{"title":"Theoretical and Social Implications of Alternative ‘Feminist’ Media: Sexual Harassment and Intersectional Advocacy in India","authors":"I. Mukherjee, Priya V. Shah, Tina E. Dexter","doi":"10.1177/01968599221144029","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/01968599221144029","url":null,"abstract":"What makes alternative digital media ‘alternative’ is critical content and being a ‘prosumer’ platform that champions social justice and change. An Indian digital zine, and our present case study for critical alternative media, is Feminism in India (FII) and its news coverage of the #MeTooIndia movement from 2017 to 2021. In this article, we adopt the critical theory of alternative media and transnational intersectionality frameworks to perform a critical-cultural review of the theoretical, sociopolitical, and change-making implications of FII. We aim to explore its role as alternative media that presents intersectional perspectives and advocacy opportunities in relation to India and its transnational #MeToo mobilizations against sexual harassment. As ‘critical content’ is what defines alternative media, we argue that FII is a critical news site that democratizes gender-diverse narratives and introduces a rupture within India's politically-pandered and patriarchally-primed mainstream media.","PeriodicalId":45677,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Communication Inquiry","volume":"47 1","pages":"362 - 379"},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2022-12-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49328848","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":"Syria and Political Cartoons from the Perspective of the Cartoonist Ali Ferzat","authors":"Salud Adelaida Flores Borjabad","doi":"10.1177/01968599221144011","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/01968599221144011","url":null,"abstract":"Political cartoons play an important role in society as an alternative media. This study aimed to explore the democracy in, and politics of, Syria drawing upon political cartoons as a reference The objective of this study was to examine the relationship between media and power in Syria, analyze political cartoons as an alternative voice of the society, and observe their impact on society and politics. We used a qualitative methodology, as well as a visual ethnographic method, for analysis and synthesis. The findings of this study provide insights into the monopolization of media in Syria, where political cartoons portray an alternative reality.","PeriodicalId":45677,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Communication Inquiry","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2022-12-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45726941","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 Role of Social Media Platforms in Contemporary New Zealand LGBTQ + Movements","authors":"S. Bandopadhyaya, L. Kenix","doi":"10.1177/01968599221142030","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/01968599221142030","url":null,"abstract":"This paper explores the shifting dynamics of what constitutes a contemporary social movement and the pros and cons that emerge after movements have gone online. This paper is premised on in-depth interviews with twenty-nine interviewees regarding how social media has brought changes to the contemporary LGBTQ + movement in New Zealand among both Māori and Pākehā (white New Zealanders) communities. The interviewees testified to the shifting nature of the contemporary LGBTQ + movement after the emergence and inclusion of the Internet and social media platforms on movement messaging and participant engagement. This research found that social networking sites have led to greater awareness and better coordination among movement actors to organise LGBTQ + movements in New Zealand (NZ). The paper concludes that the Internet and social media have led to more visibility and acceptability of information within contemporary movements. The Internet was a facilitator of movement organisation even before the emergence of social media platforms; however, online activism has amplified and has taken a new meaning with the advent of several social media platforms.","PeriodicalId":45677,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Communication Inquiry","volume":"47 1","pages":"345 - 361"},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2022-12-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46393214","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":"Autonomous Movements and Their Media","authors":"Mitch Perkins","doi":"10.1177/01968599221140382","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/01968599221140382","url":null,"abstract":"Social movements respond and adapt to the social and historical environment, and global connections have allowed activists to envision an array of alternatives. This has led present-day movements toward autonomous practices, such as non-hierarchical leadership, prefigurative politics, and decentralizing Western perspectives. Autonomous movements’ communication and media projects are formed by these political ideals and epistemologies, dependent upon their contextual situation. Such movements see change as inevitable and rigidity and dogmatism as stifling to the political imagination. Despite criticisms leveled against autonomous practices from other leftist political paradigms, these prefigured alternatives create change in the small and ephemeral ways available to them. This research outlines the political parameters of many current social movements, offering a framework by which to study grassroots media endeavors.","PeriodicalId":45677,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Communication Inquiry","volume":"47 1","pages":"380 - 398"},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2022-11-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49245464","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":"Mad Men (2007–15), not “Rad Men”: Or, from Brothel Pickpocket to Transcendental Advertiser","authors":"B. Goss","doi":"10.1177/01968599221141073","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/01968599221141073","url":null,"abstract":"Mad Men is often assumed to be “subversive” in the academic literature whereas this investigation interprets the astutely promoted series as questioning capitalism before it ratifies market relations. Alongside convulsive change under capitalism that Mad Men captures, class-striated market societies require narratives that posit class division as compatible with meritocracy. Mad Men delivers such legitimizing narratives through Don Draper's and Peggy Olson's realization of class promotions—whereas Roger Sterling, Jr. and Pete Campbell present the privileges of inherited wealth. Don's performance in advertising illustrates Mad Men's often divided view of capitalism. Don melts down during one pitch and reveals his primordial experiences of capitalism as conditioned by poverty, theft and prostitution. However, by the final episode, Don's Coke ad affirms the market as a vehicle toward transcendental community. While Mad Men interrogates capitalism, it is solidly neoliberal in its disregard for State activity (regulation, implications of elected office). The narratively privileged moment of the series’ extended closing montage doubles-down on capitalism as the flawed but optimal steering mechanism for human aspiration. With the conspicuous exception of Betty Draper Francis who never participated in corporate work, core characters realize wealth and fulfillment by mastering market relations.","PeriodicalId":45677,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Communication Inquiry","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2022-11-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43171225","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":"American Cultural Insularity and Global Online Video: Are Netflix, Amazon Prime and Other Digital Streaming Platforms Broadening Americans’ Foreign Film Consumption Horizons?","authors":"Christof Demont-Heinrich","doi":"10.1177/01968599221139283","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/01968599221139283","url":null,"abstract":"The United States has long been characterized by American Cultural Insularity (ACI). According to a theory of ACI that I have developed in previous work ( Author 2019 , 2020 ), compared to most people in most other countries, Americans tend to consume much more of their own cultural media products and much fewer cultural media products produced in other countries than people in other countries consume. This paper compares long-running and deeply-entrenched American resistance to foreign and non-English language film in movie theaters to the (lack of) popularity of foreign, non-American and feature film-length content originally produced in a language other than English on major digital online video streaming platforms such as Netflix, Amazon Prime and Google Video. It does so primarily via a discussion of, and analysis of, digital online video streaming platform popularity charts compiled by flixpatrol.com (Flixpatrol), a Netherlands-based online video streaming data collection and analysis web site/company. An analysis of Flixpatrol's Top Streaming in the United States popularity chart for 10 major digital online video streaming platforms from February 2020 to September 2021 shows little evidence of a movement among American-based consumers toward more consumption of foreign, non-English-language feature length films.","PeriodicalId":45677,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Communication Inquiry","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2022-11-24","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43628009","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":"Approaching “Data Feminism”: Visualizations to Shed Light on Inequality","authors":"Ziyin Li","doi":"10.1177/01968599221139488","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/01968599221139488","url":null,"abstract":"Data feminism theory believes data visualization that embraces feminism can be used to reshape the world and powerfully reveal inequalities around women, people of color, and other disadvantaged groups. This paper seeks to find visualization works that are close to the thrust of data feminism and discusses their rhetorical, narrative, and other dimensions. From concrete works of practice, rather than guiding philosophies, it may be possible to present the current development of data feminism and respond to the call for “visualization as a starting point for data feminism”.","PeriodicalId":45677,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Communication Inquiry","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2022-11-24","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43441460","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: Why we're polarized by Ezra Klein","authors":"B. Trifiro","doi":"10.1177/01968599221139486","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/01968599221139486","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":45677,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Communication Inquiry","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2022-11-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47954140","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}
Ali A. Dashti, Ali A. Al-Kandari, Talal M. Almutairi, Albaraa F. Altourah, Abdulmohsen Jamal
{"title":"The Political Branding of a Powerless Nation: A Historical Account of the Branding of Kuwait During the Reign of Sheikh Abdullah Al-Salem (1950–1965)","authors":"Ali A. Dashti, Ali A. Al-Kandari, Talal M. Almutairi, Albaraa F. Altourah, Abdulmohsen Jamal","doi":"10.1177/01968599221133899","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/01968599221133899","url":null,"abstract":"This study explores the political branding of a powerless small state, the state of Kuwait during the reign of Sheikh Abdullah Al-Salem, from 1950 to 1965. The study uses models developed by Anholt for a strategic perspective on nation branding and by Bolin and Miazhevich for tactical communication in nation branding. This study explores the use of strategic communication in an Islamic-Arabic culture to brand Kuwait as a sovereign nation. At the strategic level, it employs the components of strategy, substance, and symbolic action, and at the tactical level, it uses the components of agents, audience analysis, temporal orientation and media to examine symbolic action. Using those models and following a qualitative historical analysis, the study identifies and analyzes the efforts of Sheikh Al-Salem to transform Kuwait from a Sheikhdom to Statehood in the 1950s. Those efforts helped to deter Iraq's threat to the Kuwaiti sovereignty as well as establish a self-governing, constitutional monarchy in the 1960s. The study concludes by evaluating the effectiveness of Sheikh Al-Salem's efforts as measured by tangible outcomes.","PeriodicalId":45677,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Communication Inquiry","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2022-11-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45201206","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 Attraction of Anti-intellectualism: Appropriation of Journalism Ideology in Media Education","authors":"Michael McDevitt","doi":"10.1177/01968599221133097","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/01968599221133097","url":null,"abstract":"This study considers the possibility that students are subversive actors in a hidden curriculum of anti-intellectualism. Mass communication provides the arena in which intellectuals are held up to public judgment, and consequently media education represents a promising context for observing the enculturation of resentment. The hidden curriculum framework incorporates three sources of influence: socio-demographics, student-oriented anti-intellectualism (impatience with education, disliking instructors), and three dimensions of journalism ideology: the consumer-oriented and loyal roles and accountability to the public. Data are drawn from questionnaires distributed to undergraduates at five U.S. colleges with comprehensive programs in journalism and mass communication (JMC). Republican identity, student anti-intellectualism, and journalism ideology predict support for news media exposing faculty as subversive. The study concludes with suggestions for future research on how JMC education, from a comparative perspective, could be vulnerable to anti-intellectual incursions depending on media system and populist climate.","PeriodicalId":45677,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Communication Inquiry","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2022-10-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45122460","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}