scholarly journals Spiritualreligiosity in the Workplace between Media and Organizational Logics: A French Perspective

KOME ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol Online first ◽  
Author(s):  
Mihaela-Alexandra Tudor

This exploratory research focuses on how mainstream media apprehends religion in the workplace in the specific French socio-cultural and ideological framing through the media coverage analysis of the French Observatory of Religious Phenomenon in Organization’s annual survey, published in September 2018. Findings reveal that media operates with a meaning of religion still subject to a conception of laicitythat corroborate antagonism between science and religion onthe one hand, and, secularization as an indicator of transition from traditional society to modern society on the other hand. Managers and companies implicitly use a more elastic meaning, in accordance with the specificities of the workplace and labor market that has integrated a more deinstitutionalizing vision of religion, in the context of the emergence of new religious representations in touch with alternative spiritualities.

2016 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 40-73
Author(s):  
Yasser Rhimi

Abstract This paper calls into question the growing tendency of quasi-absolutism within postmodern mainstream media discourse under the guise of objectivity. The tendency’s major aim is to ascribe more believability to its discourse by re-presenting that which it covers as the vehicle of objective truth to the mainstream audience. Two interweaving discourses have marked such objectivity: one in the form of indoctrinating and omnipresent narratives, which via effective propaganda become tantamount to ritualism, the other epitomised in the nostalgia for rationalisation, already inherent in western positivist thought through the exponential increase of quasi-empiricism (e.g. investigative reporting or speculative statistics). Accordingly, what the media cover exists. What they do not remains in the order of myth. The article starts by rethinking objectivity within modern western academia, a discourse whose objectivity is already flawed from within. Then, with respect to human experience and media coverage, the paper concludes by raising the question of postmodern mainstream media’s substitution of religious quasi-absolutist narratives, be they secular or non-secular. Subjectivity thus emerges as the ultimate ground upon which our being may be legitimate.


2021 ◽  
pp. 095715582110217
Author(s):  
Marion Dalibert

By questioning the media coverage of the seven feminist movements that have received most publicity in the French mainstream media since the 2000s, this article shows that the media narrative regarding feminism perpetuates the national metanarrative produced in generalist newspapers. This metanarrative reinforces the power of majority groups by portraying them as inherently egalitarian, while those with the least economic, social, political and cultural power, such as Muslim men, are portrayed as the most sexist. It also highlights that racialised collectives are still socially invisible or limited to a visibility that is framed by representations rooted in a (post) colonial imaginary. Non-white women are in fact presented as fundamentally submissive, while (upper)-middle-class white women are the only ones associated with emancipation, which is significant of white and bourgeois hegemony at work in the French news media.


2016 ◽  
Vol 33 (2) ◽  
pp. 90-101
Author(s):  
Aziz Douai

Western-Muslim relations have experienced long periods of peaceful coexistence,fruitful co-operation, and close interactions that have enriched both civilizations.And yet an alien observer of our mainstream media could be forgivenfor concluding that “Islam” and the “West” can never co-exist in peace becausethey seem to have nothing in common. In fact, the intermittent violence interruptingthese long peaceful interactions – from the Crusades to the “War onTerror” – has constituted the core of most mainstream media coverage and“scholarship” purporting to “study” and “explain” these relations.In a zero-sum power game, these dominant frameworks emphasize thatsuch a “clash” is inevitable. Samuel Huntington’s “Clash of Civilizations”theory has become the best known articulation and deployment of “conflict”as an “explanatory” framework for understanding current and past Muslim-West interactions. Simply put, existential, cultural, and religious chasmshave put the Muslim world on a collision course with the western world, aproblem that is most exacerbated by the presence of “Islam” and Muslimcommunities in western societies (Huntington, 1993).1 His thesis appearsto ignore each civilization’s internal diversity and pluralism and to be willfullyoblivious to the inter- and intra-civilizational interactions and centuriesoldco-existence, as Edward Said argued in his rebuttal: “Clash of Ignorance”(2001).  Beyond the broadest generalizations, after all, what do “Islam” and the“West” mean? How long can we afford to “ignore” the “porousness” and “ambiguity”of their geographical and cultural borders? Is “conflict” between thesetwo realms inevitable? How about the centuries-old dialogue between thesecivilizations, the “Self” and the “Other”? How can researchers and intellectualsdeploy their inter-disciplinary insights and scholarship to address both thereal and the perceived civilizational “chasms”?These questions constitute the overarching themes of some very importantscholarship published in three recent books: Engaging the Other: Public Policyand Western-Muslim Intersections, edited by Karim H. Karim and MahmoudEid; Re-Imagining the Other: Culture, Media, and Western-Muslim Intersections,edited by Mahmoud Eid and Karim H. Karim; and the Routledge Handbookof Islam in the West, edited by Roberto Tottoli. With rich methodologicalapproaches, broad theoretical lenses, and diverse topics, these three books offera unique platform to build both a holistic and nuanced understanding of thecontingencies and intricacies surrounding “Islam” and the “West.” ...


2021 ◽  
Vol ahead-of-print (ahead-of-print) ◽  
Author(s):  
Benny Nuriely ◽  
Moti Gigi ◽  
Yuval Gozansky

Purpose This paper aims to analyze the ways socio-economic issues are represented in mainstream news media and how it is consumed, understood and interpreted by Israeli young adults (YAs). It examines how mainstream media uses neo-liberal discourse, and the ways YAs internalize this ethic, while simultaneously finding ways to overcome its limitations. Design/methodology/approach This was a mixed methods study. First, it undertook content analysis of the most popular Israeli mainstream news media among YAs: the online news site Ynet and the TV Channel 2 news. Second, the authors undertook semi-structured in-depth interviews with 29 Israeli YAs. The analysis is based on an online survey of 600 young Israelis, aged 18–35 years. Findings Most YAs did not perceive mainstream media as enabling a reliable understanding of the issues important to them. The content analysis revealed that self-representation of YAs is rare, and that their issues were explained, and even resolved, by older adults. Furthermore, most of YAs' problems in mainstream news media were presented using a neo-liberal perspective. Finally, from the interviews, the authors learned that YAs did not find information that could help them deal with their most pressing economic and social issue, in the content offered by mainstream media. For most of them, social media overcomes these shortcomings. Originality/value Contrary to research that has explored YAs’ consumerism of new media outlets, this article explores how YAs in Israel are constructed in the media, as well as the way in which YAs understand mainstream and new social media coverage of the issues most important to them. Using media content analysis and interviews, the authors found that Young Adults tend to be ambivalent toward media coverage. They understand the lack of media information: most of them know that they do not learn enough from the media. This acknowledgment accompanies their tendency to internalize the neo-liberal logic and conservative Israeli national culture, in which class and economic redistribution are largely overlooked. Mainstream news media uses neo-liberal discourse, and young adults internalize this logic, while simultaneously finding ways to overcome the limitations this discourse offers. They do so by turning to social media, mainly Facebook. Consequently, their behavior maintains the logic of the market, while also developing new social relations, enabled by social media.


2020 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephan Lewandowsky ◽  
Michael Jetter ◽  
Ullrich K. H. Ecker

Abstract Social media has arguably shifted political agenda-setting power away from mainstream media onto politicians. Current U.S. President Trump’s reliance on Twitter is unprecedented, but the underlying implications for agenda setting are poorly understood. Using the president as a case study, we present evidence suggesting that President Trump’s use of Twitter diverts crucial media (The New York Times and ABC News) from topics that are potentially harmful to him. We find that increased media coverage of the Mueller investigation is immediately followed by Trump tweeting increasingly about unrelated issues. This increased activity, in turn, is followed by a reduction in coverage of the Mueller investigation—a finding that is consistent with the hypothesis that President Trump’s tweets may also successfully divert the media from topics that he considers threatening. The pattern is absent in placebo analyses involving Brexit coverage and several other topics that do not present a political risk to the president. Our results are robust to the inclusion of numerous control variables and examination of several alternative explanations, although the generality of the successful diversion must be established by further investigation.


2019 ◽  
Vol 2 (4) ◽  
pp. 255-275
Author(s):  
Yiqin Ruan ◽  
Jing Yang ◽  
Jianbin Jin

Biotechnology, as an emerging technology, has drawn much attention from the public and elicited hot debates in countries around the world and among various stakeholders. Due to the public's limited access to front-line scientific information and scientists, as well as the difficulty of processing complex scientific knowledge, the media have become one of the most important channels for the public to get news about scientific issues such as genetically modified organisms (GMOs). According to framing theory, how the media portray GMO issues may influence audiences’ perceptions of those issues. Moreover, different countries and societies have various GMO regulations, policies and public opinion, which also affect the way media cover GMO issues. Thus, it is necessary to investigate how GMO issues are covered in different media outlets across different countries. We conducted a comparative content analysis of media coverage of GMO issues in China, the US and the UK. One mainstream news portal in each of the three countries was chosen ( People's Daily for China, The New York Times for the US, and The Guardian for the UK). We collected coverage over eight years, from 2008 to 2015, which yielded 749 pieces of news in total. We examined the sentiments expressed and the generic frames used in coverage of GMO issues. We found that the factual, human interest, conflict and regulation frames were the most common frames used on the three portals, while the sentiments expressed under those frames varied across the media outlets, indicating differences in the state of GMO development, promotion and regulation among the three countries.


2003 ◽  
Vol 109 (1) ◽  
pp. 138-152 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter Bishop

This paper focuses on aspects of the media engagement with demonstrations at the Woomera Detention Centre during Easter 2002. A broad range of interests and affiliations were represented within the 1000–2000 protestors, several hundred of whom attacked the fences, allowing a number of detainees to escape. In an era of online activism, the Easter 2002 demonstration at Woomera showed the continuing significance of the embodied occupation of public space by protestors. It echoed an upsurge in public demonstration, from Seattle to more recent worldwide marches against war in Iraq. In addition to receiving extensive mainstream media coverage both in Australia and overseas, a whole series of ‘alternative’ forms of media were mobilised around the demonstration. Through a study of some mainstream and alternative media, this paper suggests that casting them as oppositional — one as reactionary towards asylum seekers from Islamic cultures and the other as emancipatory — is too simplistic. While mainstream media are the subject of searching critiques of their representational and agenda-setting power, similar critical evaluations are few for alternative media. It suggests that such a dichotomy has serious consequences for the understanding and operation both of emancipatory struggles and of the media. Giroux (2002) has called for a politics of educated hope, and this paper suggests that critique should be accompanied by an active search for moments of contradiction and possibility.


2016 ◽  
Vol 3 (3) ◽  
pp. 171-187
Author(s):  
Taha Siddiqui

Valentine’s Day celebration in India has been much debated and covered by the media in the last couple of years. In the year 2009, far right Hindu activist from Sri Ram Sena to Bajrang Dal were involved in beating up unmarried couples and blackening their faces, as mark of shame for celebrating Valentine’s Day. They claimed that the festival was a “western practice” and promotes “lust not love”. Following this other Anti- Valentine’s Day groups also expressed their views and this led to public debate about moral policing and Indian culture. However what is interesting to note is the fact how media covered. At one side media has played a big role in promoting it (for many reasons) and on the other hand it has also criticized it for cultural and religious concerns.This research tries to explore in depth how media covers the festival with commercialization, culture, religion and politics in the backdrop. The research studies 9 newspapers of in 3 different languages, namely English, Hindi and Urdu.  The study tries to find out whether media is biased in covering the festival or is it propagating an idea to its readers. The idea of taking 3 different languages is to draw a sharp comparison and contrast among the national and vernacular newspapers.In order to find it, both quantitative and qualitative methods have been applied to the articles. Content analysis and Textual analysis are the important methods used to find out the statistics and underlying meanings behind these articles.Int. J. Soc. Sc. Manage. Vol. 3, Issue-3: 171-187


2012 ◽  
Vol 23 (2-3) ◽  
pp. 283-298 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anne-Maree Dowd ◽  
Peta Ashworth ◽  
Michelle Rodriguez ◽  
Talia Jeanneret

Internationally, the level of public awareness of carbon dioxide capture and storage (CCS) technology remains low. The mainstream media have a salient influence in shaping the debate on CCS's implementation and its risks. This paper presents the results of analysis of print media coverage of CCS worldwide between August 2009 and June 2010. A total of 1138 articles from the Carbon Sequestration Leadership Forum were reviewed and analysed. The majority of these articles were balanced or neutral in tone and lacking in technical detail. Fifteen key themes were identified. Two of these emerged the most frequently across all sources: CCS pilot and demonstration projects, and funding issues. This suggests a pattern of media curiosity over how financial support for CCS is provided and what results are occurring at pilot and demonstration efforts. Cross-regional key risks included: Time, cost, and implementation issues; technical validity; and storage capacity issues.


2016 ◽  
Vol 4 (4) ◽  
pp. 367-384 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thomas Birkner ◽  
Daniel Nölleke

Using the concept of mediatization, in this article, we analyze the relationship between sport and media from a sport-centered perspective. Examining the autobiographies of 14 German and English soccer players, we investigate how athletes use media outlets, what they perceive as the media’s influence and its logic, and—crucially—how this usage and these perceptions affect their own media-related behavior. Our findings demonstrate the important role of the media for the sports systems from the athlete’s point of view and demonstrate the research potential of mediatization as a fruitful concept in studies on sport communication. On the one hand, the sport stars reflect in their autobiographies that their status and income depend on media coverage; and on the other hand, they complain about the omnipresence of the media, especially offside the pitch and feel unfairly treated by the tabloid press, both in England and in Germany.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document