Redefining Hijab: American Muslim Women's Standpoints on Veiling

Feminist standpoint theory suggests that, although powerful discourses attempt to define women on the “margins” of society, women's cultural positions provide them with heightened understandings of the contradictions between their experiences and the ways the dominant group defines them. Thus, while many Americans believe hijab—also called a “veil” or “headscarf”—functions to oppress women, veiled women probably possess alternative understandings. In this study, 13 veiled American Muslim women share their experiences, and under the lens of standpoint theory, the participants’ definition of hijab emerges. Specifically, the women inscribe hijab with meanings shaped by their unique cultural standpoints. Hijab functions to define Muslim identity, perform a behavior check, resist sexual objectification, afford more respect, preserve intimate relationships, and provide freedom.     

Here Comes Honey Boo Boo: A Cautionary Tale Starring White Working-Class People

Depictions of white working-class people are steadily on the rise in reality television. To understand this phenomenon, and the ways in which it articulates white working-class people in the United States today, I analyze Here Comes Honey Boo Boo, a popular reality series on TLC featuring a self-described “redneck” family. I argue that this series highlights the family's inability—because of their working-class status—to conform to “ideal whiteness,” a whiteness that displays dominant cultural standards bolstered by neoliberalism, such as wealth, rationality, personal responsibility, and self-control. The family members consequently become exemplars of “inappropriate whiteness,” a marginal identity presented as humorous and, through the use of surveillance and spectacle, authentic.     

Pornography,Alcohol, and Male Sexual Dominance

This study surveyed German heterosexual men's interest and engagement in a variety of dominant behaviors observed in recent analyses of pornography. Interest in watching popular pornographic movies or more frequent consumption of pornography was associated with men's desire to engage in or having already engaged in behaviors such as hair pulling, spanking a partner hard enough to leave a mark, facial ejaculation, confinement, double-penetration (i.e. penetrating a partner's anus or vagina simultaneously with another man), ass-to-mouth (i.e. anally penetrating a partner and then inserting the penis directly into her mouth), penile gagging, facial slapping, choking, and name-calling (e.g. “slut” or “whore”). Consistent with past experimental research on the effect of alcohol and pornography exposure on men's likelihood of sexual coercion, men who had engaged in the most dominant behaviors were those who frequently consumed pornography and regularly consumed alcohol before or during sex.     

Applications of Business Presentation Techniques to One-Shot Library Instruction

One can think of one-shot library instruction sessions as a way to introduce the academic library's resources to first-year students to help them with their research. These classes can also be thought of as an opportunity to “sell” the entire library and its resources to the student. This article will propose suggestions that can be adopted by library instruction librarians based on the recommendations and practices of business marketing practitioners and entrepreneurs who depend on one-shot “selling” meetings to convince their audience to “buy” their wares.     

On Misfits and Margins: Narrative,Resistance, and the Poster Child Politics of Rosie O'Donnell

This essay addresses why Rosie O'Donnell's “coming out” as a lesbian, as a gay parent, and as an advocate for gay adoption generated such little and lukewarm response, arguing that O'Donnell's lesbianism was rationalized in the public discourse by powerful preexisting narratives that constructed her as both maternal and childlike. These narratives converged with the narrative alterity of O'Donnell's homosexuality in such a way as to sharpen and strengthen established heteronormative discursive margins. The O'Donnell case contributes to an understanding of how dominant narratives negotiate competing narratives of resistance and offers an opportunity to examine mediated representations of “coming out.”     

Frictionless Sharing and Digital Promiscuity

This article analyses the recent Facebook innovation of “frictionless sharing”, a term which describes a smoother and wider distribution of content by individual users and a less overtly acknowledged but more efficient instrumentalization of users' immaterial labour within a structure of corporate monetization. It builds on my recent work on “the sharing subject” of contemporary digital media, in which I argue that current online social networking practices, in their emphasis on “sharing” content with networks of contacts, construct and validate the networked subject according to a version of neoliberal individualism. Moreover, the construction of this subject position implicitly recalls the heteronormativity of AIDS panic, through an unlikely rebranding of promiscuity as a desirable and successful mode of interactivity. If the new rhetoric of “sharing” erases the riskiness of circulation previously encoded in dominant images of virality, notably behaviours associated with HIV, then what is the relationship of the projected potential of “frictionless sharing” to existing normative frames of ethics and morality? In approaching this question, I revisit significant queer interventions into concepts of community and risk that emerged in the post-AIDS context, notably Tim Dean's recent examination of the barebacking subculture to which mediations of an idealized frictionlessness are also central.     

Programmer's choice: Eight factors in program decision‐making

In the introduction to Charles Woodliff's “Catch Me if You Can” in the Fall, 1965 issue of the Journal it was, prophesied that it would be not “the last that will be published on the question of the proper curriculum for training professional broadcasters.” In this issue, on the preceding pages, is an article by Professor John Pennybacker answering Professor Woodliff's article disagreeing with the one that started it all, Pennybacker's “Working with Universities.” The following comment by Woodliff is intended only as a brief comment upon Pennybacker's “Leadership and the Educator: The Middle Way” and does not, of course, attempt to make full reply in this brief form. Professor Woodliff (Assistant Professor in the Department of Radio‐Television‐Film at the University of Denver) hopes that the dialogue between him and Dr. Pennybacker represents their respective points of view fairly—and that other positions will be heard from in the future. The airing of these points of view is not just another rehash of the old “liberal arts vs. professionalism” debate. Recent surveys have shown that broadcasting education has not yet made its mark on the industry—if it is to do so in the future, teachers of broadcasting must constantly reassess their goals and the means to achieve these goals.     

How do fans purposively create information to promote a celebrity? An analysis of fans' information practices and literacy improvement

Fans purposively creating information aiming specifically to inform the public positively about a celebrity has become a significant practice within contemporary Chinese fan culture. “Celebrity promotion” information creation offers an important opportunity to understand how people intentionally create information beyond internal user groups and existing information needs. Based on unobtrusive observation and semi-structured interviews, findings show that fans create positive online content and conduct offline advertisements to boost a celebrity's specific works, reputation, and fan base. Fans also intentionally develop strategies and improve their information literacy to make informational materials more visible and appealing, while critically separating “celebrity promotion” from enjoyment-centered fandom activities. As fans adapt to the current information environment, the intentionality of their practices stems from beliefs that 1) they are the actor(s)’ shareholders/partners and 2) by creating “promotion” information, fans can achieve their goal of helping the actor(s).     

John Morley and the Irish question: Chart‐prayer‐dream

Attempts to circumscribe “the Burkean method” of rhetorical criticism can be frustrating. Critics more profitably might use Burke as an example and a prod, appropriating—as was done in this study—whichever of Burke's concepts, methods, and metaphors seem applicable to a given rhetorical event. Burke's “chart‐prayer‐dream” trilogy, together with his understanding of “strategies,” was employed to examine Morley's “Home Rule” speech before the Oxford Union in 1888. Morley's reply to Randolph Churchill abandoned propositional argument in favor of reviv‐alistic‐exhortation early in the speech; his strategies of form, argument, labelling, style, and mimesis are best understood as those of the High Priest seeking a confessional and an act of expiation from his auditors.     

Liveness, “Reality,” and the Mediated Habitus from Television to the Mobile Phone

Television's liveness has long been seen as one of its key features. This paper argues that “liveness” is not a textual feature, but a more fundamental category (in Durkheim's sense) that contributes to underlying conceptions of how media are involved in social organization through their provision of privileged access to central social “realities.” This ideological view of liveness (cf. Jane Feuer's early work) is then extended in two ways: first, to consider two new forms of “liveness” that do not involve television (online liveness via the Internet and “group liveness” via the mobile phone); and second, by connecting liveness with Bourdieu's concept of habitus, and thereby linking “liveness” (including in its extended senses) with other parts of the materialized system of classification through which we make sense of the everyday world.     

The effect of responsibility attributions on message source evaluation

Concepts from Heider's “Attribution of Responsibility” theory were used to investigate the process of message source evaluation. The results of a role‐playing experiment indicate that: (1) When a message source's previous behavior has had favorable consequences for a receiver, the source will be rated more “safe,” “qualified,” and “dynamic” to the extent that responsibility for those consequences are attributed to the source; and (2) when the source's previous behavior has had unfavorable consequences for the receiver, the source will be judged less “safe” but more “qualified” and “dynamic” to the extent that responsibility for those consequences are attributed to the source.     

The Morality of May 2, 2011: A Content Analysis of U.S. Headlines Regarding the Death of Osama bin Laden

Following the death of Osama bin Laden in the late hours of May 1, 2011, many print newspapers throughout the United States and the world ran front-page coverage of his death the following day. Although public support for bin Laden's death was largely consistent, newspaper headlines across the country varied in their presentation of the story, from “Got the Bastard!” to a more stoic “bin Laden dead.” Content analysis derived from the model of intuitive morality and exemplars (MIME) was applied to explain variance in headlines as a function of the dominant political philosophy found in different areas of the United States—philosophies rooted in moral salience structures. The MIME suggests a reciprocal relationship between basic motivations underlying moral judgment for distinct audiences and media content produced for those audiences. Consistent with predictions, findings suggest that newspapers in conservative-leaning regions presented the story as a patriotic “killing” (an emphasis on authority and loyalty), whereas newspapers from liberal-leaning regions were more likely to present it in terms of justice restoration (an emphasis on fairness and reciprocity).     

MORE NEWS FOR LESS

Using an ethnographic case study of the Newschannel at TV2 Norway, this article reveals ways in which the assembly-line mentality required by 24/7 news production nevertheless encourages reporters to negotiate a certain autonomy over their work and the routines required to produce it. By reorganizing its staff's use of time, space, and resources, TV2 was able to generate roughly 18 hours of “live” news coverage a day during the article's research period from 2007 to 2009. This production process is framed in terms of Schlesinger's “reactive” mode, here qualified as “reactive-active”, because it allows for the possibility of broadcasting live and gathering news at the same time. The article also revisits the concept of “professionalism” with regard to a traditional broadcaster's implementation of a 24/7 news channel within its existing newsroom. As a result of this process, more news—and more content concerning that news—is produced more efficiently while the tenets of traditional journalism remain operative.     

At Hospitality's Threshold: From Social Inclusion to Exilic Education

Abstract Describing actual museum‐wide events developed for the culturally charged arena of the Brooklyn Children's Museum, this article explores the philosophical and pedagogical double binds that have brought multiculturalism to a political impasse. Museums have strived to be valued resources in an increasingly diverse society. In aspiring to broaden their audience base, their work has shifted from developing educational policies that are “object‐centered” to those that are “community‐centered” — a change of strategy affecting everything from programs to exhibit design. Children's museums — distinct (if not marginalized) from the serious work of the traditional art or ethnographic or natural history museum — know and indeed say in their very name — “children's museum” — that they are for the sake of someone and not about something. They have always already been attuned to the visitor at the threshold.     

Adult Children's Forgiveness of Parents' Betrayals

The purpose of this study was to establish whether adult children's commitment, trust, and relational satisfaction are differentiated by their forgiveness stage (i.e., Stage 1, “Impact;” Stage 2, “Definition;” Stage 3, “Moving On”) in response to a parent's act of betrayal. Participants included 61 adult children who completed an online survey. Adult children's commitment, trust, and relational satisfaction were highest in the third stage of forgiveness. Future research should specifically analyze the messages exchanged between the parent and adult child to better understand the progression through the stages.     

Being Critical: Contesting Power within the Misinformation Society

This essay considers the meaning of “being critical.” Specifically, it considers how critical scholarship might aim to demystify and contest dominant power arrangements. First I situate my own work within a specific critical tradition and then I discuss the critical scholar's role in society more broadly. I draw from some of these attributes to conclude with a general proposal for a potential project focused on misinformation that may appeal to critical scholars from diverse theoretical backgrounds.     

IMAGINARY DARKROOM

What are the current working conditions and future prospects of Latino journalists working for any type of news media outlet? This question has not been addressed in any national study since Federico Subervi's 2004 research on behalf of the National Association of Hispanic Journalists. This paper revisits the same subject matter seven years after (2011) the original work was produced, updating the figures and expanding the study by incorporating Latino journalists working for ethnic media, as well as those working for general market media. The results indicate that the dominant “motivation” factors present in 2011 that influenced US Latino journalists' job attitudes were work itself, advancement, and growth. The leading “hygiene” factors that influenced US Latino journalists' job attitudes were salary and relations with peers. Survey respondents agreed that opportunities to obtain professional training would significantly increase the likelihood of keeping their job and their preference for a training topic was digital/multimedia reporting. Journalists suggested three elements to assure a better coverage of the Latino community—a Hispanic/Latino supervisor, an educated supervisor, and media owned by Hispanic/Latino person/family. Additionally, news staff feel underpaid and dissatisfied with promotion opportunities as well as opportunities to increase their salary. They have felt job discrimination based on race.     

The Delphi Project: Transforming Flemish Libraries Into User-Oriented Points of Information

ABSTRACT

Flemish libraries have historically been praised by visitors and valued by the general public, but since the turn of the century, they have seen a decline in usage. A group of libraries in Flanders believed the role of libraries should be substantially reevaluated. They embarked on the “Delphi Project” to establish methods for libraries to become centers of their local communities by focusing on the information needs of their customers. The emergence of technology supported a shift from libraries as lending institutions to information centers. In addition to a customer service philosophy and training, online tools have helped staff reach library users. An online tool called the “Bronnenwijizer” combines searching the local library catalogue, provincial and state catalogues, and the Internet. The tool also supports the creation of “baskets” for a patron's information needs that can be shared with other staff. Delphi libraries have also used “Infopleinen,” Web-based guides to topics featuring printed media and online sources. Finally, a new online question registration system was developed that fit the new Delphi service philosophy. Over half the libraries in West-Vlaanderen are entitled to call themselves Delphi Libraries, and the philosophy is being disseminated more broadly through the Delphi Project Web site. Due to governmental changes in provincial authority, the future of the project is challenged because coordination among libraries has been critical for the project's success.     

The Rivalry of Nonverbal Cues on the Perception of Politicians by Television Viewers

The current study examines how a politician's “active” or “passive” nonverbal behavior can influence recipients' perception of his/her image in TV talk shows. In addition, the effects of different host and studio audience reaction shots towards the politician were analyzed. To do so, an experiment with a 2 × 3 × 3 factorial design was conducted (n = 356). The stimulus material was produced in a TV studio. The results indicate a clear influence of a politician's nonverbal behavior style and the TV host's nonverbal reactions on the recipients' image-perception.