Cultural and Critical Studies 2019 Abstracts
When Art & Culture Becomes the Symbol of Resistance: An Analysis of Creative Protests During the Political Unrests of Pakistan, Egypt and Tunisia • Rauf Arif, Texas Tech University • This paper is about the importance of creative arts in closed societies where freedom of information and speech is not an option. Using a critical discourse analysis, it highlights three case studies from Pakistan, Egypt and Tunisia where artists used creative means and social media to mobilize people against their authoritarian regimes. By providing a thorough analysis of the cultural and historical contexts of the three cases, the paper concludes that during critical circumstances when traditional media are not free, creative arts have the ability to perform the role of an alternate media in the digital age.
Collaboration and Teaching about Liquid Media Literacy: New Challenges • Ralph Beliveau, University of Oklahoma • This paper addresses two of the central concerns facing the advance of media and information literacy in an American context. First, the goals of media literacy proponents may not succeed in accomplishing what they set out to accomplish because of the complexity of the networked media environment. The first wave of media literacy was responding to propaganda in a mass media context. We live in a world of networks now. The second concern has to do with the relationship between media literacy and information literacy. This paper argues that both of these concerns can be addressed by a collaborative approach to media I argue that teaching should stress an alternation between, first, deep critical engagement with media texts and, second, initial evaluations of the veracity, position, and nature of a piece of content prior to critical engagement.
Manufacturing Truth: Epistemic Crisis in the Political Economy of Fake News • Jeffrey Blevins, University of Cincinnati • This study applies Herman and Chomsky’s famous political economic critique of the U.S. news media to the current realm of fake news, and shows that the growth and distribution of fake news on social media during the 2016 U.S. presidential cycle, along with doublespeak about what is considered “fake news” had a detrimental impact on the institutional effectiveness of journalism, and exposed an epistemic flaw in the oft-cited “marketplace of ideas” metaphor used in First Amendment jurisprudence.
Dominant, Residual and Emergent: The Journalistic Performance within The Post • Matthew Blomberg, University of Kansas, USA • Given the increasing stresses on the practice of journalism, both internal and external, and challenges to public perceptions regarding the credibility of the institution, a need exists to better comprehend how the practice is understood and portrayed within other mediums. This study, through an examination of the 2017 Steven Spielberg film, The Post, analyzes the film as a cultural forum and discursive site to see what dominant, residual and emergent messages are on display.
Missing, or just Missed? Mediating Loss in the Missing Richard Simmons Podcast • Kelli Boling, University of South Carolina; Kevin Hull, University of South Carolina; Leigh Moscowitz • This study critically examines the Missing Richard Simmons podcast to explore how producers and participants use media to define and process complex relationships with celebrity figures. Employing qualitative textual analysis, this research demonstrates how audiences mediate celebrity interactions and the potential role these relationships play within a marginalized and fragile community. This project qualitatively explores parasocial interactions to demonstrate the ways expressions of grief and loss are mediated by audiences when a celebrity “relationship” disappears.
A Fifty Year Evolution: A Content Analysis of Miss USA Pageant Questions • Lindsay Bouchacourt, The University of Texas at Austin • This study looks at the evolution of the interview questions of the Miss USA pageant from 1970 to 2018. Beauty pageant winners represent femininity and the ideal woman in American society, and the pageant questions can reflect society’s expectations for women. A qualitative content analysis was conducted, and the findings revealed eight prominent themes. The results show an evolution of the questions over 50 years, which suggest changing gender and social roles for women.
Colton, Coitus, and Comedy: Male Virginity as a Punch Line on The Bachelor • Andrea Briscoe • This study examines a successful reality television show – The Bachelor – and analyzes how it handled having its first male lead that is an outspoken virgin. Through a textual analysis, the television show’s episodes and advertisements are both examined, with a specific lens focusing on masculinity and virginity. The author showcases room for improvement regarding reality television’s narratives surrounding sex, particularly in light of the #MeToo movement.
Making common sense of the cyberlibertarian ideal: The journalistic consecration of John Perry Barlow • Michael Buozis, Temple University • This study critiques the way in which journalism and other media used John Perry Barlow, someone with little to no technical expertise, as an authoritative voice of the emerging Internet. By doing so, this research aims to better account for the ways in which Barlow’s vision of Internet freedom, a deeply problematic cyberlibertarian vision, became a sort of commonsense ideology of Internet discourses, marked by enthusiastic techno-utopianism and libertarian approaches to free speech and markets.
Visual Sovereignty: Six Questions Applied to an Indigenous Video Game • Susan Clotfelter, Colorado State University • The concept of visual sovereignty has been advanced by Indigenous scholars as a way to evaluate media creations, collections, museum exhibitions, and films, whether created by Indigenous or non-Indigenous people. How, then, to evaluate an Indigenous-created video game? This paper draws on the work of Jolene Rickard in photography and museum exhibitions; Michelle Raheja in film scholarship; but also critical explorations of recent Indigenous film and the actions and utterances of characters in those portrayals. It suggests six non-exhaustive questions that can be applied to “Never Alone,” an award-winning Alaska Native-created video game, as a starting point. Because the writer is non-Indigenous and non-Alaskan, these questions are only a beginning, but they chart a starting point for a research agenda, one that might prove useful for examining the contributions of future such Indigenous-created media, as well as future portrayals of Indigenous characters.
“Fake news” and the discursive construction of technology companies’ social power • Brian Creech, Temple University • This article takes up fake news as a kind of discursive object, and interrogates recent discourses about fake news in order to understand what they reveal about the social and cultural power wielded by Silicon Valley. In taking up social media platforms and technology companies as not just an industrial system, but a cultural regime partially constituted through discourse, this article argues discursive objects, like fake news, operate in ways that make technology companies’ social power sensible as a public concern. Using the tools of critical discourses analysis to analyze a broad corpus, this article shows how public commentary and debate has worked to construct fake news it as a socio-technical problem—a formulation that implicated technology company executives as morally responsible, but also created a means for articulating what role these companies should play in liberal democratic life. These discourses push against a corporate libertarian paradigm that has worked to insulate technology companies from broader political and cultural contest.
Making Race Relevant in Southern Political Reporting: A Critical Race Analysis of 2018-2019 Storylines • George Daniels • Using a purposive sample of 17 news media messages, this study employs critical race theory as a framework in a textual analysis of news reporting on political stories across the South. The 2018 gubernatorial elections in Georgia and Florida featured African American candidates while a Mississippi special U.S. Senate election featured an African American candidate. While none was successful, the news media played a central role in making race relevant. Then in 2019, the same news media made relevant in stories involving politicians in Blackface and attire of racial exclusionary groups.
Museums as a Public Good: A Critical Discourse Analysis of the Met Museum’s Admission Policy Change • Michael Davis, University of Iowa • For decades, New York City’s Metropolitan Museum of Art has stood as an exemplar for open access. On Jan. 4, 2018, President Daniel Weiss announced that the museum would discontinue its “suggested donation” policy. Starting March 1, 2018, non-New York State residents were expected to pay $25. Using Critical Discourse Analysis to analyze the language in Weiss’ press release, this paper will argue that this action discriminates based on race, residential status, and economic factors.
Malaysia and the Rohingya: Media, Migration, and Politics • Emily Ehmer, Texas State University; Ammina Kothari, Rochester Institute of Technology • This study examines the representation of Rohingya asylum-seekers in Malaysia’s media and how news coverage supports the state regarding issues of sovereignty, political debates about migration, and domestic policies on refugees. The framing analysis draws upon news stories reported by The Star, a Malaysian newspaper, in 2012 through 2016 to identify narrative themes during a period of escalating violence in Myanmar that prompted the Rohingya to flee to Malaysia.
The Vegas shooting: A case study of news literacy and a dysfunctional public sphere • Tim Boudreau, Central Michigan U; Ed Simpson; Elina Erzikova, CMU • This exploratory study examined comments associated with YouTube conspiracy videos posted days after the Las Vegas shooting. Overall, the study found that commenters used the social media platform as a public sphere, where debate and argument were conducted in ways similar to more mainstream outlets. This indicates a need for further exploration of the principles of news literacy and those principles can shape a public sphere.
The Dewey problem: Public journalism, engagement and more than two decades of denigrating discourse • Patrick Ferrucci, U of Colorado-Boulder; Jacob Nelson, Arizona State University; Miles Davis • Using a textual analysis of metajournalistic discourse from journalism trade magazines, this study examines how the industry discursively articulated the need for the public journalism and engaged journalism movements and imagines their audience. The data illustrates how remarkably similar these movements are and the consistency by which the journalism industry imagines its audience. The results are interpreted with an eye toward of the future of the industry and the potential effects of these interventions.
The Visual Rhetoric of Disaster: How Bodies are Represented in Newspaper Photographs of Hurricane Harvey • Ever Figueroa, University of Texas • This study looks at images that appeared on the front pages of newspapers during key dates of hurricane Harvey coverage. Drawing from 106 front page photos gathered from August 28th, 2017 to September 4, 2017, this study presents a visual textual analysis that pays attention to the way race is represented within this context. The results show that media used visual rhetoric that presents minorities as displaced, while whites are represented as saviors and caretakers during moments of environmental crisis.
Hacking Culture not Code: Qualitative Analysis of How the Russian Government Used Facebook Social Ads During the 2016 Presidential Election • Bobbie Foster; Sohana Nasrin, University of Maryland; Krishnan Vasudevan, Philip Merrill College of Journalism, University of Maryland at College Park • Russia’s disinformation campaign intended to cripple American democracy during the 2016 U.S. presidential election and in its aftermath is well documented in recent scholarship (Ziegler, 2018; Barrett, Wadhwa, and Baumann-Pauly, 2018; Farwell, 2018; and Jamieson, 2018). An integral aspect of Russia’s strategy was the exploitation of the existing architectures and affordances of social networks such as Facebook, Twitter and YouTube. This study’s main findings suggest that discourses about Black identity such as Black empowerment and Black aesthetics that were presented within enclaved spaces (Squires, 2002) and by micro-celebrities on social media platforms provided a form of consumable culture that could be studied and replicated. The current study, based on a multimodal grounded analysis of 197 Facebook ads made public by Democrats on the House Intelligence Committee in May 2018, examined how Russian operatives hacked American culture to encourage forms of mal-civic action. This deliberate decision was premised upon two considerations. First, the examination of Russian propaganda offers a unique case study to consider how Facebook provides a space for foreign actors to learn about American race relations, as the social media platform facilitates the sharing and consumption of text, image, audio and video. Secondly, the researchers argue that this cultural knowledge was employed to engender the trust of Black Americans to ultimately spur them in to civic action. By undertaking this study, we seek to provide a qualitative methodological strategy for scholars to examine other discourses within the dataset that warrant scholarly inquiry.
Performing Identity on Social Media: How the “Pan-African Network” Facebook Group Affords its Members an Oppositional Identity • James Gachau • This study is an exploration of the concept of human identity as it pertains to the ultimate goal of each individual to attain self-fulfillment by “having a responsible share according to capacity in forming and directing the activities of the groups to which one belongs” (Dewey 1954). By identity I do not mean the identity politics which campaigns for the elimination of discriminatory practices based on people’s race, gender, sexual orientation, religion, national origin, age, or any other “generalized social categories.” Rather, I mean the participation of group members in activities that allow them to identify with the group. I use philosophical and communications literature on identity to explore the Pan-African Network (PAN), a Facebook group that promotes the interests of Africans across the globe by campaigning for the advancement of a proud black identity in a world increasingly perceived as hostile to Blacks and people of African descent. The theoretical framework of the study is based on Rob Cover’s conception of identity online as performative. I propose that as a social media group, PAN gives its members a sense of identity that is predicated upon the discourse and rhetoric produced by the group. In other words, the group is made by and sustained by its multifarious members, and the members are made and sustained by the group as a body of subjective interlocutors, acting as a public composed of members who write and read the norms they expect each other to follow.
Elite Company: Sourcing Trends in 2014-2017 Prestige Press Climate Change Editorials • Christopher Garcia, Florida State University; Jennifer Proffitt, Florida State University • This paper examines the sourcing practices of 103 prestige press climate change editorials published in The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and USA Today between 2014 to 2017. Utilizing a critical political economic approach, this analysis found that despite the ideological differences between the newspapers of interest in this study, each relied on sourcing practices that emphasized the views of elite political and economic actors with often no scientific training. This examination reveals that despite their differences from news content, editorial content reflects the “objective” balance of journalism norms that have been widely discussed in political economic literature. Thus, despite their ideological differences, editorials often reflect and rely on sourcing from elites who ensure that the discourse of climate change remains one that does not challenge the status quo and that remains a political debate rather than a solution-based discussion.
Losing the Newspaper Building: Collective Nostalgia as Periodization and Preservative • Nicholas Gilewicz, Manhattan College • This paper examines how journalists at metropolitan daily U.S. newspapers covered the sales of their buildings and newsroom moves between 2005 and 2018. In response to allocative decisions beyond their control, newspaper journalists use collective nostalgia in an attempt to preserve their values. As a structure of feeling, collective nostalgia offers refuge from present-day problems, and a future-oriented discourse that binds the community of newspaper journalists, preparing them—and readers—for the newspaper’s move.
Spill the Foundation: Parasocial Relationships with Beauty YouTubers • Samantha Kissel, Indiana University of Pennsylvania • Creating and utilizing a YouTube account is an important part of being a social media influencer. Influencers use their content to develop parasocial relationships with subscribers. This study looks at beauty YouTubers who maintain trust with their audiences after being involved in sponsored or collaboration projects with cosmetic brands. The findings reveal they need to maintain activity on their YouTube accounts and continually build PSI in their videos to gain additional followers.
Storming with communication: Organization leads a community’s resilience after Hurricane Harvey • Jacqueline Lambiase, TCU Bob Schieffer College of Communication; Ashley English, Texas Christian University • One district serving 75,000 students in parts of Houston and several of its southwestern suburbs, the Fort Bend Independent School District (FBISD), used a strategy of connection and empathy when creating community messaging tactics before, during, and after Hurricane Harvey. This qualitative case study tests the frameworks of social legitimacy theory and the discourse of renewal theory, as well as focuses on a public school system, rather than a corporate context, which receives the lion’s share of scholarly work related to crisis communication. This case study also uses rhetorical analysis of the district’s messaging—especially those of its superintendent—to scrutinize the ways that the Fort Bend ISD served as caretaker, booster, and beacon of hope during this historic storm in 2017 and for more than a year after the hurricane.
Mapping Representations of the Subaltern: The case of Indigenous Environmental Activists Bertha Caceres & Isidro Baldenegro • Dominique Montiel Valle • The present case study contributes to research on theories of the subaltern subject by examining news coverage of two Latin American activists’ (Berta Caceres, Isidro Baldenegro) death. In order to deconstruct and analyze dominant ideologies of ethnicity, gender, and class in news discourse, a mixed methods approach of critical discourse analysis and content analysis was deemed most appropriate. Research found that both activists were constructed as subalterns and that dominant ideologies of ethnic whitening, the patriarchal division of the private and public sphere, and classism were prevalent within news commentary. Though both activists’ representation as a subaltern was intersectional, Caceres’ was predominantly gendered.
Korean Popular Culture Consumption as a Way among First-and-a-half Generation Korean Immigrant Children in the United States to Develop Their Ethnic Identities • Jiwoo Park, Northwood University- Michigan • 12 first-and-a-half generation Korean immigrant children in the U.S. were recruited for photo-elicitation interview (PEI) to explore the effects of digital media-driven Korean popular culture consumption on their lives. As a result, they revealed their frequent consumption of Korean popular culture on their digital media devices functioned as a Korean cultural facilitator that is influential in their ethnic identity formation in one sense and in turn contributed to their senses of Korean identity in another.
Thinking Black: a Historical Analysis of the Impact of Black Racial Identity on the Discourse of Media Practitioners’ Coverage of Social Justice and Political News • Gheni Platenburg, University of Montevallo • Using a triangulation approach, this study explores this possibility by examining the impact of race on black, cable news practitioners’ discourse and looking for framing patterns in the discourse of these practitioners on the 2015 Baltimore protests, Barack Obama’s 2015 State of the Union Address and the Bill Cosby sexual assault scandal. This possibility is also vetted by examining whether these media practitioners embrace a black racial identity.
Caste Culture as Caste Power: Lifestyle Media and the Culturalization of Caste in India’s News Ecology • Pallavi Rao, Indiana University Bloomington • This paper examines how Indian lifestyle media perform an important role in reproducing the socio-politcal relations of caste through the benign language of taste cultures. I argue that mediated constructions of “Indian culture” that proliferate in soft journalism give life to essentialist notions of “caste as culture.” Lifestyle media therefore result in “the culturalization of caste,” through a heterophilia or love for the Other, without disturbing processes that make the Self or the Other.
Whose Vision Is It? Lessons of European Integration from Advocacy for the Roma in Romania • Adina Schneeweis, Communication and Journalism • Learning from the people doing activism, this article examines intervention for the Roma – Europe’s largest, most impoverished, and most excluded minority – through discourses of development, advocacy communication, and the international funding system. The study evaluates ideological commitments underpinning transnational development through in-depth interviews with Romanian activists (as an example of advocacy in the European Union today). A discourse of development marked by opportunism and bureaucracy emerges, different than a grassroots vision of integrated change.
#WhiteWednesdays, Femonationalism, and Authenticity A Twitter Discourse Analysis on the role of Hijab in Feminist Activism • Sara Shaban • In 2017, women in Iran launched a movement against the country’s compulsory hijab law, #WhiteWednesdays. Western right-wing conservatives capitalized on this movement to geopolitically isolate Iran by simultaneously praising women in Iran and criticizing western liberal feminists on Twitter. This study employs critical discourse analysis to examine the Twitter narratives around the role of hijab within feminist activism. Practical implications include the power of femonationalism to circulate specific political ideologies regarding feminism and geopolitics.
Hegemonic Masculinity in the 2016 Presidential Campaign: How Breitbart Framed Trump as the “Uber” Male • John Soloski, U of Georgia; Ryan Kor-Sins, U of Utah • During the 2016 presidential campaign, Breitbart News, a far-right, online publication, emerged as the most popular source of news for conservatives, eclipsing other mainstream news outlets like Fox News. Breitbart was one of Donald Trump’s primary allies in the media, and its former Executive Chairman, Steve Bannon, went on to become Trump’s Chief Strategist. The meteoric rise in popularity of this ideologically-centric news source shed light on the shifting character of the American media landscape. In this paper, we argue that this shift can best be conceptualized using the theory of hegemonic masculinity to trace how Breitbart framed Trump and his opponent, Hillary Clinton, during the 2016 election season. This paper uses critical framing analysis to analyze 62 Breitbart articles to understand how the themes of hegemonic masculinity are woven into Breitbart’s election coverage. Ultimately, we argue that Breitbart’s framing represents an alt-right brand of hegemonic masculinity and identify three main frames in the articles: Trump as a “manly man,” Trump as a “regular guy,” and Trump as an “underdog.”
The Carnivalesque in the 2016 U.S. Presidential Election • Bob Trumpbour, Dr.; Shaheed Mohammed, Penn State Altoona • In the 2016 general election for the presidency of the United States, the world saw the emergence of a non-politician celebrity, Donald Trump, as a key figure who, in political rhetoric and actions, frequently challenged existing power structures and figures. That candidate’s eventual electoral win combined with reports of violence at campaign rallies and elements such as calls for removal of those in power, the ridicule of opponents, the use of invectives and name-calling, all suggest parallels to Bakhtin’s elucidation of the carnival and the carnivalesque. The authors examine media coverage of the 2016 campaign using quantitative methods to uncover specific, tangible evidence for carnivalesque references in coverage of the Trump campaign, followed by qualitative analysis of the findings. Evidence demonstrated that references to the carnivalesque were significantly higher in number than in media coverage during the same time frame for the democratic candidate, Hillary Clinton. The far-reaching implications of presidential campaigns which are steeped in carnivalesque rhetoric and actions are discussed, with concerns raised regarding the future of media institutions and participatory democracy.
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