Satiric TV in the Americas

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul Alonso
Keyword(s):  
Public Discourse ◽  
Critical Role ◽  
Social Institutions ◽  
The United States ◽  
Entertainment Media ◽  
Media Spectacle ◽  
The Status ◽  
The Media ◽  
Tv Shows ◽  
Critical Humor

In the post-truth era, postmodern satiric media have emerged as prominent critical voices playing an unprecedented role at the heart of public debate, filling the gaps left not only by traditional media but also by weak social institutions and discredited political elites. Satiric TV in the Americas analyzes some of the most representative and influential satiric TV shows on the continent (focusing on cases in Argentina, Peru, Ecuador, Mexico, Chile, and the United States) in order to understand their critical role in challenging the status quo, traditional journalism, and the prevalent local media culture. It illuminates the phenomenon of satire as resistance and negotiation in public discourse, the role of entertainment media as a site where sociopolitical tensions are played out, and the changing notions of journalism in today’s democratic societies. Introducing the notion of “critical metatainment”—a postmodern, carnivalesque result of and a transgressive, self-referential reaction to the process of tabloidization and the cult of celebrity in the media spectacle era—Satiric TV in the Americas is the first book to map, contextualize, and analyze relevant cases to understand the relation between political information, social and cultural dissent, critical humor, and entertainment in the region. Evaluating contemporary satiric media as distinctively postmodern, multilayered, and complex discursive objects that emerge from the collapse of modernity and its arbitrary dichotomies, Satiric TV in the Americas also shows that, as satiric formats travel to a particular national context, they are appropriated in different ways and adapted to local circumstances, thus having distinctive implications.

scholarly journals Bella Abzug, queer rights, and disrupting the status quo

2015 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Trevor G Gates ◽  
Margery C Saunders
Keyword(s):  
Civil Rights ◽  
Social Action ◽  
Public Discourse ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
The United States ◽  
Status Quo ◽  
Working Environment ◽  
Field Analysis ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Status

Workers who are lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ)-identified have always been a part of the workplace in the United States, yet there has been a lack of awareness about how to advocate for the needs of these people. This lack of awareness was challenged by Congresswoman Bella Abzug. Abzug’s campaign for creating an equal working environment for sexual minorities initiated gradual changes in the public discourse concerning workplace and other broad equality measures for these communities. To frame these gradual transformations within a historical context, we use Lewin’s force field analysis framework to examine the change efforts of Abzug. Abzug had beginning success in thawing the status quo yet her visions for equality for LGBTQ people have yet to be realized. Using Abzug’s social action as an example, this article concludes that allies must continue to challenge societal oppression, power, and privilege and to demand civil rights protections for LGBTQ individuals.

scholarly journals Transformative Action: A Theoretical Framework for Breaking New Ground

2018 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Social Institutions ◽  
The United States ◽  
Public Affairs ◽  
Theory And Practice ◽  
Structural Factors ◽  
Community Based ◽  
Institutionalized Racism ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Status ◽  
Transformative Action

Developed by Paulo Freire, critical consciousness (CrC) is a philosophical, theoretical, and practice-based framework encompassing an individual’s understanding of and action against the structural roots of inequity and violence. This article explores divergent CrC scholarship regarding CrC theory and practice; provides an in-depth review of inconsistencies within the CrC “action” domain; and, in an effort to resolve discrepancies within the existing CrC literature, presents a new construct—transformative action (TA)—and details the process of TA development. Comprising three hierarchical levels of action (critical, avoidant, and destructive) for each level of the socio-ecosystem, TA serves as a model for community-based practitioners, such as those working in the fields of social work and public affairs. The authors argue that transformation is necessary to deconstruct the social institutions in the United States that maintain and perpetuate systemic inequity, creating dehumanizing consequences. Through critical TA, community workers can make visible hidden socio-structural factors, such as institutionalized racism and White privilege, countering the historic trend of community workers acting as tools of social control—that is, socializing individuals to adapt to marginalized roles and accept inferior treatment; maintaining and enforcing the status quo; and facilitating conformity with inequitable societal norms and practices. The authors also discuss the implications of community-based TA practice.

Analysis of Media Bias—Glenn Beck TV Shows: A Content Analysis

2021 ◽  
pp. 097325862110489
Author(s):  
Rizwan Ahmad
Keyword(s):  
Content Analysis ◽  
Public Discourse ◽  
Media Bias ◽  
Media Industry ◽  
President Obama ◽  
News Stories ◽  
Political Reality ◽  
The Media ◽  
Tv Shows ◽  
Conservative Values

This study provides an overview of the media’s role in shaping public discourse and belief through framing news stories in a biased perspective and setting an agenda that is in keeping with the interests of the corporate and institutional funders of the media apparatus. Support for such an analysis is provided by a literature review that covers many critical aspects of news framing, agenda setting and cultivation theory, especially with respect to the emergence of a new ‘network society’. The ‘content analysis’ approach is utilised to search for biased content via the use of coders and decoders in some 140 randomly selected sampled links of the ‘Glenn Beck’ show during the two periods of time from 1 January 2010 to 30 June 2010, and from 1 January 2011 to 30 June 2011, each of these periods consisting of 70 samples. The results ultimately show that the programme almost unilaterally provides supportive views of moral conservative values, and slight negative portrayals of Muslims. The programme presents critical views of President Obama and his policies, although the finding in opposing Obama’s policies is not statistically significant. The significance of these findings is discussed within the larger context of media bias and its influence on political reality, as well as public discourse and belief; although the study and hence, the findings suggesting ‘bias’ do not represent the entire media industry representing conservative values.

Introduction

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul Alonso
Keyword(s):  
Popular Culture ◽  
Political Communication ◽  
The United States ◽  
Academic Context ◽  
Media Spectacle ◽  
Research Questions ◽  
Tv Shows ◽  
Structural Research ◽  
Primary Form

Chapter 1 introduces contemporary satiric TV shows as new forms of negotiated dissent that respond, at the national and global level, to the relation between power and media, the evolution of media spectacle and infotainment as a primary form of political communication, and the connection between national traumas, social tensions, and popular culture. After formulating the structural research questions, this chapter presents the theoretical and academic context of satire in Latin America and the United States, and describes the satiric cases to be analyzed throughout the book. It places the phenomenon of satiric TV as sociopolitical communication within the following intellectual debates and lines of work in media studies and popular culture: 1) media spectacle and global infotainment; 2) celebrity culture and identity; 3) tabloidization, hybridity, and discursive integration in the post-network era; and 4) satire, carnival, and critical metatainment. It finally presents the structure of the book.

scholarly journals Network Propaganda

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yochai Benkler ◽  
Robert Farris ◽  
Hal Roberts
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Political Communication ◽  
Coming Out ◽  
Public Discourse ◽  
The United States ◽  
Mainstream Media ◽  
Fox News ◽  
The Media ◽  
Political Media ◽  
Political Spectrum

This book examines the shape, composition, and practices of the United States political media landscape. It explores the roots of the current epistemic crisis in political communication with a focus on the remarkable 2016 U.S. president election culminating in the victory of Donald Trump and the first year of his presidency. The authors present a detailed map of the American political media landscape based on the analysis of millions of stories and social media posts, revealing a highly polarized and asymmetric media ecosystem. Detailed case studies track the emergence and propagation of disinformation in the American public sphere that took advantage of structural weaknesses in the media institutions across the political spectrum. This book describes how the conservative faction led by Steve Bannon and funded by Robert Mercer was able to inject opposition research into the mainstream media agenda that left an unsubstantiated but indelible stain of corruption on the Clinton campaign. The authors also document how Fox News deflects negative coverage of President Trump and has promoted a series of exaggerated and fabricated counter narratives to defend the president against the damaging news coming out of the Mueller investigation. Based on an analysis of the actors that sought to influence political public discourse, this book argues that the current problems of media and democracy are not the result of Russian interference, behavioral microtargeting and algorithms on social media, political clickbait, hackers, sockpuppets, or trolls, but of asymmetric media structures decades in the making. The crisis is political, not technological.

Still a Mother

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jackie Krasas
Keyword(s):  
Social Institutions ◽  
The United States ◽  
Gender Violence ◽  
Best Interests ◽  
Family Court ◽  
Reproductive Justice ◽  
The Status ◽  
Employment Education ◽  
Being There ◽  
Best Interests Standard

This book traces the trajectories of mothers who have lost or ceded custody to an ex-partner. The book argues that these noncustodial mothers' experiences should be understood within a greater web of gendered social institutions such as employment, education, health care, and legal systems that shapes the meanings of contemporary motherhood in the United States. If motherhood means “being there,” then noncustodial mothers, through their absence, are seen as nonmothers. They are anti-mothers to be reviled. At the very least, these mothers serve as cautionary tales. The book questions the existence of an objective method for determining custody of children and challenges the “best-interests standard” through a feminist, reproductive justice lens. The stories of noncustodial mothers that the book relates shed light on marriage and divorce, caregiving, gender violence, and family court. Unfortunately, much of the contemporary discussion of child-custody determination is dominated either by gender-neutral discussions or, at the opposite end of the spectrum, by the idea that fathers are severely disadvantaged in custody disputes. As a result, the idea that mothers always receive custody has taken on the status of common sense. If this was true, as the book's author affirms, there would be no book to write.

scholarly journals US alt-right media and the creation of the counter-collective memory

2019 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 77-91 ◽  
Author(s):  
Krzysztof Wasilewski
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
New York ◽  
Collective Memory ◽  
Critical Analysis ◽  
New York Times ◽  
The United States ◽  
Far Right ◽  
The Media ◽  
The Creation ◽  
Tv Shows

The media play an important role in shaping the collective memory of their users. Popular movies, TV shows or commemorative newspaper texts influence the ways in which people remember and forget. Many scholars have attempted to describe this connection; however, little attention has so far been paid to alternative media. This article aims to analyse the features of the collective memory constructed by the media associated with the so-called alt-right (alternative right) movement in the United States. I argue that far-right media produce an ethnically exclusive collective memory, which consequently aims to counter the mainstream collective memory. The findings of this study come from the critical analysis of how the New York Times and Breitbart News engaged in a nationwide discussion on the Confederacys legacy that ensued in August 2017 after the decision to remove the Robert E. Lee monument in Charlottesville, VA and the mass protests that soon followed.

Intellectuals and cultural trauma

2011 ◽  
Vol 14 (4) ◽  
pp. 453-467 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ron Eyerman
Keyword(s):  
Collective Identity ◽  
Public Discourse ◽  
Social Role ◽  
The United States ◽  
Cultural Trauma ◽  
Specific Group ◽  
Social Actors ◽  
Intellectual Labor ◽  
The Media ◽  
Martin Luther King

As opposed to the intelligentsia, a historically specific group, and the professions, those who perform intellectual labor, the intellectual is here understood as the performance of a social role, one which involves the articulation of ideas communicated to a broad audience. This implies at least two distinct ways of speaking about and studying the intellectual. The first is to look at the way various social actors take on the task of articulating ideas in public discourses. The second is to study how particular persons aspire to the intellectual, a role whose meaning they inherit as part of a tradition which must be interpreted and reinvented. Through an analysis of six assassinations, the article shows how intellectuals can act as carrier groups in what is called a cultural trauma, a public discourse in which the foundations of collective identity are brought up for reflection. The six assassinations are Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy in the United States, Pim Fortuyn and Theo van Gogh in the Netherlands and Olof Palme and Anna Lindh in Sweden. The article concludes with reflections on the changing nature and position of the intellectual in contemporary society, especially in the light of the prevalence of the media and the new digital age.

Media’s portrayal of CAM: Exploring 40 years of narratives and meanings in public discourse

Journalism ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 146488492098540
Author(s):  
Emilia H Lopera-Pareja ◽  
Lorena Cano-Orón
Keyword(s):  
Public Discourse ◽  
Radical Change ◽  
Media Representations ◽  
Tone Language ◽  
Media Attention ◽  
Alternative Medicines ◽  
Qualitative Approaches ◽  
The Press ◽  
The Status ◽  
The Media

The media are a key element in being able to assess how the climate of public opinion regarding Complementary and Alternative Medicines (CAM) has evolved over the years. The aim of this study is to explore the variation of the media representations along 40 years (1979–2018) in Spanish newspapers to assess if the press has contributed to legitimise, delegitimise or maintain the status quo of these therapies. From quantitative and qualitative approaches, we evaluate the media attention, the narratives, linguistic terms and tone used, and the relations between them. Results indicate the media reporting on CAM has remained relatively stable during the first 37 years (1979–2015) of the study, but in the last 3 years a radical change has been observed in media attention, tone, language and arguments used. Media representations of this issue evolves from a period of low media attention (1979–2015), in which CAM was legitimised, to another period of high media attention (2016–2018), in which CAM was delegitimised.

scholarly journals The Perpetuation of Stereotypes i in Croatian Public Discourse

2021 ◽  
Vol 45 (4) ◽  
pp. 287-297
Author(s):  
Jakob Patekar
Keyword(s):  
Public Discourse ◽  
Black People ◽  
Critical Role ◽  
The United States ◽  
Nazi Regime ◽  
Marginalized Groups ◽  
Public Figures ◽  
Raising Awareness ◽  
People Today

The way people are spoken or written about has a critical role in how they are perceived, and this in turn influences how they are positioned within a society – belonging to its core, the majority, or being relegated to the margins, the minority. Various authors have reflected on the role of language in dehumanizing, oppressing, and discriminating certain groups, be it the Jewish citizens during the Nazi regime in Germany, the Tutsi in the Rwandan genocide of 1994, black people in the United States since 1619, women throughout history, or gay and disabled people today, to name a few marginalized groups. In these and other cases, language was the first step in the othering and, consequently, the marginalization of a certain group. The aim of this paper is to explore the language of marginalization in Croatian public discourse, looking at how media workers and public figures contribute to stereotyping people with autism by using the words “autistic” and “autistically” as pejoratives. For this purpose, I analyzed one of the most visited newspaper websites in Croatia in relation to how these words are used. I found that journalists, writers, and politicians use “autistic” and “autistically” as pejoratives when they want to say that an individual, an institution, or a state is “out of touch with reality”, “self-centered”, “unresponsive”. In addition, “autistic” and “autistically” are often used with the intent to insult, thus further imbuing these words with negative connotations. I conclude that raising awareness is needed among media workers and public figures so that they recognize the danger of stereotyping people with autism through the pejorative use of the words “autistic” and “autistically”.

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