scholarly journals What is Nigeria? Unsettling the Myth of Exceptionalism

2015 ◽  
Vol 50 (1) ◽  
pp. 65-78 ◽  
Author(s):  
Aghogho Akpome

This article explores perceptions and representations of Nigeria and Nigerians in the popular global imaginary. It analyses selected popular media narratives in order to foreground contradictions and paradoxes in the ways in which the country and people of Nigeria are discursively constructed. By doing so, it interrogates stereotypes of corruption and criminality as well as myths of exceptionalism about Nigeria and Nigerians originating from both within and outside the country. The analysis reveals that the generalised portrayal of Nigeria and Nigerians as exceptional social subjects is characterised by contradictions and inaccuracies in dominant representational practices and cannot be justified by the verifiable empirical information available on the country and its people.

Author(s):  
Karolina Karbownik

The music media have constructed the identity of groupies as sexual and passive objects, submissive, inauthentic consumers of music. The stereotype, although still present in popular culture, is criticized by both the interested parties and rock artists. This article is an attempt to discuss the role that groupies played in the creation of the myth and character of the rock god, while taking into account the preconceived assumptions held by the popular media. Narratives of groupies’ participation in the emerging rock and metal scene have also been included as the ones which created a male rock musician identity: wild, aggressive and powerful. The basis for the discussion of groupies and their role in building identity in the context of rock music is the result of a deep, rhetorical analysis of groupies’ biographies, press materials, films, scientific literature and own research.


Author(s):  
Judith Fathallah

Fanfic is the unauthorized rewriting or adaptation of popular media narratives, utilizing corporately owned characters, settings and storylines to tell an individual writer’s own story. It is often abbreviated to fanfic or even fic and exists in a thoroughly grey legal area between copyright infringement and fair use. Although there were a few cases of cease-and-desist letters sent to fan writers in the 20th century, media corporations now understand it is useless to attempt to prosecute fanfic writers – for one thing, there are simply too many of us and for another it would be terrible publicity. Although modern fanfic can be reliably dated to the 1960s, it is now primarily an online practice and the fastest growing form of writing in the world. This article uses participant observation and online ethnography to explore how fanfic archives utilize digital affordances. Following Murray, I will argue that a robust understanding of digital read–write platforms needs to account for the social and legal context of digital fiction as well as its technological affordances. While the online platform LiveJournal in some ways channels user creativity towards a more self-evidentially ‘digital’ text than its successor in the Archive of Our Own (AO3), the Archive encourages greater reader interactivity at the level of archive and sorting. I will demonstrate that in some ways, the AO3 recoups some of the cultural capital and use value of print. I argue that a true appreciation of digital fiction is less about projecting fiction as becoming more and more ‘digital’ along a linear trajectory than application of a nuanced sociotechnological perspective that addresses the aims, ideology and provision of particular platforms in practice.


Author(s):  
Vaughn W. M. Watson ◽  
Lauren Elizabeth JoReine Johnson ◽  
Romina S. Peña-Pincheira ◽  
Joel E. Berends ◽  
Sisi Chen

1967 ◽  
Vol 28 ◽  
pp. 207-244
Author(s):  
R. P. Kraft

(Ed. note:Encouraged by the success of the more informal approach in Christy's presentation, we tried an even more extreme experiment in this session, I-D. In essence, Kraft held the floor continuously all morning, and for the hour and a half afternoon session, serving as a combined Summary-Introductory speaker and a marathon-moderator of a running discussion on the line spectrum of cepheids. There was almost continuous interruption of his presentation; and most points raised from the floor were followed through in detail, no matter how digressive to the main presentation. This approach turned out to be much too extreme. It is wearing on the speaker, and the other members of the symposium feel more like an audience and less like participants in a dissective discussion. Because Kraft presented a compendious collection of empirical information, and, based on it, an exceedingly novel series of suggestions on the cepheid problem, these defects were probably aggravated by the first and alleviated by the second. I am much indebted to Kraft for working with me on a preliminary editing, to try to delete the side-excursions and to retain coherence about the main points. As usual, however, all responsibility for defects in final editing is wholly my own.)


PsycCRITIQUES ◽  
2007 ◽  
Vol 52 (51) ◽  
Author(s):  
Louis Hoffman ◽  
Christine Buck
Keyword(s):  

Author(s):  
Stephen Monteiro

Cinema plays a major role in contemporary art, yet the deeper influence of its diverse historical forms on artistic practice has received little attention. Working from a media and cultural studies perspective, Screen Presence explores the intersections of film, popular media, and art since the 1950s through the examples of four pivotal figures – Andy Warhol, Robert Rauschenberg, Mona Hatoum and Douglas Gordon. While their film-related works may appear primarily as challenges to conventional cinema, these artists draw on overlooked forms of popular film culture that have been commonplace, and even dominant, in specific social contexts. Through analysis of a range of examples and source materials, Stephen Monteiro demonstrates the dependence of contemporary artists on cinema’s shifting applications and interpretations, offering a fresh understanding of the enduring impact of everyday media on how we make and view art.


Author(s):  
Ryan Whibbs ◽  
Mark Holmes

This research presents the findings of a year long study, undertaken between 2016 and 2017, seeking to understand the degree to which students are influenced to attend culinary school by food medias, social media, and the Food Network. The notion that food medias draw the majority of new cooks to the industry is often present in popular media discourses, although no data exists seeking to understand this relationship. This study reveals that food medias play a secondary or tertiary role in influencing students to register at culinary school, while also showing previously unknown patterns related to culinary students’ intention to persist with culinary careers. Nearly 40 percent of this sample do not intend to remain cooking professionally for greater than five years, and about 30 percent are “keeping other doors open” upon entry into culinary school. Although food celebrity certainly plays a role in awareness about culinary careers, intrinsic career aspirations are the most frequently reported motivation.


2018 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 120-142
Author(s):  
Pernilla Lagerlöf ◽  
Louise Peterson

Music technologies are becoming important in children's play in everyday life, but research on children's communication and interaction in such activities is still scarce. This study examines three children's social interaction in an 'experimental' activity in preschool, when the music technology breaks down. Detailed analysis is carried out by using a Goffmanian approach. The findings illustrate the children's interpretive framings of the adult's introduction and their orientation to the technological material in order to perform different alignments and how they change footings. The children's social interaction is organised according to the playful framing of the bracketed activity. This suggests the significance to pay attention to children's definitions of situations and to consider children's experiences of participation in popular media culture.


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