Engaging with Korean dramas: discourses of gender,media, and class formation in Taiwan

This paper attempts to explore the politics of differential engagements with Korean drama, particularly with relation to the formation of gender and class identities. As social identities are mediated through the cultural, discourse becomes a significant site for understanding the relationships between structures and the formation of subjectivities. The imported Korean drama falls mostly into two genres – trendy drama and family drama. Both of them deal with family and love, and both of them aim at women audiences. As such, discourses of femininity provide a productive avenue for understanding: on the one hand, their place in social formation, that is, how women inhabit different discourses of femininity which in turn position them hierarchically in the social domain; on the other hand, how social processes, including globalization and nation formation, play a central role in constituting the different meanings and hierarchy of discourses of femininity. However, discourses of femininity also intersect with discourses of television in structuring women's engagements with Korean drama. This paper therefore traces the transformations of the discourses of femininity and television and explores how they regulate, constrain, or enable women's engagements with Korean drama. In doing so, this paper aims to highlight the hierarchically structured gendered discourses in the process of social formation in contemporary Taiwan.     

Feminism and social change: women's place in Taiwanese newspapers and public opinion

This study used a content analysis of editorial articles to explore the portrayal of gender in women's pages of Taiwanese newspapers between 1975 and 2009. In addition to topical themes and editorial format, we focused on how women's pages present political messages in terms of the topics addressed, style of argumentation, methods of challenging traditional gender roles, and the promotion of provocative actions. We compared the content analysis data with social development indicators and public opinion polls in the contexts of the evolution of the market and the women's movement in Taiwan. We found that in the early stages of the women's movement, the women's pages mainly played the role of shaping a collective identity among the female public. During the postfeminist period, the women's pages mainly address social problems rooted in the domestic realm and provide self-development advice.     

Formation of a talking space and gender discourses in digital diaspora space: Case of a female Korean im/migrants online community in the USA

This article explores an online community of female Korean im/migrants in the USA in order to investigate the formation of a digital diaspora of women on the web. Employing multiple research methods including in-depth interviews, textual analysis, and participatory observation, this article examines the largest online community of female Korean im/migrants in the USA (www.MissyUSA.com), focusing on how their unique talking space was created on this site and the ways in which the relevant gender discourses are presented and constructed in relation to their diasporic conditions. The findings show that these women's shared identity (i.e. being Korean, married, female, and living in the USA) is an important element in the formation and development of this online community, especially in the creation of a candid talking space – sokpuri – where they vent their innermost feelings about their lives in the USA. The Missy and ajuma are the two salient identity discourses and selective use and flexible appropriation of the terms are found. The ajuma image (less individualistic, more active in sharing information and helping others) is adopted when these women identify their online community as a place where the empowering ajuma spirit is alive; meanwhile, they still adopt the Missy image of a young, independent, and modern woman for their individual identities, despite its consumerist origin. Although the issues of housewifization and having an enhanced gender relationship are quite often discussed, this online community has a limitation in that it does not produce a consistent and systematic challenging voice.     

Gender Contract and Localization in Early Women's Magazines in Finland Since 1782

The publishers and editors of the early Finnish women's magazines were familiar with Central European, English and Swedish women's magazines. A women's magazine started the history of Finnish magazine publishing in 1782. However, it survived less than 6 months and the next 2 women's magazines appeared only 70 years later. The article asks how the publishers of the first four magazines chose, adopted and localized this particular international magazine genre. Successful localization needs the approval of the content by the readers. Only the fourth women's magazine Koti ja Yhteiskunta (Home and Society) published in 1889–1911 managed to create a permanent readership. The central theoretical concept used to analyze the localization is the gender contract, which defines the rights and duties of women in society and is renegotiated as women's situation is changing.     

Facilitating Collaboration and Research in Sex and Gender Differences and Women's Health: Year One Experiences

Librarians at the University of Florida Health Science Center Libraries partnered with faculty to promote awareness of and access to research on women's health and sex and gender resources in an outreach project funded by the National Library of Medicine and the National Institutes of Health Office of Research on Women's Health. The project featured elements that facilitated cross-disciplinary collaboration (using CoLAB Planning Series®, or CoLABs), instruction to various groups (including faculty, undergraduate students, graduate students, and professional students), collection development, and information dissemination. Librarians leveraged existing partnerships with faculty and built new ones. Success in this project demonstrates that libraries can partner effectively with their faculty on emerging trends and new initiatives.     

Knowledge and Attitude of Women to HIV/AIDS in a Farming Community in Southwestern Nigeria: Challenges for Public Libraries

The HIV/AIDS epidemic is one of the major setbacks to the achievement of the 2015 millennium development targets in Africa, generally, and Nigeria, in particular, where it is the leading cause of death. In terms of age and gender distribution, the most severely affected are sexually active females in their most economically reproductive years. A greater percentage of the Nigerian population lives in rural areas where there is low access to health information. This study assesses the knowledge level and attitudes of women in a farming community to HIV/AIDS, and suggests intervention strategies by the public libraries to bridge the knowledge gap on HIV/AIDS. This article suggests that public libraries as custodians of knowledge should play a significant role in transmitting information about how to prevent and control HIV/AIDS.     

Negotiating fragmented women's news: state,market and feminism in contemporary Chinese media

This study aims to explain the reasons for the transformation of women's news in contemporary China. It concludes that in comparison with women news's in the Maoist period, present-day women's news is represented in a fragmented way. This article analyses the differences among the individual, professional, and institutional aspects in news production, while emphasizing the complicated interaction among feminism, state, and market to illuminate the reasons behind women's news transformation. Due to the immanent masculinity of both state and market, feminism in China has to face a state–market complex, that is, double pressure. Comparing with state and market, the influence from feminism to journalism is quite weak and there is a long way to go before feminism realizes its own agenda for media transformation.     

LGBTQ+ health research guides at North American health sciences libraries: a survey and content analysis

Objectives:Current literature recommends online research guides as an easy and effective tool to promote LGBTQ+ health information to both health care providers and the public. This cross-sectional study was designed to determine how extensive LGBTQ+ health guides are among hospital and academic libraries and which features are most prevalent.Methods:In order to locate LGBTQ+ health guides for content analysis, we searched for guides on the websites of libraries belonging to the Association of Academic Health Sciences Libraries (AAHSL) and the Canadian Association of Research Libraries (CARL). Additionally, we searched the Springshare interface for LibGuides with the word “health” and either “LGBT” or “transgender.” Content analysis was performed to identify major characteristics of the located guides, including target audience and the information type provided.Results:LGBTQ+ research guides were identified for 74 libraries. Of these, 5 were hospital libraries, and the rest were academic libraries. Of 158 AAHSL member libraries, 48 (30.4%) had LGBTQ+ guides on their websites. Nearly all guides (95.9%) provided general LGBTQ+ health information, and a large majority (87.8%) also had information resources for transgender health. Smaller percentages of guides contained information on HIV/AIDS (48.6%) and women''s health (16.2%).Conclusions:Even though literature recommends creating LGBTQ+ health guides, most health sciences libraries are missing an opportunity by not developing and maintaining these guides. Further research may be needed to determine the usage and usefulness of existing guides and to better identify barriers preventing libraries from creating guides.     

The Rise of 'Good Reading' over 'Good Writing': How and why women's magazine fiction changed in the 1950s and 1960s

This article examines the ethos and rationale of The Woman Worker, launched in Britain in September 1907 as the official organ of the all-female trade union, the National Federation of Women Workers (the Federation). As a monthly journal, it was edited and managed by Mary Macarthur, President of the Federation, moving to weekly production in June 1908 with the assistance of Robert Blatchford, founder of the successful socialist newspaper, The Clarion. Under Macarthur, the paper emphasised both the importance of union organisation for women workers and the need for parliamentary legislation to protect them from low pay, victimisation and exploitation in the workplace. It is argued here that although this paper sought to fill a gap in the market, producing a paper that appealed beyond those already converted to the cause of women's organisation was a difficult challenge for Macarthur. Her attempts to provide a readable but didactic paper on a limited budget, relying on Labour colleagues for copy, resulted in a paper that did not always have a clear target readership; it was a union journal seeking broad appeal amongst working-class women but it also reflected the interests of committed labour activists. This arguably resulted in a paper that struggled to achieve its initial aim of binding women workers together.     

To Hope or to Know: Coping with Uncertainty and Ambivalence in Women's Magazine Breast Cancer Articles

Breast cancer is one of the most feared diseases in contemporary Western society. Popular women's magazines are important sources of information about and orientation to the disease. The current study applies problematic integration theory in an interpretive analysis of all breast cancer articles appearing in five top-circulating women's magazines between 1997 and 2002. In so doing, the study illuminates two major challenges (uncertainty and ambivalence) and several imperfect approaches to coping constructed in this discourse (simplification, information-seeking/provision, affect management, trusting intuition, sustaining hope, and metaphoric reframing). These results have several clear and important practical implications and highlight a major and largely untried direction for future research.     

博物馆儿童研究中“道”与“器”的思考——来自《儿童博物馆建设运营之道》一书中的启示

美国儿童博物馆协会编著的论文集《儿童博物馆建设运营之道》,既是一部启发思路的成果汇编,又堪称是一本指导实践的实用手册。该书不仅专注于显性意义上形而下的器,还重视隐性意义上形而上的道。本文对该论文集中各位学者的真知灼见和核心观点进行归纳和述评,并在此基础上反思该书在当代博物馆儿童研究中的地位和价值。同时主张在面对与日俱增的儿童现象及材料时,不应仅止步于追求“求实”“致用”的经验,还要探寻隐匿于经验之中的本质及其关联,以“求真”实现“道器并重”。     

Information networks and social media use in public diplomacy: a comparative analysis of South Korea and Japan

This article examines how South Korean and Japanese public diplomacy organizations employ digital media to embrace the principle of ‘networked public diplomacy’ through analyses of the web and social media practices. A network analysis was used to map interorganizational information networks among core public diplomacy organizations in each country. To reveal the key organizations' communication strategies on Facebook, a content analysis was also conducted. The findings indicate that Japan had a strong internal network infrastructure achieved through dispersed connections and partnerships; however, Korea had a centralized network, including a limited number of dominant actors. The results of content analysis suggest that both South Korea and Japanese public diplomats focused on promoting their cultural products and national values through their use of texts and visual images. In addition, user profile analysis gaged the degree of users' engagement in the organizations' profiles and identified the demographic features of users. Comparative data suggest the Korean public diplomacy organization was more successful at attracting and engaging with foreign public than the Japanese public diplomacy organization. These results imply that although these two countries had similar sociopolitical backgrounds and perspectives of public diplomacy, they had distinct forms of internal information networks, communication strategies, and social networking performances with public.     

First and second-level agenda-setting in the 2014 Indian general election: a time-series analysis of party-media relation

The role of the press as a political watchdog is crucial to the functioning of democracy. Especially in the run-up to elections, voters depend on the media's presentation of parties and candidates to make informed, responsible choices at the ballot box. But who, then, influences the news media? Empirical evidence in the United States and Europe suggests that political party campaigns and election coverage in the news media are interconnected and influence each other. This study tests whether such agenda-setting effects between party campaigns and the media also take place in the general elections in the world's largest democracy, India. India's western-type political system has a distinct media system characterized by high competition, diversification, non-consolidation and formal and informal ties between the media, commercial interests and political actors. Content analysis and Granger's causality test of newspaper coverage (N?=?716) and party campaign messages (N?=?458) found that agenda-setting effects do occur in India, but are largely bi-directional. We also found an overwhelming focus of both newspapers’ election coverage and of all major party campaigns on one single candidate, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)'s Narendra Modi. This, we argue, is a result of the broader trends that have shaped Indian politics in recent years. The significant correlations and non-significant causal effects between party campaign and media coverage also indicate a trade-off situation between political power negotiation and political balance in the press.     

Promoting a Juvenile Awards Approval Plan: Using Collaboration and Selected Projects for Improved Visibility and Findability to Promote Juvenile Collections in Academic Libraries

This article describes a project to promote an approval plan for purchasing award-winning juvenile books. The overall project utilizes a combination of projects for promoting awareness and use of the awards books and the juvenile collection in general. The promotion plan includes collaborative work with teacher education faculty, projects to increase the visibility of the juvenile collection in the library, and projects to improve the findability of the juvenile books via the online catalog and an online subject guide. Initial assessment of the plan indicates some success with increased book circulation and increased use of the online guide.