The Media Audience: A Brief Biography—Stages of Growth or Paradigm Change?

The concept of audience was widely adapted from its earlier origins in public spectacles and performance to apply to the new circumstances of mass media reception in the early 20th century, and especially to the public for film and broadcasting. It could even be applied more generally to include print media. The then novel usage of the term was a component in the larger paradigm of mass communications that in turn rested on certain preconceptions about its ‘mass’ character. These preconceptions have been challenged by subsequent research and theory. More recently, however, the ongoing transformation of the means of communication may have rendered the whole mass communication paradigm itself obsolescent, and with it the concept of a mass audience. In this article it is argued that paradigmatic change in ideas about the audience may be less due to a shift in technology than to the more fundamental theoretical changes of the intervening period.     

Older people’s health information needs

This paper, originally given at the Health Libraries Group conference ‘First aid for the front line’ in September 1998, argues that older people’s health information needs are in many respects little different to anyone else’s. It looks at different formats of information that may be helpful for older people, and at the needs of two specific groups, carers and elders from ethnic groups. Direct user involvement in the development of information is seen as important. It is emphasized that there is a particular need for primary care workers to know how other services, such as those within social care and the voluntary sector, operate. The paper ends by looking at the information professional’s role in providing resources and training to such workers, and suggests a broader remit for the profession as a whole, to help to ensure social inclusion for older people.     

Digitizing journal archives: the experience of Taylor & Francis

There are enormous quantities of information available to researchers on the Internet, of varying levels of quality. Now, more than ever, it is important that academic publishers make best use of their journals and provide their readers with access to this high‐value content, in a form that can be easily found and used. To that end, Taylor & Francis have taken up the challenge of satisfying researchers' need to have all relevant content available at their fingertips, by digitizing their older journal content, creating subject‐based collections of backfiles and putting them online. This article provides an insight into the ‘why’ and ‘how’ of the process of digitization of Taylor & Francis's journal archives. The fact that these online backfiles are being requested, purchased, and used demonstrates the added value that publishers may hold in their archives.     

Multilingual Mix in Hong Kong Advertising,Pre- and Post-1997

The paper examines the historical change in linguistic practice of Hong Kong advertising through the decolonization period and attempts to make sense of it from a local-and-global point of view beyond the conventional national-functionalist perspective. It is found that the prominent patterns of language mixing in the advertising of Hong Kong are not only ‘Standard Written Chinese mixed with English’, but also ‘Standard Written Chinese mixed with both English and Cantonese’. The embedded elements of both English and Cantonese in the Chinese advertisements can take the form of a word, a phrase and/or a full clause and can serve both informational and involving functions. Finally, it is argued that multilingual mix in Hong Kong advertising is a phenomenon constantly emerging in the multicultural process of globalization and that being able to mix different languages or varieties of languages for effective communication should be an aspect of linguistic competence highly valued in the age of globalization and localization.     

Rhetoric and realities Malaysian television policy in an era of globalization

This paper identifies and evaluates Malaysia's television policy in a period of change. A period, that is, which sees the transnational media becoming more dominant and influential in this region. A period, on the other hand, which also sees Malaysia's policy makers arguing in the international arena for ‘Asian’ values and, domestically, for ‘Islamic’ values.

By locating the development of Malaysian television and its contents within these wider proclamations of intent by the powers that be, this paper argues that while these declarations give the policy makers much political mileage and may help them ‘look good’ in the local and international arenas, in reality, all is not what it seems with Malaysian television.

What this paper argues is that while the rhetoric of ‘Western media/ cultural imperialism’ is constantly evoked by the policy makers in Malaysia to imply that they are ‘Malaysianizing’ the medium of television, current practices and trends indicate that it is very much ‘business as usual’, with Malaysian television being led further and further into the international marketplace and the attendant pressures this entails.     

Does China's outward focused journalism engage a constructive approach? A qualitative content analysis of Xinhua News Agency's English news

This study examines the rationalisation of the news frames of currency-related international economic interaction by analysing news articles from the ‘China Focus’ column in China’s state-run Xinhua News Agency. Thematic analysis of the main themes in the news articles shows dominant positive coverage of China’s economic development. Using qualitative content analysis, it also investigates the breeding of the ‘emergence’ of constructive journalism practices in China. It finds that Xinhua prioritises the frames of referring to solutions to the conflict and problem and mentioning the social and economic stability, sustainability, and prosperous development. The frames of moral judgement, conflict and its formation, and human interest are less applied in news articles. It bears elements of constructive journalism, but still needs efforts to make a clear division from positive journalism and Party journalism.     

Digital Broadsides

This article explores the ‘ontological rift’ between the digital and the material archive of political broadside ballads. It outlines the ways in which the ballad’s original diversity has been eroded and homogenised by multiple processes of remediation, including digitisation over time, and investigates the limitations of digitisation projects in delivering the multifarious and widely scattered broadside ballad archive online. Finally, it considers how far digitisation projects have unintentionally ‘concretised’ not only older interpretive practices in relation to the ballad as genre, but also outdated narratives regarding the ballad’s place in the news networks and political culture of seventeenth-century England.     

Unpublishable research: examining and organizing the ‘file drawer’

It is well known that a number of research outcomes are not reported (the so‐called ‘file drawer problem’). It is generally assumed that what is not reported are ‘negative results’. Our study approaches the issue from a new angle by exploring what researchers perceive to be ‘unpublishable’. A survey regarding ‘unpublishables’ was sent out to 2,535 faculty members at Indiana University. Forty of these individuals consented to in‐depth interviews, which more fully explored these academics' views on the issue of unpublishable work. Our results indicate that there are several types of research besides negative results that are perceived to be unpublishable yet worthy of publication. Moreover, there is a great diversity within and across disciplines as to what constitutes ‘unpublishable’ research. Respondents indicated that academic discourse would benefit from the formal dissemination of papers that included inconclusive or null results, as well as replication and refutation studies. The results of our study suggest that there is a perceived gap in scholarly communication, which is to the detriment of science. These results can be used by administrators, educators, and publishers in order to refine scholarly communication practices so as to create a more robust, accurate literature and to inform future generations of researchers.     

Israel's legal deposit law in global context

Nearly half a century after it first came into effect, Israel's legal deposit law has been amended to make its provisions in accordance with and appropriate for the digital age. Other considerations guiding legislators were the necessity to adjust the law in response to laws (particularly Basic Laws) passed since the original deposit law was enacted. This paper traces the legislative history of the law through primary documents and compares it to similar laws passed in other countries over the past decade. It concludes that while the deposit of electronic materials was the primary justification for the new legislation, the legislators failed to craft the language of the new Books Act to reflect this goal. While some elements of the new law are a vast improvement over the older legislation, the Books Act is not suitable for meeting the challenges of preservation and documentation of cultural heritage in electronic formats.     

Stanley Kubrick in the Museum: Post‐cinematic Conditions,Limitations, and Possibilities

This paper contextualizes the Stanley Kubrick exhibition, a worldwide exhibition tour program dedicated to showcasing the complete oeuvre of the filmmaker Stanley Kubrick, within ‘post‐cinematic’ conditions. Since the mid‐1990s, the formal and experiential components of the cinema in the 20th century have increasingly become displaced from the traditional apparatus and site and ‘relocated’ within new technological and institutional platforms, and museums have become one of those new sites for content consumption. The paper discusses both the limitations and possibilities of the exhibition as it is considered to represent the migration of cinema into the art museum context as one salient phenomenon of post‐cinematic conditions. The Kubrick exhibition is explored to uncover the underlying tensions of the ‘exhibition of cinema’ as a key trend of major international museums, between the movie theater as black box and the art museum's exhibition space as white cube. It considers the difference between these two institutional platforms and their conceptions of objecthood, artifact and the temporal economy of the viewing experience. The author argues that this event succeeds in realizing the possibilities for revivifying three constants of cinema: film auteur, cinematic apparatus, and intermediality. The ambivalence demonstrates that while the museum's exhibition of cinema inevitably removes some of its ontological essences, it also preserves and revivifies others.     

Journals and repositories: an evolving relationship?

It is now widely accepted that there are two routes to open access (OA): OA repositories and OA journals. It is often assumed these are distinct alternative parallel tracks. However, it has recently become clear that there is potential for repositories and journals to interact with each other on an ongoing basis and between them to form a coherent OA scholarly communication system. This paper puts forward three possible models of interaction between repositories and journals; services such as arXiv and PubMed Central, and the work carried out by the RIOJA project, are working exemplars and pilot implementations of these models. The key issues associated with the widespread adoption of these models include repository infrastructure development; changing ideas of the ‘journal’, ‘article’, and ‘publication’; version management; quality assurance; business and funding models; developing value‐added features; content preservation; policy frameworks; and changing roles and cultures within the research community.     

Commerce and the Church

First published in January 1905, the Irish Independent is widely acknowledged as having been influenced by developments in journalism first associated, almost a decade earlier, with the Daily Mail in Britain. However, this article argues that while the Irish Independent adopted many elements of New Journalism its proprietor, William Martin Murphy was strategically selective in how elements were incorporated within his new venture. The success of the Irish Independent can be viewed as the outcome of two processes: the selection and adaption of some aspects of New Journalism to create a successful commercial newspaper and also the exclusion of what were considered the less desirable elements of New Journalism that may have damaged the title’s circulation in a country where the power of the Roman Catholic Church was strong. Murphy, in effect, ‘shopped’ for aspects of New Journalism as practiced elsewhere that he felt were most suitable to the local Irish market. In the latter respect, this article highlights the importance of considering the local context when discussing the universality of journalism practice.     

Non-Anglophone Reader Perceptions of a ‘Periphery’ Journal

This questionnaire-based case study investigated non-Anglophone readers’ perceptions of a ‘periphery’ online English language teaching journal. Findings showed respondents (n = 37) regarded its policy of publishing ‘alternative voice’ non-standard academic papers as acceptable. Although seen as a research conduit for and by new periphery academics, some requested impact factor indexing whilst recognizing the journal’s qualitative features. Contrasted with studies showing conservative perceptions by journal reviewers on academic writing, non-Anglophone readers were more open-minded to non-standard language use. It is argued then that the findings and methodology from this small-scale study may resonate with other studies into new online periphery journals.     

Between a rock and a hard place: the big squeeze for small publishers

The combination of decreased income as a result of the RoweCom collapse, cuts in library budgets internationally, and the success of ‘Big Deal’ bundling arrangements has serious repercussions for smaller and society publishers. This paper argues that the scholarly communications environment is going to become increasingly hostile for these publishers and that their best chance of survival may be to adapt to new business models, in particular open access.     

Some Theory for the Conservation of Contemporary Art

ABSTRACT

This article analyzes different ontological categories and how they relate to the conservation of contemporary art. Faced with the necessity of apprehending the work of art from an ontological point of view, a theoretical approach is made on the concepts that most affect the conservation of contemporary art: quiddity, truth-authenticity, identity, quality, consistency, and interpretation. These are analyzed from an empirical perspective, based on the experience of conservation and restoration. Since conserving and restoring require making decisions that will affect the material and conceptual plane of the works, several possible paradigms that must be introduced into the deontological code of the profession are analyzed. In addition, the study of a new paradigm is provided, that of the death of the work of art. This paradigm can serve as a frame of reference, given the impossibility of bringing the ‘Truth’ of the artwork into the world of the sensitive. This may occur due to different conditioning factors and limitations of a material, technical, or intentional type, which affect issues that were once established as essential to the entity. On the other hand, different types of time that are related to the conservation of contemporary art are studied: biological time, the eternal present of the work, time as a constructor agent, and destructive time as a facilitator of the appearance of ruin or ruin-relic in the work of art.     

HAROLD D. LASSWELL'S ANALYSIS OF HITLER'S SPEECHES

The War-Time Communications Project (WTCP), conducted during the Second World War, was a major event in the evolution of communication science. A prominent place in it was occupied by Professor Harold D. Lasswell's study on Hitler's speeches, in which the ‘speech model’ was examined in reference to its vocal components and non-verbal communication elements – in terms of ‘how spoken’, rather than of ‘what said’, with an emphasis on audience feedback. This approach formed part of Lasswell's innovative idea: quantification of the word domain. The study was of one of a series of content analysis research works undertaken at the Library of Congress at that time, part of an attempt at ‘keeping an eye’ on world peace. The present article, the first exposition of Lasswell's opus, highlights one of his central concepts – linguistic transformation.     

Getting mobile right: start with who and why,not what and how

Mobile dominance is imminent. Getting mobile wrong means losing market share to disruptors; getting it right gives us an opportunity to rebuild relationships with our audience. It is the audience, therefore, that should direct mobile strategy. This means starting by researching the workflows and challenges of different segments, to understand how to add value (not just bells‐and‐whistles). We must prioritize mobile in our product development and innovation, freeing it from the ‘print + online’ paradigm so that it can fulfil different kinds of information needs and objectives. This article advocates a back‐to‐basics approach that puts audiences (not content, and not technology) at the centre of mobile strategy, and explores market segmentation and research, innovation, business models, development choices, and the wider organizational implications of getting mobile right.