FOUR RUMOURS AND AN EXPLANATION

Our analysis of 2207 domestic news reports in a structured sample of UK “quality” (the Guardian, The Times, the Independent and the Telegraph) and mid-market (Daily Mail) newspapers, revealed journalists’ extensive use of copy provided by public relations sources and news agencies, especially the UK-based Press Association. A political economic explanation for this reliance on news stories produced “outside the newsroom”, draws inspiration from Gandy's notion of information subsidies and presents findings from a substantive content analysis of selected UK national newspapers, interviews with journalists working on national titles and news agencies, as well as detailed archival analysis of UK newspaper companies’ annual accounts across 20 years to deliver information about newspapers’ profitability, their expansive editorial pagination as well as the number of journalists they employ. The argument here is that this reliance on public relations and news agency copy has been prompted by the need for a relatively stable community of journalists to meet an expansive requirement for news in order to maintain newspapers’ profitability in the context of declining circulations and revenues.     

Jumping the Shark

What is the effect on media coverage of politics when political actors conform to market aspects of media logic by “jumping the shark”—staging dramatic political events to fit the demands of the media—thus reflecting what Strömbäck characterizes as the fourth phase of mediatization? Our paper answers this question with a large-scale, longitudinal analysis of how The Globe and Mail, Canada's leading national newspaper, covered 13 Canadian party leadership contests held between 1975 and 2012. We analyzed changes in the amount and style of reporting over the course of this 37-year time period, finding that the Globe has provided less coverage of party leadership competitions overall. The diminishing number of stories printed on the subject increasingly feature opinion writing, photos, combative language and the elevation of the individual candidate over the party organization. Our findings support a key element of the mediatization thesis: the shift from political logic to media logic as an organizing principle for political communications.     

Using You've Got Mail to Teach Social Information Processing Theory and Hyperpersonal Perspective in Online Interactions

Courses: Communication Theory; Interpersonal Communication; Computer-Mediated Communication

Objective: To illustrate the implications of social information processing and hyperpersonal perspective in CMC relationships

Time required: 1 hour

Materials needed: a DVD of You've Got Mail. scene 2 “Morning log-ons” and scene 21 “Still here” will be used     

“Now We Can Talk”

This paper explores debate within Puerto Rico's journalistic community regarding the journalistic role of La Comay, a full-sized puppet host of the popular information and entertainment show SuperXclusivo, which faced a boycott in late 2012 and cancelation in early 2013. Calls to boycott and shutter the daily TV show came from the island's LGBT advocates because of comments made by La Comay that they considered homophobic. This analysis of 58 texts from four of Puerto Rico's island-wide news outlets provides an opportunity to examine how a region's dominant cultural archetype—that of the motherly and controversial comadre, after which La Comay is named—appeared in boundary work conducted by local journalists as they determined whether La Comay should have been awarded journalistic status. This paper is not meant to be yet another examination of satirical journalism as much as it is a chance to explore the appearance of a region's culture in the construction or maintenance of its journalistic community.     

Enactment as rhetorical strategy in the year of living dangerously

In The Year of Living Dangerously, the philosophical position that is argued in the film's content is reflected also in the film's form; i.e., the film is an enactment of the argument it makes. Failure to recognize enactment as a viable rhetorical strategy may have led to a failure to recognize the film's rhetorical force. Further study of enactment and its rhetorical effectiveness are suggested.     

Does Ownership Matter?

Does media ownership affect the editorial page? Scholars such as Tim Groseclose, Jeffrey Milyo, and Tim Groeling have offered recent empirical tests for media bias in political news coverage. This article focuses on the editorial content of newspapers to examine whether a change in publishers affects a newspaper's editorial page's support for government action on public policy questions, the attention given to the major political parties, and the tone of coverage of the parties. Our content analyses compare the Wall Street Journal's editorial page before and after Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation purchased the paper with two newspapers that did not change ownership structures over the same time period (New York Times and Washington Times). We show that Murdoch's Wall Street Journal is far less supportive of government intervention in the economy, much more negative to Democrats, and much more positive to Republicans than the paper's editorial page was under Bancroft family ownership. We also show that the Wall Street Journal's changes were unique as the New York Times and Washington Times generally did not exhibit similar changes to their own editorial pages.     

The Effects of Viewing Grey's Anatomy on Perceptions of Doctors and Patient Satisfaction

The present investigation applies cultivation theory to describe the role of viewing Grey's Anatomy on patients' predispositions. Results demonstrate that heavy viewers of Grey's Anatomy perceive this program to be credible. Credibility was positively associated with a perception that real-world doctors are courageous. A direct association did not emerge between Grey's Anatomy viewing and a perception that doctors are courageous, although an indirect effect emerged, mediated through credibility. A positive association emerged between perceptions that doctors are courageous and patient satisfaction. Results are discussed with an emphasis on the role of entertainment programs in cultivating patients' predispositions about medical doctors.     

VISION OF THE SERMON BY PAUL GAUGUIN: AN EXPLORATION OF MAKING AND MEANING

Abstract

In preparation for a major exhibition at the National Gallery of Scotland in 2005, a thorough technical examination of VISION OF THE SERMON by Paul Gauguin was undertaken for the first time since the painting's acquisition in 1925. An inter-disciplinary approach to the research was adopted in an attempt to assess how innovative were the materials and techniques employed by Gauguin in this iconic work. The importance of the unique customs and religious piety of Brittany in 1888 to the iconography of Vision is discussed, as well as the various ways in which the original appearance of the painting has altered over time. Changes have occurred through both the natural ageing of materials and as a result of human intervention, particularly an aqueous lining and reframing. Analysis suggests that the paint medium consists of several different drying oils, confounding years of speculation that it may contain wax. The discovery that the original surface coating contains beeswax and tallow has grave implications for the feasibility of future conservation treatments. Following Gauguin's accusation of plagiarism by Emile Bernard, a tentative comparison is made between Vision and the latter's Breton Women in the Meadow. This reveals that while compositional similarities exist, Vision is far more complex, both in conception and execution.     

Radio Adaptations of Robin Hood's Legend During the Golden Age of Radio

During radio's reign on the airwaves, classics and legends were sources for radio plays written for a wide audience. Scriptwriters realized radio's cultural importance and culled classics for material that pushed their conception of “high” culture but still satisfied a wide audience. Radio plays were adapted from William Shakespeare's plays, Edgar Allan Poe's short stories, Geoffrey Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales, and Robin Hood's legend. This study covers radio adaptations of Robin Hood broadcast between the 1930s and 1970s: Popeye (1939); Buster Brown (1948); Family Theater (1949); the children's theater program Let's Pretend (1954), Escape (1952), Gunsmoke (1955); and Crisis (1975).     

The Staging of Agency in Girls Gone Wild

This paper addresses the ambivalence produced by Girls Gone Wild (GGW) as both text and social practice by interrogating the ways in which it functions hegemonically by staging an effect of agency. I draw on Bakhtin's notion of the carnivalesque as a means to examine how contradictory spatio-temporal contexts of GGW function as spaces that offer the opportunity to momentarily transgress—yet simultaneously reify—white, bourgeois norms of femininity. The videos reinforce a neoliberalist mentality of personal responsibility through the inclusion of the consent—and dissent—processes on camera. After analyzing how postfeminist discourses emphasizing “individual choice” justify GGW as a mode of female empowerment, I turn to a complementary textual analysis of GGW's role-reversal counterpart, Guys Gone Wild (2004), in an effort to show the ways in which this “mirror image” text ultimately reinforces the structure of exploitation in the original.     

Internal Party Bulletin or Paper of the Working Class Movement?

On 1 January 1930 the Communist Party of Great Britain's (CPGB) new daily newspaper, the Daily Worker, was published for the first time. It was heralded by the CPGB as a maturing of the British Communist movement, and an opportunity for the Party to spread its message to a much wider audience than previous weekly newspapers would allow. With leading Party members in control of the paper, the Daily Worker was very much a Party newspaper; however, the CPGB wanted it to be much more than an internal bulletin. This paper examines the attempts by the CPGB to create a newspaper that spoke both for and with the voice of the working-classes, whilst also spreading the Party's message. It will ultimately conclude that the CPGB's depiction of it as a paper ‘by the working-classes, for the working-classes’ reflected the Party's efforts at locating its own place within the working-class movement.     

Tense Futures: The Work of Cultural Studies

Currently, scholars grapple with media that depict Third World women as either victims of unchanging contexts or agents of liberation. To explore how a widely distributed and popular documentary film can destabilize a First World gaze, this essay examines Iron Ladies of Liberia (ILL), which traced Ellen Johnson Sirleaf's first year as president of Liberia. ILL foregrounded women's rhetorical and political agencies to alter a postwar context, while it also situated their agencies within an enabling and constraining constellation of power relationships. Through its unique relationships between filmmaker and subject, ILL suggested a transnational feminist perspective on women in media.     

The Gospel According to: A Theory of Transformative Discursive Allegory

The battle between secular culture and conservative religion is one that pervades modern society. In the face of this vehement clash, a curious collection of books has emerged that attempt to provide a means of reconciliation between faith and popular culture. The Gospel according to book series by Presbyterian publisher Westminster John Knox (WJK) Press pairs seemingly controversial artifacts of popular culture such as The Simpsons with the gospel message. These books function in a way that is similar to allegory but lacks allegorical form. This essay argues for the existence of a distinctive rhetorical strategy called transformative discursive allegory that functions to create an allegorical relationship between a secular and a sacred text. WJK's The Gospel according to book series is shown as an example of how transformative discursive allegory functions to allow the faithful to participate in popular culture while simultaneously affirming one's ideological beliefs as omnipresent in the world. The findings suggest that allegorical function and form are separate elements and that one can create an allegorical relationship without allegorical form or intent.     

The Jasper dragging death: Crisis communication and the community newspaper

This essay examines approximately 1 1/2 years of opinion page content in The Jasper NewsBoy concerning the dragging death of James Byrd Jr. in June of 1998. The manner of Byrd's murder horrified much of the nation and galvanized public discussion about race relations. The NewsBoy's coverage was an important part of the community's response to the crisis, which ranged from prayer vigils to town hall meetings. This paper sketches a brief outline of the crisis as it unfolded to provide a context for the papers role, followed by an analysis of the NewsBoy's opinion section based on Fishman's methodology for examining crisis communication events. By combining elements of civic journalism and crisis communication, the newspaper helped the town stage a successful image restoration campaign.     

The press and political continuity in China: The case of the World Economic Herald

This paper, utilizing the method of case study, investigates the role of the Shanghai‐based World Economic Herald in China's political democratization in the 1980s, and analyses its relationship with the social changes of that period.

A prominent theme running through this study is that political democratization must be coupled with economic growth in order for the role of the press to change in China.

Results of the study suggest that the World Economic Herald, throughout its ten‐year existence, became more and more politically oriented and outspoken in its coverage of key political issues. The findings also reveal that in early 1989, the Herald waged an unprecedented struggle against the Party's tight control of the news media and for political democratization including press freedom. However, its role in promoting political change was restricted by the nature of China's reform movement, which was characterized by a separation of political reform from economic reform. The development and demise of the Herald provided a window through which it could be clearly seen how the press affected and was affected by the social changes in China in the historical period of the 1980s.     

Presidential silence,C. Everett Koop,and the surgeon general's report on AIDS

On October 22, 1986, C. Everett Koop released the Surgeon General's Report on Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome. This essay examines that report as a rhetorical watershed in the national dialogue about AIDS. We suggest that this report—and the media attention that attended it—dramatically shifted the socio‐political environment concerning AIDS and contextual‐izfd Reagan's silence concerning the disease as a lack of presidential leadership on the issue.     

Hiding homoeroticism in plain view: the Fight Club DVD as digital closet

–The DVD format has emerged as the dominant digital means of repackaging films for home consumption. In this essay, we theorize this new viewing experience and identify some of the challenges it poses for the media critic. We argue that the additional material DVDs typically offer, coupled with the format's interactivity, constitute a rhetorically powerful means of directing the consumer's viewing experience and protecting the commercial viability of the product. To illustrate, we offer a critical analysis of the DVD release of the controversial film Fight Club. Our analysis suggests that Fight Club's DVD “extra text” dissuades the viewer from acknowledging the film's homoerotic elements as representing homosexual experience.