Consuming lifestyles: Local television, neo-liberalism and divergent social imaginaries in India

The rapid production of films of diversity in post-1994 South Africa has unfortunately not been matched by critical works on film. Part of the reason is that some of the films recycle old themes that celebrate the worst in black people. Another possible reason could be that a good number of films wallow in personality praise, and certainly of Mandela, especially after his demise. Despite these problems of film criticism in post-1994 South Africa, it appears that some new critics have not felt compelled to waste their energy on analysing the Bantustan film – a kind of film that was made for black people by the apartheid system but has re-surfaced after 1994 in different ways. The patent lack of more critical works on film that engages the identities and social imaginaries of young and white South Africans is partly addressed in SKIN – a film that registers the mental growth and spiritual development of Sandra’s multiple selves. This article argues that SKIN portrays the racial neurosis of the apartheid system; and the question of identity affecting young white youths during and after apartheid is experienced at the racial, gender and sex levels.

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The first stage of Australia’s digital transition and its implications for Australian television drama

Media International Australia ◽

10.1177/1329878x211030370 ◽

2021 ◽

pp. 1329878X2110303

Author(s):

Anna Potter ◽

Amanda D. Lotz

Keyword(s):

Policy Reform ◽

Television Drama ◽

Local Television ◽

Initial Stage ◽

Policy Frameworks ◽

Domestic Drama ◽

Streaming Services ◽

Support Mechanisms ◽

Cultural Visibility ◽

Digital Disruption

This article analyses how digitisation and screen policy reform altered the production of domestic drama and children’s programmes in Australia. Focusing on dynamics that developed before widespread use of streaming services, it maps the disruptions and evolution that digital ‘multi-channels’ caused and how they challenged audiovisual policy frameworks intended to safeguard local television including drama on advertiser-funded broadcasters. The article reveals how the effects of fragmentation undermined commercial television’s business model and eroded investment in scripted content. Shifting policy priorities also brought new support mechanisms for local programmes and led to adjustments to the ABC’s drama funding practices, with significant effects on the form, content, and cultural visibility of Australian drama. This initial stage of digital disruption – spanning roughly 2001–2014 – is often overlooked but is crucial for appreciating the challenges facing Australian television drama production in the 2020s.

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Blocked by YouTube? Unseen digital intermediaries for social imaginaries in the Asia Pacific

Media International Australia ◽

10.1177/1329878x211017917 ◽

2021 ◽

pp. 1329878X2110179

Author(s):

Jonathon Hutchinson

Keyword(s):

Online Community ◽

Community Building ◽

Asia Pacific ◽

User Engagement ◽

Asia Pacific Region ◽

Social Imaginaries ◽

Content Sharing ◽

Enterprise Education ◽

Commercial Enterprise ◽

Asian Pacific

YouTube is one of the most utilised online content sharing sites, enabling commercial enterprise, education opportunities, and facilities for vernacular creativity. Its user engagement demonstrates online community development; alongside its use as a distribution platform to monetise one’s branded self. However, as a subset of Alphabet Incorporated, its access is often restricted by governments of Asian Pacific countries. This research describes how countries that have banned YouTube still have exceptionally strong online communities, bringing into question the sorts of augmentations used by its participants. This article focuses on digital intermediation strategies, specifically the DIY approach of community building through the use of unseen infrastructures. This comparative study of YouTube channels in several Asia Pacific countries highlights the techniques that bypass limiting infrastructures to boost online community activity. The results demonstrate digital intermediation provides unique opportunities for key agents to contribute to strengthening social imaginaries within the Asia Pacific region.

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Book Review: Buying Reality: Political Ads, Money, and Local Television News, by Danilo Yanich

Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly ◽

10.1177/1077699021996245 ◽

2021 ◽

pp. 107769902199624

Author(s):

James C. Foust

Keyword(s):

Television News ◽

Local Television ◽

Political Ads ◽

Local Television News

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Futures of sustainability: Perspectives on social imaginaries and social transformation. A comment on Frank Adloff and Sighard Neckel’s research program

Social Science Information ◽

10.1177/0539018421999562 ◽

2021 ◽

pp. 053901842199956

Author(s):

Gerard Delanty

Keyword(s):

Conceptual Framework ◽

Research Program ◽

Social Transformation ◽

Research Agenda ◽

Social Imaginaries ◽

The Third ◽

The Future ◽

And Control

This essay is a comment on the research program launched by Frank Adloff and Sighard Neckel. My comment is specifically focused on their research agenda as outlined in their trend-setting article, ‘Futures of sustainability as modernization, transformation, and control: A conceptual framework’. The comment is also addressed more generally to the research program of the Humanities Centre for Advanced Studies ‘Futures of Sustainability’. I raise three issues: the first relates to the very idea of the future; the second concerns the notion of social imaginaries and the third question is focused on the idea of social transformation.

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Paid family leave on local television news in the United States: Setting the agenda for policy reform.

SSM - Population Health ◽

10.1016/j.ssmph.2021.100821 ◽

2021 ◽

pp. 100821

Author(s):

Margaret Tait ◽

Colleen Bogucki ◽

Laura Baum ◽

Erika Franklin Fowler ◽

Jeff Niederdeppe ◽

...

Keyword(s):

United States ◽

Policy Reform ◽

Television News ◽

The United States ◽

Family Leave ◽

Local Television ◽

Paid Family Leave ◽

Local Television News

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Russia’s ‘fortresses of solitude’: Social imaginaries of loneliness after the fall of the USSR

Social Science Information ◽

10.1177/0539018420925967 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 59 (2) ◽

pp. 288-309

Author(s):

Sergei Akopov

Keyword(s):

Cross Cultural ◽

Popular Media ◽

Individual Rights ◽

Cultural Perspective ◽

Russian Government ◽

Authoritarian Rule ◽

Social Imaginaries ◽

Official Discourse ◽

Specific Focus

Based on the distinction between three approaches to loneliness, and the development of the phenomenological and existential framework of loneliness studies, this article explores Russia’s discourse of national loneliness on three levels: a) the level of the official discourse of the Russian government; b) the level of political and philosophical concepts; and c) the level of popular media and cinema (with a specific focus on a case-study of the post-Soviet Russian blockbuster film Brother and its sequel, Brother 2). In this article I concentrate on the particular experiences of loneliness and their interpretations in Russia after the fall of the USSR. The case of the fall of the USSR has shown that social and political exploitations of different forms of national loneliness can become the flip side of the doctrine of autonomy, equal individual rights and freedom from authoritarian rule. This should be considered and never disregarded within our analysis of the contours and new transformations of emerging hegemonic discourses, including the different forms of nationalism in Russia, and in a wider cross-cultural perspective.

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