Documentary Film

2013 ◽  
Author(s):  
Zoë Druick
Keyword(s):  
Civil Rights ◽  
Digital Media ◽  
Political Communication ◽  
Documentary Film ◽  
Reality Television ◽  
The United States ◽  
Digital Platforms ◽  
Nonfiction Film ◽  
State Education ◽  
The Hours

Since the 1990s, there has been a veritable explosion of documentary films and digital media productions accompanied by a correspondingly large number of books and articles dedicated to contextualizing and interpreting them. The documentary film form itself is not new, of course. It dates from the 1920s, cinema’s fourth decade, and has long been a realist form associated with state education and political communication. During the experimental phase of cinema’s development after 1895, numerous fictional and nonfictional styles met and intermingled. However, it wasn’t until John Grierson, a British film writer and producer, bestowed the name “documentary” on a certain sort of pedagogical nonfiction film in 1926 that the genre began to acquire epistemological stability and institutional support. Although related, documentary retains some autonomy from instructional films, industrial and sponsored films, TV news, home movies, newsreels, and YouTube videos. Documentary was from the outset a filmic counterdiscourse to Hollywood, as well as a way for nations outside of the United States to make a filmic mark. It was thought that film could show reality as it was, especially by showing the connections between invisible structural causes (such as colonialism, industrial capitalism, geopolitical conflicts) and their effects, an important corrective to the fantasies being propagated by Hollywood’s celebration of consumerism. For many decades after the 1920s, documentary maintained its association with serious topics (e.g., economic depression, the world wars, postwar traumas, the Cold War, and the struggle for civil rights) and oppositional politics (e.g., social movements, anticolonial struggles, peace movements, struggles for environmental justice) handled without the distraction of aesthetic concerns. A number of factors led to changes surrounding documentaries in the 1990s and beyond: including the increase in film production programs in colleges, the proliferation of cable television stations needing inexpensively produced content to fill the hours, new more affordable video and digital technologies, and the rise of media conglomerates restricting the content of cinema and television screens. For years filmmakers had caviled against the authoritative conventions of educational and anthropological documentary. Beginning as early as the 1960s, documentary became increasingly self-reflexive, finding numerous ways to draw attention to itself as a form of knowledge production. Despite perceived challenges to the original documentary project, documentary remains a mainstay of television and a vital connection between cinema and television studies. Critical postcolonial and feminist work has highlighted the modernist (even at times imperial) project traditionally associated with the documentary, while identifying the challenges launched from within this trajectory. At the edges of documentary studies can be found engagements with other popular reality-based forms such as reality television and mockumentary. Documentary texts, which became increasingly interactive and concerned with everyday life and politics, have become a growing presence on digital platforms. Although some moot the future of documentary, the dynamism of this subfield of cinema studies reflects the widespread flowering of documentary and reality-based forms in media culture.

scholarly journals “Wars” on COVID-19 in Slovakia, Russia, and the United States: Securitized Framing and Reframing of Political and Media Communication Around the Pandemic

2020 ◽  
Vol 5 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marta N. Lukacovic
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Social Media ◽  
Digital Media ◽  
Political Communication ◽  
Research Question ◽  
The United States ◽  
Frame Element ◽  
Political Factions ◽  
Russian Media ◽  
The Government

This study analyzes securitized discourses and counter narratives that surround the COVID-19 pandemic. Controversial cases of security related political communication, salient media enunciations, and social media reframing are explored through the theoretical lenses of securitization and cascading activation of framing in the contexts of Slovakia, Russia, and the United States. The first research question explores whether and how the frame element of moral evaluation factors into the conversations on the securitization of the pandemic. The analysis tracks the framing process through elite, media, and public levels of communication. The second research question focused on fairly controversial actors— “rogue actors” —such as individuals linked to far-leaning political factions or militias. The proliferation of digital media provides various actors with opportunities to join publicly visible conversations. The analysis demonstrates that the widely differing national contexts offer different trends and degrees in securitization of the pandemic during spring and summer of 2020. The studied rogue actors usually have something to say about the pandemic, and frequently make some reframing attempts based on idiosyncratic evaluations of how normatively appropriate is their government's “war” on COVID-19. In Slovakia, the rogue elite actors at first failed to have an impact but eventually managed to partially contest the dominant frame. Powerful Russian media influencers enjoy some conspiracy theories but prudently avoid direct challenges to the government's frame, and so far only marginal rogue actors openly advance dissenting frames. The polarized political and media environment in the US has shown to create a particularly fertile ground for rogue grassroots movements that utilize online platforms and social media, at times going as far as encouragement of violent acts to oppose the government and its pandemic response policy.

The Global White Snake as Digital Activist Project

2021 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 109-124
Author(s):  
Liang Luo
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Digital Media ◽  
Oral Tradition ◽  
The United States ◽  
Digital Platforms ◽  
Green Card ◽  
Permanent Resident ◽  
Resident Alien ◽  
Human World ◽  
Contemporary United States

There is a long oral tradition and written record for the legend of the White Snake. As a woman, her “original sin” is being a snake. She is a snake who has cultivated herself for hundreds, if not thousands, of years to attain the form of a beautiful woman. Living as a resident “alien” (yilei) in the “Human Realm” (renjian), the White Snake has always been treated with suspicion, fear, exclusion, and violent suppression/exorcism. The White Snake is an immigrant to the human world, whose serpentine identity made her a “resident alien,” the legal category given to immigrants in the United States before they receive their “Green Card” and become a “permanent resident.” The implication of being a snake woman in the human world took on new meanings when the COVID-19 pandemic worsened the existing xenophobia, fear, and suspicion toward minority populations in the contemporary United States and throughout the world. Inspired by the Chinese White Snake legend, the three Anglophone opera, film, and stage projects from Cerise Lim Jacobs, Indrani Pal-Chaudhuri, and Mary Zimmerman, energetically engage with issues relevant to minority activism in the United States and more broadly, through digital media and digital platforms.

scholarly journals Digital Media and the Entrenchment of Right-Wing Populist Agendas

2019 ◽  
Vol 5 (4) ◽  
pp. 205630511988532 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ralph Schroeder
Keyword(s):  
Digital Media ◽  
Political Communication ◽  
News Media ◽  
The United States ◽  
Right Wing ◽  
Negative Effects ◽  
Electoral Success ◽  
The Media ◽  
Media Manipulation ◽  
Political Divide

Since Brexit and the election of President Donald Trump, news media around the world have given extensive coverage to the issue of disinformation and polarization. This article argues that while the negative effects of social media have dominated the discussion, these effects do not address how right-wing populists have been able to successfully and legitimately use digital media to circumvent traditional media. The article uses the United States and Sweden as case studies about how digital media have helped to achieve electoral success and shift the political direction in both countries—though in quite different ways. It also argues that the sources of right-wing populism go beyond the hitherto dominant left–right political divide, capturing anti-elite sentiment, and promoting exclusionary nationalism. The dominance of the issue of media manipulation has obscured the shift whereby the relation between the media and politics has become more fluid and antagonistic, which fits the populist agenda. This shift requires a rethinking of political communication that includes both the social forces that give rise to populism and the alternative digital channels that entrench them, with implications for the prospects of the role of media in politics in the two countries and beyond.

Coda

2018 ◽  
pp. 229-232
Author(s):  
Hertha D. Sweet Wong
Keyword(s):  
Civil Rights ◽  
Digital Media ◽  
The United States ◽  
Civil Rights Era ◽  
Race And Gender ◽  
Interactive Engagement ◽  
Politics Of Race ◽  
And Gender ◽  
Modes Of Thought ◽  
Post Civil Rights

The Coda reiterates that the post-civil rights era in the United States–with the coalescence of rebellion against historic modes of thought, heightened awareness of the politics of race and gender, and challenges to the artificiality of disciplinary silos –gave rise to a period of intense innovation in autobiographical expression in text and image. During this same period, profoundly new possibilities for image-text self-expression arose as the internet was developed, digital tools were generated, and social media sites were launched. Like the interart autobiographies discussed in Picturing Identity, digital media demands interactive engagement. The conclusion discusses e-poetry as a digital descendant of the forms discussed in the book. Finally, the chapter suggests that scholarly claims that digital technology itself decenters the subject must be reconsidered. It is not technology alone that determines subjectivity. All the writers-artists discussed thematize a split subject that seeks, usually futilely, wholeness.

Hyperpartisan news: Rethinking the media for populist politics

2020 ◽  
pp. 146144482091041
Author(s):  
Maria Rae
Keyword(s):  
New Media ◽  
Digital Media ◽  
Political Communication ◽  
The United States ◽  
New Agents ◽  
The United Kingdom ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
The Media ◽  
Start Ups ◽  
Better Than

Online media sites such as Breitbart News in the United States and The Canary in the United Kingdom have come to prominence as powerful new agents. Their reach and influence in the contemporary digital media ecology have been widely highlighted, yet there has been little scholarship to situate these important new players in the field of political communication. This article argues that, first, these ‘interlopers’ known as the ‘alt-right’ and ‘alt-left’ need to be understood as embedded in the context of populist politics. Second, ‘hyperpartisan’ describes these sites better than the framework of alternative media as it mirrors populism’s ideological pillar of ‘us’ versus ‘them’. Finally, a deliberate provocation is argued to name these digital start-ups as news to create a starting point for conceptualising these disruptive new media forces.

#BlackLivesMatter: An Analysis of the Movement as Social Drama

2019 ◽  
Vol 44 (1) ◽  
pp. 92-110
Author(s):  
Leslie Kay Jones
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
Social Movement ◽  
Public Space ◽  
Digital Media ◽  
Civil Rights Movement ◽  
Meaning Making ◽  
The United States ◽  
Technological Determinism ◽  
Movement Mechanics

Scholars agree that the United States is experiencing a new black civil and human rights movement called #BlackLivesMatter and that the Internet is pivotal to that movement. Protests in Ferguson, Missouri, and in Baltimore, Maryland, dominated national attention for months through 2014 and 2015. Protesters have successfully gained the attention of elite power brokers, a necessary step in the social movement process. #BlackLivesMatter has many insights to provide about mobilization, if researchers take black American discursive power and intellectual production more seriously as subjects of analysis. This article argues that a dramaturgy framework reveals important meaning making that occurs on the periphery of a social movement. In this periphery, my analysis shows that black social media publics are harbingers of racial progress. Introducing the concept of a Greek Chorus to the dramaturgy framework better clarifies the role that Twitter plays in the movement as a public space where outside observers negotiate their own meaning making surrounding the movement’s claims and strategies. Conceptualizing movement mechanics in this way provides a clearer understanding of the importance of digital media in the contemporary black civil rights movement without relying on technological determinism, reducing social media to a structural component of the movement, or undermining the importance of physicality to protest.

scholarly journals Social Media, Digital Scholarship, and Academic Promotion in US Medical Schools

2021 ◽  
Vol 53 (3) ◽  
pp. 215-219
Author(s):  
Stephanie Y. Johng ◽  
Ranit Mishori ◽  
Valeriy R. Korostyshevskiy
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Digital Media ◽  
Medical Schools ◽  
The United States ◽  
Academic Promotion ◽  
Digital Platforms ◽  
Promotion Policies ◽  
Digital Scholarship ◽  
Medical Institutions ◽  
Academic Medical

Background and Objectives: Academic promotion is critical in academic medicine. Traditionally, peer-reviewed journal articles have been at the core of advancement deliberations. With the increasing prominence digital content and social media, an increasing number of academics have begun linking their scholarly value with their online activities. It is unclear whether and how US academic medical institutions have updated their promotion criteria to reflect the changing environment and digital practices of faculty members. Methods: We reviewed publicly available advancement and promotion policies and faculty handbooks of 148 allopathic medical schools in the United States (April 2018 through September 2018), to see if social media was explicitly included in their scholarship criteria. Results: Of the 148 allopathic institutions only 12 (8.1%) stated that digital and social media products would be factored into the scholarship and/or other domains of the promotion application. There were no associations between acceptability of social media in the tenure process and schools’ characteristics. Conclusions: Digital media use has the potential to distribute scholarship widely. Including digital scholarship in promotion would help destigmatize the use of digital platforms and promote science dissemination to the public. Medical institutions should embrace new models of digital scholarship and lead the way in defining and ensuring quality.

scholarly journals Rethinking digital media and political change

2016 ◽  
Vol 24 (2) ◽  
pp. 168-183 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ralph Schroeder
Keyword(s):  
New Media ◽  
Digital Media ◽  
Political Communication ◽  
The United States ◽  
Limited Attention ◽  
General Level ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political Issues ◽  
Media Work ◽  
Political Spectrum

The role of new digital media in politics has often been discussed for individual countries and technologies, or at a general level. So far, there are few studies which compare countries and treat new media in the context of the media system as a whole, including traditional and new digital media. The main contribution of this article is to compare two countries at the extremes of the political spectrum and with quite different media systems, the United States and Sweden. It synthesizes what is known to date about digital media in these two cases, including about the uses of Twitter, Facebook and other new media. The article discusses the shortcomings of existing analyses of political communication and of how digital media work in a way that is different from traditional or mass media. The argument is that new media expand input from people into the political systems only at the margins, where they can circumvent established agenda setting and gatekeeping mechanisms. The article develops a framework for understanding digital media which highlights how they extend and diversify the public sphere, even as this sphere is monitored and managed, and still faces the constraint of the limited attention devoted to political issues.

scholarly journals Visions of Aztlán: The Chicano Documentary Film

2020 ◽  
pp. 113-131
Author(s):  
David R. Maciel ◽  
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
Documentary Film ◽  
The United States ◽  
Chicano Movement ◽  
Artistic Value ◽  
Spanish Speaking ◽  
The Us ◽  
1960S And 1970S ◽  
The 1960S

In the decade of the 1960s and 1970s, a trascendental social movement –which was known as the Chicano Movement for Civil Rights– took place in the United States. One of its major achievements was a cultural flowering that encompassed all the art forms and practices. Among them, one of single importance is the documentary film. This article presents an overview of the origins, first steps and current developments of the Chicana/o documentary cinema. Such films address a multitude of topics and combine highly artistic value with a definite political message. In addition, the Chicana/o documentary is an outstanding and highly informative mirror into Chicano experience. Since its inception to the present, over 100 documentaries have been produced and exhibited in the US, yet they have not been well-distributed in the Spanish-speaking world.

scholarly journals Youth Political Talk in the Changing Media Environment: A Cross-National Typology

2021 ◽  
pp. 194016122110556
Author(s):  
Neta Kligler-Vilenchik ◽  
Keren Tenenboim-Weinblatt ◽  
Pablo J. Boczkowski ◽  
Kaori Hayashi ◽  
Eugenia Mitchelstein ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Young People ◽  
Digital Media ◽  
Political Communication ◽  
Qualitative Interviews ◽  
The United States ◽  
Media Environment ◽  
The Us ◽  
Political Talk ◽  
Unique Dataset ◽  
Cross National

While political communication scholarship has long underscored the importance of political talk—casual conversations about news and politics that occur in everyday situations—as a way for citizens to clarify their opinions and as a precursor for political engagement, much of this literature tends to depict political talk as uncomfortable and difficult for citizens. Yet, this focus on the challenging aspects of political talk has been informed predominantly by the US context. To what extent may a different picture emerge when looking across different cultural contexts? And how are these dynamics shaped by the affordances of the multi-platform social media environment? This paper explores these questions through a unique dataset of 122 qualitative interviews conducted between 2016 and 2019 with young people (ages 18–29) from five countries: Argentina, Finland, Israel, Japan, and the United States. Rather than solidifying the avoidance of controversial political talk as the key strategy at the disposal of young people, our findings point at a five-pronged typology of young people, with each type representing a different approach toward political talk. Our typology thus contributes to a more comprehensive and nuanced picture of various approaches towards political talk employed by young people across different countries and in relation to different digital media affordances.

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