Policy and Partnerships for the Development of the Infoculture — Information at the Centre of a New Form of Solidarity

The development of digital technologies for the production, processing, dissemination and use of information is leading to the emergence of a new society based on a far reaching transformation in the relationship between people and institutions and on a radical change in many professional, economic, educational or cultural practices. The crucial question facing us today is whether our traditional societies are ready for such a shift in ways of thinking, communicating and acting. Are people sufficiently aware and adequately equipped to become citizens of this new information society? Are they prepared to be active, efficient and responsible participants in the new communities living on information exchange? Are we really ready to be part of a new culture based on a swifter and broader flow of information, ideas and knowledge? The development of that special culture, or infoculture, depends first and foremost on education, both general and vocational, and on initial and continuing training as well as on raising awareness among the public at large. Achieving a real infoculture calls for full-scale mobilization of all those who in their various ways are involved in the information society. Partnerships must be encouraged; national, regional or world projects must be given support; there is more than ever a need for a new form of solidarity to develop the infoculture.     

“Split Screens” and “Spin Rooms”: Debate Modality,Post-Debate Coverage,and the New Videomalaise

This experimental research examines how different presentation modalities in presidential debates and post-debate spin influence the ability to form evaluations about candidates' character, shape perceptions of their incivility, and alter judgments of political trust and news credibility. Results indicate that these experimental factors work together to encourage character judgments, diminish perceptions of candidate civility, and reduce levels of trust in government. In addition, political talk conditioned experimental effects on perceptions of news credibility, with the adverse effects of split screen presentations concentrated among those who talked about the debate. Thus, the negative effects of “in your face” politics conveyed by the “split-screen” modality appear to be most pronounced among those primed to think about performance and those attuned to politics through interpersonal talk.     

“The Facebook Election: New Media and the 2008 Election Campaign” Special Symposium

This study examines influences on the degree to which news organizations attend to everyday readers through online feedback, or conversely via advertising and marketing data. Factors at the community level, the market level, and the organizational level are examined as predictors of editors’ exposure and attention to audiences. Results of a national survey indicate that most editors tend to pay attention to both online reader feedback and marketing data. Factors at the organizational level, such as organizational size and public ownership, were more influential than community-level factors in explaining level of attention. Community structural pluralism was not a strong predictor of attention to feedback via marketing data or online. These findings suggest a business motive in editors’ communication and reinforce previous research pointing to the importance of organizational and peer-level factors in shaping journalists’ response to audiences.     

New Challenges in the Coverage of Politics for UK Broadcasters and Regulators in the “Post-Truth” Environment

The last two years have been times of turbulence for the BBC, and other broadcasters, in terms of their coverage of UK politics. Their reporting of the general elections of 2015 and 2017, of the 2016 European Union Referendum and the 2015 election of Jeremy Corbyn to the leadership of the Labour Party have been much criticised (as has that of other mainstream media outlets). And despite the rise of social media, the BBC remains the most used and most trusted source of news in the UK and hence is a vital element in the UK public sphere. Consequently, these journalistic failures—when its political coverage failed to reflect what turned out to be the reality on the ground - are particularly problematic. This brings into focus the issue of “the truth” in election and referendum campaigns. The example quoted here—about the Labour Party and antisemitism—illustrates the difficulties in arriving at the “truth”, even in the less frenetic atmosphere between campaigns. It demonstrates how there can be many truths and this, in itself, raises urgent questions about the nature of political journalism which pose challenges for public broadcasting in Britain with implications that go much wider.     

Narrative Capacity,Resistance Performance,and the “Shape” of New Social Movement Networks

The current research explored two new social movement networks in the United States in order to demonstrate the impact of narrative capacity on the “shape” of an activist network. In particular, we found that activists in a network that demonstrated efficient narrative capacity described the hub organization in positive terms, while activists in a network that demonstrated poor narrative capacity held mixed perceptions about the hub. Some activists in the second network held positive perceptions about the organization, while others held negative perceptions. The observations from these two research sites led us to conceptualize activists' differing perceptions about their respective hub organizations as “distance” that they experienced from that hub. Therefore, two different star shapes emerged from our research: a symmetrical star and elongated star. Such findings demonstrate the importance for narrative capacity in the construction and maintenance of effective activist networks.     

Understanding the “Heroes” and “It Getters”: Fandom and the Colbert Nation

The Colbert Report, an innovative American satirical news show, and the show's dedicated viewers, known as “the Colbert Nation,” redefined fan engagement through audience participation, mediated culture jamming, and ironic political spectacle. Yet very little is known about this fan group. This survey of The Colbert Report's devoted followers finds that the fans are distrustful of political and media elites, highly cynical, very politically involved, not apathetic, and moderately efficacious. Further analysis reveals that viewers have different motivations, some seeing the show as primarily entertainment, some mainly as a trusted source of political information, and others as a mix of entertainment and information. The fans are also found to be highly sophisticated consumers of satire and news, and watch the show as an alternative to mainstream media and as a form of comic relief from current events. Several implications are discussed.     

Speech and the “new” philosophies

Speech philosophy, in the face of the current anti‐intellectualism, deals with the place of rational‐logical elements in discourse. The author argues for the supremacy of reason in communication, and calls for neo‐classical communicative logic fused with the social direction of thought. Such a goal inevitably incorporates value judgments. Thus the intellectual, logical, and ethical components are an unbroken continuum in their expression and effect.     

“You can't eat information:” Government information and the information policy role of the national library of New Zealand

The National Library of New Zealand is committed to promoting access to information. Government information is a significant component in the Library's operational and policy work. The Library collects published government information and provides policy advice on New Zealanders' ability to access and use information. Over the last decade, the National Library has initiated or contributed to a number of projects concerned with government information. Some, like the Depository Library Scheme, are solely focused on government information, whereas others discuss government information issues in the wider context of information policy at the national level. This article looks at the environment in which these projects arose, what they achieved, and the reasons why it has not been easy to gain agreement for a unified focus on government information.     

Work Spouses: Defining and Understanding a “New” Relationship

Despite a spate of media attention in recent years and implications for both work and family relationships, communication scholars have yet to study work-spouse relationships. Since popular press sources have often focused on the nature of and propriety of such relationships, the purpose of this study was to empirically examine how work spouses characterized their relationships. We analyzed 269 participants’ open-ended responses to a survey, which yielded five categories: (a) characteristics of a work spouse, (b) conditions for the work-spouse relationship, (c) characteristics of the work-spouse relationship, (d) functions of work spouses, and (e) ways of managing the work-spouse relationship. From this analysis, we construct a definition of the relationship and chart a course of future research for communication scholars.     

Problems and Solutions in Our “New World of Archives”

SUMMARY

This article introduces the volume by making a distinction between authority control and the broader notion of context control. After exploring the differences between the two, and offering a tentative definition of context control, the article describes the organization of the volume, and summarizes the articles from the perspective of context control. The article then discusses the main themes that emerge from the articles, including criteria for identifying ‘new’ records-creating entities when some aspect of the current one changes, the role of standards, and the resources required to fully document contextual information. The article concludes by noting that this is a complex and evolving area in need of more study and reporting.     

Stealing the Limelight? Examining the Relationship Between New Librarians and Their Supervisors

This study was conducted in order to determine how supervisor support relates to a new librarian's job satisfaction and organizational commitment. Factors examined include whether librarians in positions of power are reluctant to foster growth in beginning librarians and, if so, whether this reluctance is due to feelings of insecurity or fear of being outshone. This paper also examines the effect a supervisor's reluctance to offer advice and mentoring on the psychological state of new librarians. Suggestions for future research are discussed.     

“New Conformism Redux”

To assess future priorities for cultural studies, this essay returns to the later writings of Raymond Williams, in particular his concerns about “new conformism.” It is argued that today we face comparable analytical challenges in which the pressures of institutionalization, and a strain of ahistoricism, have produced a “weak materialism” in contemporary cultural critique. The essay recommends a flexible and context-driven navigation of the current dominant tendencies toward micro-recuperative and macro-epistemological analysis, and proposes that this flexibility is the preferred mode of assuring that the dynamism of culture is captured by our critical methods.     

“Land of the Long Black Cloud”: Copyright Globalization and Viral Counterpublicity in Aotearoa New Zealand

Viral flows of counterpublicity are an increasingly common occurrence in the global modular network of the modern public spheres. This article applies a public sphere theoretical framework built upon the radical or agonistic tradition and a critical discourse analytical methodological framework to interpret the example of the 2009 New Zealand Internet Blackout, which was mobilized in protest against impending copyright legislation that would have rendered the Aotearoa New Zealand environment one of the harshest in the world. It shows that viral counterpublicity can generate successful counterhegemonic projects and even bring about legislative change, and in doing so, makes the argument that our understanding of what the modern public sphere is should allow for more unruly and contentious forms of democratically legitimate communication.