scholarly journals YouTube Podcasting, the New Orality, and Diversity of Thought: Intermediality, Media History, and Communication Theory as Methodological Approaches

Author(s):  
Christer Johansson

The chapter investigates a new kind of YouTube phenomenon, the extended dialogue podcast, by combining three transdisciplinary approaches: (1) an intermedial analysis, (2) a media-historical analysis, and (3) a communication-theoretical analysis. The objects of study are the YouTube shows The Joe Rogan Experience and Hur kan vi? (a Swedish version of Rogan’s show). The shows air live on YouTube, which means that they are inherently multimodal, combining sound, moving images, occasional expositions of websites, and the viewers’ written commentaries. The shows are characterized by a strong emphasis on dialogue between the hosts and the invited guests, and by an extended duration, sometimes spanning over three hours of talk. Both shows are politically controversial, since the intention behind them is to challenge political correctness and self-censorship in mainstream media and public discourse. In order to understand the shows as digital objects, the chapter analyzes their specific mix of medialities and modalities. To understand them as historical phenomena, the chapter investigates how the shows relate to earlier media types, focusing on orality and its relation to literacy. And, finally, to understand the shows as political agents, their role in contemporary debates on media, power, and knowledge is the target of analysis.

Lituanistica ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 65 (4) ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrius Gudauskas

The article deals with the terms of communication science used in the Lithuanian language that specify the means whereby mass communication is carried out. Several different concepts are used in theoretical discourse in Lithuania: the means of mass communication, the media, the mass media (žiniasklaida), media, audiovisual media, and the like. The terms “the mass media” (žiniasklaida) and “the media” (medijos) used in the Lithuanian language are both translated into English as “media”, although these are different words and do not always mean identical things. The Lithuanian compound word (term) žiniasklaida is made of two independent words, žinios (news) and sklaida/skleidimas (dissemination). The Dictionary of the Lithuanian Language defines the word žiniasklaida as measures of periodical information – the press, radio, and television. In fact, when we speak about the radio, television, and printed newspapers in general terms, we often use this particular word of Lithuanian origin – žiniasklaida. Conceptual terms defining the means of communication discussed in the article have peculiar aspects and notional etymological nuances. These rather different terms entered the common usage at the end of the twentieth century and have been used ever since, that is, they are still used in the theoretical literature of communication sciences and in the public discourse of Lithuania of the early twenty-first century. The internationally and globally established scientific concepts “the mass media” and “the media” used to be translated into the Lithuanian language differently and therefore they were treated ambiguously, at times not accurately enough, and deviated from the postulates of the general communication theory. Lithuanian researchers who use the terms discussed in the present article were noticed to have had the universal concept of the mass communication theory, “the mass media”, in mind. The author also addresses the differentiated usage of different terms mentioned in the article in the Lithuanian language and different notional fields that they create. This is discussed when these terms are used synonymically and when they do not refer to identical things. In recent years, attempts to dissociate from the term žiniasklaida became noticeable in the works of Lithuanian researchers (Laima Nevickaitė, Žygintas Pečiulis). The semantic field of this term does not encompass all the existing means of communication as, for example, the terms “media” (medijos) or “the means of mass communication” can do, and this points to the conclusion that the Lithuanian neologism žiniasklaida should be avoided in research texts when we have the concept “the mass media” in mind. It is particularly pertinent in those cases when we refer to the overall communication process encompassing all possible means of communication and all possible effects on the perception of the audience, as well as the audience’s responses to the world we live in. The question of whether the term žiniasklaida could be used to define the conformity of the term “the mainstream media” should be discussed in future studies into the terminology of communication and information science. The author of the article proposes recommendations for correcting both the headline of the article Žiniasklaida in the Lithuanian version of the free online encyclopaedia Wikipedia and its content, whose current references to other languages are as follows: English – mass media, Russian – Sredstva massovoi informatsii (Средства массовой информации), German – Massenmedien, and so on. This would remove the discrepancy between the headlines and the content of encyclopaedic texts. Finally, due to the pluralistic and liberal usage of the terms “the mass media” and “the media”, which is becoming more and more firmly established, this analysis of these terms is relevant and useful in further developing a purposeful discourse of communication and information science and its popularisation.


2021 ◽  
Vol 39 (2) ◽  
pp. 136-155
Author(s):  
Mathias Möschel

This article focuses on the legal construction of the notion of anti-White racism in France. By analyzing cases litigated under criminal law, it describes how a right-wing NGO has been promoting this notion via a litigation strategy since the late 1980s, initially with only limited success. Public debates in mainstream media in the 2000s and intervention by more traditional antiracist NGOs in courts have since contributed to a creeping acceptance of anti-White racism both within courtrooms and in broader public discourse. This increased recognition of anti-White racism is highly problematic from a critical race and critical Whiteness perspective.


2020 ◽  
pp. 211-236
Author(s):  
Adeena Mey

Among the many reconfigurations and experiments with the ‘medium of the exhibition’ of the 1960–1970s, Sonsbeek 71 stands as one the most audacious examples. Organized by curator Wim Beeren as an attempt to find a new curatorial language and innovative exhibition form, Sonsbeek 71 took ‘the entire country as its field of operation’, the ‘exhibition’ consisting of several works of land art, ‘information centres’, as well as pavilions dedicated to film, video, and art mediation. The ‘spatial relations’ exposed by the scale of this apparatus became the very object of Beeren’s curatorial inquiry. Focusing on projected moving images at Sonsbeek 71, this chapter discusses it on three different levels. First, it identifies the way both the film and exhibition apparatus were reconfigured and how Sonsbeek 71 functioned as an epistemology of the exhibition as medium. Second, it articulates a critique of the exhibition as a form intersecting technical, discursive, informational, and sensible elements, and shows how, in its radical expansion of the exhibition medium, Sonsbeek 71 ‘conflates media history with earth history’ (Parikka). Third, what is meant by the notion of the exhibition as ‘medium’ is discussed in light of the inflatable pavilions designed by the Eventstructure Research Group where structural films and artists’ films were projected. This eventually opens up to a critique of the informational, cybernetic epistemology of Sonsbeek 71.


2020 ◽  
pp. 187-210
Author(s):  
Ulrich Meurer

By ‘unearthing’ artefacts from folded layers of time, media archaeology undermines linear historical discourse: in this regard, this chapter addresses an exemplary art-based project on the origins of cinema that takes the epistemological metaphor of ‘excavation’ at its word. In 2011, the Canadian artist Henry Jesionka discovers several ancient bronze and glass objects on a Croatian beach, dates the pieces to the first century CE, and identifies them as components of an intricate Graeco-Roman mechanism for the projection of moving images. This rewriting of media history not only illustrates how traits of materiality and contingency interfere with teleological history; it also reflects on industrial capitalism’s paradox claims of ‘reason’ and the ideological presuppositions of progress: Cornelius Castoriadis’s notion of a merely simulated Rationality of Capitalism (1997) suggests that traditional narratives of technological invention are invariably organized around a clandestine and insufficiently repressed nucleus of the unforeseen, unpredictable, and irrational. By admitting to a similar element of chance or lost control, Jesionka’s Ancient Cinema project and new founding myth of cinema comment on the logic of media archaeology as an expression of late capitalism’s waning belief in its own rationale.


Author(s):  
Barbara Franco

This chapter defines community in its broadest sense as shared experience based on ethnicity, racial origins, religion, geography, or other cultural values. It provides examples of public history projects in museums, preservation of historical resources, and oral history that demonstrate how the collaborative nature of community history requires shared authority, dialogue, and participatory management. These projects exemplify best practices for successful community-based history that balance experience with expertise; historical analysis with current-day relevance; and inner dialogue with public discourse. The chapter considers why community history matters as a form of civic dialogue and how emerging technology may impact and challenge public history dialogue in the future.


2019 ◽  
Vol 48 (3) ◽  
pp. 403-427 ◽  
Author(s):  
Laura Smith-Khan

AbstractThis article examines how communicative resources affect the construction of credible texts and identities in a public debate on Australia's treatment of a refugee. It centres on two key written statements—one from the Immigration Minister, and another from a Somali refugee. The analysis is divided into four levels, exploring the parties’ respective linguistic, material, identity, and platform resources, and how these impact their statements’ creation and reception, and their participation in discourse creation more generally. The article finds that there are inequalities on all four resource levels that largely undermine the refugee's ability to present a credible text and identity and challenge mainstream discourse on refugees. The article demonstrates how a multi-level analysis of communicative resources can challenge assumptions about participation and uncover inequalities invisible in the prevailing discourse. (Asylum, Australia, communicative resources, discourse, intercultural communication, media, power, refugee)*


2021 ◽  
Vol 15 (1) ◽  
pp. 127-148
Author(s):  
Rohmanur Aziz

This study aims to reveal the role of the media in disseminating information regarding the cancellation of the departure of pilgrims from the critical discourse dimensions. Therefore, this research method uses Critical Discourse Analysis from Norman Fairclough. The results of this study indicate that the role of the media in the cancellation policy of Hajj pilgrims in 2021 consists of three essential things. First, the media sided with the news content about the cancellation of the hajj based on norms by the law and various derivative regulations. Second, the mainstream media group has its concept in understanding how to disseminate the information so that it can become a public discourse and understand the public after being back on the mainstream media stage. Third, the media behaves like a ‘pendulum’ that can go back and forth to contribute to "orchestrating" the public discourse in this context regarding the cancellation of the departure of the pilgrims.Penelitian ini bertujuan untuk mengungkap peranan media dalam menyebarluaskan informasi mengenai pembatalan keberangkatan jamaah haji dilihat dari dimensi-dimensi wacana kritis. Oleh karena itu metode penelitian ini menggunakan Analisis Wacana Kritis dari Norman Fairclough. Hasil penelitian ini menunjukkan bahwa peranan media dalam kebijakan pembatalan jemaah haji tahun 2021 terdiri dari tiga hal penting. Pertama, media berpihak pada konten pemberitaan tentang pembatalan haji berdasarkan pada norma yang sesuai dengan undang-undang dan berbagai peraturan turunannya. Kedua, kelompok media arus utama memiliki konsep tersendiri dalam memahami cara menyebarluaskan informasi sehingga dapat menjadi wacana publik, namun sekaligus dapat memahamkan publik setelah kembali dimainkan di panggung media arus utama. Ketiga, media berperilaku sebagai bandul pendulum yang dapat bolak-balik berkontribusi dalam “mengorkestrakan” wacana publik dalam konteks ini tentang pembatalan pemberangkatan jemaah haji.     


Author(s):  
Yochai Benkler ◽  
Robert Farris ◽  
Hal Roberts

This book examines the shape, composition, and practices of the United States political media landscape. It explores the roots of the current epistemic crisis in political communication with a focus on the remarkable 2016 U.S. president election culminating in the victory of Donald Trump and the first year of his presidency. The authors present a detailed map of the American political media landscape based on the analysis of millions of stories and social media posts, revealing a highly polarized and asymmetric media ecosystem. Detailed case studies track the emergence and propagation of disinformation in the American public sphere that took advantage of structural weaknesses in the media institutions across the political spectrum. This book describes how the conservative faction led by Steve Bannon and funded by Robert Mercer was able to inject opposition research into the mainstream media agenda that left an unsubstantiated but indelible stain of corruption on the Clinton campaign. The authors also document how Fox News deflects negative coverage of President Trump and has promoted a series of exaggerated and fabricated counter narratives to defend the president against the damaging news coming out of the Mueller investigation. Based on an analysis of the actors that sought to influence political public discourse, this book argues that the current problems of media and democracy are not the result of Russian interference, behavioral microtargeting and algorithms on social media, political clickbait, hackers, sockpuppets, or trolls, but of asymmetric media structures decades in the making. The crisis is political, not technological.


Author(s):  
Henry A. Giroux

Education in society occurs across both formal and informal spheres of communication exchange. It extends from schools to diverse cultural apparatuses such as the mainstream media, alternative screen cultures, the Internet, and other spaces actively involved in the construction of knowledge, values, modes of identification, and agency itself. The modern era is shaped by a public pedagogy rooted in neoliberal capitalism that embraces consumer culture as the primary mechanism through which to express personal agency and identity. Produced and circulated through a depoliticizing machinery of fear and consumption, the cultural focus on the pursuit of individual desires rather than public responsibilities has led to a loss of public memory, democratic dissent, and political identity. As the public sphere collapses into the realm of the private, the bonds of mutual dependence have been shredded along with the public spheres that make such bonds possible. Freedom is reduced to a private matter divorced from the obligations of social life and politics only lives in the immediate. The personal has become the only sphere of politics that remains. The rise of the selfie as a mode of public discourse and self-display demands critical scrutiny in terms of how it is symptomatic of the widespread shift toward market-driven values and a surveillance culture, increasingly facilitated by ubiquitous, commercial forms of digital technology and social media. Far from harmless, the unexamined “selfie” can be viewed as an example of how predatory technology-based capitalism socializes people in a way that encourages not only narcissism and anti-social indifference, but active participation in a larger authoritarian culture defined by a rejection of social bonds and cruelty toward others. As with other forms of cultural and self-expression, the selfie—when placed in alternative, collective frameworks—can also become a tool for engaging in struggles over meaning. Possibilities for social change that effectively challenges growing inequality, atomization, and injustice under neoliberalism can only emerge from the creation of new, broad-ranging sites of pedagogy capable of building new political communities and drawing attention to anti-democratic structures throughout the broader society.


2019 ◽  
Vol 64 (5) ◽  
pp. 591-607
Author(s):  
Marco Giugni ◽  
Maria Grasso

In this article, we employ data from comparative claims analysis of five major newspapers in nine European countries between 2010 and 2016 to examine discourse around youth. We look at the ways in which collective actors frame youth in the public domain and how this may provide discursive opportunities understood in terms of the extent to which public discourse portrays young people as agents of social change. More specifically, we argue that young people are depoliticized in the public domain. We find that public statements and more generally public discourse about youth tend to depict them as actors who do not have political aims or to focus on other, nonpolitical characteristics. Our exploratory analysis shows that, while youth are fairly present as actors in the public domain, they are only rarely addressed or discussed in political terms. Moreover, where they are addressed politically, it is in negative terms, with few political claims. At the same time, we observe important cross-national variations, whereby the depoliticization process looks to be further matured in some countries relative to others. This process of depoliticization of youth in the public domain, in turn, has important implications on their potential for acting as political agents and for their political activism.


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