This article presents a model and a case study of the narrative structures that are present in the interactive media design of multimedia applications in the mass media. As basic categories for the history and structure of media, we employ the model of the modes of the physical, analog, and digital presentation/representation. In this case study of the online edition of the New York Times, we have the case of a newspaper that in the digital edition employs (...) multi-media applications. Contrasting the traditional concept of “narrativity” with the current status quo of the digital media outlets, we will examine the specific conditions of the multimedia applications in the mass media with this sample case of the New York Times. As narrative structure of interactive design in multimedia for mass communication, we analyze the types of narrative media and general narrativity in the New York Times with the background of its processes of interactivity and media convergence. (shrink)

Can citizens impact the broader discourse about an organization and its legitimacy? While social media have empowered citizens to publicly question firms through large volumes of online evaluations, the high heterogeneity of their evaluations dilutes their impact. Our empirical study applying a threshold vector autoregressive model (TVAR) analysis of 2.5 million tweets and 1,786 news media articles tests the condition by which the heterogeneity of online evaluations converges and influences the broader media discourse. Although social media (...) evaluations do not initially influence media legitimacy, they become influential after reaching a tipping point of refracted attention, which is created by high volume and convergence of individual evaluations around few aggregative frames. Thus, social media storms may influence the broader discourse about an organization when this discourse converges and reaches a tipping point, rather than merely through the massive participation of citizens. (shrink)

Using a purposive sample with an even distribution of 299 non-Hispanic Whites, 294 African Americans, 292 Asian Americans and 295 Hispanics, we test a moderated mediation model that examines the relationship between self-reported news media consumption (e.g., non-conservative and conservative) and environmental behavioural intentions. Our study found evidence supporting the mainstreaming hypothesis (converging attitudes) across key variables within the theory of planned behaviour (TPB). Our results also reveal non-conservative outlets to be associated with more favourable environmental attitudes, subjective norms (...) and perceived behavioural control, while conservative outlets are associated with less favourable levels for two of these three variables. Results also indicate conditional indirect relationships between non-conservative news use on behavioural intentions through our TPB variables, which vary by race/ethnicity. (shrink)

Narrative allegory is distinguished from mythology as reality from symbol; it is, in short, the proper intermedium between person and personification. Where it is too strongly individualized, it ceases to be allegory […]. In the community of scholars of intermedia research, the above quoted citation is commonly regarded as Coleridge’s coining of the term “intermedium” or “intermediality”. However, a short glance at the discursive strategy of his argument emphasizes that his notion of “intermedium” must be closely linked to the poetics (...) and aesthetics of 19th-century romanticism. For the romantic poet, the term of “intermedium” does not point to media relations or intermedia processes but to.. (shrink)

The convergence of corporate social responsibility (CSR) and corporate governance (CG) has changed the corporate accountability mechanism. This has developed a socially responsible ‘corporate self-regulation’, a synthesis of governance and responsibility in the companies of strong economies. However, unlike in the strong economies, this convergence has not been visible in the companies of weak economies, where the civil society groups are unorganised, regulatory agencies are either ineffective or corrupt and the media and non-governmental organisations do not mirror (...) the corporate conscience. Using the case of Bangladesh, this article investigates the convergence between CSR and CG in the self-regulation of companies in a less vigilant environment. (shrink)

본 연구는 디지털 융합미디어를 기반으로 하는 현대사회의 불통 현상과 더불어 이로 인해 야기되고 있는 인간 소외의 원인 규명을 미디어에 기초한 인간의 의사소통 행위에 관한 이론적 고찰을 통해 분석하고, 그 문제의 해결을 위한 방안의 모색을 유가의 和와 노자의 이상사회에 대한 의미 분석을 통해 시도한다. 이 점에서 동양철학의 융화적 사고와 융합미디어 시대의 사회적 소통성 연구는 우리가 지향해야할 미래 사회의 공감과 소통의 기제성을 마련하는 동시에 우리가 향유하고 있는 디지털 생활문화에 대한 새로운 이해의 틀을 마련하는 계기가 된다. 더욱이 동양의 관계적 세계관의 소통구조에 대한 의미 (...) 분석은 불통문화의 해결을 위한 방안을 모색하는 동시에 의사소통 행위의 사회적 가치를 회복하는 이론 토대가 된다. (shrink)

Social media is a pervasive part of everyday life. That is, new media occupies more and more spaces in individuals’ lives both in intimate and work sphere. In addition, due to convergence, new media brought together interpersonal and mass communications in the same environment. This fact has caused a wide range of changes in cultural industries. One of the main changes brought about by social media in relation to the mass media is the construction (...) of a flow of content, advertising and propaganda customized for each individual, and constructed from surveillance and control of individuals’ interactions in digital networks. For so doing, one element is central: Algorithms. It is not only by means of contents produced by cultural workers or amateurs that social media guarantees the life world colonization by the system, but mainly through the tracking of user interactions. That is possible thanks to the data gathering performed by algorithms. Therefore, social networks colonize the life world in a more constant and pervasive way than mass media, facilitating surveillance and social control that are vital for both, the digital conglomerates economic power and the state capacity to watch individuals, either to strengthen the sales effort or to ensure citizen vigilance. (shrink)

This article develops an interdisciplinary theoretical method for assessing the environmental values articulated and practised by dispersive or ‘mobile’ film production practices, aiming toward applicable strategies to make media practices more environmentally conscientious and sustainable. Providing a social and environmental study of the local relational values, political economy and ecosystem ramifications of runaway productions and film incentive programmes, this study draws on contemporary international green production practices as entryways into environmentally positive film industry change. Offering an overview of the (...) potential use of a relational values approach to media production cultures, the essay uses two opposing models (the Michigan film incentive and the underwater cinematography culture of South Florida) in order to assess the political dynamics, social consequences and environmental threats of Hollywood's mobile practices – as well as their potential as sites, beyond Hollywood, to converge environmental values with local media culture. (shrink)

Resumo: O atual ecossistema de mídia em rede é claramente caracterizado pela convergência. Recentemente, a convergência de mídia tem progredido rapidamente, tanto nos círculos teóricos quanto nas aplicações práticas, e o desenvolvimento da convergência tornou-se inevitavelmente uma tendência importante no desenvolvimento da mídia. A convergência de mídias transformou, de forma única, a ecologia das notícias, da comunicação e da opinião pública, na qual uma revisão da produção de notícias se destaca enquanto sua expressão principal. Como resultado da convergência da mídia, (...) a produção de notícias mudou de um modo linear tradicional para um modo não linear. Devido ao uso de vídeo, áudio e formas H5 de notícias, na nova mídia, além da mídia tradicional, baseada principalmente em conteúdo de texto e imagem, as reportagens de notícias são agora mais diversificadas, visualmente atraentes e inovadoras. O processo de produção de notícias mudou como resultado da convergência da mídia, tornando-se mais eficaz, adaptável e diversificado. Ao estudar o impacto da integração da mídia sobre a produção de notícias, este artigo teve, por objetivo, entender como a mídia deve ser ajustada na era da integração, de que maneira a produção de notícias deve se desenvolver e se superar, e as leis gerais da produção de notícias no processo de desenvolvimento da integração. Ao mesmo tempo, nesse contexto, a pesquisa em questão investiga o impacto da convergência da mídia na produção de notícias, delineia a maneira como a mídia pode se adaptar a cenários dinâmicos, propõe novos métodos de produção de notícias para promover o progresso da era da convergência e visa estabelecer os princípios básicos da produção de notícias no desenvolvimento integrado. Sob a tendência de digitalização, rede e informatização, o modo de produção de notícias passou por mudanças. Com o surgimento da nova mídia e a transformação gradual da mídia tradicional, o ambiente e o modo de produção de notícias também passaram por mudanças profundas. Este artigo revelou os mecanismos subjacentes e as tendências futuras dessa mudança, que podem melhorar a eficiência e a qualidade da produção de notícias, e aumentar sua competitividade em um ambiente de mídia diversificado. Ele tem um valor de referência importante para organizações de notícias, profissionais de mídia e formuladores de políticas relevantes, podendo fornecer uma base científica para a tomada de decisões. (shrink)

This book takes on current perspectives on transnationalism and children's relationships to media, childhood, and markets in converging global worlds. It introduces the idea of multi-sited imaginaries to explain how children's media and literacy performances shape and are shaped by shared visions of communities that we collectively imagine, including play, media, gender, family, school, or cultural worlds. It draws upon elements of ethnographies of globalization to examine the convergences of such imaginaries across multiple sites: early childhood and (...) elementary classrooms and communities in Puerto Rico and the Midwest United States. The analysis situates children's literacy and play practices in the intersections of local/global, rural/urban, Spanish/English/multilingual, and Latino multinational media/US multinational media, revealing how children use drama and pretense to relocate, take up, contest, and consume global media and consumer identities. (shrink)

Using a general model of corruption that explains and accounts for corruption across different corporate and professional activities, the paper will examine how certain practices in the media, especially in areas where journalism, advertising and public relations regularly intersect and converge, can be construed as instances of corruption. By applying this general model of corruption the paper will then offer a taxonomy of media corruption by identifying most if not all the major types of media corruption. It (...) will be argued that such corruption is regular and systematic. (shrink)

This article provides a review and a perspective on the interaction between neuroscience and the media. It situates public discourse and the communication of neuroscience in an intricate web of social expectations and ethical responsibilities that converge and diverge between different stakeholders such as academic researchers, public sponsors of research, and the interested public. The article highlights some of the key ethical and social challenges that emerge when neuroscientists interact with the media. This study shows that the (...) class='Hi'>media manifests important shortcomings in matters of neuroscience explanations and fosters some unrealistic expectations for the outcomes of neuroscience. It concludes with attention to some of the research and practical questions that need further attention in matters of ethics and communication in neuroscience. This article relies on a number of assumptions that need to be acknowledged from the onset. They explain the view that the communication of neuroscience is of crucial importance for neuroethics. (shrink)

This article takes the second screen – television-related use of smart phones and tablet computers – as a starting point to discuss how current culture is shaped by the ever more heterogeneous connections between multiple devices, texts and platforms. They form unstable assemblages that simultaneously highlight and undermine the specific affordances of their elements. Focusing first on technical and industrial and then on practical and domestic procedures of creating connections, the current media landscape will be described as >convergence (...) as crisis<: While media indeed become increasingly more interconnected, the connections themselves and the shape of the assemblage in its entirety are ephemeral, unstable and vague. Convergence mainly exists and is generated through being in crisis. (shrink)

As media companies test and implement newsroom "convergence," growing numbers of journalists are producing content not only for their own employer but also for other media outlets with which that employer has a business relationship. This article, based on case studies in 4 converged news markets, explores journalists' perceptions of normative pressures in this new media environment, particularly in relation to the overarching concept of public service. The findings suggest that although journalists do not see (...) class='Hi'>convergence itself as posing significant ethical problems, they do raise concerns related to specific components of public service, including a devotion to accuracy, an avoidance of sensationalism, and independence from economic pressures. (shrink)

Modern converged mass media, particularly television and the World Wide Web, may be fostering a new orality in opposition to traditional alphabetical literacy. Scholars of orality and literacy maintain that oral cultures feature reduced levels of critical assessment of media messages. An analysis of Aristotle's description of ethos, as presented in that philosopher's Rhetoric, suggests that an oral culture can foster media that deliver selective truths, or even lies, thus ranking poorly in hierarchical ethical schemata such as (...) those developed by Kohlberg, Gilligan, and Baker. (shrink)

The idea of the Guantánamo detainee as a Muselmann , the lowest order of concentration camp inmates, contains within it important implications for the new understanding of sovereignty in the era of Guantánamo, in an age of exception. The purpose of this article is to explain the status of those who are detained at Guantánamo Bay. Stated broadly, in assessing that status, we will emphasize the connection between the altered meaning of sovereignty that has accompanied the placing of prisoners in (...) an American penal colony in Cuba and the biopolitical status of the prisoners who reside there. More particularly, we will locate the points of convergence among the factors (the war on terror, sovereignty, and the media) that have produced and reconstituted the legal and ethical status of Guantánamo detainees. (shrink)

Des processus socio-cognitifs de gestion du temps et de construction du temps sont définis et illustrés dans des contextes d'usage de dispositifs médiatiques d'accès à la connaissance. Ces résultats, obtenus par observation de situations réelles, sont interprétés à la lumière de catégories relevant des sciences de la communication et de la psychologie. En découle l'exposé de problèmes de recherche en sciences de l'information et de la communication touchant au jeu de convergence avec les approches psychologiques à propos de la (...) construction des temporalités médiatiques. La convergence repose sur une préoccupation commune pour la contextualisation des observations allant jusqu'au terrain de recherche.Sociocognitive time management and time construction processes are defined and illustrated within the framework of interactive systems to access knowledge. These results emerged from the observation of in situ practices. They are discussed using concepts from both Psychology and Communication Science. Research questions for Information and Communication Sciences are derived from this study. It is assumed that there are points in common with cognitive psychology concerning the time media topic. This convergence is based on a common interest in socially situated observations and fieldwork. (shrink)

An idea has been increasingly gaining currency in Western democracies since the 1950s and '60s, namely the idea of the omnipotence of the media, a power that has become more pronounced as the influence of politics has become steadily weaker. This omnipotence of the media manifests itself, firstly, in the fabrication of individualistic tastes and desires, and secondly in the fragmentation of public space and social relations, if not the explosion of public space and social relations.These are the (...) themes to which I would like to return in the hope of not rewriting the story of Pangloss. I think no one will dispute the idea that the media has played, and continues to play, a crucial role in the dynamics of postmodern individualism. The norm of private happiness, the value of pleasure, and the ideal of intimate fulfilment are diffused throughout mass culture, the press and television. Thanks to the media, the fulfilment of these desires and the love of oneself has become a socially legitimated form of behaviour, an ideal for the masses. In celebrating private pleasures and private happiness, the media have undoubtedly contributed to the decline of tradition, strict moral codes and ideological commitments. Living in the present, living for oneself and in accordance with these desires have become the legitimate norm, and in this sense the media have without a doubt contributed to the culture of individualism.That is not all. Television is known to have played a role in the erosion of social life, in the erosion of certain forms of community life like the neighbourhood, the street, and the café, which had been important areas of social interaction since the nineteenth century. Television has put an end to people going out regularly to bars, cafés or on the streets; everyone goes home in the evening to watch the news or look at a film. The traditional social life of men has largely disappeared, and men spend much more time with their family and in private life. Leisure culture and the media have converged in such a way that privileges pleasures enjoyed in the intimacy of the home.For the same reason, television has caused the attendance of cinema, sporting events and theatre to drop. Television has shattered traditional forms of social and public life in favour of the consumption of images within the home, and this trend will undoubtedly only become more pronounced as the number of familial receivers increases, such as video machines, internet, cable, what one can in short call `fragmented television'.Access to information and images is becoming more and more personalized; there are greater possibilities for everyone to construct his own timetable and to escape from the homogeneity of media programming. From this point of view, the media appear to be as much an instrument for the creation of homogeneous, mass tastes as an instrument of individualization, and the privatization of life. In this context, and despite its obvious shortcomings, McLuhan's famous formula `the medium is the message' seems to me correct. (shrink)

Media studies as a field has traditionally been wary of the question of technology. Discussion of technology has often been restricted to relatively sterile debates about technological determinism. In recent times there has been renewed interest, however, in the technological dimension of media. In part this is doubtless due to rapid changes in media technology, such as the rise of the internet and the digital convergence of media technologies. But there are also an increasing number (...) of writers who seem to believe that media theory, and more widely social science and the humanities, needs to rethink the question of technology and its relationship to society, culture and cultural production. Andrew Feenberg has characterized the two most dominant positions as, on the one hand, the social constructivist or 'technology studies' approach to technology, and, on the other, 'substantivist' theories of technology. The social constructivist approach, aims to counter technological determinism by showing how the development of technology is shaped not by technical and scientific progress but by contingent social, cultural and economic forces. The limitation of this view, however, is that it tends to see technology as no different from any other social process and it may lose the ability to distinguish between the technical object and any other social formation or cultural artefact. Doubtless constructivism would like to see technology as a subset of the cultural artefact and not vice versa, therefore explaining technology in terms of culture and society. But there are powerful arguments for arguing something like the opposite: in other words for understanding culture and society in terms of or as technical objects. In recent years this argument has been put most forcefully by the French philosopher Bernard Stiegler and it is to his work and its implications for media theory that this essay is dedicated. In particular I will show how Stiegler might defend his ideas around technics from the charge of technological determinism. Firstly, technics is not understood in the narrow sense of techno-scientific technology but in the wider sense of all the ways in which the human is exteriorised into artefacts or organized inorganic matter. Technics in this sense is therefore inseparable from culture and society and it makes no sense either to talk of technics determining culture and society or vice versa. Culture and society are not constituted by technics as if by a cause but rather constituted through it. Secondly, a technics in Stiegler's sense does not represent scientific progress or a deterministic evolution; rather, however strange this may seem, technics is a kind of pure accidentality or contingency. For Stiegler it is because of the exteriorisation of the human into artefacts or inorganic organized matter that culture and society constitute themselves contingently. Stiegler's work therefore offers a way for us to rethink the relationship between culture and technology in ways which can productively reconfigure the concerns of critical theory. (shrink)

‘Social media’ like Facebook or Twitter have become tremendously popular in recent years. Their popularity provides new opportunities for data collection by state and private companies, which requires a critical and theoretical focus on social media surveillance. The task of this paper is to outline a theoretical framework for defining social media surveillance in the context of contemporary society, identifying its principal characteristics, and understanding its broader societal implications. Social media surveillance is a form of surveillance (...) in which different forms of sociality and individuals different social roles converge, so that surveillance becomes a monitoring of different activities in different social roles with the help of profiles that hold a complex networked multitude of data about humans. (shrink)

In the article we discuss the meaning of the body in its material dimension in relation to its transformation in the current context, which is determined by the multi-layered convergence of biopolitics (Foucault 1978–79), necropolitics (Mbembe 2003), digital psychopolitics (Han 2014), and gore capitalism (Valencia 2010). It is an inquire of the ways in which the contemporary body becomes a form of mass media for certain populations who choose to consent to the mandate of making themselves entrepreneurs of (...) their own bodies within the livestream regime (Valencia 2016, 2018). The author analyzes a variety of representations of femininity taking physical form g-locally in bodies, which—in an effort to comply with capitalist mandates and with binary choreographies of gender and sexuality—become businesses themselves. (shrink)

Since literary historian Robert Bone published his seminal essay ‘Richard Wright and the Chicago Renaissance’ in 1986, scholars have created new cartographies of previously unexplored terrain in American cultural history. The earliest studies focused on literature, but more recently attention has turned to other disciplines, including visual arts. Recent publication of The Muse in Bronzeville: African American Creative Expression in Chicago, 1932–1950 (2011) by Robert Bone and Richard A. Courage promises to decisively broaden scholarly understandings of the scope and significance (...) of Chicago-centred cultural production during the Great Depression and post-war years. Of particular relevance to contemporary studies of new media art is the manner in which then-emergent ideas and practices – centring on racialized subject matter, elite and mass audiences, traditional and new mediums of expression, private vs public sponsorship, and passive vs active reception of art objects – converged to create new paradigms and possibilities for visual artists to reshape consciousness in a period of institutional collapse and change. Chicago’s New Negro artists of the 1930s and 1940s, like their counterparts in 1920s Harlem, sought to reframe perceptions of African American life, to re-present the black subject as something other than an object of contempt or amusement beneath the privileged gaze of the white viewer. Just as these artists sought to revise perceptions of racial reality, examination of the wide range of actual images they created and the mediums and styles they explored revises reductive notions about creative expression in this period, which often portray a mere subordination of art to propaganda and an embrace of representational aesthetics and simplistic narratives in a fruitless detour in the evolution from modernism to postmodernism. On the contrary, Andrew Hemingway notes the range of stylistic experiment and characterizes so-called ‘social art’ as ‘a hybrid and unstable mode [which] had to carry the imperative to be an art equal in formal achievement to both the great art of the past and the modern tradition … [and] to suggest a political orientation without becoming overt revolutionary propaganda’ (2002).New media theorist Oliver Grau observes thatIn many quarters, virtual reality is viewed as a totally new phenomenon… but it did not make its first appearance with the technical invention of computer-aided virtual realities. On the contrary, virtual reality forms part of the core of the relationship of humans to images… grounded in art traditions that have receivedscant attention up to now.(2004)In the midst of another period of change, of transformed and transforming ideas and practices in the arts, we have much to learn from the attempts of Chicago’s New (Media) Negro artists to create ‘art for the people’, to immerse broad audiences in such accessible media as mural painting, photography and graphic arts. (shrink)

This article, first of all, supports the idea that the undeniable process of ICT-based technological convergence implies the social, cultural and business unification of the world of media and culture. The poor performance of the megamerger is a clear indicator of the unstable ground of the convergence hypothesis. Secondly, it argues in favour of cooperation between different expertise, skills and cultures to make multimedia products or to supply multimedia services, instead of creating from scratch a brand new (...) class of hybrid skills and professions. Thirdly, a variety of new possible and realistically achievable professional profiles in cultural industries and institutions are illustrated. Eventually a set of public policies, in the light of a new role for cities and regions, is developed. (shrink)

We are increasingly exposed to polarized media sources, with clear evidence that individuals choose those sources closest to their existing views. We also have a tradition of open face-to-face group discussion in town meetings, for example. There are a range of current proposals to revive the role of group meetings in democratic decision-making. Here, we build a simulation that instantiates aspects of reinforcement theory in a model of competing social influences. What can we expect in the interaction of polarized (...) media with group interaction along the lines of town meetings? Some surprises are evident from a computational model that includes both. Deliberative group discussion can be expected to produce opinion convergence. That convergence may not, however, be a cure for extreme views polarized at opposite ends of the opinion spectrum. In a large class of cases, we show that adding the influence of group meetings in an environment of self-selected media produces not a moderate central consensus but opinion convergence at one of the extremes defined by polarized media. (shrink)

This paper argues that race and class inequalities cannot be fully understood in isolation: their intersectional quality is explored through an analysis of how the White working class were portrayed in popular and political discourse during late 2008 (the timing is highly significant). While global capitalism reeled on the edge of financial melt-down, the essential values of neo-liberalism were reasserted as natural, moral and efficient through two apparently contrasting discourses. First, a victim discourse presented White working people, and their children (...) in particular, as suffering educationally because of minoritised racial groups and their advocates. Second a discourse of degeneracy presented an immoral and barbaric underclass as a threat to social and economic order. Applying the 'interest-convergence principle', from Critical Race Theory, the discourses amount to a strategic mobilisation of White interests where the 'White, but not quite' status of the working class (Allen, 2009) provides a buffer zone at a time of economic and cultural crisis which secures societal White supremacy and provides a further setback to progressive reforms that focus on race, gender and disability equality. The existence of poor Whites, therefore, is not only consistent with a regime of White supremacy — they are actually an essential part of the processes that sustain it. (shrink)

In the face of differences between the ethical religio-philosophies believed across the globe, how should a media ethicist theorize or make recommendations in the light of theory? One approach is relativist, taking each distinct moral worldview to be true only for its own people. A second approach is universalist, seeking to discover a handful of basic ethical principles that are already shared by all the world's peoples. After providing reasons to doubt both of these approaches to doing media (...) ethics, consideration is given to a third. This under-explored approach offers moral claims that would be reasonable for nearly all long-standing cultures to accept even though they currently do not, with the aim of creating new common ground among them. The chapter advances some rights and responsibilities, particularly as they concern the media's role in respect of self-government and self-expression, on which many of those with African, Confucian, Islamic, and Western foundational commitments could sensibly converge. (shrink)

This article aims to contribute to the discussion on the Europeanization of public spheres. It is the starting point for an investigation into the role of the media in transnational debate in Germany. The study aims to determine whether the media function as either a motor of or an obstacle to Europeanization of national public debate, compared to other actors. Drawing on empirical data from the project ‘The transformation of political mobilisation and communication in European public spheres’, we (...) analyze the communications through which political actors, civil society actors, and the media in Germany make public demands on European issues. Sources on which this investigation was built were the news and editorial section of two national quality newspapers, one tabloid and one regional newspaper in the period between 2000 and 2002. The findings show that the demands made by the media are generally more European in scope than those made by other political actors. Regarding the evaluation of EU integration and the frames that are advocated, the German press and the political elite are rather convergent. (shrink)

Art history on the edge : iconology, media, and visual culture -- Four fundamental concepts of image science -- Image science -- Image X text -- Realism and the digital image -- Migrating images : totemism, fetishism, idolatry -- The future of the image : Rancière's road not taken -- World pictures : globalization and visual culture -- Media aesthetics -- There are no visual media -- Back to the drawing board : architecture, sculpture, and the digital (...) image -- Foundational sites and occupied spaces -- Border wars : translation and convergence in politics and media -- Art X environment -- The historical uncanny : phantoms, doubles, and repetition in the war on terror -- The spectacle today : a response to retort -- Coda : for a sweet science of images. (shrink)

‘Justice’ is spoken of in two ways: the lawful and the fair. The law is a human construct that is devoted to the advantage of all, or to the advantage of the best, or to the advantage of those in power or to the advantage of those representing it – let it be the politician, the media, the TV presenter, the filmmaker. Thus, the law serves the production or the preservation of happiness within politics and business. The law commands (...) us to act according to the mean. A well-written law follows the mean well and a poorly written law does not. On the other hand, fairness is a principle sometimes materialised through the law and the given justice system. Fairness is the ultimate value pursued by both the common law and civil law traditions. However, its distribution through the law and the representation of this delivery varies. Does this mean that a different kind of justice is distributed? Through the teachings of Aristotle, this essay aims to deconstruct the notion of justice, by breaking down its two ingredients, the lawful and the fair, and by analysing the effect of their representation in modern European society. The relativity attached to the notion of justice is not a modern phenomenon, but a philosophical matter that can be analysed and indeed explained through the teachings of Aristotle and its contemporary students. The analysis will be developed in the context of convergent Europe, focusing on the role of the media and courts especially in relation to criminal justice. (shrink)

The present study endeavors to give a description of a famous case of sexual harass- ment at the workplace and critique it in terms of its embedment of an intertwined relationship between two pervasive ideologies prevalent in our society: patriarchy and consumerism. By focusing on the favorable conditions, ways of resolution, and outcomes of the lawsuit, this essay approaches the organization- al culture of Mitsubishi Motor Manufacturing of America through the lens of critical theory. Selective literature review on sexual harassment, (...) as well as general coverage of the event by the media and the parties involved demonstrate the validity of the claim that this study has made. (shrink)

This article investigates media representations of the European financial crisis in Greece and Italy. We study the Euro crisis as an ‘emergency situation’ with domino effects, where media played a central role in shaping communication practices at the national level as well as between the two countries. Drawing upon vertical and horizontal dynamics of Europeanization, we map the convergences and divergences in media discourses that surround the period 2011–2015. In doing so, we elaborate a qualitative analysis of (...) newspaper articles focusing, in particular, on the themes of austerity and the fragmentation of Europe. Our argument suggests that national public spheres in times of transnational crisis become increasingly nationalized; yet under certain circumstances such as when the supranational infrastructure is the target of blame, they converge, opening the path toward a transnational discursive dialogue. (shrink)

BackgroundTranscranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) is an FDA approved treatment for major depression, migraine, obsessive compulsive disorder, and smoking addiction. TMS has gained popular media support, but media coverage and commercial reporting of TMS services may be contributing to the landscape of ethical issues.MethodsWe explore the differences between the academic and print media literature portrayals of TMS to evaluate their ethical impact for the public. We performed a comprehensive literature review using PubMed and NexisUni databases to evaluate the (...) literature available on TMS from 2014 to 2019. Our sample consisted of 1632 academic articles and 468 print media articles for a total of 2100 articles. We then coded each article for seven specific top-level codes: (1) type of source, (2) year of publication, (3) purpose of TMS application, (4) age of subjects, (5) population, (6) overall tone, and (7) specification of TMS parameters. We also made some additional notes of the TMS parameters where specified and the breakdown of mental health applications.ResultsOur results indicated several discrepancies between the academic and the print media reporting about TMS technology, particularly with regards to tone and specificity. Namely, the academic sample was largely neutral and specific about the parameters under which TMS was being applied, while the print media sample was heavily optimistic and presented the application of TMS with far less specificity. There was some convergence between the two samples, such as the focus of both on therapy as the predominant TMS application.ConclusionsWe call upon the academic community to increase scrutiny of TMS services in order to ensure that people’s knowledge of health technologies is not unduly influenced by sensational claims and a general lack of adequate information. (shrink)

본 논문은 고도화된 형태의 과학기술에 기초한 기술정보의 융합을 통해 높은 생산성과 효용성을 갖춘 디지털 융합매체의 개발을 독려하고 있는 현대 디지털 융합 매체사회의 문제점을 규명하는 것을 목적으로 한다. 이것은 수학적 사고를 근간으로 하는 기계론적 세계관과 과학주의의 확대 과정 속에서 발생하고 있는 인간의 문화적 소외 양상을 디지털 융합매체의 새로운 미디어 환경 속에서 비판적으로 고찰하는 것인 동시에 사회의 여러 영역들과 긴밀한 이해관계를 형성하고 있는 디지털 매체의 존재의 양상에 대한 비판적 접근이기도 하다. 또한 이것은 낙관론적인 과학주의 사고 과정에 배태되어 있는 기계론적 세계관의 위험성(자기증식적, 자기강화적)을 (...) 고찰하는 과정이 된다. 이 점에서 현대 사회에 빈도 높게 나타나고 있는 반인륜적이고, 반사회적인 사태들은 기술정보의 융합을 통해 높은 생산성을 창출하는 낙관론적인 과학주의의 모순을 보여주는 상징적인 사례에 해당한다. 디지털 매체의 발달과 더불어 정보기술을 활용하는 인간 능력의 향상은 다양한 영역들 간에 정보를 교류할 수 있는 새로운 소통문화의 토대를 형성한다. 하지만 자본을 중심으로 하는 현대 사회의 문화생산구조 속에서 소통을 위한 매체는 구조화된다. 자본에 의해 구조화된 매체는 사회의 새로운 이념에 맞추어 새로운 형식의 매체를 창출하는 반복의 과정을 거친다. 그리고 변화된 사회의 이념에 따라 새롭게 구조화된 매체의 확대 과정 속에는 기계론적인 사고에 기초한 과학지상주의가 전제되어 있다. 더욱이 이러한 기술정보의 융합을 시도하는 디지털 융합매체 속에서 인간은 더 이상 조작 주체로서의 고유한 지위를 갖지 못한다. 또한 이것은 디지털 가상 세계 속에서 나타나는 주체함몰(상실)을 상징하는 것이기도 하다. 그러므로 본 연구는 디지털 융합시대를 지탱하는 기술정보의 융합 논리 속에 내재되어 있는 기계론적 세계관에 기초하는 과학주의에 대한 비판적 고찰을 시도한다. 그리고 이것을 위해 본 논문에서는 디지털 융합시대를 대표하는 빅데이터의 세계관과 더불어 기술정보의 융합 논리에 대한 철학적 분석을 시도한다. 또한 이것은 자본을 중심으로 구조화 되고 있는 현대 사회의 융합매체가 가지는 소외의 양상을 고찰하는 과정이기도 하다. (shrink)

This collective book analyzes seriality as a major phenomenon increasingly connecting audiovisual narratives (cinematic films and television series) in the 20th and 21st centuries. The book historicizes and contextualizes the notion of seriality, combining narratological, aesthetic, industrial, philosophical, and political perspectives, showing how seriality as a paradigm informs media convergence and resides at the core of cinema and television history. By associating theoretical considerations and close readings of specific works, as well as diachronic and synchronic approaches, this volume (...) offers a complex panorama of issues related to seriality including audience engagement, intertextuality and transmediality, cultural legitimacy, authorship, and medium specificity in remakes, adaptations, sequels, and reboots. Written by a team of international scholars, this book highlights a diversity of methodologies that will be of interest to scholars and doctoral students across disciplinary areas such as media studies, film studies, literature, aesthetics, and cultural studies. It will also interest students attending classes on serial audiovisual narratives and will appeal to fans of the series it addresses, such as Fargo, Twin Peaks, The Hunger Games, Bates Motel, and Sherlock. (shrink)

Taking as its starting point the notion of photocinema—or the interplay of the still and moving image—the photographs, interviews, and critical essays in this volume explore the ways in which the two media converge and diverge, ...

This article is devoted to presenting the intermedia journalistic project called Out of Eden Walk and launched by American reporter Paul Salopek. Based on values such as journalistic reliability and the in-depth view of the reality, the project can be situated within the framework of the popular strands of slow journalism and slow travel. Salopek’s intention was to present Out of Eden Walk as an alternative to the rapidity of mass media communication and popular travel writing. The purpose of (...) this paper is to demonstrate the way in which Salopek uses media convergence mechanisms for creating an intermediary journalistic message, which is then distributed via various communication platforms based on both new media and traditional media. (shrink)

Resumo: Neste artigo, propõe-se uma confrontação entre a teoria dos signos de Gotthold E. Lessing, tal como exposta em Laocoonte ou sobre as fronteiras da pintura e da poesia, e os dois ensaios de Theodor W. Adorno sobre as relações entre música e pintura. Pretende-se, com isso, demonstrar a presença decisiva de elementos da estética clássica alemã no pensamento adorniano do pós-guerra; em particular, observa-se o modo pelo qual a teoria racionalista de Lessing atua na abordagem dialética adorniana a respeito (...) da irredutibilidade formal dos meios artísticos e das possibilidades de sua convergência. À luz de tal confrontação, discutem-se, em um segundo momento do artigo, os temas da conferência de Adorno de 1966, A arte e as artes, que, em certa medida, consubstancia a discussão dos ensaios anteriores sobre música e pintura. Assinala-se, nesse contexto, a continuidade da posição teórica de Adorno e se apresentam as diferenças entre o processo de pseudomorfose e o de imbricação dos meios artísticos, segundo o filósofo.s: This article presents a comparison of Gotthold E. Lessing’s theory of signs, as found in his Laocoön: an essay on the limits of painting and poetry, and Theodore W. Adorno’s two essays on the relationship between music and painting. Our aim is to point out the decisive influence of German classical aesthetics on Adorno’s post-war aesthetics. Specifically, we discuss how Lessing’s theory functions as a framework for Adorno’s dialectical assessment of the formal specificity of artistic media and their possibilities of convergence in the context of the 1960’s avant-garde. In this context, we discuss the main implications of Adorno’s famous lecture of 1966, Art and the arts, which concerned the process of media convergence that intensified during the 1960’s, as well as the concepts of “overlapping” between artistic media and of “pseudomorphosis”. (shrink)

In the summer of 2009, we conceived a special issue of MediaTropes on the theme of “bioconvergence.” We sent out an initial circular to measure interest and solicited abstracts from scholars across disciplines. We received so many engaging and excellent contributions that we decided to publish two volumes of this special issue. Volume I appears here, while the publication of Volume II is anticipated in early 2012. The contributions to this volume examine, from a range of angles, the ways in (...) which living bodies, media, and technologies “converge.” The starting proposition of this special issue is that bodies are technologized and conceived increasingly in technical and biotechnological terms, while correspondingly, techniques and technologies have become increasingly “bodied.” Moreover, both tendencies are pointedly and pervasively mediatized as bodies and technologies constitute intercutting currents of spectacle and digitality in public and cultural life... (shrink)

Media service to the corporate sector is reflexive: the media are major corporations. Like others, they sell a product to a market: the product is audiences and the market is other businesses (advertisers). It would be surprising indeed if the choice and shaping of media content did not reflect the interests and preferences of the sellers and buyers, and the business world generally. Even apart from the natural tendency to support state power, the linkage of the corporate (...) sector and the state is so close that convergence of interests on major issues is the norm. The status of audiences is more ambiguous. The product must be available for sale; people must be induced to look at the advertisements. But beyond this common ground, divisions arise. (shrink)

This text deals with convergence and divergence in relation to the formation of images of inhumanity in Slovak Roma settlements. Slovak media, social networks, and television reports often contain negative images emphasizing the Roma’s backwardness, irrationality, superstition, and cruelty, and aiming to highlight their inhumanity. This approach has become prevalent even among official state authorities such as the police of the Slovak Republic, shaping the perception of the Roma as monsters. It represents a mobilization strategy that connects and (...) disconnects various disciplinary apparatuses, forming concrete images of monsters. By examining moments of convergence and divergence, which mainly focus on the killing and consumption of canines, the text clarifies the social and material ordering that contributes to the particular arrangement of significance used by the Slovak media and other officials. (shrink)

Government, media, and medical accounts of Emma Goldman converged to create her public presence in the U.S. as a "dangerous individual." The prevailing discourses constituted Goldman as violent, utilizing her alleged menace to distract attention from far more egregious violence against labor by state and corporate forces. Goldman responded by denying, confronting, and redirecting the alarmed gaze toward greater risks left underarticulated in hegemonic accounts. Goldman's bold confrontations with authorities constituted a kind of anarchist parrhesia, fearless speech, a relentless (...) truth-telling practice that risked her own security in pursuit of her "beautiful ideal." The labor of remembering America's history of class violence hones our attention to the complex discursive processes by which some historical facts come to count in prevailing narratives, while others fade into obscurity. (shrink)

The convergence of humans and artificial intelligence (AI) systems introduces new dynamics into the cultural and intellectual landscape. Complementing emerging cultural evolution concepts such as machine culture, AI agents represent a significant techno-sociological development, particularly within the anthropological study of Web3 as a community focused on decentralization through blockchain. Despite their growing presence, the cultural significance of AI agents remains largely unexplored in academic literature. Toward this end, we conceived hybrid netnography, a novel interdisciplinary approach that examines the cultural (...) and intellectual dynamics within digital ecosystems by analyzing the interactions and contributions of both human and AI agents as co-participants in shaping narratives, ideas, and cultural artifacts. We argue that, within the Web3 community on the social media platform X, these agents challenge traditional notions of participation and influence in public discourse, creating a “hybrid marketplace of ideas”—a conceptual space where human- and AI-generated ideas coexist and compete for attention. We examine the current state of AI agents in idea generation, propagation, and engagement, positioning their role as cultural agents through the lens of memetics and encouraging further inquiry into their cultural and societal impact. Additionally, we address the implications of this paradigm for privacy, intellectual property, and governance, highlighting the societal and legal challenges of integrating AI agents into the hybrid marketplace of ideas. (shrink)

In this essay, I take up the question of the time of medicine in relation to two events in the U.S. from 2005—the Terri Schiavo case and Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath. I consider both cases as “mediatized medical events,” that is, as events in which the practices of medicine received considerable media attention at a particular historical moment; or, we might say, as events that brought a convergence between media and medical practices. I juxtapose these two (...) events because, placed side by side, they help make visible two stories of catastrophe, as well as the many difficulties of telling stories of catastrophe. Bringing together these seemingly divergent events allows me to draw connections that I hope will expand our bioethical imaginary beyond the reductive approaches that tend to dominate the practice of bioethics today. I also juxtapose them to signal a bioethical tension at the heart of the neoliberal state’s response to catastrophe in general, what Foucault might have diagnosed as the difference between making live and letting die. In these two events, we glimpsed—if only fleetingly—the state’s operation of making live and letting die, and medicine’s central role in that operation, as well as the re-assertion of medical sovereignty in crisis events. (shrink)