Gender,media, and myth-making: constructing China’s leftover women

In the last 10 years, the term ‘leftover women’ (剩女)—educated, unmarried women over the age of 27—has emerged as a visible stereotype in popular consciousness in China. Despite the surplus of men that is a result of China’s One Child Policy, women are blamed for marriage market challenges through sexist narratives and terminology. While some scholarship treats ‘leftover women’ as an accepted demographic phenomenon with clear causes and impacts, it can also be viewed as an artificial construct created through socially generated gender stereotypes and furthered through media messaging. This article examines and compares sociological research on Chinese marriage patterns, presentations of ‘leftover women’ in contemporary Chinese media, and independent interview findings to understand the role of media in the construction of gender discourse and the perpetuation of gender stereotypes. These rigid concepts of gender roles and ideal womanhood have far-flung consequences, both for women who internalize these misperceptions and for the social hierarchies supported by antiquated gender constructs.     

The Stubborn Pervasiveness of Television News in the Digital Age and the Field’s Attention to the Medium, 2010–2014

A secondary analysis of 2010–2014 World Values Survey (WVS) data (N = 81,229) is performed across 56 countries to assess frequency of exposure to television news versus the Internet and mobile phone as information sources. A large majority of the comparisons (105/112; 93.75%) reveal television to be used more frequently than Internet or mobile phones (p < 1.0E-09). A content analysis of works published in 9 communication journals from 2010 to 2014 indicates a precipitous decline in the attention political communication scholars are giving to television. Meanwhile, there is substantial growth in the focus on new media.     

The development of recordkeeping systems in the British Empire and Commonwealth, 1870s–1960s

¹ 1. Use of the term ‘recordkeeping’ should not be taken as an endorsement of the Records Continuum as elaborated by Frank Upward and his collaborators. View all notesThis essay demonstrates that initiatives in the imperial periphery, not least in Western Australia, played a significant role in the development of recordkeeping systems in the British Empire and Commonwealth. Local circumstances, including the adequacy of local revenues and the availability of skilled staff, played their part in shaping the systems. Nonetheless, there are overarching patterns. The need to maintain security provided a potent driver for the creation of confidential registries. The need to carry out basic functions influenced the design of recordkeeping systems far more than any shared ‘imperial imaginary’. The diverging work patterns of colonial capitals and of district administrations tended to produce distinct recordkeeping systems. The development of integrated registry systems may have played a part in the development of the Secretariat as an institution of colonial government.     

Counting the house in public television: A history of ratings use, 1953–1980

This study explores the evolution, diffusion and application of audience research in public television from its origins through the 1970s, the formative period for the system. Shifts in funding structures for public TV and the rise of cable and satellite competition are reflected in the changing practice of such research.     

Archiving the wild,the wild archivist: Bukit Brown Cemetery and Singapore’s emerging ‘docu-tivists’

In recent years there has been growing interest in the discipline of computing in relation to cultural heritage, parallel with developments in greater user participation in archives and advances in documentation work. These trends are reflected in the case of a documentation project of an old Chinese cemetery in Singapore, Bukit Brown Cemetery. This case was characterised by tensions among the ‘wild’ array of emerging individual participants and archivists that took the momentum away from both more formal NGOs and government institutions in documenting, archiving and raising awareness of the heritage of the site when part of it was announced to be set aside for a new highway. The case presents a compelling need for participatory archives, facilitated by computing interventions encouraging public engagement and visits to the site. Being actively involved in the documentation process, the authors reflect on how conceptual frameworks of records may assist in designing new media innovations and informing the ways by which a cemetery may be documented. Through these reflections, the authors argue for the active participation of archivists and records professionals in documentation work, and demonstrate how, in the creation and keeping of records, they shape the collective imagination of the public and other stakeholders in heritage sites.     

The good,the bad,and the unexpected: Violating audience expectations in Clint Eastwood’s speech at the 2012 Republican National Convention

Courses: Communication Theory, Nonverbal Communication, Public Speaking

Objective: At the end of this activity, students should be able to define key components of expectancy violations theory and apply the theory to analyze violations that occurred in Clint Eastwood’s speech at the 2012 Republican National Convention.     

“This is the Whiteman’s Law”: Aboriginal resistance,bureaucratic change and the Census of Canada, 1830–2006

Census information of some form has been collected in Canada since the 1611 census of New France. Aboriginal people, identified or not, have been included in these enumerations. The collection of this information has had a profound impact on Aboriginal people and has been an element that has shaped their relationship with the dominant society. In response, Canadian Aboriginal people have often resisted and refused to co-operate with census takers and their masters. This article is an examination of this phenomenon focused on the censuses conducted in the post-Confederation period to the present. A census is made to collect information on populations and individuals that can then be used to configure and shape social and political relations between those being enumerated and the creators of the census. However, the human objects of the census are not just passive integers and they have resisted its creation in a number of ways, including being “missing” when the census is taken, refusing to answer the questions posed by enumerators or even driving them off Aboriginal territory. A census identifies elements of the social order and attempts to set them in their “proper” place and those who do not wish to be part of that order may refuse to take part. Archivists and historians must understand that the knowledge gained in a census is bound with the conditions of own creation. This has been noted by contemporary Aboriginal researchers who often state that the archival record of their people often distorts history and reflects the ideas and superficial observations of their Euro-Canadian creators. Changes to the Census of Canada since 1981, have increased the participation rate and therefore changed the nature of the record.

A world-class archival achievement: the People’s Republic of China archivists’ success in opening the Ming-Qing central-government archives, 1949–1998

This article describes the first half century of the Communist government’s supervision and management of the central-government archives of the last two dynasties. Immediately with the Communist ascent to power in 1949, the new government took great interest in assembling and protecting the country’s archival documents, readying the Ming-Qing archives for access to scholars, and preparing for publication of selected materials. By the 1980s Beijing’s Number One Historical Archives, in charge of the largest holding of Ming-Qing documents, had become the first Chinese authority to complete a full sorting and preliminary catalogues for such a collection. Moreover, to facilitate searches, an attempt has recently begun to create a subject-heading system for these and other holdings in the country. In the first half century’s final decades, foreign researchers were admitted for the first time and tours and international exchanges began to take place.

The SK-II #changedestiny campaign and the limits of commodity activism for women’s equality in neo/non-liberal China

This article examines one market-based intervention to combat gender discrimination in China, beauty brand SK-II’s #changedestiny campaign, and in particular an accompanying video, Marriage Market Takeover, which attempts to challenge the cultural stigma of “leftover women” (single women over 25). By mobilizing affect and highlighting the self-optimizing subject, SK-II, through the #changedestiny campaign, positions itself as a key instigator of women’s empowerment, and ultimately of not only familial, but also societal, change. In this regard, it follows the logic of what Banet-Weiser and Mukherjee (in Commodity activism: Cultural resistance in neoliberal times [NYU Press, 2012]) call commodity activism, or the merging of consumer behavior with efforts at social change within neoliberal brand culture. However, in a context we call “neo/non-liberal China,” modes of authoritarian and therapeutic governance intersect, and consumer subjects, not consumer citizens, are encouraged. We argue that through offering resistance to, and a resolution situated within familial relationships, the #changedestiny campaign does little to challenge the patriarchal “leftover women” discourse. We further argue that gender discrimination is raised in the #changedestiny campaign as a way to rationalize a neoliberal emphasis on consumption, self-care, and personal fulfillment, and that ultimately gender—as well as class—norms are reaffirmed despite the campaign’s efforts to promote meaningful social change.     

Is plus size equal? The positive impact of average and plus-sized media fashion models on women’s cognitive resource allocation,social comparisons,and body satisfaction

During individual laboratory sessions, 49 women with an actual-ideal self-discrepancy randomly viewed 12 images of media fashion models varying in body types. Heart rate was recorded during image exposure. Self-report social comparisons and body satisfaction were measured following exposure to each image. A visual recognition test was administered following the last image. The results indicated that women reported the greatest body satisfaction and the least amount of social comparisons when viewing plus size models, but body satisfaction decreased and social comparisons increased when viewing average sized followed by thin size models. Further, as social comparisons increased (e.g., internal processing), external resource allocation and encoding decreased. The theoretical and applied implications from these findings are discussed.     

Expanding Television’s Cultural Forum in the Digital Era: Prime Time Television,Twitter, and Black Lives Matter

Twitter updates and expands television’s cultural forum model by letting viewers speak to current events such as the Black Live Matter (BLM) movement. This article analyzes 1,985 tweets in response to three television episodes (Law & Order: SVU, The Good Wife, and Scandal) that dramatized BLM, and identifies five common themes in how viewers address these representations: thematic appropriateness, timing, producers’ qualifications, institutional critiques, and the purpose of entertainment television. This study concludes that Twitter facilitates a meta-commentary, which expands traditional discussions of entertainment programming, and that these programs transcend “mere” entertainment to become critiques of larger social movements.