Spaces of Resistance or Acquiescence? Learning from Media Discourses on the Role of Voluntarism in Ageing Communities

2013 ◽  
Vol 45 (2) ◽  
pp. 438-450 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mark W Skinner ◽  
Alun E Joseph ◽  
Rachel V Herron
2008 ◽  
Vol 24 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Gertrud Pfister ◽  
Rikke Schou Jeppesen

Artiklen beskriver og forklarer de forandringer, som sporten har gennemgået, og den indflydelse, som disse forandringer har haft på udøvere og på deres kroppe og images. Der er særlig fokus på mediernes rolle i forhandlingen om konstruktion af ambivalente maskulinitetsformer. Gertrud Pfister & Rikke Schou Jeppesen: Images, Bodies and Masculinities. Media discourses about Ski JumpersToday ski jumping can be considered a typical media sport: it has very few participants and no basis to become a »sport for all« movement. Nevertheless, the few specialists and their main events attract masses of spectators and great media attention. The high demands of skill and strength as well as the danger involved have made ski jumping a typical male sport. Since its beginnings in the 19th century a ski jumper was looked upon as the epitome of »true manhood«. Today ski jumpers are celebrities with fragile egos, skinny bodies, boyish looks, ambivalent masculinities and fan communities of teenage girls. With a constructivist theoretical approach, we will describe and explain the changes that have taken place in ski jumping and the effects of these changes on the athletes, their bodies, their images and their masculinities. The focus will be on the media representation of two German ski jumpers, Martin Schmitt and Sven Hannawald who dominated this sport between 2000 and 2003. Sources are the articles about these athletes in 6 German print media. With a qualitative content analysis, we explore the media coverage of ski jumping and the way the athletes are presented. The correlations between the images and the »doing gender« of the athletes and their presentations in the media along with the role of the media in constructing new and ambivalent masculinities will be the key issues of this article.


Author(s):  
Hanna Köttl ◽  
Verena C Tatzer ◽  
Liat Ayalon

Abstract Background and Objectives Media discourses have the power to construct and perpetuate positive and negative aging images and influence public and individuals’ attitudes. This study aims to critically examine the media portrayal of older persons’ everyday information and communication technology (EICT) usage during the first and second waves of the coronavirus disease 2019 pandemic. Research Design and Methods A total of 51 articles published in 3 leading German newspapers between March 2020 and November 2020 were identified from the LexisNexis Academic database. Data were analyzed employing critical discourse and thematic analysis. Results EICT use was associated with youthful, consumption-orientated, and active lifestyles, while nonuse was constructed as failures on the policy or individual level. The pandemic seemed to have acted as an amplifier, further exacerbating and perpetuating stereotypical, dichotomous, but also empowering aging images. Discussion and Implications Neoliberal rational and binary distinctions of active users and nonusers opened and encouraged critical discussions on positive aging trends, the concept of the third and fourth ages, and aging-and-innovation discourses. Moreover, the crucial educative role of the media in raising awareness about power imbalances and reducing EICT-related ageism is stressed.


2015 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 68-81
Author(s):  
Trish Morgan

Since the financial crash of 2008, large sectors of capitalist economies have been enveloped by a crisis that is typically represented by media discourses in purely economic and financial terms. However, the crisis is also ecological. Yet, while media discourses frequently embrace and propose small-scale environmental remedies, it is rarely pointed out that such calls stand at odds with the consumer capitalist system under which the media industries operate. Adopting a ‘business as usual’ approach to consumption, the media industries encourage the public to shop their way out of recession, despite crippling austerity measures that have been imposed on them. This is in the face of an unprecedented ecological crisis which is now largely accepted as due to anthropogenic factors. In light of this ecological crisis, continued growth-based economic paradigms are increasingly deemed unsustainable. Yet frequently, media discourse uncritically takes growth and waste as two aspects of an unchanging and necessary paradigm. Against this backdrop of economic and ecological crises this paper draws on a set of critical cross-disciplinary literature from Harvey's political economy, to Foster and Moore's political ecology to Baran and Sweezy on waste, through to Adorno, Bourdieu and Garnham, to identify and engage with the strategic role of the media. It outlines crisis theories of economy and ecology, moving on to discuss crucial, if neglected aspects of the role of the media and cultural industries with respect to these crises. This paper advances the view that the role of the media in construction of norms with respect to consumption practices and waste is of significance and arguably needs to be incorporated into crisis theory of both economy and ecology.


Transfers ◽  
2015 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 7-27 ◽  
Author(s):  
Vanessa Stjernborg ◽  
Mekonnen Tesfahuney ◽  
Anders Wretstrand

This study focuses on Seved, a segregated and socioeconomically “poor” neighborhood in the city of Malmö in Sweden. It has attracted wide media coverage, a possible consequence of which is its increased stigmatization. The wide disparity between perceived or imagined fear and the actual incidence of, or exposure to, violence attests to the important role of the media in shaping mental maps and place images. Critical discourse analysis of daily newspaper articles shows that Seved is predominantly construed as unruly and a place of lawlessness. Mobility comprises an important aspect of the stigmatization of places, the politics of fear, and discourses of the “other.” In turn, place stigmatization, discourses of the other, and the politics of fear directly and indirectly affect mobility strategies of individuals and groups.


Author(s):  
Selin Çağatay ◽  
Mia Liinason ◽  
Olga Sasunkevich

AbstractThis chapter lays out the theoretical foundation of the book. It conceptualizes resistance as a space in-between small-scale mundane practices with a low level of collective organizing and large-scale protest activities which often exemplify resistance in social movement studies. In line with feminist and queer conceptualization of resistance, the authors suggest to examine multi-scalarity of resistant practices. The chapter attends to three scales of feminist and LGBTI+  activism in Russia, Turkey, and Scandinavia. The first scale analyzes activism in relation to the civil society-state-market triad. The second scale problematizes the notion of solidarity in relations between feminist and LGBTI+  activists from different geopolitical regions and countries as well as between small- and large-scale activist organizations and groups. Finally, the third scale focuses on individual resistant practices and the role of individual bodies in emergence of collective political struggles.


Author(s):  
Aleksandra Wagner

The objective of this chapter is to provide an overview of the main mechanisms and processes observed in media discourses with the potential to shape political and economic responses to energy issues. By adopting the discursive approach to public policy analysis, the author attempts to answer these questions: How is energy is discussed? What is said and what is not said? Who speaks and who is absent in media discourse? The focus is on the problems of media communication that are crucial for public dialogue on energy. In conclusion, it is argued that the energy discourse in mass media is a post-hegemonic discourse, while the counter-discourses try to find their place in other dimensions of the public sphere, such as nonfiction literature or social media, and therefore their visibility is limited.


2017 ◽  
Vol 40 (7) ◽  
pp. 957-972 ◽  
Author(s):  
Georgia Aitaki

This article investigates how the Eurozone crisis is thematically negotiated in a popular Greek television comedy. Inspired by the increasing interest in the ideological role of news media during the Eurozone crisis of the late 2000s, it turns the spotlight on the sphere of entertainment in an attempt to address the importance of fictional mediations and meaning-making processes. To that end, it proposes an understanding of television fiction as an accommodator and shaper of ‘hot moments’, instigating processes of self-assessment and evaluation of change. More specifically, the study examines the ways in which the family comedy Piso sto Spiti (MEGA Channel, 2011–2013) provides culturally based understandings of the Eurozone crisis by depicting it as associated with inherent flaws of the modern Greek and by assessing the possibility of change through a juxtaposition with national ‘others’. At the same time, it identifies ways that ideology leaks from television fiction in its interaction with other media discourses simultaneously circulating within a society.


2016 ◽  
Vol 11 (5) ◽  
pp. 624-640 ◽  
Author(s):  
Barbara Gabriella Renzi ◽  
Matthew Cotton ◽  
Giulio Napolitano ◽  
Ralf Barkemeyer

Author(s):  
Maude Casey

This chapter examines the writing of Over the Water (first published in 1987) as a process of exploration, commemoration and resistance. It considers the narratives of a second generation Irish teenager and her mother, each constrained by the context of Britain’s occupation of Ireland and resultant attacks on the civil liberties of Irish people in Britain. Noting the importance of second wave feminism and the development of women’s presses in generating resistance to these constraints, it also considers the empowering role of the Irish in Britain Representation Group (IBRG). It celebrates the writing of fiction as a process of surviving and thriving, using the transformative power of language to imagine new spaces of resistance and hope.


2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (13) ◽  
pp. 7387
Author(s):  
Adriana Angel ◽  
Lissette Marroquín Velásquez ◽  
Sandra Idrovo

The purpose of this article is to discuss the relationship between sustainability and health in the context of the coronavirus pandemic in Latin America, the region with the second highest number of deaths due to COVID-19. After performing a dialectical analysis on mass media discourses about the pandemic, we argue that sustainability must be understood in relation to tensions such as (a) health and economy, (b) isolation and interconnectedness of health management, and (c) access to and excess of information about the pandemic. Based on this analysis, we suggest that if health is to be considered a fourth pillar of sustainability, it needs to be approached in close connection with these inseparable and irreducible tensions in order to broaden the way in which it has been approached in global sustainable development agendas and to recognize the role of individuals and communities in health issues.


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