Mediatization,Legal Logic and the Coverage of Israeli Politicians on Trial

This paper investigates the characteristics that point to the mediatization of legal coverage in Israel, and the adoption of media rather than legal logic in the coverage of five trials of key political figures between 1961 and 2012 in two leading Israeli newspapers. Using insights from the literature on the mediatization of political coverage, our analysis focused on the changes over time in the type of dramatization of trial news; in the nature of criticism expressed in the press; in the forms of journalists' interventions and judgments; in the context of the meta-coverage of media advisors and media initiatives by legal actors; and the media's own reflections about these interventions. We found that the mediatization of the legal sphere resulted in a “trial by media” where journalists pass judgments on defendants and present media alternatives to legal procedures. Moreover, meta-coverage of the media strategies of legal actors was accompanied by “counter-interventionism”, i.e., journalistic criticism of their own role in cooperating with the media interventions of legal actors. We suggest that this “counter-interventionism” is tied to the defense of the legal sphere by legal journalists.     

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.     

Telling Presences: Witnessing,Mass Media,and the Imagined Lives of Strangers

In most traditional accounts, to be a witness is to be physically present at an event and report it to those who are absent. The ontological principle that authorizes testimony is the individual's corporeal presence at the event, a presence often vouchsafed by the suffering of the witnessing body. The logical extension of this is that media audiences are not the witnesses of the events they see, but the recipients of someone else's testimony. I take issue with such an account, claiming that contemporary witnessing has become a general mode of receptivity to electronic media reports about distant others. Replacing the ontological primacy of the witness with the interpretive encounter with “witnessing texts,” I focus on these texts’ world-making properties and the imaginative demands they make of their addressees. Mass media witnessing situates this imaginative engagement with others within an impersonal framework of “indifferent” social relations, creating a ground of civil equivalence between strangers that is morally enabling.     

The call of conscience,rhetorical interruptions,and the euthanasia controversy

Emmanuel Levinas writes of how the “call of conscience”; is a “primordial discourse”; that “interrupts”; the routines and language‐games that help organize and give meaning to a person's everyday existence. Levinas thus provides a way of thinking about the relationship between the call of conscience and rhetoric that advances what rhetorical theorists have so far claimed about this relationship. This essay develops the position that the call of conscience is a rhetorical interruption in its purest form. A case study is offered to illustrate how such an interruption manifests itself in the debate over the justifiability and social acceptability of physician‐assisted suicide. The specific rhetorical transaction in question occurred in cyberspace and lasted five months; it began when members of a disability civil rights group known as “Not Dead Yet!”; conducted what their opponents described as an “invasion”; of an electronic mailing list operated by the Euthanasia Research and Guidance Organization.     

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.     

Movement as memory: Significant form in eyes on the prize

Eyes on the Prize: America's Civil Rights Years ranks as one of the most successful public television documentaries ever produced. Although it originally aired in 1987, the series has since been shown widely in school and college classrooms, where it arguably has influenced many students’ understanding of the civil rights struggle and, more fundamentally, of the nature and form of “social movement” itself This essay draws upon Kenneth Burke's concept of “significant form” to examine how the documentary's design works to shape public memory of the civil rights struggle as a social movement. In addition to yielding insight into the rhetorical structure of a landmark television documentary, the analysis of form in Eyes on the Prize illumines how public consciousness of “social movement” can be created and perpetuated through narrative form.     

Who are We?

This article scrutinises the usage of the words “we”, “us” and “our” by BBC radio journalists when reporting and discussing news and current affairs. By analysing reports and discussions on the “flagship” Radio 4 Today, a daily news programme whose centrality to political and public debate is widely recognised, the article raises substantive questions about clarity, accuracy and impartiality in senior broadcast journalists’ choice of language. In exploring the assumptions which may underlie the invocation, via such language choices, of an implied community, and against the backdrop of the BBC's commitment to impartiality in its Editorial Guidelines, the article identifies numerous recent examples where the choice of words and identifiers can be seen as undermining the BBC's impartiality and which show several of its senior journalists adopting the first-person plural “we” when reporting on matters of public policy. The findings therefore indicate a general need to codify norms which are seen to integrate the need for accuracy as well as impartiality, and for these norms to take into account issues which might at first glance seem to be inconsequential, micro-level features of the journalists’ language. The evidence suggests that more fine-grained guidelines on permissible circumstances for BBC journalists’ usage of “we” and “our” need revising and disseminating in the light of these findings.     

Diverse techniques in international broadcasting

The question of “who is to supply programs” to television networks is one that affects viewers, advertisers, and licensees as well as networks and program producers and packagers. The revolutionary change that took place in the early 1950's, when the advertising agency was supplanted by the network as the primary source of programming, cured many then‐existing problems, but led to complaints that the networks could and did prevent “outside” creative program agencies from having an outlet for their productions. These complaints, added to those presented in Congress and elsewhere about the present quality of television programming, led to the proposal discussed in the following article. Often mislabeled, and still more often misunderstood, the FCC's proposal is intended to “preserve intact the present structure of television network broadcasting, but seeks within that structure to improve conditions of competition in the program process.”     

The “Big Deal”: A Survey of How Libraries Are Responding and What the Alternatives Are

The library's mission is to support the information and educational needs of its users. E-journal “Big Deals” offer libraries one method of maximizing the resources available to their users, but, with libraries now experiencing flat or decreasing budgets, these Big Deals present budgetary difficulties for libraries. They also remove collection development decisions from the control of the libraries themselves. Some libraries have canceled their Big Deals, resulting in problems. This article presents the results of an online survey of libraries regarding these bundled journal packages.     

MANAGED MEDIOCRITY?

Based on a production study of the distinct and unique children's news programme, BBC Newsround, this paper explores the place of the professional understanding of the target audience as a “missing link” within the news-making process. Approaching programme production with this concern uncovers the particular understandings of the target audience that inform journalists’ news culture and professional views. Further revealed is how such ideas, when traced within the news production process, explain the particularised practices that condition and shape “appropriate” news representations for the audience. The paper concludes with an assessment of the impact of these professional ideas on the dialogical possibilities of the children's news programme.     

Redefining Access: Embracing multimodality,memorability and shared experience in Museums

The authors discuss the principles of “access for all” in museums, both physical and intellectual access. They explore this question of multisensory processing in neurologically typical individuals, and case studies of two Portuguese museums that experimented with implementation of an “access for all” approach to the presentation of their permanent collections. The study was designed with three phases: addressing architectural barriers to access, preparation of accessible information about space and objects, and testing of alternative formats to convey this information to learn how to meet diverse needs in different ways. Set in the context of research on multisensory learning, this article discusses why an access for all principle is a majority issue as well as a moral and legal concept. It discusses two case studies where an “access for all” museological approach has been applied to access to the collections, with differing success. The discussion focuses on how an “access for all” approach could enhance learning, long‐term memorability and the ‘cultural value’ of a museum experience for all visitors.     

Historical Perspectives on Problem Patrons from the British Public Library Sector, 1850-1919

Summary

Failure to engage an historical perspective can lead to exaggeration of the novelty of the “problem patron” phenomenon in libraries. In fact, from the institutions' earliest years, there were significant levels of fear that British public libraries would be abused by their intended users. This paper examines the experience of the problem patron in British public libraries in the years 1850-1919, and the definitions and solutions suggested by supporters and staff of these libraries. Contemporary sources are used to suggest that some observations about this period may have continued relevance for present discussions of the “problem patron.”     

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.     

Getting It Right-The Evolution of Reference Collections

Summary

Reference works were present in the earliest libraries; and their numbers have grown inexorably ever since. They consume an increasing share of library acquisitions budgets. This article traces the evolution of reference collections, drawing on experiences at the author's library. The author concludes that while reference questions will always be with us; it is perhaps less certain that they will always be answered from “reference works” in collections labeled “reference.”     

1. CBQ REVIEW ESSAY: A Review of Recent Sources in Mass Media Interviewing, 1998–2006

Abstract

Interviewing has, of course, become a common place occurrence. Most adults are familiar with the nature of the transaction, but perhaps not with the complexity of what is actually happening. Modern interviewing as we have come to understand it is basically a post-World War II phenomenon. One of the major changes is the development of interviewing ordinary people (as compared with the more typical past practice of interviewing elites or at least only the significant players). In Learning from Strangers: The Art and Method of Qualitative Interview Studies, Weiss observes that interviews permit listeners “to learn about places, environments, organizations, fashions, careers, and cultures with which they would otherwise have no contact or exposure. But perhaps more telling is that interviews also reveal “interior experiences” including perceptions, and how they are interpreted. The human condition covering events, families, work, and all the emotions from joy to grief become open for all to witness” (Weiss, p. 1).

David Silverman refers to the “interview society” (p. 248) in his 1997 Qualitative Research: Theory, Method and Practice (London: Sage), and that was a decade ago. Today we find ourselves being exposed more and more to a panoply of interviewing experiences. This essay review is designed to present the most recent books with both sides of the equation presented. Guidance on how to be a successful interviewer, and also how to be a wise and sensible interviewee can be found in the following pages. The neutrality of the interviewer is assumed, but should not always be taken for granted as various astute observers note.

The subject domain of interviewing in mass media contains a range of topics considered below. The essay begins with general resources. Fielding's edited work, titled Interviewing, is the most unusual, as this four-volume book set contains “classic” journal article reprints. While there are no articles specifically on mass media, the individual contributions all pertain to the general topic and cover issues and findings that are relevant to the conduct of interviewing in mass media.

As one element of the mass media, entries dealing with interviewing in journalism, follow. Of particular note in this category are Brady's The Interviewer's Handbook and the treatment of the online journalism environment as found in Craig's 2005 chapter. As the title suggests, Brady's work presents a “how to” approach. Craig's contribution brings interviewing into the electronic/computer era and addresses the special challenges and benefits associated with it.

The interviewing in mass media section includes a review of Elsberg's Media Interview Owner's Manual, Barber's The Craft of the Media Interview, and Jones' Winning with the News Media. These, and other entries in this section, provide the core of the recent literature by highly experienced interviewers, and would be useful to anyone contemplating an interviewing career or interesting reading for the person attempting to understand the techniques used by the professionals.

In the era of television and the Internet, radio interviewing still has a place, and Beaman's Interviewing for Radio more than adequately addresses the special consideration of the medium. Television interviewing is covered in Merlis' How to Make the Most of Every Media Appearance. The broader category of video interviewing is treated in The Video Performer, a manual written by Dreibelbis. Bull analyzes the highly specialized world of political communication via television appearances in his work titled The Microanalysis of Political Communication.

The special kind of interviewing found in the public relations environment closes this essay. These works are guides or “how-to” presentations. All are useful, but the Palmer volume may prove to be the most valuable in terms of what to avoid and how to use the media for your own purposes.     

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.     

An experimental study of public trust in AI chatbots in the public sector

This study investigates the public's initial trust in so-called “artificial intelligence” (AI) chatbots about to be introduced into use in the public sector. While the societal impacts of AI are widely speculated about, empirical testing remains rare. To narrow this gap, this study builds on theories of operators' trust in machines in industrial settings and proposes that initial public trust in chatbot responses depends on (i) the area of enquiry, since expectations about a chatbot's performance vary with the topic, and (ii) the purposes that governments communicate to the public for introducing the use of chatbots. Analyses based on an experimental online survey in Japan generated results indicating that, if a government were to announce its intention to use “AI” chatbots to answer public enquiries, the public's initial trust in their responses would be lower in the area of parental support than in the area of waste separation, with a moderate effect size. Communicating purposes that would directly benefit citizens, such as achieving uniformity in response quality and timeliness in responding, would enhance public trust in chatbots. Although the effect sizes are small, communicating these purposes might be still worthwhile, as it would be an inexpensive measure for a government to take.     

Phantom Conflict: Lippmann,Dewey, and the Fate of the Public in Modern Society

Contrary to the prevailing view in media and cultural studies, philosopher John Dewey and journalist Walter Lippmann did not represent different schools of thought. They were not adversaries in a great public debate about the fate of the public in modern democracies in the 1920s. Rather, their exchange about the “phantom” public was reframed as a conflict in the early 1980s, a reframing which has achieved broad interdisciplinary acceptance even though its rests on a casual rhetorical trope, not historical documentation. The reframing provides a salutary but inaccurate origin story for American media and cultural studies, illustrates the hazards of relying on secondary interpretations of historical sources, and deflects attention away from realistic assessment of the problems confronting democracy today. Dismantling this disciplinary folklore is essential to the integrity of the emerging “new history” of media and communication.     

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.