phenomenon wherein human and nonhuman actors across various media channels and news cultures worked to quiet historically marginalized voices. Furthermore, the movie's controversy allows for a critique of the media ecosystem and its role in a market-driven economy.","PeriodicalId":45677,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Communication Inquiry","volume":"17 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2024-07-25","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141783501","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":"“Psychic Poisons” or Emerging Medicines: A Thematic Analysis of Cannabis Representations in Australian Nineteenth-Century Periodicals","authors":"Hannah Adler, Clare J Burnett","doi":"10.1177/01968599241248611","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/01968599241248611","url":null,"abstract":"This interdisciplinary study investigates representations of cannabis in 386 Australian newspaper reports from the latter-part of the nineteenth century. During this time, periodicals were the primary means of information circulation, and the Australian press shared much of its reporting with other jurisdictions. Using a reflexive thematic analysis, this research reveals that in this period, in which cannabis was being introduced into colonial pharmacopeias but had not yet been regulated in Australia, periodicals were at the heart of communicating cannabis to Australian audiences. These newspapers represented cannabis as both a dangerous recreational drug and a legitimate medicine, with these very distinct representations largely siloed from one another. These discourses, facilitated and perpetuated by mass media, were representative of a patchwork of influences, including international anxieties of drug use. Therefore, such reporting both legitimized and de-legitimized cannabis, influencing popular understandings of cannabis in nineteenth-century Australia at a pivotal time in the drug's history.","PeriodicalId":45677,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Communication Inquiry","volume":"29 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2024-05-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140927470","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":"Paralleling the Gay Man's Trauma: Monkeypox Stigma and the Mainstream Media","authors":"Rachel Grant, Alan Halaly","doi":"10.1177/01968599241241467","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/01968599241241467","url":null,"abstract":"Mainstream media portrayed monkeypox as a sexually transmitted disease through government guidance and increased a sense of hypersexualization and stigma among gay men and men who have sex with men (MSM). The purpose of this study is to understand how the US mainstream media perpetuated stigma toward gay and bisexual men (MSM) in its coverage of monkeypox in 2022. This article, therefore, contributes to the fields of queer studies and health communication. Using discourse analysis, we found three discourses including: Global disparities, LGBTQ Behavior and Stigma, and Racialized Discussion of Health Disparities.","PeriodicalId":45677,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Communication Inquiry","volume":"29 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2024-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140578200","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":"Remembering the Recession: Marketplace and Status Quo Journalism","authors":"Diane L. Cormany","doi":"10.1177/01968599241235217","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/01968599241235217","url":null,"abstract":"Ten years after the 2008 Great Recession, US media recalled the experiences and lessons learned from its aftermath. Among these was Marketplace's Divided Decade project, which spanned calendar year 2018 and included 66 discrete stories covering the impact on individuals and different sectors. The project cut across both Marketplace Morning and its evening broadcast Marketplace, both syndicated by American Public Media (APM). Marketplace appeals to a public radio audience of elite, educated listeners who are located away from financial power centers but still wield influence. This audience is larger than any other U.S. broadcast business program. Using theories of affect, this paper will demonstrate how Marketplace's recollection of a critical event continued to shape attitudes about the economy. By using critical discourse analysis (CDA), I unearth how power is reified through financial news reporting practices. Marketplace's focus on individual narratives decoupled the crisis from its structural context, while its reliance on economic policy leaders emphasized their affective memories and justified official responses. Divided Decade upheld the status quo by separating the impact of the crisis from the lives that were affected, while foreclosing alternative approaches to the problems the 2008 crisis laid bare.","PeriodicalId":45677,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Communication Inquiry","volume":"35 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2024-03-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140152733","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":"“Belief Initiates and Guides Action—Or it Does Nothing”: An Exploration of the Political Functions of Watching and Reading Dystopian Fiction","authors":"Mayte Donstrup","doi":"10.1177/01968599241234323","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/01968599241234323","url":null,"abstract":"This article addresses the question of how dystopian fiction can produce civic and ideological connections among audiences. To this end, we have drawn from different theoretical perspectives on public connectivity to show how audience involvement with fictional entertainment can forge clear links with the political sphere. In short, we offer a qualitative reception study that has yielded six features of dystopias: cognition, rejection of socially negative themes, warning, speculation, ideology, and narcosis. These features are empirically grounded in extensive qualitative research. Finally, based on the participants’ responses, we have proposed a specific reception strategy for the dystopian genre: dystopian imaginative engagement.","PeriodicalId":45677,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Communication Inquiry","volume":"35 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2024-03-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140072348","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}
Joshua D. Atkinson, Matthew Dorr, Vamsi Chaitanya Pedasanaganti, Shudipta Sharma
{"title":"Toward an Understanding of Centralized Intertextual Fortification: The Case of Commercially Oriented Qanon Content Creators","authors":"Joshua D. Atkinson, Matthew Dorr, Vamsi Chaitanya Pedasanaganti, Shudipta Sharma","doi":"10.1177/01968599241231281","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/01968599241231281","url":null,"abstract":"In this research, we engaged in a cyber-archaeology of interactive media utilized by Qanon content creators to determine if the concept of diffused intertextual production was present in their work. Most of these content creators were engaged in commercial endeavors with their content. Through our research, we found a communicative strategy similar to diffused intertextual production was utilized by content creators in the Qanon community, but with key differences. We call this emergent strategy centralized intertextual fortification. Our analysis demonstrates that there were different kinds of content creators associated with the Qanon community: intertextual curators, interactive accumulators, and interactive confederates. The first two often “boost” one another and the newer confederates through the content that they produce. In addition, interactivity associated with the various social media and streaming platforms did not allow for followers to take part in the production process as in the case of diffused intertextual production. Instead, the user-to-user interactivity provided by followers of the content creators entailed praise, sharing of virtual objects, and expressions of ideology. Taken together, this centralized use of intertextuality and interactivity allows for these commercially oriented content creators to spread the Qanon intertext, as well as reinforce it through the interactivity of their followers.","PeriodicalId":45677,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Communication Inquiry","volume":"13 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2024-03-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140037715","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":"Don’t Fear Artificial Intelligence, Question the Business Model: How Surveillance Capitalists Use Media to Invade Privacy, Disrupt Moral Autonomy, and Harm Democracy","authors":"Joseph Jones","doi":"10.1177/01968599241235209","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/01968599241235209","url":null,"abstract":"This paper analyzes the causes, consequences, and logic of surveillance capitalism, delineating how behavioral surplus became the latest form of accumulation and questioning its ethical, legal, and material implications. The purpose of this project is to provide a decisively human response to an otherwise reductive, totalizing political economic system that uses equally reductive technology. Using history, political economy, and media ethics, it shows how surveillance capitalists use artificial intelligence (AI) to disrupt the privacy necessary for identity work and distort the moral autonomy necessary for democratic worldmaking. Exploiting human psychology and emotional vulnerabilities, surveillance capitalists interfere with our ability to become better versions of our personal and collective selves. We must therefore reject surveillance capitalism and embrace a more inconclusive understanding of democracy informed by care. While experts and technocrats can endlessly debate the potential outcomes and possibilities, the challenges of AI and an abusive surveillance capitalist system must ultimately be answered by a caring citizenry with equally resilient social institutions.","PeriodicalId":45677,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Communication Inquiry","volume":"18 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2024-02-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140019923","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":"Change in Meaning of Hugh Hefner and Playboy: From Horatio Alger to Sexual Predator","authors":"James K. Beggan","doi":"10.1177/01968599231220927","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/01968599231220927","url":null,"abstract":"Between 1953 and 2023, mass media changed how they cover Hugh Hefner and Playboy magazine. My thesis is that the defining narratives of Hugh Hefner and his famous creation involved five distinct media personas, which were entrepreneur, activist, paradox, tragic figure, and predator. Using key magazine articles as central points of information, I consider how changes in Playboy's success combined with cultural shifts in the structure of feeling, such as fourth-wave feminism and the Me Too movement, to transform the dominant representation of Hugh Hefner from an entrepreneurial Horatio Alger to a salacious predator. Media attention after his death recognizes that Hugh Hefner had a definite but undeniably controversial influence on American life.","PeriodicalId":45677,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Communication Inquiry","volume":"14 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2023-12-25","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139159767","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}