Identifying paths to audience success of media products: the media decision-makers’ perspective

Research on media success factors is a fragmented field. Definitions, measures, and methods vary, and findings are often inconsistent. In an attempt to fill this perceived research gap, we distilled generic success factors of media products from the literature. Guided by theory and empirical findings, these factors were aggregated to complex concepts, building blocks of success that we further investigated in an exploratory qualitative study. We found that the building blocks are applicable to all types of media, independent of seriality and content types of media products. Subsequently the research question of this article is: Which building blocks of success are most important for media products? To answer this question, we conducted an online survey of 255 media professionals in print, audio-visual, and online media in Austria, Germany and Switzerland. To analyze our data, we deployed qualitative comparative analysis, a method based on set theory that is suitable to investigate complex causality. We conclude that four building blocks are necessary for success: “good” distribution, environmental orientation, form/design, and human resources are preconditions for achieving success in terms of audience market share. In addition, three patterns emerge in the sufficient paths (combinations of building blocks) to success. Which route to success a media product shows can be related to the width of its topical scope and the corresponding projected audience size.     

Entertaining audiences,ensuring inclusivity,and considering media influence: Sixth graders’ understanding of media producers’ responsibility

Qualitatively analyzing 35 responses from a letter-writing homework in a media literacy education program, this study examines sixth graders’ understandings of producers’ responsibility in creating media content. Responses suggest their understandings about producers’ responsibility are bounded within the context of their media use as consumers, rather than as citizens. Findings focus on the importance of introducing contextual factors of media production as well as the challenges that researchers and educators might face.     

From the media of the periphery to peripheral media: The changing priorities of Brazil’s alternative ecology

ABSTRACT

This article proposes a new appraisal of Brazil’s alternative media. By investing in the concept of the periphery, this study draws on past literature, semistructured interviews, and data collected from across the country (n = 50) to propose a repertoire analysis of media producers’ views of the country’s popular notion of the periphery. Evidence shows that they have shown nuanced views of the periphery as a site of purpose, pluralism, and authorship. Despite crisis and turmoil, this study presents some paths that could help reorientate the priorities of alternative media research toward a closer consideration of the periphery as entity that appears much more in line with local realities and expectations than previous international debates.     

Interpreting and shaping geopolitics in Chinese media: the discourse of the ‘New style of great power relations’

Chinese leaders have attempted to alleviate international anxiety about its rise to global prominence describing its development as a ‘peaceful rise’ or ‘peaceful development’. Most recently, Chinese leaders have begun deploying a new term, the ‘New Style of Great Power Relations’ (新型大国关系). The purpose of this study is to examine the treatment of the ‘New Style of Great Power Relations’ as a political slogan within the Chinese media as a means to shape a geopolitical worldview among Chinese citizens and international actors. Researchers identified 541 articles from 25 different Chinese media sources selected to represent varying levels of government influence and editorial perspectives. This study found the concept primarily intended to engage the United States by stressing cooperative aspects of U.S.–China relations, but also challenges specific U.S. actions. Those U.S. policies challenged within the Chinese media are portrayed as inconsistent with the ‘new style’ concept’s principles. This forms a ‘rhetorical trap’, as it were for the United States, in that the framing of the discourse implicates U.S. intentions and policies as disingenuous unless the United States changes its policy stances. The essay examines the implications of the discourse for understanding Chinese political communication.     

Double media distortions for science communication – an analysis of ‘compiled science news’ transforming in Taiwan

Scientific news is one of the major resources that help the public to understand new scientific knowledge. The latest technology in research and development primarily utilizes English as the language of communication in academic journals and scientific communities. Compiled science news therefore has become a major agent for many non-Western societies to understand the latest technological developments. For this reason, this study aimed to investigate the meaningful change among transforming processes of imported science news from ‘original scientific research’ and ‘overseas news reports,’ to ‘domestic compiled science news.’ The research findings showed that scientific knowledge categories of compiled science news in Taiwan appeared to be apparently unbalanced, and the compiled skills present obvious weaknesses. Furthermore, more seriously compiled science news in Taiwan has continually suffered from the ‘double media distortion’ syndrome. The first distortion appeared from the ‘original scientific research’ to the ‘overseas news reports,’ and the second was from the ‘overseas news reports’ to the ‘domestic compiled science news.’ Such situations are very different from the Western world and could also be a common problem for all non-Western societies.     

New media–new voices: satirical representations of Nigeria’s socio-politics in Ogas at the top

New media are increasingly providing spaces and opportunities for media houses and activist groups engaged in socio-political reform in Africa. In Nigeria, social media are becoming platforms for communicating messages of resistance against oppressive political and exploitative economic power structures. This study analyzed Ogas at the top (OATT), an online puppetry series by Buni TV, as a way of examining new platforms and message content in Nigeria’s rapidly changing media sphere. Relying on semiotics and critical discourse analysis perspectives, the study analyzed select episodes of the series, to gauge how producers constructed powerful visual and linguistic messages to boldly satirize social injustices perpetrated by Nigeria’s political elites.     

Educating tomorrow’s media workers: television instruction at American institutions of higher learning, 1945–1960

This paper explores the rise of programs in television instruction in the USA during broadcasting’s postwar expansion period. Beginning in professional schools, television training entered the university first through extension school courses, then in full degree programs. This transition to institutions of higher learning entailed key shifts in demographics, pedagogical orientation, and legitimation strategies, while embroiling television in larger struggles over the shifting boundaries of the postwar humanities. Studying the education of early television workers, I argue, raises key questions about processes of worker professionalization vital for developing research on media industries and media labor.     

Can government’s presence on social media stimulate citizens’ online political participation? Investigating the influence of transparency,trust, and responsiveness

This paper empirically investigates the association of quality information provided by a government agency on social media and citizen’s online political participation. It further answers the why and how questions regarding the existence of this relationship by examining the mediating influence of transparency, trust, and responsiveness. The data was collected from 388 followers of the social media platforms of a government agency i.e. Punjab Food Authority and the findings of the analysis were obtained using structural equation modeling technique. The results reveal that the agency’s provision of quality information on social media was significantly related to perceived transparency, trust in agency, perceived responsiveness, and citizens’ online political participation. Moreover, the results show that perceived transparency mediates the relationship between agency’s provision of quality information on social media and citizens’ trust in agency. Additionally, trust in agency was an insignificant predictor and perceived responsiveness was a negative predictor of citizens online political participation, Also, trust in agency and perceived responsiveness suppressed the relationship between agency’s provision of quality information on social media and citizens’ online political participation. This study aims to bring awareness and contribution to the body of knowledge about the governmental use of social media and its resulting benefits since in developing countries like Pakistan the research in this area is sparse. Further, it provides strategic and practical suggestions to agencies regarding advantages of utilizing social media in their communication with citizens.     

Gender,media, and myth-making: constructing China’s leftover women

In the last 10 years, the term ‘leftover women’ (剩女)—educated, unmarried women over the age of 27—has emerged as a visible stereotype in popular consciousness in China. Despite the surplus of men that is a result of China’s One Child Policy, women are blamed for marriage market challenges through sexist narratives and terminology. While some scholarship treats ‘leftover women’ as an accepted demographic phenomenon with clear causes and impacts, it can also be viewed as an artificial construct created through socially generated gender stereotypes and furthered through media messaging. This article examines and compares sociological research on Chinese marriage patterns, presentations of ‘leftover women’ in contemporary Chinese media, and independent interview findings to understand the role of media in the construction of gender discourse and the perpetuation of gender stereotypes. These rigid concepts of gender roles and ideal womanhood have far-flung consequences, both for women who internalize these misperceptions and for the social hierarchies supported by antiquated gender constructs.     

The media and the crisis of democracy in the age of Bush‐2

In this study, I demonstrate the consequences of the triumph of neoliberalism and media deregulation for democracy. I argue that the tremendous concentration of power in the hands of corporate groups who control powerful media conglomerates has intensified a crisis of democracy in the United States and elsewhere. Providing case studies of how mainstream media in the United States have become tools of conservative and corporate interests since the 1980s, I discuss how the corporate media helped forge a conservative hegemony, failed to address key social problems, and promoted the candidacy of George W. Bush in the 2000 US presidential election.     

Packing of Michelangelo’s ‘Pieta’

Abstract

The sources and chemistry of waxes likely to be encountered in art objects are briefly reviewed and their gas-chromatograms are illustrated. Examples of the identification of waxes and wax-mixtures in a variety of objects are described, and the advantages for this purpose of gas-chromatography over infrared spectroscopy are indicated.     

Making do with media: teachers,technology, and tactics of media use in American classrooms, 1919–1946

In the last century, teachers have come under pressure to incorporate new media technologies into their lessons. Comparing educational research, press coverage, and teachers' firsthand accounts of mediated instruction between 1919 and 1946, this article highlights a historic discrepancy between anticipated and actual uses of media in classrooms. Drawing on de Certeau's theory of “making do,” the author argues that teachers' efforts to balance high technologies with simpler, more do-it-yourself varieties of media in their lessons constituted critical forms of participation in educational media culture and small acts of resistance against industrial, top-down efforts to streamline, modernize, and technologize their work.     

Cross‐media response to digital manipulation of still and moving images

This investigation provides survey data for a cross‐media comparison between newspaper photo editors and television news directors to assess the ethical response to digital image processing and enhancement technology. The results indicate that television news directors tend toward less strict ethical standards in application of the technology. However, the television people showed more sensitivity to aspects of the technology that relate to long‐standing themes of TV critics.     

Social media monitoring: Responsive governance in the shadow of surveillance?

Social media monitoring is gradually becoming a common practice in public organizations in the Netherlands. The main purposes of social media monitoring are strategic control and responsiveness. Social media monitoring poses normative questions in terms of transparency, accountability and privacy. We investigate practices of social media monitoring in four Dutch public organizations. Policy departments seem to be more strongly orientated towards monitoring, whereas organizations involved in policy implementation seem to be more inclined to progress to webcare. The paper argues for more transparency on social media monitoring.     

Mapping contentious discourse in China: activists’ discursive strategies and their coordination with media

Discursive strategy in social movements in China has received limited scholarly attention. This paper systemically examines the way in which contentious discourse in China is informed by its cultural repertoire and illustrates how activists strategically frame their culturally informed discourse in coordination with the usage of media platforms. We analyzed 143 slogans and banners from 22 environmental and land requisition protests, and found that activists in China draw heavily on Chinese cultural repertoire. They embed family values in a rank system that is mapped onto two axes – space vs. time and us vs. them – with family/self at the center, to frame diagnostic, motivational, and prognostic collective action frames. In order to unpack the dynamic process of strategic framing, we paid special attention to activists’ coordination mechanisms with media in our analyses drawn from extensive participatory observation and interviews in two protest cases. We found strategic framing (such as frame bridging, amplification, extension, transformation and borrowing) was used in coordination with both traditional and new media in an effort to adjust their contentious discourse to achieve consensus mobilization, action mobilization, and social mobilization at various stages of protest. This study brings cultural repertoire back into the study of contentious discourse in China and highlights the dynamic nature of strategic framing that is often practiced in coordination with media.     

The bigger,the better? Measuring the financial health of media firms

Abstract

This study examined the degrees of product diversification of media conglomerates since the Telecommunications Act of 1996 and tested the impact of product diversification of the firms on their financial health. The strategy of related product diversification enables firms to gain market power and synergy effect, then improves financial performance. Based on that assumption, for a sample of 26 media firms from 1996 to 2002, this study conducted a regression analysis to test the hypotheses. The results showed two contradictory curvilinear models. First, revenue, EBITDA and sales growth rates revealed a U‐shaped relationship with diversification. That is, performance decreased as firms shifted from concentrated business strategies to related diversification, but performance increased as firms changed from related diversification to unrelated diversification. On the other hand, financial efficiency variables measuring management effectiveness or profitability (ROS, ROA and ROE) and stock market evaluation (earnings per share) showed an inverted U‐shape relationship. Thus, the unrelated diversification led to a decrease in financial efficiency.     

‘Terrible Panizzi’: Patriotism and Realism of the ‘Prince of Librarians’

Abstract

This article deals with the figure of Antonio Panizzi, considered as an Italian patriot and English librarian. It highlights the constant attention he devoted to the Italian political events throughout his life: from his arrival in London (1823) as a political exile, to his informal ambassador in United Kingdom, a role that allowed him to lobby the political class and the press on behalf of the cause of Italian patriots forced in the prisons of Kingdom of the Two Sicilies. The article describes the multifaceted library activity carried out by Panizzi at the British Library, of which he became Principal Librarian in 1856. Panizzi is considered to be the first Promethean Librarian of the 19th century, a great reformer with new ideas on library services, innovative methodologies, and working practices in librarianship. Panizzi rigorously carried out the activity of librarian at the British Library without ever forgetting the need for a free, unified, and democratic Italian state.