The “Pepper-Spraying Cop” Icon and Its Internet Memes: Social Justice and Public Shaming Through Rhetorical Transformation in Digital Culture

Within hours of its publication online, the “pepper-spraying cop” image from the Occupy Wall Street movement at the University of California–Davis became an Internet meme. The outraged public manipulated key signifiers of the famous picture, creating hundreds of digital derivatives that offered new takes on what happened. With the use of iconographic tracking and visual rhetorical analysis, the study argues that Internet memes are more than silly jokes or social commentary. Through rhetorical transfigurations, they can deliver social justice and launch public shaming campaigns, serving as online instruments to respond to an off-line event.     

Using the Theory of Planned Behavior to Predict College Students’ Intent to Use LinkedIn for Job Searches and Professional Networking

College students and recent graduates are the fastest-growing user demographic on LinkedIn, with an estimated 40 million profiles for these groups. Guided by the theory of planned behavior, 107 college students completed an online survey to determine their LinkedIn use, attitudes, perceived control, and social influences for networking and job/internship searching. The results of this study suggest that students are infrequent and passive users of LinkedIn. Past behaviors, attitudes, perceived behavioral control, and actual behavioral control were related to the effectiveness of LinkedIn to help them find internships and jobs. Parents and friends, attitudes, and past use of LinkedIn were related to their intention to use LinkedIn. Past use of LinkedIn and parents were the significant predictors of future intention to use LinkedIn.     

Walking the talk: Using digital media to develop distance learners’ digital citizenship at the Open University (UK)

ABSTRACT

This article describes the approaches that the Library at the Open University has taken to ensure that distance learning students develop digital and information literacy skills for study, work and lifelong learning. Librarians create learning objects and work with academics to embed them into the online curriculum. They also deliver a program of live online training and pilot new approaches to engage with the student community.     

From ‘poison’ to ‘seeder’: the gap between propaganda and xuanchuan is cultural*

Propaganda has been perceived as ‘poison’ in the field of communication study. Xuanchuan, propaganda’s counterpart in China with a master metaphor of ‘seeder,’ however, has different histories and traditions that do not fit into the ideology-charged theoretical framework. Drawing upon Chinese thought and scholarship on xuanchuan/propaganda, the author demonstrates a deep conceptual and perceptual gap, rooted in culture, between propaganda and xuanchuan. Revelation of the gap is of paramount importance for studying China’s propaganda, both theoretically and empirically.     

Constructing narratives of success in the introductory communication course: Using written self-assessments to understand students’ perceptions of learning

Learning outcomes assessments are an important aspect of course administration. However, these efforts tend to prioritize the perspective of instructors/administrators. This study seeks to understand how students perceive their learning gains after taking the introductory communication course. In qualitatively analyzing a sample of more than 2,500 student self-assessments, we found that students crafted narratives of success that focused on verbal and nonverbal improvements, provided accounts of growth in confidence, and demonstrated mastery of course principles. These findings incorporated student perceptions of learning and closed the assessment loop by highlighting learning outcomes that need to be better emphasized in the introductory course.     

‘My music,my freedom(?): the troubled pursuit of musical and intellectual independence on the Internet in Indonesia’

In Indonesia, the Internet has reshaped music industry praxis, particularly artist marketing and promotion. It is also a primary resource for artistic inspiration, providing musicians and producers with unprecedented access to recording artists worldwide. Finally, for the nation's top musicians, the Internet can lead to national and even international recognition, by means independent of – and even superior to – the production, distribution, or promotional support Indonesia's major record labels can provide. Answering Lysloff's call that examinations of digital media should consider how and why they are meaningful,this qualitative analysis examines the Internet practices consultants believe have radically reshaped Indonesia's national music industry and advanced its global impact. Particularly among the nation's self-described non-mainstream or independent music professionals, the Internet has revolutionized professional and social communication. Furthermore, through online intellectual critique, individual contributors also debate artistic ideals, as well as broader social and political problems. The Internet, thus, circumscribes a network of musically and socially likeminded individuals who engage in thoughtful debate about the arts and society in a presumably safe and egalitarian environment. There are limits to the Internet's equanimity and its users’ abilities to secure artistic and intellectual independence; however, spatial proximity to the music industry's epicenter in Jakarta, rhetorical dexterity in Internet correspondence, and Internet legislation all pose particular challenges to the democratization of Indonesia's independent music industry network and the professional and social relationships that happen through its channels.     

Understanding the context of records creation and use: ‘Hard’ versus ‘soft’ approaches to records management

Current records management methodologies and practices suffer from an inadequate understanding of the ‘human activity systems’ where records managers operate as ‘mediators’ between a number of complex and interacting factors. Although the records management and archival literature recognizes that managing the active life of the records is fundamental to their survival as meaningful evidence of activities, the context where the records are made, captured, used, and selectively retained is not explored in depth. In particular, the various standards, models, and functional requirement lists, which occupy a vast portion of that literature, especially in relation to electronic records, do not seem to be capable of framing records-related ‘problems’ in ways that account for their dynamic and multiform nature. This paper introduces the idea that alternative, ‘softer’ approaches to the analysis of organizational functions, structures, agents, and artifacts may usefully complement the ‘hard’, engineering-like approaches typically drawn on by information and records specialists. Three interrelated theoretical and methodological frameworks—namely, Soft Systems Methodology, Adaptive Structuration Theory, and Genre Theory—are discussed, with the purpose of highlighting their contributions to our understanding of the records context.     

Creating a collaborative “hot clock”: Using smart phones to motivate students’ learning in news interviewing and reporting

Courses: Survey of Mass Media, Broadcast Journalism, News Writing, Media Programing, Communication Technology.

Objective: Employing the concept of a “hot-clock radio format,” the purpose of this unit activity is to motivate students’ collaborative learning in news reporting, interviewing, and media programing via smart phones.     

From the Periphery to Center Stage: The Effects and Exploitation of the Other in Titus Andronicus and Assassin’s Creed III

Aaron the Moor from Titus Andronicus and Ratonhnhaké:ton from Assassin’s Creed III are each aiding in a war against an international superpower, and both characters are plotting ways to advance and improve their respective culture. Aaron is seen as the villain and the antagonist, whereas Ratonhnhaké:ton is seen as an individual who fights for freedom. However, once both characters’ usefulness is exhausted, they are easily characterized as the Other and lose whatever benefits they may have earned. They are tossed aside by the factions they are trying to help. Even though Assassin’s Creed III is a video game, the same issues of colonialism and imperialism can be investigated in this 21st-century genre as in Shakespeare’s play.     

‘Othering’ the archive—from exile to inclusion and heritage dignity: the case of Palestinian archival memory

This paper seeks to address, from the critical perspectives of cultural heritage discourse, the issues at stake in critically apprehending the archive as both a technology of disinheritance and one of potential inclusion and re-inheritance. The first section draws on the work of Jacques Derrida, Edward Said and other critics whose work has sought to address the marginalizing capacity of dominant European/North American archival and cultural–museological institutions. The remainder of the paper grounds these conceptual–ethical issues in the context of Palestinian cultural politics and memory-work. This critical framework is used not only to draw out the absences and silences in archives and cultural institutions, and the epistemological and ‘real’ violences at play in what Derrida characterises as ‘archive trauma’, but responds to Said’s call to ‘re-read’ the colonial archive ‘contrapuntally’ in order to create an ‘othering’ of dominant archival discourse. What is needed to provoke such an ‘othering’ is a commitment to rethink the archive in terms of alternative understandings of ‘hospitality’, ‘memory-work’ and what Derrida has referred to as ‘heritage dignity’. This strategy is capable of apprehending in greater depth the moral-ethical ‘debts’ and ‘duties’ and the operational ‘responses’ and ‘responsibilities’ towards ‘inclusion’ and towards full recognition of those constituencies which have been disenfranchised or exiled outside the realms of dominant cultural–institutional discourse.     

I’d Like to Buy the World a Coke: One Culture Via Apps and Global Advertising

Global cultures are merging into one culture. What has been a difference in cultures that has existed for several millennia may be gone by the end of this century, possibly much sooner. Okay, you might be thinking, how? Ah, there’s the rub! For in order that multiple cultures will disappear, languages must merge, religions must disappear, governments must change, and all the other elements that constitute unique cultures must melt together into a singular pull-down menu bar or an easily updated app-driven hand-held (if not much smaller) device. So much of that is already happening that it is hard to claim much insight with much certainty. This article seeks to examine the roles of each—culture, applications, and advertising—in the change in the way we, as individuals, shift our own societies, our own communication. Yes, that’s a lot to cover in these few pages. Let’s consider this as adding to the multitude of researchers struggling with might be best described as a start in the conversation.     

How to manage an information state: Jean-Baptiste Colbert’s archives and the education of his son

This article examines the archival methods developed by Colbert to train his son in state administration. Based on Colbert’s correspondence with his son, it reveals the practices Colbert thought necessary to collect and manage information in his state encyclopedic archive during the last half of the 17th century.

“Sleeping Beauty Gets a Makeover”: Using the Retelling of Fairytales to Create an Awareness of Hegemonic Norms and the Social Construction of Value

Courses: Any course that addresses gender, ability, identity, self-image, and power (e.g., gender communication, the introductory communication course, and interpersonal communication).     

Reality Bites: An Investigation of the Genre of Reality Television and Its Relationship to Viewers’ Body Image

Utilizing a unique methodological approach, this study investigated subtypes of reality television (RTV) to study the influence of exposure to RTV on body image (body dissatisfaction and drive for thinness) as compared a more traditional weekly report of RTV viewing. Young adults (N = 472) completed online surveys measuring their exposure to RTV and perceptions of their own body image. Four types of RTV were uncovered. Regression analyses using these 4 factors demonstrated that exposure to competition-based RTV shows (e.g., Dancing with the Stars) predicted increased body dissatisfaction and drive for thinness. On the other hand, the weekly self-report of RTV viewing did not reveal any relationships between weekly exposure to RTV and body image. These findings underline the need for cultivation-based media studies that include program-based measures of genre-specific media exposure, especially when seeking to capture media effects related to RTV.