Critical Media Studies

The WTO protests in Seattle witnessed the emergence of an international citizens' movement for democratic globalization. With the tactical exploitation of television, the internet, and other technologies, Seattle also witnessed the enactment of forms of activism adapted to a wired society. In the wake of Seattle, this essay introduces the “public screen” as a necessary supplement to the metaphor of the public sphere for understanding today's political scene. While a public sphere orientation inevitably finds contemporary discourse wanting, viewing such discourse through the prism of the public screen provokes a consideration of new forms of participatory democracy. In comparison to the public sphere's privileging of rationality, embodied conversations, consensus, and civility, the public screen highlights dissemination, images, hypermediacy, publicity, distraction, and dissent. Using the Seattle WTO protests as a case study and focusing on the dynamic of violence and the media, we argue that the public screen accounts for technological and cultural changes while enabling a charting of the new conditions for rhetoric, politics, and activism.

Published by Cognella Academic Publishing (San Diego), ISBN 978-1-7935-2153-8. Previous editions have been adopted at 10 universities and colleges.

"Media Environments: Using Movies and Texts to Critique Media and Society" uses popular film as a gateway to critical readings, encouraging students to think creatively and critically about media, society, technology, and popular culture.

The text anthology explores media in their totality and provides models and theories for interrogating many universal themes that span media, technology, and planetary civilization. Using popular films about media as lead-ins, students are introduced to the works of well-known thinkers and writers such as Marshall McLuhan, Charlton D. McIlwain, Shoshanna Zuboff, Julia Hildebrand, Neil deGrasse Tyson, Devon Powers, Antonio Lopez, and many others. Chapters span interconnected topics:

Memes (original meaning),
Networks (McLuhan),
Spectacle (Debord),
Hyperreality (Baudrillard).

Capitalism and Consumerism,
Freedom and Protest,
Social-Mobile Media,
Ecology and the Anthropocene,
Science and Our Place in the Universe,
Pseudoscience and Conspiracy,
Celebrity and Superheroes,
New Concepts of "Hot" and "Cool" Media,
Land Art, Dark Skies, and Technological Civilization.

The fourth edition features 19 new readings that explore Afrofuturism in Black Panther, Avatar and global media ecosystems, Hollywood and climate change, Blade Runner 2049 and future earth scenarios, Avengers and environmental advocacy, #BlackLivesMatter and Black movements in digital culture, and the International Dark Sky movement as a radical media-tech philosophy. Intellectually rigorous and thematically diverse, Media Environments is ideal for courses and programs in media and/or communication studies.

This PDF includes Chapters 1 and 2 of the innovative text anthology, designed for use in Media Studies courses, especially large lecture courses like "Media and Society."
-- The book combines movies and texts to introduce students to critical media studies. Accessible and readable, the book is well-liked by students. Topics include the Spectacle, Hyperreality, the Global Village, Social/Mobile Media, Capitalism and Counterculture, Surveillance and Privacy, Ecology and the Anthropocene, Media and Science, Media Futures, the Meme (original version from Dawkins), and many others.
-- Upon adoption, I will provide handouts, syllabus, PPTs.
-- Published by Cognella.  https://titles.cognella.com/media-environments-9781516521104

For the data center industry, efficiency is an imperative and a struggle. Machines require constant power and cooling, yet often have very low utilization rates, where jobs are actually being computed. To improve efficiencies, Alibaba began co-allocating jobs on the same array of machines and released datasets from this production cluster. This article explores this dataset via a series of data visualization. These images show, even on its own narrow terms, the dataset fails to achieve the vision of efficiency. The high diversity of job lengths and types create unevenness and conflict in the data center—work itself disrupts optimal efficiency. For the industry, efficiency should best be handled by machines, with automation freeing up operators for higher-level, higher-impact tasks. However, the logic of efficiency may itself be questioned. Efficiency introduces a particular framing, defining a problem, establishing a goal, and offering a compelling road map forward. If efficiency is clarifying, it is also obfuscating, bracketing out alternative ways of understanding these sociotechnical systems. As hyperscale technology companies dominate data centers, often what is becoming more efficient are exploitative or extractive operations. Efficiency should then be challenged, but without falling back to a familiar valorization of inefficiency. As the data center grows in significance while decentering human labor, it becomes important to develop a critical theorization of efficiency attuned to the new conditions of this machine-centric future.

Social acceleration may be described through the analogy of software updates. That is, updating to the latest requires some sort of forgetting of the former. This article argues that knowledge is increasingly severed from learning and thinking, following Bauman's (2005) insight that contemporary society no longer produces a culture of learning but rather a culture of forgetting, disengagement and discontinuity. First, I will review the development of the knowledge society and its promise, which social acceleration will let us forget that the same promise is still pending in contemporary discourse. Then I will address the problem of disengagement, or fear of involvement, which consequently alters the relation people have with each other and learning. Discontinuity is when society loses its connection with its past and future alternatives. Time ceases to be inscribed in duration to become scattered moments, drifting loose with the relentless overflow of information. However, learning takes time; it is a built-in property that was also forgotten alongside the 'updating' of the contemporary conceptions of knowledge. One needs time to think and connect what was, what is and what could be to foster imagination and creativity, to figure out that society could be otherwise and become an object of critique, and most importantly, an object of involvement and learning.

Der hier vorliegende ethnographische Text untersucht negative soziale Dynamiken, die durch die Nutzung sozialer Medien entstehen können. Das empirische Material basiert auf Feldforschungen, die zwischen 2013 und 2015 sowohl online als auch offline durchgeführt wurden. Bei dem Fallbeispiel handelt es sich um einen kommunalpolitischen Wahlkampf in der südostspanischen Stadt Murcia. Im Fokus stehen parteiinterne Diskussionen innerhalb eines linksgerichteten Bündnisses, die zu einem großen Teil in der Quasi-Öffentlichkeit sozialer Medien ausgetragen wurden. Einstiegspunkt in den Text bildet eine spezifische Vorannahme, die von den Aktivisten und Aktivistinnen im Vorfeld der Kommunalwahl geteilt wurde. Die beforschten Akteure gingen davon aus, dass die Art von Öffentlichkeit, die soziale Medien für sie generierten, ihnen dabei helfen würde, einen erfolgreichen populistischen Wahlkampf zu führen. Konträr zu dieser kulturoptimistischen Perspektive auf Technologie arbeitet der Text einen Widerspruch heraus, der den Wahlkämpfer*innen selbst verborgen blieb: Er bestand zwischen dem Ideal der demokratischen Gemeinschaftsform, das sie in ihrem Bündnis umzusetzen suchten, und der kommerziellen Logik jenes digitalen Mediums, dessen sie sich in ihrem aktivistischen Alltag hierfür bevorzugt bedienten: Facebook. Dessen Fragmentierung und Algorithmisierung wirkten in dem hier untersuchten Sample als Amplifikatoren bestehender sozialer Beziehungen. Zwar verstärkte das soziale Medium in einigen Fällen das Gefühl von Zusammengehörigkeit, größtenteils entfaltete es aber destruktive Dynamiken. Als „Egomedium“ war es nicht nur maßgeblich mit dafür verantwortlich, dass die Wahlkampfstrategie ins Stocken geriet, sondern auch dafür, dass das kommunale Wahlbündnis am Ende zerbrach. Aus der hier vorgestellten, kulturanthropologischen Analyse ergibt sich nicht zuletzt ein gleichermaßen demokratietheoretisches wie medienpolitisches Argument. Ein global operierendes Technologieunternehmen wie Facebook trägt auch eine Verantwortung für jene Formen von Mikro-Öffentlichkeiten, die seine Software – quasi als Nebenprodukt – in unzähligen lokalen Kontexten erzeugt.

A strange obsession for truth seems to define the present time: injunction to truth-telling, call to being authentic, fear of the fake are some of the features characterizing practices and rethorics of our living together. The realm of politics appears to be a privileged ground to this end, being able to grasp the symptoms diffused in the everyday life and configure them into steady models of behaviour through the effectiveness of its (self)representations. This paper aims to address the rhetoric pervasiveness of the concept of truth by inquiring the semantic field deployed by neologism "truthiness" and its Italian translation "veracità", tentatively defined as a "natural" truth that presents itself without mediation or filters and keeps together diverse phenomena, from popular wisdom to food wholesomeness. As a matter of fact, the need for witnessing one's genuine and truthful being seems to be the recurrent feature in several cultural expressions of the present time, as well as in the subsequent subjectivation processes. The goal of the paper is thus to analyse this "aesthetics of truthiness" to outline its specific enunciative strategies that testify how the matter of post-truth should be addressed primarily in terms of behaviours instead of knowledge. Fig. 1-"Governo balneare": Matteo Salvini al Papeete di Milano Marittima Lo sguardo trasognato, leggermente all'insù, fissa il volto di una ragazza in costume che danza. Occhi socchiusi, espressione estatica, microfono in mano: in piedi probabilmente sul cubo, la vocalist si dimena di fronte a Matteo Salvini che a torso nudo, la pelle salmastra rubizza per il sole, divide il

This article investigates the reception of two of the most popular TV programs depicting Italian American mafiosi: The Untouchables (1959-63) and The Sopranos (1999-2007).  Italian American organizations protested against both these ethnic representations, winning concessions from producers in the 1960s but coming up empty by the turn of the last century.  The paper argues that the relative success or failure of these antidefamation efforts is not a mere barometer of white ethnics' cultural status nor aesthetic achievement.  Rather, the cultural status of television itself affected the ways the protesters made their claims and whether or not their demands were met.

While “media geography” has coalesced in recent years as an identifiable subdiscipline of human geography, media geography did not emerge from a linear history, nor does it have a clearly defined or singular focus. Compiling this edition, participating in media geography networks at conferences and elsewhere, and teaching media at our respective institutions have all abundantly revealed that media geography is a subdiscipline with many different routes and trajectories. People come to identify as media geographers as a result of an interest in a particular medium such as film, television or radio, through the literature on the Internet and geographies of cyberspace, through critical and popular geopolitics, through questions of development and the digital divide, through media and cultural studies, through communication studies, through scholarship on the city and urban studies, and through GIS, the geoweb and geospatial technologies.Media geography intersects with social and cultural geography, development geography, political geography, feminist geography, economic geography and GIS. One of the major contributions of media productions, spaces and analyses are the opportunities they offer for providing an entryway into understanding places and communities that we may otherwise rarely, if ever encounter—but this can be problematic when the identity and places that are being marked as yours, no longer appear recognisable, representative and/or desirable. The contributions in this collection pay close attention to such opportunities and challenges posed by a range of media formats, contexts and methods. These diverse entry points make for a rich emerging field in which a number of voices and perspectives are present. The field is further complicated and enriched by scholars in media studies who have turned to human geography and human geographic concepts, in order to take space, place and scale seriously in their analyses of media texts, industries and audiences. Given the diversity of the field, we thought it valuable as editors to write three position pieces that situate our work, and us personally, within the broader project represented by the scholars in this volume.

With the widespread adoption of ICT technologies, platforms, social media and sharing economy businesses have emerged as models of economic organization. This paper examines their functioning on a micro level to provide a thorough critique. The theory of cognitive capitalism and opposing arguments are explored in order to bring a holistic understanding and observe how value is captured and accumulated with the use of technological apparatuses. Cognitive capitalism is not uniform, however, and recognition of the special properties displayed by networks makes it possible to identify the challenge posed by the rising array of netarchist platforms. Platform cooperativism is the proposed egalitarian and long-term sustainable counter, as it aims to design new tools in line with the commons paradigm. Finally, the paper provides key insights into the specifications, difficulties, and next steps required to lead to better platform coops and a better future.

Iz uvodnika: "Prav v teh okoliščinah je še toliko pomembnejše, da politično ekonomijo komuniciranja vnovič vzpostavimo kot temelj kritičnega (če že ne celotnega) komunikološkega raziskovanja. Razlog ni le v dejstvu, da kritična komunikologija – s tem pa tudi politična ekonomija komuniciranja – vprašanj, povezanih z mediji, komunikacijskimi sistemi, informacijskimi tehnologijami ali komunikacijsko sfero ne obravnava zaradi njih samih, temveč zaradi njihove konstitutivne vloge, ki bi jo morali igrati v demokratičnih družbah. Še pomembnejši vzrok je: a) v fokusu tega pristopa, ki je odločno usmerjen v proučevanje asimetrij moči, globokih družbenih razkolov in skrajnih neenakosti v nadzoru nad proizvodnimi sredstvi, ter b) v njegovih temeljnih izhodiščnih značilnosti, ki jih v prevedenih besedilih omenjajo tako Meehanova, Mosco in Waskova kot McChesney, torej v zgodovinski perspektivi, združevanju in preseganju ločnice med teorijo in prakso, izhajanju iz družbene totalitete in moralni filozofiji oziroma normativnih predpostavkah, zaradi katerih je pristop odkrito političen. Ta izhodišča so še zlasti pomembna v času globoke krize, saj je skrajni čas, da se domnevno kritični del znanstvene sfere začne zavedati svojega poslanstva in se preneha pretvarjati, da je lahko izločen iz družbenih bojev."

In 2016 Instagram integrated personalization algorithms into its system, promising to show the moments they believe we will care about the most. The platform's personalization logic and its commercial nature raise concerns regarding the emergence of filter bubbles and "individual realities", privileging topics that reflect a firm market logic and represent a reality where capitalism dominates. The present study aims to investigate the existence of a filter bubble on Instagram, posing the following questions: Do filter bubbles exist on Instagram? Do Instagram algorithms favor commercial soft topics? The study employs the algorithm auditing method, impersonating a user interested in soft-topics and another one involved in public-oriented topics by creating fake accounts. Both accounts' recommendations were collected and analyzed qualitatively. The analysis shows that Instagram algorithms render certain topics much more salient, generating a filter bubble of soft topics that closely resembles what Debord introduced as the spectacle.

A presence for decades in individuals' everyday life practices and identity formation, The Walt Disney Company has more recently also become an influential element within the 'big' curriculum of public and private spaces outside of yet in proximity to formal educational institutions. Disney, Culture, and Curriculum explores the myriad ways that Disney's curricula and pedagogies manifest in public consciousness, cultural discourses, and the education system. Examining Disney's historical development and contemporary manifestations, this book critiques and deconstructs its products and perspectives while providing insight into Disney's operations within popular culture and everyday life in the United States and beyond. The contributors engage with Disney's curricula and pedagogies in a variety of ways, through critical analysis of Disney films, theme parks, and planned communities, how Disney has been taught and resisted both in and beyond schools, ways in which fans and consumers develop and negotiate their identities with their engagement with Disney, and how race, class, gender, sexuality, and consumerism are constructed through Disney content. Incisive, comprehensive, and highly interdisciplinary, Disney, Culture, and Curriculum extends the discussion of popular culture as curriculum and pedagogy into new avenues by focusing on the affective and ontological aspects of identity development as well as the commodification of social and cultural identities, experiences, and subjectivities.

"Salò o le 120 giornate di Sodoma" (1975) di Pier Paolo Pasolini e "Todo modo" (1976) di Elio Petri: due film gemelli ed estremi, dalla medesima tonalità apocalittica e dall’identico destino censorio. Due film che si trovano uniti anche nel confronto implicito con il pensiero di Michel Foucault, proprio in quei mesi impegnato in una svolta significativa nei suoi lavori con il passaggio da "Sorvegliare e Punire" (1975) a "La volontà di sapere" (1976). Attraverso l’analisi comparata dei due film e di alcuni passaggi del filosofo francese dedicati al concetto di potere pastorale, questo libro si concentra su una fase cruciale della storia della cultura critica europea, nella quale prende compiutamente forma, all’incrocio tra arte e filosofia, la riflessione sul ruolo della verità nell’esercizio del potere. Un momento originario che influenzerà ampiamente la teoria critica successiva nonché gran parte del cinema italiano più recente, da Nanni Moretti a Paolo Sorrentino e Matteo Garrone, e che propone alcune chiavi di lettura decisive per comprendere la nostra attuale ossessione per il vero e l’autentico nei comportamenti e nei sentimenti quotidiani.

These are the slides I used on the second day (August 29, 2020) of the broadcast online lecture series titled "Amplifying Issues through Investigative Broadcast Journalism" organized by the Polytechnic University of the Philippines (PUP) and Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism (PCIJ).

Very few contemporary television programs provoke spirited responses quite like the dystopian series Black Mirror. This provocative program, infamous for its myriad apocalyptic portrayals of humankind's relationship with an array of electronic and digital technologies, has proven quite adept at offering insightful commentary on a number of issues facing contemporary society. This timely collection draws on innovative and interdisciplinary theoretical frameworks to provide unique perspectives about how confrontations with such issues should be considered and understood through the contemporary post-media condition that drives technology use.

From Jesus to the Internet examines Christianity as a mediated phenomenon, paying particular attention to how various forms of media have influenced and developed the Christian tradition over the centuries. It is the first systematic survey of this topic and the author provides those studying or interested in the intersection of religion and media with a lively and engaging chronological narrative. With insights into some of Christianity s most hotly debated contemporary issues, this book provides a much-needed historical basis for this interdisciplinary field.

В статье на примере исследовательской практики британской школы “исследований культуры” (cultural studies) исследуются возможности применения (нео)марксистского понятия идеологии в области изучения масс-медиа и популярной культуры (popular culture). Автор рассматривает «исследования культуры» 1970-1980-х годов с точки зрения их вклада в развитие (нео)марксистской проблематики идеологии. Указанная проблематика задавала рамку для конкретных исследований масс-медиа и популярной культуры, отличающихся, в свою очередь, высоким уровнем теоретической рефлексии.
Как показано в статье, наиболее ценные результаты в указанных областях были достигнуты за счет синтеза марксистского понятия идеологии в трактовке Л.Альтюссера,  концепции гегемонии А.Грамши и (пост)структуралистской семиотики и теории дискурса. В статье проводится мысль о том, что отход более поздних «исследований культуры» от (нео)марксистской проблематики идеологии оставляет незавершенным проект критического исследования сложного взаимодействия культурных практик и структур классового доминирования в современном обществе.

A study of the limits of multilingual literary expression in print culture. Beginning with the insight that multilingual literature defies simple translation, Brian Lennon examines the resistance multilingual literature offers to book publication. Looking closely at the limit of multilingual literary expression and the literary journalism, criticism, and scholarship that comments on multilingual work, In Babel’s Shadow presents a critical reflection on the fate of literature in a world gripped by the crisis of globalization.

We investigate the uses of social media by disabled musicians/musicians with disabilities. Viewing social media as potential assistive technologies, we discuss SignSnap, Bandhub, and Facebook and discuss how these platforms are used by disabled/musicians/musicians with disabilities to connect with others and generate content. We also critically examine how generated content is read/heard and may be (mis)represented and (mis)appropriated by nondisabled audiences through the critical case of the video of Julia Maritza Ceja. This case, analyzed through the application of theories of disability develop in disability studies literature, examines the ease by which content generated by disabled musicians/musicians with disabilities can become problematic through what we can "inspiration pornification." We conclude by noting both the positive and problematic potentials of social media in the music learning and music making of disabled musicians/musicians with disabilities.

Talking politics online is not exclusively reserved for those spaces dedicated to politics, particularly the everyday political talk crucial to the public sphere. However, past net-based public sphere research has focused mostly on political spaces thereby neglecting an array of other genres. The aim of this article is to move beyond politically oriented communicative spaces by investigating political talk within the British reality TV discussion forum Wife Swap. The purpose is to see whether a forum dedicated to reality TV provides the communicative space, content, and style for politics that extends the public sphere. The central question is whether it fulfils the requirements of rationality and ‘decent’ deliberation. Moreover, the analysis moved beyond a formal notion by investigating how expressives influence the more traditional elements of deliberation. The findings revealed that Wife Swap participants engaged in political talk that was often deliberative. Moreover, it was a space where the use of expressives played a key role in enhancing such talk.

AI voice assistants are based on software that enters in dialogue with users through speech in order to provide replies to the users’ queries or execute tasks such as sending emails, searching on the Web, or turning on a lamp. Each assistant is represented as an individual character or persona (e.g. “Siri” or “Alexa”) that despite being non-human can be imagined and interacted as such. Focusing on the cases of Alexa, Siri and Google Assistant, this working paper argues that AI voice assistants activate an ambivalent relationship with users, giving them the illusions of control in their interactions with the assistant while at the same time withdrawing them from actual control over the computing systems that lie behind the interface. The paper illustrates how this is made possible at the interface level by mechanisms of projection that expect users to contribute to the construction of the assistant as a persona, and how this construction ultimately conceals the networked computing systems administered by the corporations who developed these tools.

This working paper is an early draft of chapter 6, Simone Natale, Deceitful Media: Artificial Intelligence and Social Life after the Turing Test, forthcoming with Oxford University Press, 2021.

The dominant discourse surrounding the teaching of writing focuses on texts and thoughts, words and ideas, as though these entities existed apart from the bodies of teachers, writers, audiences, communities. As a discipline, broadly speaking, we in composition and rhetoric have not acknowledged that we have a body, bodies; we cannot admit that our prevailing metaphors and tropes should be read across the body, or that our work has material, corporeal bases, effects and affects. Yet some recent attention to embodiment and to body politics in composition theory and research, and indeed the creation of a collection like this, suggests that we are beginning to recognize the corporeal entailments, foundations, and connections in the teaching of writing (see Fleckenstein, Hawhee, Couture, Lewiecki-Wilson and Wilson, McRuer). In this essay, I will build on this momentum as I argue that, in fact, ignoring the body has serious consequences. As we compose media, we must also—always—compose embodiment. I will also argue that we must be careful about which bodies we conceptualize. In this essay, I will critically investigate the ways that embodied pedagogy can be developed without invoking normative models of embodiment. And I will make some modest suggestions about ways that we can develop technologies and pedagogies for writing that not only affirm the body, but that affirm all bodies.

A number of high-profile corporate scandals were reported in Japan in 2011, and the accounting scandal of the Olympus Company was among them. During 2011, suspicions surfaced that Olympus had been engaging in improper accounting practices for over 20 years. The main aim of this case study is to delineate the scandal narrative while emphasising the performance of its main actors: The Olympus representatives, the main whistleblower (Michael Woodford), and all the media outlets that participated in the scandal (both mainstream, tabloid, and foreign). It was precisely the reluctance of the mainstream media to publish new of the corruption on the one hand, and the vigilance of the foreign and tabloid media to amplify it on the other, that contributed to the outcome of the scandal.

This study examines how the political elite shape the news coverage of the media by analyzing the two newspapers, the Daily Express and The Guardian’s, coverage of the 1989 Hillsborough Disaster – a disaster which claimed the lives of 96 Liverpool FC fans and which remains the worst football stadium-related disaster in British history. Through use of media hegemony and framing, along with key theoretical concepts, several imprints of the power elite’s hegemonic dominance were found. The Daily Express and The Guardian blamed a variety of actors, including the football fans, for the disaster in their 1989 to 1990 coverage due to conflicting opinions between the elites. However, from 2012 to 2013, the coverage changed to blame mainly the police, thereby reflecting the consensus reached by the elites on who were to blame for the disaster. This shaping of discourse is the result of routinization. The study hypothesized that there would be a change in sources, from elite to community sources, in the 2012 to 2013 period because of the release of the independent report, which exonerated the fans. Instead, the study concludes that the two newspapers predominantly used elite sources in both time periods and that routinization is so engrained in British journalism that despite the revelation of failures by the authorities, these were still the main sources sought for information. Finally, the Daily Express and The Guardian not only predominantly quoted elite sources but also afforded them space to defend themselves in the very same stories where they were criticized. This was an advantage that was not afforded to the football fans when they were criticized.

Cover copy:

In defiance of the alleged "death of romantic comedy," After "Happily Ever After": Romantic Comedy in the Post-Romantic Age edited by Maria San Filippo attests to rom-com’s continuing vitality in new modes and forms that reimagine and rejuvenate the genre in ideologically, artistically, and commercially innovative ways. No longer the idyllic fairy tale, today’s romantic comedies ponder the realities and complexities of intimacy, fortifying the genre’s gift for imagining human connection through love and laughter.

It has often been observed that the rom-com’s "happily ever after" trope enables the genre to avoid addressing the challenges of coupled life. This volume’s contributors confront how recent rom-coms contend with a "post-romantic age" of romantic disillusionment and seismically shifting emotional and relational bonds. Fifteen chapters contemplate the resurgence of the "radical romantic comedy" and uncoupling comedy, new approaches in genre hybridity and serial narrative, and how recent rom-coms deal with divisive topical issues and contemporary sexual mores from reproductive politics and marriage equality to hook-up culture and technology-enabled sex. Rom-coms remain underappreciated and underexamined—and still largely defined within Hollywood’s parameters of culturally normative coupling and its persistent marginalization of racial and sexual minorities. Making the case for taking romantic comedy seriously, this volume employs critical perspectives drawn from feminist, queer, postcolonial, and race studies to critique the genre’s homogeneity and social and sexual conservatism, recognizing innovative works inclusive of LGBTQ people, people of color, and the differently aged and abled.

Encompassing a rich range of screen media from the last decade, After "Happily Ever After" celebrates works that disrupt and subvert rom-com fantasy and formula so as to open audience’s eyes along with our hearts. This volume is intended for all readers with an interest in film, media, and gender studies.

Neoliberalism, Media and the Political presents a novel critical analysis of the condition of media and journalism in neoliberal cultures. Emphasizing neoliberalism's status as a political ideology that is simultaneously hostile to politics, the argument is grounded in empirical illustrations from different social contexts, including post-Rogernomics New Zealand, Celtic Tiger Ireland, the Leveson Inquiry into the UK press, and the climate-sceptic blogosphere. Phelan draws on a variety of theoretical sources, especially Laclau and Bourdieu, to affirm the importance of neoliberalism as an analytical concept. Yet, he also interrogates how critiques of neoliberalism – in media research and elsewhere – can reduce social practices to the category of neoliberal. Against the image of a monolithic free-market ideology that imposes itself on other domains, the book identifies the potential sites of a cultural politics within neoliberalized media regimes.

In this paper, the Kony 2012 movie and movement that received both fame and fury in the spring of 2012 is critically analyzed. How did the narrative and discourses that are used represent and portray the LRA conflict, Joseph Kony himself, and Ugandans, and how did, or did not, this reinforce pre-existing power relations? First of all, the political agency of the movement is analyzed. Through a strong online presence, the campaign called on activists to go out on the street and “make Kony famous”. Moreover, activists were called upon to pressure politicians to “do something”, i.e. expand the American military mission aimed at finding Kony. Secondly, two conventional frames that are used in many analyses of movement are examined: humanitarianism and the white savior industrial complex. In the third part, I argue that these two are not opposites, but are very much related. The humanitarianism framework uses a metaphor of savages, victims and saviors (SVS), which result in somewhat neocolonial power relations. Following this SVS triangle, I argue that in the movie local Ugandans are victimized and have neither a voice nor an agency to save themselves from the savaged Kony and his LRA, and are therefore in need of the outside intervention of a savior to save them from Kony. This (Western) humanitarian agent is portrayed as capable of changing the conditions in Uganda, while local voices and agency are ignored and denied. Following Spivak (1988), I argue that this denying of local speech and discourses are a form of epistemic violence. This narrative moreover represents Ugandans as distant, suffering Others and subalterns, who are outside of Western hegemony and incapable of changing their own societal conditions. Following Hall (1992), I argue that the discourse used in the campaign, which places “the West” at the centre of the world, spreads Western dominance further across “the Rest” of the world. Finally, the humanitarian narrative, with saviorism as a core characteristic, that is used in the campaign therefore does not change the world, as it is argued in the movie itself, but rather reinforces and strengthens pre-existing power relations of Western dominance.

This article unpacks reasons why the Propaganda Model represents a critical sociological approach to understanding media and society, explores the model’s potential within the sociological field, and considers the trajectory of its reputational reception to date. The article also introduces the three central hypotheses and five operative principles of the Propaganda Model and suggests that the model complements other (competing) approaches that explore the relationship between ideological and institutional power and discursive phenomena.

Imperialism and the novel fortified each other to such a degree that it is impossible, I would argue, to read one without in some way dealing with the other. (Edward Said:71) Within his encyclopedic discussion of the relationship between imperialism and western literature in Culture and Imperialism, Edward Said (80-97) refers in some detail to the novels of Jane Austen, and in particular to Mansfield Park. The reason for selecting Mansfield Park for such detailed scrutiny is the frequent reference to Sir Thomas Bertram's Antiguan estate and its role in maintaining the privileged lifestyle of Sir Thomas and his family at Mansfield Park. By suggesting a strong link between Austen and Empire, Said (83) is arguing for a much earlier, much stronger relationship than has normally been acknowledged between Empire and the novel.

11 books (free access to full PDF texts):
Media Literacy Education and Film and Media Studies


Media and Information Literacy Education Dictionary:
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/311675000_Media_and_Information_Literacy_Education_Dictionary

Media Literacy Education:
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/267623006_FEDOROV_A_MEDIA_LITERACY_EDUCATION_MOSCOW_ICO_INFORMATION_FOR_ALL_2015_577_P?ev=prf_pub

On Media Education:
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/260230477_On_Media_Education

Violence on the Russian & American Media Screen and Youth Audience:
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/260230555_Violence_on_the_Russian_American_Media_Screen_and_Youth_Audience

Film Criticism:
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/277009139_FEDOROV_A_FILM_CRITICISM_MOSCOW_ICO_INFORMATION_FOR_ALL_2015_382_P

Film studies in the university students' audience: from entertainment genres to art house:
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/271155569_FILM_STUDIES_IN_THE_UNIVERSITY_STUDENTS%27_AUDIENCE_FROM_ENTERTAINMENT_GENRES_TO_ART_HOUSE

Western World in the Soviet and Russian Screen: From Epoch of Ideological Confrontation (1946-1991) to Modern Time (1992-2016): https://www.researchgate.net/publication/307587864_Western_World_in_the_Soviet_and_Russian_Screen_From_Epoch_of_Ideological_Confrontation_1946-1991_to_Modern_Time_1992-2016?ev=prf_pub

The White Movement Image in the Mirror of the Russian and Western Screen:
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/305441604_THE_WHITE_MOVEMENT_IMAGE_IN_THE_MIRROR_OF_THE_RUSSIAN_AND_WESTERN_SCREEN?ev=prf_pub

Reflections: West about Russia / Russia about West. Film images of people and countries:
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/307905692_Reflections_West_about_Russia_Russia_about_West_Film_images_of_people_and_countries?ev=prf_pub

Cinema in the Mirror of the Soviet and Russian Film Criticism:
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/311953725_Cinema_in_the_Mirror_of_the_Soviet_and_Russian_Film_Criticism

Russia in the mirror of the Western screen:
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/269992854_RUSSIA_IN_THE_MIRROR_OF_THE_WESTERN_SCREEN

In decine di migliaia di anni il nostro corpo non ha subito modifiche biologiche. L’homo sapiens ha intessuto una storia fatta di processi simbolici, culture, rappresentazioni, abitando sempre lo stesso corpo che ha segnato il confine tra il dentro e il fuori. Nell’era del postumano, però, il corpo sembra essersi smaterializzato, disseminato. È l’insetto kafkiano, l’androide di Dick, il cyborg di Ballard e Haraway. Eppure continua a essere il braccio a muovere il pennello dell’artista, l’occhio a guardare il foglio bianco, la mano a digitare le lettere sulla tastiera. Il corpo è ancora rivoluzionario.
Con l’ingresso del Metaverso e del fashion nft sulla scena, oggi Il corpo virtuale di Antonio Caronia diventa una lettura profetica. Ma è anche una guida per guardare il presente con le lenti di un futuro passato, uno squarcio nell’immaginario, tra ciò che siamo stati e ciò che potevamo diventare, come società e come corpi.