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.     

Re-Animating Joseph Beuys' “Social Sculpture”: Artistic Interventions and the Occupy Movement

Since making its presence felt in September 2011, the Occupy movement has drawn upon aesthetic-affective techniques and cooperative structures developed in socially engaged art practices from the mid-twentieth century onwards—such as Joseph Beuys' notion of “social sculpture”—as resources for producing new social compositions. These practices extend the concept of art into a social plastic form that reshapes and re-forms our subjectivities, the way we communicate, our social structures and by extension, the world we inhabit. At the same time, before the mass evictions of Occupy took place across North America, the movement placed a heavy emphasis on visibility and space. Its short-term strategies and successes were largely owed to the seizing of a particularly opportune moment in a highly visible space that provided a symbolic frame for “Occupy Wall Street as event.” This paper explores the possibility that the eviction of Occupy from its encampments was not the disaster bemoaned by many of its participants—or the failure celebrated by its detractors—but a renewed opportunity for social composition.     

Seeing “Straight” through Queer Eye: Exposing the Strategic Rhetoric of Heteronormativity in a Mediated Ritual of Gay Rebellion

Bravo's hit series Queer Eye for the Straight Guy has garnered much popular and critical acclaim. While from a Queer theory perspective, Queer Eye's openly gay stars and their easy fraternization with straight men can be celebrated, there are reasons for critical concern. In interrogating the series as an expression of the strategic rhetoric of heteronormativity, we examine how Queer Eye functions as a mediated ritual of rebellion that domesticates Queers, contains Queer sexuality, and places straight men at the sociosexual center. The series thus supports the very heteronormative order it seems to challenge.     

“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.     

“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.     

Diffusion of the New Video Delivery Technology: Is There Redlining in the Internet Protocol TV Service Market?

This study examines the current status of the entry behavior of Internet Protocol TV (IPTV) into the video programming service market, with a particular focus on income redlining and local competition. Analyzing previously unavailable data on telecommunication companies' introduction of IPTV services into Indiana, this study found that although IPTV's entry into the state increased the local competition between cable and IPTV, this local competition was mostly confined to higher income areas due to the income redlining tendency associated with IPTV's entry. These empirical findings raise the issue of the recent deregulation policy reforming cable franchising rules, whose goal was to promote local competition but which might insufficiently reflect the public interest, especially for low-income households.     

What Influences Advertising Price in Television Channels?: An Empirical Analysis on the Spanish Market

Advertising has an important role in the media industry. In a context where advertising generates a negative externality for viewers, this article analyzes the factors explaining ad prices in free TV empirically. This article also considers the participation of government-owned broadcasters in the Spanish market. This study finds that private ownership is associated with higher advertising prices. The results show a positive relation between audience size and ad price and a negative relation between ad price and advertising time. In addition, this study finds that higher prices are associated with the percentage of the population between 14 and 29 years old and the regional gross domestic product per capita in the broadcast area.     

Recent Romanian Cinema: Is It a Real New Wave or Just a Splash in the Water?

This article demonstrates that recent Romanian cinema manifests the features of a new, coherent, and strong film movement that was correctly tagged as a late new wave in the context of postcommunist significant changes that have shaped the Romanian society and its artistic milieu over the past two decades. By discussing the general characteristics of new waves and the legacies of the most influential cinematic movements of the 20th century, several common features are highlighted, as is the Romanian directors’ capacity to integrate and restate these influences through innovative techniques and an original approach to reality. The analysis is exemplified through the exploration of some of the most representative films of the recent Romanian cinema, prizewinners at prestigious international film festivals.     

“Not Just the Levees Broke”: Jazz Vernacular and the Rhetoric of the Dispossessed in Spike Lee's When the Levees Broke

This essay proposes the notion of the “jazz vernacular” as a tool specific to the Creole culture in New Orleans for understanding racial discourses of disposability both geographically and historically. We argue that the jazz vernacular is a discourse structured by musical repertoire. The jazz vernacular provides a channel for the historical pain of the black diaspora by playing in the background, both literally and figuratively, of communication in and about New Orleans. This essay considers Spike Lee's documentary When The Levees Broke to understand how the jazz vernacular frames hurricane Katrina as well as how it frames Lee's film as an intervention into “neoliberal” racial discourses. We argue that Lee's film utilizes the jazz vernacular as a metadiscourse to reinforce the ways in which residents used jazz to restructure cultural memory around the rhetoric of the dispossessed in New Orleans after Katrina. When the Levees Broke uses testimonials and affective communication to structure the narrative of Katrina through elements of the jazz vernacular like: displacement, embodiment, brashness, and improvisation to connect contemporary Creole New Orleanians to a long history of structural oppression and violence. By harnessing performative elements, Lee's film performs a jazz intervention into neoliberal discourses about freedom, defense, safety, and heroism that contrasts these discourses with the despair and the resistance of black America. Consequently, Lee's use of the jazz vernacular relies on native musical culture to recontextualize what neoliberalism had erased.     

An “Accidental Profession”: Small Press Publishing in the Pacific Northwest

This research examines contemporary, independent publishing in the Pacific Northwest (USA and Canada). Through a series of interviews with small publishers in Seattle, Portland, and Vancouver, BC, this paper will investigate whether independent publishers, based outside of the major publishing hubs of New York and Toronto, believe they can: compete in the global publishing environment; help to promote and preserve regional cultures and identities; and maintain diversity in cultural output. It will also explore how independent presses see themselves situated in the national and international publishing arena and identify what structures are in place to support them to do so. Although the focus of the empirical research is the Pacific Northwest, this paper has been contextualised within national publishing discourse.     

“Yo! What's it Like to be Black?”: An Exercise to Help Students Deepen the Content of Cross-Cultural Dialogue

Objectives: To help students ask questions across cultural groups that go beyond the superficial or generic so that they may move into deeper dialogue. To push students to use critical thinking and analytical skills to ask questions of substance. To help build relationships with strangers

Course: Intercultural communication     

“Is this for real?”: Web literacy for the web-savvy

Objective: Students will enhance their information literacy skills (ability to determine the validity, currency, and appropriateness) relative to web resources.

Courses: Professional Writing, Academic Writing, Introduction to Communication     

“Boundaryless” in the creative economy: assessing freelancing on Upwork

This paper engages discourses about the nature of creative work through a case study of creative worker freelancing on Upwork, an online marketplace. The analysis begins by contextualizing the growth of freelancing in a transformation of capitalism to a mode of flexible accumulation. It is framed against neoliberal narratives about the creative economy, including promises of financial success and freedom from rigid Fordism. An exploration of the characteristics of technology-mediated work on Upwork, including contract structure, wages, consistency of work, risk-management strategies, and profiles of clients and freelancers follows. The findings suggest that despite the company’s emphases on efficiency, flexibility, and freedom from the physical office, freelancers face significant trade-offs in undertaking such work, notably its infrequency, barriers to high wages, and intense global competition. The discussion addresses structural drivers of precarity in the marketplace and of its ongoing success.     

Asian-Japanese: State Apology,National Ethos,and the “Comfort Women” Reparations Debate in Japan

Recent scholarship on apology has shifted its critical emphasis from the juridical use of apology as a means of self-defense to the moral value of apology as integral to specific reconciliation processes. This article examines the “comfort women” reparations debate in Japan in the 1990s as symptomatic of this change in how we think about apology and reparations. It illustrates how “comfort women” reparation lawsuits disrupted the symbolic economy of political apology in an inter-Asian political context and, thus, transformed the rhetorical force of apology from a past-oriented to a future-oriented technology of care.     

“I Am Who I Am”: Black Masculinity and the Interpretation of Individualism in the Film Barbershop

This essay will provide further insight into how Black audiences interpret a popular culture text by focusing upon how a group of young black men construct Black masculinity as depicted in the film Barbershop. Interestingly, a rhetorical community of young Black men discussed the representations of the characters in the film from a perspective of Black individualism rather than reaffirming identity through a collective orientation toward the culture. This reading contrasts with much of the “ghettocentric” film literature by highlighting how a Black audience's interpretation of a text can focus on individualism rather than on cultural representations and stereotypes.     

MTL 2.0: A Report on the Social Media Usage and User Engagement of the “Big Four” Academic Libraries in Montréal

Although academic libraries continue to use social media to encourage student use of libraries and promote library resources and services, there has not yet been a study of social media use by the academic libraries in Montréal. This paper examines the social media accounts of the four university libraries in Montréal and, based on data gathered over the course of an 8-month period, seeks to determine the influence of each libraries' social media activity. Success was defined by measurable growth in the number of followers during the period studied. For the three universities with Facebook and Twitter accounts, the account considered most successful was the one with the highest engagement rate. The results indicate that all of the libraries were successful on the first measure, and the libraries with the fewest number of posts had higher levels of user engagement.     

“Nor Any Drop to Drink”: New Orleans Libraries in the Aftermath of Hurricane Katrina

SUMMARY

Hurricane Katrina's winds and flood waters impacted nearly every library in the New Orleans metropolitan area. The author provides a brief commentary on the extent of damage at the academic libraries before describing in detail the destruction and recovery of the library at Xavier University. The article offers a series of questions that librarians in flood-prone areas might ask in order to prepare themselves and their staffs for the possibility of a major flood and its consequences.