Negotiating Copyright in the American Theatre: 1856–1951

Drawing on fascinating archival discoveries from the past two centuries, Brent Salter shows how copyright has been negotiated in the American theatre. Who controls the space between authors and audiences? Does copyright law actually protect playwrights and help them make a living? At the center of these negotiations are mediating businesses with extraordinary power that rapidly evolved from the mid-nineteenth to mid-twentieth centuries: agents, publishers, producers, labor associations, administrators, accountants, lawyers, government bureaucrats, and film studio executives. As these mediators asserted authority over creativity, creators organized to respond, through collective minimum contracts, informal guild expectations, and professional norms, to protect their presumed rights as authors. This institutional, relational, legal, and business history of the entertainment history in America illuminates both the historical context and the present law. An innovative new kind of intellectual property history, the book maps the relations between the different players from the ground up.

Media representation of China in the time of pandemic: A comparative study of Kenyan and Ethiopian media

China has been a pivotal player throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, yet there is very little research on how China’s role and effort have been interpreted among African countries that are diverged in their crisis responses. Through content and discourse analysis of the local media and more than 50 in-depth interviews, this study investigates media representation of China during the coronavirus pandemic in the Kenyan and Ethiopian newspapers, specifically Kenyan’s Daily Nation and The Standard, and the Ethiopian Herald and The Reporter. This study finds that Kenyan newspapers adopted a more critical and problem-centred narrative, as many of its news articles are organized around problems such as the ‘debt-trap diplomacy’, and the mistreatment of Africans in Guangzhou during the pandemic. Unlike Kenyan newspapers, Ethiopian newspapers adopted a more positive and favourable tone towards China. This article also captures the dynamics behind the production of China-related news during the pandemic, and discusses how the media environment, professional norms, journalistic habitus, the ‘rules of games’ (i.e. who counts as an important source) have fundamentally shaped the news production.

Are conscientious objectors morally obligated to refer?

In this paper, we argue that providers who conscientiously refuse to provide legal and professionally accepted medical care are not always morally required to refer their patients to willing providers. Indeed, we will argue that refusing to refer is morally admirable in certain instances. In making the case, we show that belief in a sweeping moral duty to refer depends on an implicit assumption that the procedures sanctioned by legal and professional norms are ethically permissible. Focusing on examples of female genital cutting, clitoridectomy and ‘normalizing’ surgery for children with intersex traits, we argue that this assumption is untenable and that providers are not morally required to refer when refusing to perform genuinely unethical procedures. The fact that acceptance of our thesis would force us to face the challenge of distinguishing between ethical and unethical medical practices is a virtue. This is the central task of medical ethics, and we must confront it rather than evade it.

Audience Views on Professional Norms of Journalism. A Media Repertoire Approach

Despite several studies showing discrepancies between audience expectations of journalism and journalists’ professional norms, what remains largely unknown is the audience view on the adherence of journalism to these seemingly essential professional norms. Recent research mainly focused on analysing audience expectations within the context of specific cases. Moreover, these studies rarely take into consideration characteristics that might shape people’s views on journalism such as political ideology. This article seeks to complement these studies by exploring the impact that a user’s news consumption might have on their expectations of journalism. Utilizing data from an online survey among a representative sample of the Flemish audience, we analyse views on adherence to the main professional norms by the Flemish media, and subsequently relate these to news consumption. To grasp the cross- and multi-medial news consumer, we use a news repertoire approach. Flemish news repertoires differ significantly in views on several professional journalistic norms. By linking these distinct news repertoires to their views on professional norms of journalism, we first question how essential these professional norms put forward by journalists really are. Secondly, we discuss if expectations of journalism result in divergent news consumption strategies or vice versa, laying the groundwork for further exploring audience views on professional journalistic norms.

What are You All Going to Do to Keep Black Women in Art Therapy?

In this viewpoint, the authors describe their impressions of a 2018 conference and the significance of participating in a learning environment that centered on arts therapists of color. Collectively, two art therapy educators, a music therapy educator, one new professional art therapist, and one art therapy graduate student, question the maintenance of professional norms that have at times motivated BIPOC students and practitioners to leave the creative arts therapies in search of other professional places to thrive. The article concludes with a Womanist Manifesto for Arts Therapies Education.

New Gatekeepers in Town: How Groups in Social Networking Sites Influence Information Flows in Russia’s Provinces

The study focuses upon “city public groups” (“gorodskie pabliki,” local newsgroups on social networking sites)—the new entrants in the local media space of the Russian province that have recently become important actors of regional public communication. Such groups combine news posting and citizen discussions, report on local affairs and gossip, and entertain. Some groups are based on user-generated content; others create their own content or act as aggregators. Being non-registered and grassroots initiatives, these media enjoy higher freedom in comparison to official local newsrooms. Given the popularity of city public groups among local citizens and local authorities’ interest toward them, owners and moderators of these media are playing an influential role for local mediated discourse. Based on the gatekeeping theory and its extensions for digital space, this article explores the emerging roles of these new gatekeepers in the local communities. Based upon 28 in-depth interviews collected by the author in Russian towns in 2017–2018, the article also analyses the professional norms and values of the owners and moderators of local city groups that they employ to perform their gatekeeping function.