Image Deities and Devotees

Author(s):  
Balaji Maheshwar ◽  
Karthik Subramanian

Maruthar Gopalan Ramachandran (popularly known as MGR) was the Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu between 1977 and 1987. But before his famous tenure as a politician began, MGR had already cemented himself in the Tamil imagination through decades of playing the hero-saviour in blockbuster Tamil films, a suite of movies still re-watched with veneration today. Half a century prior to the pervasive social media environment we inhabit today, that turns on an equivalence between image and self, figures like MGR consciously used their star status to convert a fan following into a voter base. In this conversation, Balaji Maheshwar and Karthik Subramanian, two photographers from Tamil Nadu who are both making work exploring MGR’s legacy, open up questions around image worship, image deities and devotees, and the role of cinema in shaping our most intimate memories. Keywords: Maruthar Gopalan Ramachandran, Jayaram Jayalalitha, Tamil cinema, image worship, MGR fan clubs

2018 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 45-65
Author(s):  
Gopalan Ravindran

The notion of ‘rhetorical bodies’ argues the cause of the rhetorical elements in the material and the material elements in the rhetorical in ways that can be seen as analogous to the bi-partite modes of Deleuzian film philosophy, ‘movement-image’ and ‘time-image’. Tamil films of the 1940s and 1950s bear the strong imprints of the rhetorical elements of the Self-Respect Movement and Dravidian Movement, which took root in different versions during the 1920s–60s. The narrative locations of the bodies (both male and female) in the Tamil films of the 1940s and 1950s provide interesting theoretical and analytical challenges if one seeks to combine the Deleuzian notions of ‘movement-image’ with the notions of material rhetorics. The coming together of these notions provides new pointers to the understanding of an important phase in the history of Tamil cinema for its implications on the long-running nexus between politics and films in the state of Tamil Nadu. The Deleuzian trajectory in film philosophy provides more than enough pointers to examine early Tamil cinema's attempts to construct ‘movement-images’ through rhetorical bodies. This paper seeks to examine the contexts of ‘movement-images’ and the role of ‘rhetorical bodies’ in constructing the same in Velaikari (1949), scripted by C. N. Annadurai. Popularly known as Aringnar Anna, C. N. Annadurai was the former Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu and the Founder of DMK (Dravida Munnetra Kazhakam), the party which unseated Congress from power in Tamil Nadu in 1967, and the state remains out of reach of the national parties ever since.


2020 ◽  
Vol 9 (10) ◽  
pp. 167
Author(s):  
Christian Carvajal-Miranda ◽  
Luis Mañas-Viniegra ◽  
Li Liang

The COVID-19 epidemic was the first universal health crisis since China entered the era of mobile social media. When Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) broke out in 2003, it was not until almost six years later that Weibo was born, marking China’s entry into the era of mobile social media (Weixin 2020). In this context, this research analysed the role of the social media platform Weibo and the Internet search browser Baidu, in a government controlled online media environment, during the COVID-19 pandemic. In order to undertake this study, we applied the use of content and sentiment analysis to the discourse identified through the topics published during the investigation period, which encompassed 15 December 2019 until 15 March 2020. From the findings of this study, we concluded that, during the pre- and post-COVID-19 period, there was an important presence of social and lifestyle topic categories dominating the online discourse, which dramatically changed in correlation to the increasing spread of the disease. Additionally, there was a marked absence of topics in relation to economic and political information, and there was a notable absence of an official Government “voice” generating topics.


Author(s):  
Carolina Carazo-Barrantes

Abstract This paper analyzes the role of social media in electoral processes and contemporary political life. We analyze Costa Rica’s 2018 presidential election from an agenda-setting perspective, studying the media, the political and the public agendas, and their relationships. We explore whether social media, Facebook specifically, can convey an agenda-setting effect; if social media public agenda differs from the traditional MIP public agenda; and what agenda-setting methodologies can benefit from new approaches in the social media context. The study revealed that social media agendas are complex and dynamic and, in this case, did not present an agenda-setting effect. We not only found that the social media public agenda does not correlate with the conventional MIP public agenda, but that neither does the media online agenda and the media’s agenda on Facebook. Our exploration of more contemporary methods like big data, social network analysis (SNA), and social media mining point to them as necessary complements to the traditional methodological proposal of agenda-setting theory which have become insufficient to explain the current media environment.


Author(s):  
Hanna Kontu ◽  
Alessandra Vecchi

Although it is clear that social media is powerful, many luxury fashion brands have been reluctant or unable to develop strategies and allocate resources to effectively engage with the new media. Adopting an exploratory approach, this chapter studies the use of social media in the luxury fashion industry through three case studies from the Italian market. The aim is to understand the role of social media as a strategic marketing tool and its broader implications to the overall marketing strategy. The findings arising from this research can help practitioners and managers to make sense of the social media environment and better understand how to design social media activities to engage with the luxury fashion consumer.


2020 ◽  
Vol 32 (2) ◽  
pp. 749-768 ◽  
Author(s):  
Barbara Masiello ◽  
Enrico Bonetti ◽  
Francesco Izzo

Purpose This paper aims to understand how festival brand personality is built and managed in the social media environment by explaining the intended (by the organizers) festival brand personality and how this concept is communicated and perceived by social media users. Design/methodology/approach A multi-method research design was used. Initially, a qualitative analysis based on the free-listing psychological meaning approach was adopted. Then, a content analysis of 23,717 Facebook posts and tweets was performed through NVivo11. Finally, the resulting data were examined through a non-parametric statistical analysis. Findings The results show an “internal brand personality gap” (between the intended and communicated brand personality) and an “external brand personality gap” (between the communicated and perceived brand personality). The findings also highlight the existence of an “ultimate brand personality on social media,” which represents a collective and dynamic construct that is co-created by the organization and its customers through interaction and the key role of the customers’ experiences. Research limitations/implications The findings contribute to a theory of event brand personality and its management on social media by showing a case with multiple identities. Practical implications Implications for the organizers of festivals and non-sport events are discussed to reduce internal and external gaps and better understand the “fit/unfit problem” when dealing with brand personality on social media. Originality/value This paper contributes to a research area that is in its infancy because it is one of the first attempts to analyze festival brand personality and its relationship with social media.


2017 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 9-32
Author(s):  
Magdalena Danileț ◽  
Claudia Stoian

Abstract The purpose of this paper is to explore the role of social media in the employment setting as it is perceived by the job seekers. The study is a qualitative investigation in which thirteen in-depth interviews based on Zaltman Metaphor Elicitation Technique (ZMET) were conducted in order to gain a deeper understanding of the link between social media and the process of employment. The 22 elicited bipolar constructs associated with the role of social media in the employment setting were framed into six deep metaphors: Connection, Resource, Journey, Control, Affective Distress and Transformation. The size of the sample and the deeply subjective nature of answers provided by the subject’s limits the generalization of the results for a wider range of job seekers in the social media environment. This research provids an insight into deep-seated motivations, attitudes and behaviors involved in the use of social media by job seekers.


2020 ◽  
Vol 214 ◽  
pp. 01039
Author(s):  
Zichen Wang ◽  
Tanapol Kortana ◽  
Wenzhi Kuang

In this study, a questionnaire survey was conducted by the consumers who purchasing Huawei mobile phones in China under the social media environment as the test subjects. At present, research on self-congruence with brands is still centered offline, so this research aims to broaden the scope of the self- concept exploration to consider the role of self-congruence with brands in the network, besides, to explore that how social media marketing affects the brand loyalty of customers, and whether it will be affected by self-congruence. At the same time, based on the S-O-R theory, a research framework containing six hypotheses was proposed through this study. All hypotheses were supported after data analysis by using SPSS 25, nevertheless, management implications were proposed based on the research conclusions.


2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Heesook Choi

This study examines the participatory effects of political satire, specifically late-night talk shows, in the age of digital media. Based on the O-S-R-O-R (background Orientation-Stimulus-Reasoning-outcome Orientation-Response) model of communication effects, this study theorizes and tests structural relationships in which audience factors (e.g., partisanship, hard news use) guide political satire viewing, and information processing activities (e.g., political talk, social media expression) and cognitive outcomes (e.g., political knowledge, political efficacy) channel the impact of the audience factor-driven political satire viewing on participation. More importantly, this study examines, for the first time, the role of social media in both political satire viewing and political expression, and its influence on participation. Data from a nationally representative survey (N=573) suggest that hard news use is an essential prerequisite for the participatory effects of political satire viewing. In addition, partisanship is a key predictor of political satire viewing, and media channel matters, such that those who watch late-night talk shows on television are less likely to participate in politics, while those who watch late-night talk shows in the social media environment are more likely to participate in politics through political expression on social media. These findings highlight the importance of understanding who receives what messages from where and how in the contemporary media environment to better explain the effects of media.


2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 341
Author(s):  
Theodora A. Maniou

In the era of big data, within the intense environment of social media, the effective communication of cultural heritage initiatives is considered of equal or—in some cases—even greater importance than heritage data themselves. Media and journalists play a critical and in some cases conflicting role in audience engagement and the sustainable promotion of cultural heritage narratives within the social media environment. The aim of this study was to assess the role of media and journalists in propagating cultural heritage news through social media platforms, and the narratives they tend to create in the digital public sphere. A qualitative approach is employed as a means of examining in-depth specific narratives, their meaning(s) and connotation(s), using semantic analysis.


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