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.     

“Muslims are not Terrorists”: Islamic State Coverage,Journalistic Differentiation Between Terrorism and Islam,Fear Reactions,and Attitudes Toward Muslims

Previous research shows that news about Islamist terrorism can seriously affect citizens’ fear reactions and influence non-Muslims’ out-group perceptions of Muslims. We argue that news coverage that explicitly links Islam to terrorism or terrorists of the Islamic State (IS) may trigger fears in non-Muslim individuals. In contrast, news differentiation (i.e., explicitly distinguishing between Muslims and Muslim terrorists) may dampen particular fear reactions in citizens. To test the specific effects of news differentiation, a controlled laboratory experiment was conducted. Results showed that undifferentiated news about IS terrorism increased participants’ fear of terrorism and resulted in hostile perceptions toward Muslims in general. However, fear of terrorism only enhanced hostile attitudes toward Muslims for individuals with negative and moderately positive prior experiences with Muslims. For those with very positive experiences, no such relationship was found. Implications of these findings for journalism practice and intergroup relations in multicultural societies are discussed.     

The repository,the researcher,and the REF: “It's just compliance,compliance, compliance”

Although institutional repositories (IRs) have become widespread, they have been consistently under-populated and under-utilised. Unless their content approaches a significant percentage of a university's output, IRs can neither form a useful branch of open access to scholarly communications, nor provide a representative view of an institution's research output. The UK's 2021 Research Excellence Framework (REF) requires all work submitted to it to have been deposited in a repository, which for most authors would mean an IR. This research sought to understand the impact of the REF mandate upon researchers and repository staff, and upon their relationship with the university, through a series of semi-structured interviews with researchers and repository managers. The research discovered that despite steep rises in repository submissions, little resource has been made available to accommodate hugely-increased workloads, nor have interfaces improved. Researchers and repository-managers alike struggle with a tedious and difficult administrative task that may require many iterations to complete. The research concludes that the mandate, and the pressure it places on the relationship between the researcher and the institution, is highlighting unspoken tensions in this relationship. Although the mandate is increasing the amount of open access material in the UK, as well as providing universities with evidence for the REF, it is placing significant strain on the tacit contract between a researcher and their employer. Opportunities to align the participants, to create alternative metrics from newly available data, and to develop new solutions, are being missed. This has implications for the way other mandates focusing on deposit in IRs are managed, both within and beyond the UK.     

Truth vs. Authenticity: Dealing with More “Good” Books Going “Bad” and Seeking Opportunities for Catalog Record Enhancement

ABSTRACT

Discusses the challenges and opportunities inherent in enhancing the catalog record for books that have developed documented reputations at odds with earlier certifications of authenticity, credibility, and quality. Librarians, as historically arbiters only of order and access, are reluctant to engage books beyond their organization and their facts. The author features a number of books and authors whose reputations have been recently and rightly sullied and argues that libraries should approach these works with the goal and giving them new contexts for the patron.     

Everyday Expertise,Autism, and “Good” Mothering in the Media Discourse of Jenny McCarthy

We examine Jenny McCarthy's mediated crusade to cure and prevent autism to better understand contemporary discourses about mothering, expertise, and gender. McCarthy distrusts traditional scientific and medical expertise and exalts what have long been seen as feminine modes of knowing such as instinct and experience. Her claims dismiss the medical community as wholly corrupt while reifying women's stereotypical identity as mothers. Furthermore, her campaign demonstrates the ways in which our current ethopolitical culture – which values multiple streams of knowledge and democratizes expertise – intersects with a postfeminist culture to limit women's power and create a culture of anxiety around motherhood.     

One “Nation,” Under Stephen? The Effects of The Colbert Report on American Youth

This study examines the effect of The Colbert Report, Comedy Central's mock conservative talk show, on young adults. By fashioning his character as a hyperbolic ideologue, Colbert is mocking personalities such as Bill O'Reilly. However, this study finds that when young adults are exposed to The Colbert Report's humor, they are not led to be more critical of the far right. Instead, the opposite happens, and there is an increased affinity for President Bush, Republicans in Congress, and Republican policies. Ironically, Colbert's attempts to poke fun at conservative commentators may be helping those same commentators spread their message.     

The Ethno-Cultural,Linguistic and Ethical Problems of the “Infosphere”

If we wish to extend co-operation among the different peoples of the world on the basis of information exchanges, we must do more than create the global information infrastructure and highway which form the technological basis for the information society of the 21st century An effort must also be made to resolve sensitive issues involved in mutual understanding between peoples belonging to different cultures and speaking different languages. This will not come about if the tendency for some languages and cultures to dominate others is allowed to persist. A long-term international programme of action is needed to preserve cultural diversity and multilingualism in the infosphere. The basic forms of such action could include: preservation — by means of the appropriate media — of the cultural heritage of peoples with no written language; the development of computer translation systems; extension of the study of the most widely spoken languages (in terms of the number of speakers) in secondary and higher education; the elaboration and adoption of general ethical standards for the writing, reviewing and citing of scientific publications, particularly articles in periodicals; the elaboration of agreed scientific terminology in different languages; the development of co-operation on the inclusion of national literature in international databases; the devising of ways and means of protecting the infosphere from pollution. Given the world-wide importance of such action, it would be appropriate to conduct it under the auspices of UNESCO and of the International Council of Scientific Unions, as was done in the late 1960s and early 1970s for the UNISIST programme.     

The “Looking Into the Past” Photographs: Comparing and Sharing the Past

With contemporary mediated nostalgia on the rise, it is increasingly important to identify sites of past remembrance that provide potentials for a comparative and healthy engagement with our collective and individual histories. Refracted through scholarly discourse about nostalgia, this analysis focuses on one example of potentially healthy past engagement called the “Looking Into the Past” photographs – where a photographer maps a comparatively vintage image onto a contemporary picture of the exact same locale to physically and visually compare the past to the present. A deep reading of the images' textual properties elucidates how this past engagement meme encourages a healthy use of comparative histories as opposed to mainstream media texts that tend to discourage healthy historical comparison.     

Inciting Curiosity and Creating Meaning: Teaching Information Evaluation through the Lens of “Bad Science”

Ability to evaluate information is a critical component of information literacy. This article provides strategies for engaging students in learning about information evaluation in the contexts of the scientific publication cycle and communication in the digital age. Also included are recent findings regarding undergraduate student research behavior and ideas for integrating constructivist learning theory in order to develop effective learning activities that encourage curiosity and critical thinking.     

When We Was Red: Good Bye Lenin! and Nostalgia for the “Everyday GDR”

In former Eastern Bloc nations, nostalgia is often seen as a dangerous pining for days under totalitarian regimes in the face of rocky transitions to democratization. This paper questions these judgments and instead proposes that the complexities of waxing nostalgic in post-communism will help us understand these transitions better. East German culture, in particular, has been at the forefront of post-communist nostalgia through its ostalgie movement. Wolfgang Becker's film Good Bye Lenin! has been touted as the most representative example of ostalgie, and is used here as a text to examine the complex questions about looking back on everyday life during communism's fall. Through its use of nostalgic themes, the film simultaneously embraces and derides the Western values that became an indelible part of the post-1989 landscape, and thus serves as a reminder that a distinct East German identity may still exist.     

“Bridging the Gap”: Difference,Dialogue, and Community Organizing

The purpose of this study is to understand a citywide initiative to increase diversity and inclusion in a predominantly white US city with a tragic racial history. This research reveals prevailing struggles with communicating about diversity and race and taking meaningful actions to promote social change. Using theories of difference and dialogue, we analyze in-depth, qualitative fieldwork with three voluntary organizations: The Chamber of Commerce; The Network; and Minorities in Business. Our work answers calls to center race and embodied differences and extends theorizing on dialogic sensibilities. The findings reveal that difference organizes dialogue through: (1) the ongoing construction of context; (2) the mobilizing of social change efforts; and (3) the intermingling of economic and racial justice discourses. Ultimately, we hope this work encourages further conversation about difference, race, and engaged scholarship.     

“Try to Walk With the Sound of My Footsteps”: The Surveillant Body in Contemporary Art

While the prevailing artistic response to surveillance has been sousveillance, the turning of surveillance against itself, this paper suggests that the usefulness of such responses depends upon granting power to the surveillance video camera as the roving eye of an elusive disciplinary body. This paper analyzes contemporary art works where the surveillant eye is met not with the returned gaze, but with interpersonal and embodied responses that challenge the dichotomized relationship between viewer and viewed.     

“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.