The Post-Soviet Diaspora on Transnational Reality TV

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Claudia Sadowski-Smith
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Social Media ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Upward Mobility ◽  
The United States ◽  
Reality Tv ◽  
1.5 Generation ◽  
Tv Show ◽  
Diasporic Identities ◽  
Russian Identity

This chapter examines Lifetime’s short-lived Russian Dolls and ABC’s Dancing with the Stars, a widely watched US reality TV show. Both shows exemplify the emergence of narratives that associate the post-Soviet diaspora with idealized accounts of turn of the twentieth century European immigrant adaptation and upward mobility. While they focus on 1.5 generation immigrant participants, many of whom likely came to the United States as religious refugees, the two shows consistently represent their emerging collective “Russian” identity as just another ethnicized version of pan-European whiteness. Post-Soviet migrant cast members are portrayed as following in the footsteps of idealized and homogenized early European migrants, and they are set in firm opposition to Latina/os. The chapter also examines media commentary surrounding the two shows, interviews with participants, their social media posts, and their participation in a Ukrainian TV show where their identity is differently constructed to highlight migrants’ engagement with growing anti-immigration sentiment and their efforts to establish new collective transnational and diasporic identities, which are not represented on DWTS and Russian Dolls.

Transgender idol: Queer subjectivities and Australian reality TV

2016 ◽  
Vol 20 (1) ◽  
pp. 87-103 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joanna McIntyre
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Minority Groups ◽  
The United States ◽  
Reality Tv ◽  
Normative Framework ◽  
Cross Pollination ◽  
Tv Shows ◽  
Tv Show

Transgender is a marginalised category to which reality TV has given visibility, yet it is usually overlooked in observations regarding the minority groups that have gained mainstream representation through these programmes. Popular Australian reality TV shows have provided a unique space for the constructive representation of certain queer subjectivities. The Australian reality TV contestants in question present gendering that embraces ambiguity, that is, they demonstrate the deliberate disruption and blurring of gender/sex category divisions. This article examines the ways in which Australian reality TV’s representations of transgender contestants remain robustly queer while also being negotiated and made palatable for ‘family’ television audiences. It asserts the reality TV shows that feature transgender performance orchestrate a balance between queer expression and its containment. This article also takes as a case study a particularly successful Australian transgender reality TV contestant, Courtney Act. It argues Act’s representation of queerness was ‘managed’ within the normative framework of mainstream television yet she is still significantly troubled by gender binaries during her time on Australian screen. In 2014, she appeared as a contestant on the United States’ queer-themed reality TV show RuPaul’s Drag Race and again proved to be a reality TV success. This transnational intersection of transgender performance signalled the productive possibilities of international cross-pollination in regard to affirmative reality TV representations of marginalised subjectivities. At the same time, however, it also revealed the localised nature of reality TV, even in those shows with an international queer appeal.

A survey of Instagram users with asthma to evaluate the acceptability of a planned clinical trial intervention (Preprint)

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kerry Spitzer ◽  
Brent Heineman ◽  
Marcella Jewell ◽  
Michael Moran ◽  
Peter Lindenauer
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Social Media ◽  
Health Care Providers ◽  
College Education ◽  
The United States ◽  
Survey Study ◽  
Care Providers ◽  
Healthy Behaviors ◽  
Social Media Platforms ◽  
Hispanic White

BACKGROUND Asthma is a chronic lung disease that affects nearly 25 million individuals in the United States. There is a need for more research into the potential for health care providers to leverage existing social media platforms to improve healthy behaviors and support individuals living with chronic health conditions. OBJECTIVE In this study, we assess the willingness of Instagram users with poorly controlled asthma to participate in a pilot study that uses Instagram as a means of providing social and informational support. In addition, we explore the potential for adapting photovoice and digital storytelling to social media. METHODS A survey study of Instagram users living with asthma in the United States, between the ages of 18 to 40. RESULTS Over 3 weeks of recruitment, 457 individuals completed the pre-survey screener; 347 were excluded. Of the 110 people who were eligible and agreed to participate in the study, 82 completed the study survey. Respondents mean age was 21(SD = 5.3). Respondents were 56% female (n=46), 65% (n=53) non-Hispanic white, and 72% (n=59) had at least some college education. The majority of respondents (n = 66, 81%) indicated that they would be willing to participate in the study. CONCLUSIONS Among young-adult Instagram users with asthma there is substantial interest in participating in a study that uses Instagram to connect participants with peers and a health coach in order to share information about self-management of asthma and build social connection.

Lawyers as Activists

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael C. Dorf ◽  
Michael S. Chu
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Social Media ◽  
Social Change ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
Rule Of Law ◽  
The United States ◽  
The Rule Of Law ◽  
Court Action ◽  
The Government ◽  
Trump Administration

Lawyers played a key role in challenging the Trump administration’s Travel Ban on entry into the United States of nationals from various majority-Muslim nations. Responding to calls from nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), which were amplified by social media, lawyers responded to the Travel Ban’s chaotic rollout by providing assistance to foreign travelers at airports. Their efforts led to initial court victories, which in turn led the government to soften the Ban somewhat in two superseding executive actions. The lawyers’ work also contributed to the broader resistance to the Trump administration by dramatizing its bigotry, callousness, cruelty, and lawlessness. The efficacy of the lawyers’ resistance to the Travel Ban shows that, contrary to strong claims about the limits of court action, litigation can promote social change. General lessons about lawyer activism in ordinary times are difficult to draw, however, because of the extraordinary threat Trump poses to civil rights and the rule of law.

The Insidious Momentum of American Mass Incarceration

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Franklin E. Zimring
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Public Policy ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Mass Incarceration ◽  
The United States ◽  
Next Generation ◽  
Single Generation ◽  
American Life ◽  
Peak Rate ◽  
Or Practice

The phenomenal growth of penal confinement in the United States in the last quarter of the twentieth century is still a public policy mystery. Why did it happen when it happened? What explains the unprecedented magnitude of prison and jail expansion? Why are the current levels of penal confinement so very close to the all-time peak rate reached in 2007? What is the likely course of levels of penal confinement in the next generation of American life? Are there changes in government or policy that can avoid the prospect of mass incarceration as a chronic element of governance in the United States? This study is organized around four major concerns: What happened in the 33 years after 1973? Why did these extraordinary changes happen in that single generation? What is likely to happen to levels of penal confinement in the next three decades? What changes in law or practice might reduce this likely penal future?

Orientalized Aztecs: Observations on the Americanization of Theatrical Dance

2019 ◽  
Vol 51 (2) ◽  
pp. 35-50
Author(s):  
K. Mitchell Snow
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Manifest Destiny ◽  
The United States ◽  
United States Policy ◽  
Ballets Russes

The opening decades of the twentieth century saw a passing fashion for “Aztec” dancing in the vaudeville theaters of the United States. Russian classical dancers Kosloff and Fokine tapped the orientalist currents of the Ballets Russes, adopting the Aztec as superficial signs of the American. Conversely, works by Shawn and film director Cecil B. DeMille, which served as points of reference for the Russians, represented a continuation of equally orientalist attitudes toward Mexico's past, forged during the realization of the United States’ policy of Manifest Destiny. The emergence of a cadre of trained dancers from Mexico, trained by students of Kosloff and Shawn, would bring a distinctively different perspective on the presentation of their heritage to the dance stage, one that was no longer based in the imagination of an expansionist America.

A Century of America on Chinese Screens

2010 ◽  
Vol 17 (4) ◽  
pp. 305-323 ◽  
Author(s):  
Zhiwei Xiao
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Print Media ◽  
The United States ◽  
Sharp Contrast ◽  
American People ◽  
Early Twentieth Century ◽  
History Of ◽  
Chinese Films ◽  
New Millennium

AbstractNo serious study has been published on how Chinese filmmakers have portrayed the United States and the American people over the last century. The number of such films is not large. That fact stands in sharp contrast not only to the number of "China pictures" produced in the United States, which is not surprising, but also in contrast to the major role played by Chinese print media. This essay surveys the history of Chinese cinematic images of America from the early twentieth century to the new millennium and notes the shifts from mostly positive portrayal in the pre-1949 Chinese films, to universal condemnation during the Mao years and to a more nuanced, complex, and multi-colored presentation of the last few decades.

scholarly journals Stand against anti-Asian racial discrimination during COVID-19: A call for action

2020 ◽  
pp. 002087282097061
Author(s):  
Qin Gao ◽  
Xiaofang Liu
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Social Media ◽  
Racial Discrimination ◽  
Asian Americans ◽  
Well Being ◽  
Political Rhetoric ◽  
The United States ◽  
Psychological Well Being ◽  
Negative Impacts

Racial discrimination against people of Chinese and other Asian ethnicities has risen sharply in number and severity globally amid the COVID-19 pandemic. This rise has been especially rapid and severe in the United States, fueled by xenophobic political rhetoric and racist language on social media. It has endangered the lives of many Asian Americans and is likely to have long-term negative impacts on the economic, social, physical, and psychological well-being of Asian Americans. This essay reviews the prevalence and consequences of anti-Asian racial discrimination during COVID-19 and calls for actions in practice, policy, and research to stand against it.

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