Media and the ageing body: Introduction to the special issue

2017 ◽  
Vol 21 (3) ◽  
pp. 281-289 ◽  
Author(s):  
Cecilie Givskov ◽  
Line Nybro Petersen
Keyword(s):  
Contemporary Society ◽  
Special Issue ◽  
Media Technologies ◽  
Introductory Article ◽  
Embodied Experiences ◽  
The Media ◽  
Ageing Body ◽  
Changing Practices ◽  
The Relationship

In this introductory article we offer a frame for understanding the relationship between the ageing body and the media as the focus for this special issue. As societies age, issues of representations of old bodies and people’s practices and embodied experiences with media technologies requires a deeper investigation. At the same time, contemporary society is undergoing processes of mediatization, which invites us to think of the ways in which media can be said to play a role in changing practices or changing representations regarding the older body. The introduction is concerned with this duality: the changing sociocultural conditions for the ageing body and the changing authority of media and its role for the ageing body. Finally, we briefly introduce the articles that are part of the special issue ‘The ageing body and the media’.

Governance and Business-Society Relations in Areas of Limited Statehood: An Introduction

2021 ◽  
pp. 000765032098508
Author(s):  
Sameer Azizi ◽  
Tanja Börzel ◽  
Hans Krause Hansen
Keyword(s):  
Social Inequality ◽  
Ethnic Diversity ◽  
Global South ◽  
Special Issue ◽  
Introductory Article ◽  
Collective Goods ◽  
International Ngos ◽  
State Actors ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Critical Reflections

In this introductory article we explore the relationship between statehood and governance, examining in more detail how non-state actors like MNCs, international NGOs, and indigenous authorities, often under conditions of extreme economic scarcity, ethnic diversity, social inequality and violence, take part in the making of rules and the provision of collective goods. Conceptually, we focus on the literature on Areas of Limited Statehood and discuss its usefulness in exploring how business-society relations are governed in the global South, and beyond. Building on insights from this literature, among others, the four articles included in this special issue provide rich illustrations and critical reflections on the multiple, complex and often ambiguous roles of state and non-state actors operating in contemporary Syria, Nigeria, India and Palestine, with implications for conventional understandings of CSR, stakeholders, and related conceptualizations.

scholarly journals Fashion, the media and age: How women’s magazines use fashion to negotiate age identities

2017 ◽  
Vol 21 (3) ◽  
pp. 334-348 ◽  
Author(s):  
Julia Twigg
Keyword(s):  
Later Life ◽  
Women's Magazines ◽  
Special Issue ◽  
Third Age ◽  
The Media ◽  
Ageing Body

The article explores the role of women’s magazines in the negotiation of later life identities, focussing on the treatment of fashion and dress. It locates the analysis in debates about the changing nature of later years with the emergence of Third Age identities, and the role of consumption in these. Focussed on the treatment of fashion and age, it analyses four UK magazines: three chosen to represent the older market ( Woman & Home, Saga, Yours), and one to represent mainstream fashion ( Vogue). It is based on interviews with four editors and analysis of the content of the magazines. The article analyses the media strategies that journalists use to negotiate tensions in the presentation of fashion for this group and their role in supporting new formations of age. This article forms part of ‘Media and the Ageing Body’ Special Issue.

Skin Matters: An Interview with Marc Lafrance

2019 ◽  
Vol 36 (7-8) ◽  
pp. 273-291 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tomoko Tamari
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Medical Technology ◽  
Sense Of Self ◽  
The Body ◽  
Special Issue ◽  
Feature Representations ◽  
Actual Experience ◽  
Binary Oppositions ◽  
The Media ◽  
The Relationship

Following the Body & Society special issue, Skin Matters: Thinking Through the Body’s Surfaces (vol. 24, 1–2), Tomoko Tamari conducted an interview with the special issue editor, Marc Lafrance. He argues for the skin as an interface, which both resists and reinforces binary oppositions. Lafrance is particularly interested in the relationship between the skin and subjectivity, focusing on those who are suffering from traumatic stigmatizing experiences. This theme is also elaborated in the debates around the issue of human-made skin in ‘regenerative medicine’. He argues that while the development of medical technology for human-made organic skin tends often to be welcomed, the actual experience of face-transfer patients following skin graft surgeries is one of physical and psychological hardship along with a complex sense of self-wholeness and ‘reflexive embodiment’. Reflexivity is also an important phenomenon encouraged by the media and social media, which constantly feature representations of the skin.

scholarly journals The politics and poetics of migrant narratives

2020 ◽  
Vol 23 (5) ◽  
pp. 679-697
Author(s):  
Koen Leurs ◽  
Irati Agirreazkuenaga ◽  
Kevin Smets ◽  
Melis Mevsimler
Keyword(s):  
Research Agenda ◽  
Stakeholder Analysis ◽  
Special Issue ◽  
Relational Approach ◽  
Media Technologies ◽  
Humanitarian Organizations ◽  
The Media ◽  
And Migration ◽  
Multi Stakeholder ◽  
Media Power

Serving as the introduction to the special issue on ‘Migrant narratives’, this article proposes a multi-perspectival and multi-stakeholder analysis of how migration is narrated in the media in the last decade. This research agenda is developed by focussing on groups of actors that are commonly studied in isolation from each other: (1) migrants, (2) media professionals such as journalists and spokespersons from humanitarian organizations, (3) governments and corporations and (4) artists and activists. We take a relational approach to recognize how media power is articulated alongside a spectrum of more top-down and more bottom-up perspectives, through specific formats, genres and styles within and against larger frameworks of governmentality. Taken together, the poetics and politics of migrant narratives demand attention respectively for how stakeholders variously aesthetically present and politically represent migration. The opportunities, challenges, problems and commitments observed among the four groups of actors also provide the means to rethink our practice and responsibilities as media and migration scholars contributing to decentring media technologies and re-humanizing migrants.

A media educational concept of the formation and continuous development of personal readiness for self-learning during the life

2020 ◽  
pp. 17-26
Author(s):  
S. V. Akmanova ◽  
L. V. Kurzaeva ◽  
N. A. Kopylova ◽  
A. R. Akmanov
Keyword(s):  
Human Life ◽  
Dynamic Factor ◽  
Continuous Increase ◽  
Media Environment ◽  
Media Technologies ◽  
Competent Person ◽  
Educational Concept ◽  
The Media ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Self Learning

The continuous increase of media information volume in the personal and professional individual space with constantly improving mechanisms of its management and distribution, the accelerated penetration of media technologies into various spheres of human life and activities, the ever-growing influence of the media environment on people’s consciousness actualize the problem of preparing a person with highly developed media educational competences, that is capable for continuous self-learning. This significance is especially evident in connection with the difficult people living conditions during periods of epidemics and pandemics. The article describes the media educational concept of the formation and development of lifelong self-learning personal readiness. It assumes dynamic, factor and competence-based aspects of the realization, which accordingly take into account the stages (phases, levels) of the formation and development of this readiness, the factors of the relationship between the person and the environment of his/her development, as well as a certain content from the standpoint of acquiring the necessary personal self-learning competences. The concept will allow lecturers and universities’ administration to successfully design pedagogical activities to form a media-competent person, ready for continuous self-learning throughout life.

scholarly journals Introduction to special issue on digitalization, labour and global production

2020 ◽  
pp. 102452942091447
Author(s):  
Gale Raj-Reichert ◽  
Sabrina Zajak ◽  
Nicole Helmerich
Keyword(s):  
Working Conditions ◽  
Digital Communication ◽  
Communication Technologies ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Power Relationships ◽  
Special Issue ◽  
Introductory Article ◽  
Global North ◽  
Global Systems ◽  
The Relationship

This special issue contributes to the emerging literature on digitalization and its impact on work and workers in global systems of production. Three key themes are featured in the collection of papers. They are on the relationship between the use of digital communication technologies and power relationships, working conditions of online workers or crowd-workers, and shifting geographies of production. The papers also largely focus on the global South, contributing to research on digitalization and labour which has thus far tended to examine large and higher income countries mainly in the global North. This introductory article expands on and situates the papers broadly within the literature on digitalization and labour and within the three themes more specifically, and discusses their implications for future research.

Old persons’ bodily interaction with media in nursing homes

2017 ◽  
Vol 21 (3) ◽  
pp. 317-333 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christine E Swane
Keyword(s):  
Nursing Homes ◽  
Old Age ◽  
The Body ◽  
Material Objects ◽  
Special Issue ◽  
Regular Feature ◽  
Media Technologies ◽  
Ethnographic Fieldwork ◽  
Physical Functions ◽  
Ageing Body

Old persons in nursing homes suffer from complex diseases, pain and the loss of physical functions and memory. They embody the notion of ‘deep old age’, the ‘fourth age’, as recipients of personal care, medicine, meals and organised activities. People in nursing homes are also part of a society in which media have become a regular feature of everyday life. Based on ethnographic fieldwork in Danish nursing homes, this article explores old persons’ subjective interaction with media technologies and material objects. Embodiment and agency are central analytical concepts for understanding residents’ use of media artefacts when the body is in pain and loses functionality. With theories of domestication and biographical situation, this article reveals how media are important for residents in making an institutional dwelling ‘their home’. Media seem to bridge the gap between institutionalisation and a long life’s preferences and participation in social and cultural worlds. This article forms part of ‘Media and the Ageing Body’ Special Issue.

scholarly journals Editorial: ‘One City, Many Tales’: COVID-19, perception, and the importance of contextualization

2021 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 3-7
Author(s):  
Xiaoling Zhang
Keyword(s):  
Media Coverage ◽  
Soft Power ◽  
Special Issue ◽  
Health Crisis ◽  
Image Construction ◽  
The World ◽  
The Media ◽  
Methodological Approaches ◽  
Media Narratives ◽  
The Relationship

This introduction to the special issue summarizes the contributions from the five leading scholars in the field—their contribution to the conceptualization of such concepts as soft power, sharp power, image shaping, image reception, as well as methodological approaches. It highlights the importance of contextualizing their findings for a full understanding of the image of China in the media narratives examined. In doing so, the Introduction lays foundation for further investigations on the relationship between media coverage of health crisis and image construction as the world continues to fight against the virus.

The elderly female face in beauty and fashion ads: Joan Didion for Céline

2017 ◽  
Vol 21 (3) ◽  
pp. 349-362 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anne Jerslev
Keyword(s):  
Visual Culture ◽  
Elderly Women ◽  
The Elderly ◽  
Special Issue ◽  
Joan Didion ◽  
Fashion Brand ◽  
Ageing Body ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Point Of Departure

The point of departure for this article is an astonishment at the recent increase in elderly women in fashion and beauty ads, and the question of what value this kind of photography may attribute to the ageing body and face in a visual culture whose association between youth and beauty forms one of the most influential constructions of ageism in Western culture. To attempt to answer this question, the article discusses the relationship between beauty, time and the ageing face, especially in beauty and fashion ads. The 2015 spring ad campaign for the luxury fashion brand Céline, which featured ‘celebrity writer’ Joan Didion, is used as a case study to examine how time and ageing coalesce in the construction of the ageing writer as cool. This article forms part of ‘Media and the Ageing Body’ Special Issue.

Growing old with media technology and the material experience of ageing

2017 ◽  
Vol 21 (3) ◽  
pp. 305-316 ◽  
Author(s):  
Cecilie Givskov
Keyword(s):  
Everyday Life ◽  
Older Women ◽  
Cell Phones ◽  
Natural Ageing ◽  
Special Issue ◽  
Media Technology ◽  
The Media ◽  
Ageing Body ◽  
Cultural Constructions ◽  
Material Ageing

During the 20th and 21st century, media such as radio, telephone, television, computers and cell phones moved into everyday life as taken-for-granted elements. Based on observations and life-history interviews with 22 older women, this article discusses how media technology is materially involved in the experience of growing old. The analysis reveals two aspects of this. First, different technology stands out from its background presence as problematic because the media no longer enable the experiences they used to. Second, disconnects with and through media technology direct attention towards the declining body. The participants embody ‘old age’ by linking their experience with media to two cultural constructions of material ageing: generation and natural ageing. I argue that inasmuch as everyday life has become mediatized, the experience of growing old also takes place with and through media technology. This article forms part of ‘Media and the Ageing Body’ Special Issue.

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