Cultural and Critical Studies 2003 Abstracts
Cultural and Critical Studies Division
Anything You Can Do, I Can Do Better!” Representing Gender in the Talk Show ¡Qué Mujeres! • Carolina Acosta-Alzuru, Georgia • Talk shows have become a “hot” topic, eliciting discussion in both the public and academic arenas. Drawing on feminist media studies and cultural studies, I examine ¡Qué Mujeres!, a show produced in Venezuela and broadcast in the U.S. on Univision, uncovering the ways in which gendered representations are immersed in the “conversation and confrontation” present in the show. ¡Qué Mujeres! is one battleground among many in which the struggle over the definition of “Venezuelan woman” is endlessly played.
Privatization of Radio and Media Hegemony in Turkey • Ece Algan, Iowa • This study analyzes media hegemony and the impact of media globalization and privatization on national-cultural identities in Turkey. Globalization is viewed as a complex process of global/local interaction where many contrasting elements, such as nationalism, ethnicity, regionalism, diversity, homogenization, imperialism, and domination are constantly contested and redefined. Using Turkish media as a case study with a special emphasis on radio and music, this study draws on the concept of hegemony to identify the ways in which the global is conceived, experienced, negotiated and transformed by the local.
Saying They’re Sorry: News Media Apologia Strategies •James Aucoin and Melva Kearney, South Alabama • Six prominent news media apologies offered between 1981 and 1998 are examined to determine strategies used. The apologiae are criticized using rhetorical theory. Reactions to each apologia are assessed. Sincerely admitting mistakes, showing regret for them, and correcting them because it is the right thing to do, and announcing long-term corrective actions to prevent reoccurrences are basic requirements for successful media apologia.
Competing for the Public Interest, 1920-1922: Amateurs and ‘Citizen Radio’ • Misook Baek, Iowa • The language of “the public interest” was first introduced in broadcasting by Herbert Hoover when the “broadcast boom” swept the nation. This paper examines the contestation over the meaning of the public interest between the government, radio corporations, and amateurs, with focus on the amateurs’ vision of “Citizen Radio.” This paper appreciates Citizen Radio as an actual process of developing the meaning of the public interest, while revealing how the project failed and corporate interests took over its meaning.
From Tin to Tourism: Nature for Sale in Phuket, Thailand • Margaret Duffy, Missouri • This research examines media coverage of the economic and environmental transitions from tin mining to tourism at Phuket Island, Thailand. The analysis focuses on two areas: 1) A discussion of the dominant news theme, a narrative that utilized the “goose that laid the golden egg” analogy both explicitly and implicitly. 2) An analysis of how news narratives reinforced assumptions that economic development and environmental protection can be achieved with the proper control of authorities accompanied by technological development.
Toward a Phenomenology of Media Reading: Theorizing the Embodied Subject, and the Text • Meenakshi Gigi Durham, Iowa • This paper offers a theory of media reading that uses phenomenology to reconcile Althusser’s concept of media “interpellations” of readers with psychoanalytic concepts of the subject. Using Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology of subjectivity, in which identity stems from embodied experience, this paper theorizes the dialectical relationship of reader and text in a way that moves away from top-down “effects” models as well as valorizations of the “active audience” to posit a more complex and reiterative notion of identity formation and decoding.
Theoretical Approaches to International Health Communication Campaigns: A Critical Viewpoint from a Marginalized Space • Mohan J. Dutta-Bergman, Purdue • Based on the fundamental argument that silencing and marginalization of third-world voices lie at the core of miscommunication in international health campaigns, this paper offers a critical lens to inform the current scholarship and praxis of health campaigns. Questioning the ulterior motives situated behind the Western enterprise of health campaigns, it argues that international health campaigns seek to create docile bodies that would offer themselves to the support of the imperial powers of the developed world.
Triangulation: Layering Methods to Uncover Layers of Meaning • Heidi Hatfield Edwards, Pennsylvania State • This paper illustrates how the use of multiple qualitative methods enriches the study of social phenomenon by providing multidimensional perspectives of complex situations. It details the intricate case study design employed in a study investigating the audience role in shaping corporate involvement in social issues. The study is theoretically grounded in a rhetorical view of public relations and significantly influenced by a cultural studies tradition. The qualitative methodology reflects these perspectives.
From Information Highway to Commercial Highway: The Corporate Strategy to Wire America’s Schools • Bettina Fabos, Northern Iowa • The Internet was quietly privatized in 1995. That same year, the Clinton Administration and corporate America launched a campaign called the “Educational Challenge” which aimed to wire America’s schools by the year 2000. The intense PR blitz, lasting between 1995-1998 was accompanied by many slick ads, all loftily illustrating the internet’s learning potential. By 1998 most schools were wired and the Internet was, almost overnight, commercially viable. This paper examines how the “information highway” was cast as a commercial highway all along.
Popularizing Evangelicalism: Cultural Implications of Contemporary Christian Music • Eric Gormly, North Texas • American society has witnessed a dramatic growth in a musical genre known as Contemporary Christian Music. Ostensibly, the genre’s purpose is to evangelize to an emerging Evangelical youth culture through broader appeal. Evangelicals historically have used the media of popular culture and secular commercial practices for evangelizing vehicles. Using a range of cultural theory, however, the author argues that the movement toward religious messages in the form of popular music enables the subculture of Evangelical Christians to resist against a dominant secular society by taking possession of a cultural form and redefining it as their own, empowering them to effect an influential voice in the cultural discourse of American society.
‘Eat. Sleep. Watch Dawson’s Creek.’ Consuming Dawson’s Creek’s Teenage Experience • Amanda S. Hall, Georgia • Drawing on cultural studies, especially consumption, this study examines how a sample of the audience of Dawson’s Creek, a Warner Brothers’ Television show, interpret and relate to the show and whether they incorporate these meanings into their lives. Ten in-depth interviews were conducted with females aged 15- to 20-years-old. Findings suggest the way participants interpret the show establishes a way of life for them, serving a crucial role of support during the teenage years.
‘Trailer-Park Trash’: News, Ideology & Depictions of the American Underclass • Joseph C. Harry, Slippery Rock • A textual analysis, using social-semiotic and Marxist theoretical perspectives, of newspaper articles was conducted to analyze how class is depicted in stories about life in “trailer parks.” The analysis finds that class perspectives conflict, as higher-class journalists routinely depict a “lower class” segment as “white trash.” In this way, class functions as an invisible meta-sign, providing journalists an ironic, stereotypical means of ridiculing and, in some ways, celebrating “white trash” as a cultural marker, while sustaining economic class differences.
The Columbine Tragedy and Collective Identity: Local Reactions and a Sense of ‘Us’ • Lee Hood, Colorado • The shootings at Columbine High School in 1999 put Columbine and the suburb of Littleton, Colorado, into a glaring international spotlight. But in the Denver area, the story was a local tragedy. Using in-depth interviews, this study examines how a sense of collective local identity emerged around the event. The research is situated within cultural studies, as well as sense of place literature, both from media studies and from other areas such as sociology and cultural geography.
The Contemporary Korean Film Industry: State Cultural Policy under Neoliberal Globalization, 1988-2002 • Dal Yong Jin, Illinois • This paper draws systematic attention to the reconfiguration of the Korean film industry. It attempts to clarify the cause of the changes and discusses the Korean film industry with a special focus on state cultural policy toward cinema. The paper, in particular, examines the main role of the Korean government in the film industry’s decline until the mid-1990s, as well as its rise in recent years.
The Political Economy of the Reagan-era Prime Time Soap Opera • Chris Jordan, Pennsylvania State • Prime time soap operas of the 1980s arose from an intensification of television production’s historically oligopolistic structure under Reaganomics and deregulation. While regulatory reforms undertaken on behalf of the public interest broadened access to prime time television for independent producers during the 1970s, Reagan’s implementation of tax reforms and deregulatory initiatives concentrated control over prime time television in the hands of Hollywood’s largest producers and syndicators during the1980s. The one-hour evening soap opera facilitated these companies’ domination of prime time network access and foreign syndication sales by allowing them to use access to a nationwide audience to engage economies of scale in television production.
American Journalism Goes to War, 1898-2001: A Manifesto on Media and Empire • Richard Kaplan, California-Santa Barbara • Considers the role that the “imagined community” of the nation plays in the organization of journalism – in its narratives, in its professional ideals, and as an institution. Three theoretical maneuvers help explicate this centrality of nation to journalism. First, journalism’s narratives must be largely understood as a rite of the community. In its plots, the press thematizes the life and values of the group. Second, this community has, since 1776, been defined as the democratic nation.
Civilization, Christianity, and Cherokeeness: The Three Layers of Elitism in the Writings of Cherokee Editor Elias Boudinot • Kevin R. Kemper, Missouri-Columbia • Cherokee Elias Boudinot was the first Native American editor of the first Native American newspaper, the Cherokee Phoenix. An ideological critique examines Boudinot’s writings and considers literature from other disciplines to reveal Boudinot as an elitist who saw himself as a civilized, Christian Cherokee. The complex journalist saw others as lost or saved, white or Cherokee, ignorant or educated. That elitism may have led to his support of removal of the Cherokee from ancestral lands.
The Agency: Naturalizing Terrorism • Sue Lawrence, Marist College • CBS’ The Agency is coded to exert a powerful effect on the perceptions of the audience around a discourse on terrorism. Episodes depicting depict foreign attacks on US soil naturalize terrorism, making terrorist acts on the US seem common, horrifying and inevitable. The Agency reflects the ideology of the US government at a time when the country is engaged in a war on terrorism, embracing stereotypes and underlining the need for a strong intelligence agency.
War and Its Metaphors: News Language and the Prelude to War in Iraq, 2003 • Jack Lule, Lehigh • Metaphors can kill, said George Lakoff in response to official justifications for war in the Persian Gulf. This paper studies metaphor in news coverage during the prelude to the 2003 war with Iraq. The paper outlines a methodology for study of metaphor and applies the method to six weeks of coverage by NBC Nightly News, the top-rated U.S. evening newscast. The paper identifies metaphors in NBC coverage, examines implications of those metaphors, and finally considers the role of metaphor and news language in the conception and construction of war.
Examining Diversity in Cable Television: A Proposal for Linking Diversity of Content to Diversity of Ownership • Siho Nam, Pennsylvania State • Originally developed as a means of retransmitting and boosting broadcast signals, cable television has grown as a main component of contemporary media culture. In view of that, this paper first seeks to examine various conceptions of and views toward diversity, proceeds to argue for the need to consider diversity of content in connection with diversity of ownership, and then finally discusses implications of diversity in cable TV with respect to both political and cultural democracy.
The ‘Devil’s Bargain’: A Natural History of a Prison Newspaper • Eleanor Novek, Monmouth • A free press is necessary for a healthy democracy, but how can an imprisoned journalist speak the truth to power? This paper traces the development of an inmate newspaper at a state prison for women, contrasting the routines of prison journalism with those of the commercial press. A prison newspaper is a paradoxical “devil’s bargain” – on one hand, a control mechanism employed by prison administrators, and on the other, a potentially empowering aspect of prison culture for inmates.
Labor of Love? Media, Myth, and the Political Economy of Marriage in Wendt v. Wendt • Sarah Burke Odland, Iowa • This paper explores how the news discourse surrounding the high-profile divorce trial of Gary and Lorna Wendt—a high-paid executive and his homemaker wife—interpreted and constructed cultural conceptions of gender roles within the institution of marriage. Drawing on theories of gender identity, political economy, and myth, the analysis demonstrates how the news discourses functioned as a myth-maker, naturalizing and normalizing the devaluation of domestic work.
The Story of Depression: An Investigation into the Discourse of Depression as Constructed in Direct-to-Consumer Antidepressants Advertising • JinSeong Park, Marquette • This paper discusses how direct-to-consumer (DTC) antidepressant advertising frames depression and depicts men and women. The findings suggest that DTC advertising bio-chemically frames depression and depicts men as more stable and women as more vulnerable. The social implication of the findings is that by naturalizing the view that depression is a female problem, DTC advertising may reinforce social stereotypes of women and hide the socio-cultural conditions that possibly induce female depression.
Political Regulation on Cinema in Korea • Seung Hyun Park and Jinman Han, Hallyum University & Kangwon National University • Political regulation on cinema has been the greatest barrier to the development of Korean cinema since its inception in the early twentieth century. Especially in the period from 1961 to 1979, authoritarian rule, which often involved martial law and emergency measures to silence diverse voices in basic human rights of the Korean people, elaborately designed the film industry to follow the official aesthetic doctrine defined by state agencies.
Global Queens, National Celebrities: Tales of Feminine Triumph in the Textual Imagery • Radhika Parameswaran, Indiana • Joining the tide of ethnic multiculturalism in global popular culture, a parade of Indian beauty queens’ conquests at Miss World and Miss Universe contests over the past decade have begun to pose a serious challenge to Latin America’s record of victories at these contests. Using textual analysis, this article examines media narratives on six Indian global beauty queens to reveal the complex ways in which hegemonic constructions of gender, nation, and class structure popular representations of the modern Indian woman’s agency.
Television News and Gender-relevant Visual Frames: How Election Stories Both Empower and Exclude Women Viewers • Kimmerly S. Piper-Aiken, Michigan State • This study involved the analysis of 30 news stories focused on “the importance or value of the women’s vote” or “the gender gap” from the 1996, 1992, 1988, and 1984 elections. This study found dramatic evidence of gender-relevant framing in television news video in three categories: visual imaging, visual clichés, and visual stereotypes. In terms of women’s involvement in politics, there was evidence that television news messages have been both empowering and exclusionary.
Ted Turner as Postmodern Legend: From Mouth of the South to Maverick on a Mission • Jimmie Reeves, Texas Tech • Like the “great man” narratives of other prominent figures in mass media history, the legend of Robert Edward (Ted) Turner III has been carefully cultivated and is largely the product of self-promotion. In exploring the continuities, contradictions, and contrivances of the Ted Turner story, this paper focuses on a period that begins in 1963 with Turner taking control of the family business and ends in 1991 with Turner being named Time Magazine’s “Man of the Year.”
The Road to War: Breaking the Code • Denise St. Clair and Atsushi Takjima, Wisconsin-Madison • This paper evaluates six newspaper articles from six newspapers around the world to assess through the use of framing analysis whether the coverage of President Bush’s September 13, 2002 speech to the United Nations urging the world to go to war with Iraq represents the dominant ideology of the country in which the paper is produced. This study builds on Entman’s work on framing, specifically in regard to the reliance on official sources.
‘Tama Mesquakies Battle to Save the School’; Hegemony and Change at a Community Newspaper • Sara Struckman and Frank D. Durham, Iowa • This study interprets newspaper coverage involving a conflict between the Mesquakie tribe of Iowa and the local white community over the proposed closing of the Native Americans’ school in 1968-69. The focus is the interaction of the two newspapers, the regional Des Moines Register and the local Tama News-Herald. As a result of the textual analysis, we have understood more about the nature of media hegemony and social change.
Undisciplined Reading: An Ethnographic Study of Social-Silent Readers in a Mega-Bookstore Cafe • K. D. Trager, Indiana • This article explores the ways that the “social-silent” readers in may case study established rules for themselves and others that tamed the “undisciplined” atmosphere of one Borders bookstore café in the Midwest. Their actions are read as a “mild protest” against the forms of sociability constructed by the store and the deprivatization the store offers. This paper also examines the quiet struggle between the different types of readers to define the café reading space.
Feeding the Public’s Hunger for Sensation: Discourses on Dog-eating • Christopher Vaughan, Rutgers • The consumption of dog has served as a cultural dividing line in Western discourses demarcating civilized and “uncivilized” societies. The case of Igorot tribes in the northern Philippines, whose canine repasts generated much sensationalist journalism and popular cultural comment, served in the early 20th century to provide a false case for the unsuitability for self-government of Filipinos writ large. The journalistic tradition continues in coverage of such minority practices in the Philippines and South Korea.
Are the Opinion Pages a Forum for Public Participation? A Comparison of Danish and British Models • Karin Wahl-Jorgensen, Cardiff University • This paper compares the potential for public participation in the opinion pages of Danish and British quality newspapers, which have radically different models for these pages. The paper is based on an examination of op-ed and editorial pages in the three largest circulation Danish dailies, as well as in the British papers, The Guardian, The Telegraph, and The Times, during a randomly selected two-week period in the autumn of 2002. The paper draws on deliberative democratic theory as its normative framework.
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