scholarly journals Television and the Public Sphere:  Relationships of Power and Resistance in Contemporary  New Zealand Television

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Frances Cook

<p>This thesis considers New Zealand television’s public sphere role, by analysing three television programmes in terms of how they enable the exercise of power or resistance. The programmes 7 Days, Campbell Live, and Shortland Street were used as case studies of typical public sphere spaces that are available to the New Zealand public. These programmes were analysed in terms of Foucault’s concepts of power and resistance as active exercises that are present in all interrelations. The research found that the programmes were sites of both the exercising of power and the possibility of resistance, as they each worked to circulate competing discourses that subjects could take up to reinforce existing power structures or to resist the exercise of power upon them. Despite this conflicted nature, each programme was found to circulate these competing discourses in a manner that accommodated critical positions and discourses, as well as reinscribing normative power relations.</p>

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Frances Cook

<p>This thesis considers New Zealand television’s public sphere role, by analysing three television programmes in terms of how they enable the exercise of power or resistance. The programmes 7 Days, Campbell Live, and Shortland Street were used as case studies of typical public sphere spaces that are available to the New Zealand public. These programmes were analysed in terms of Foucault’s concepts of power and resistance as active exercises that are present in all interrelations. The research found that the programmes were sites of both the exercising of power and the possibility of resistance, as they each worked to circulate competing discourses that subjects could take up to reinforce existing power structures or to resist the exercise of power upon them. Despite this conflicted nature, each programme was found to circulate these competing discourses in a manner that accommodated critical positions and discourses, as well as reinscribing normative power relations.</p>


Author(s):  
Lori G. Beaman

This chapter problematizes the notions and language of tolerance and accommodation in relation to religious diversity, and traces their genealogy both as legal solutions and as discursive frameworks within which religious diversity is increasingly understood in the public sphere. The problem they pose is that they create a hierarchy of privilege that preserves hegemonic power relations by religious majorities over religious minorities. Tolerance in this context might be imagined as the broadly stated value that we must deal with diversity and those who are different from us by tolerating them. Accommodation might be seen as the implementation of this value—that in order to demonstrate our commitment to tolerance we must accommodate the ‘demands’ of minority groups and those individuals who position themselves or align themselves with minorities.


2021 ◽  
Vol 41 (2) ◽  
pp. 148-152
Author(s):  
Matthew Engelke

Abstract This essay introduces the special section “Word, Image, Sound,” a collection of essays on public religion and religious publicities in Africa and South Asia. The essays cover case studies in Myanmar, Zambia, Senegal, Rwanda, and Egypt. The introduction situates the essays in relation to the broader fields of work on the public sphere and publics, especially as they relate to recent work in the human sciences that focus on materiality, the senses, and media.


2005 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 90-112 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lincoln Dahlberg

Much communications research is in agreement about the failure of mass media to adequately facilitate a public sphere of open and reflexive debate necessary for strong democratic culture. In contrast , the internet's decentralised, two-way communication is seen by many commentators to be extending such debate. However, there is some ambivalence among critical theorists as to the future role of the internet in advancing the public sphere. On the one hand, the internet is providing the means fot the voicing of positions and identities excluded from the mass media. On the other hand, a number of problem are limiting the extensiveness and effetivness of this voicing. One of the most significant problems is the corporate colonisation of cyberspace, and subsequent marginalisation rational-critical communication. It is this problem that i will focus on in this article, with reference to examples from what I refer to as the 'New Zealand online public sphere'. I show how online corporate portals and media sites are gaining the most attention orientated to public communication, including news, information, and discussion. These sites generally support conservative discourse and consumer practices. The result is a marginalisation online of the very voices marginalised offline, and also of the critical-reflexive form of communication that makes for a strong public sphere. I conclude by noting that corporate colonisation is as yet only partial, and control of attention and media is highly contested by multiple 'alternative' discursive spaces online.


2021 ◽  
pp. 0044118X2110408
Author(s):  
Ilaria Pitti ◽  
Yagmur Mengilli ◽  
Andreas Walther

Existing understandings of youth participation often imply clear distinctions from non-participation and thus boundaries between “recognized” and “non-recognized” practices of engagement. This article aims at questioning these boundaries. It analyzes young people’s practices in the public sphere that are characterized by both recognition as participation and misrecognition or stigmatization as deviant and it is suggested to conceptualize such practices as “liminal participation.” The concept of liminality has been developed to describe transitory situations “in-between”—between defined and recognized status positions—and seems helpful for better understanding the blurring boundaries of youth participation. Drawing on qualitative case studies conducted within a European research project, the analysis focuses on how young people whose practices evolve at the margins of the respective societies position themselves with regard to the challenges of liminality and on the potential of this for democratic innovation and change.


2021 ◽  
pp. 218-234
Author(s):  
Mary Angela Bock

This chapter reviews the project’s argument, that social actors struggle over the construction of visual messages in embodied and discursive ways. Digitization has vastly expanded the encoding capabilities of everyday citizens, allowing them to render their expression of democratic voice visible, even as the ethical rules for visual expression are inchoate. The project’s case studies demonstrate the way grounded practices produce representations that support the authority of the criminal justice system, and together they invite three theoretical discussions: (1) on the way visual journalism’s physicality increases its reliance on those in power, (2) on the importance of image indexicality as a discursive affordance in the public sphere, and (3) on the digital public sphere as visual, and participation in this visual public sphere must be considered as an essential human capability. As a whole, the project offers insight into the construction of the criminal justice system’s literal and metaphorical image.


2007 ◽  
Vol 14 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephanie Ho

Blogging is a twenty-first century phenomenon that has heralded an age where ordinary people can make their voices heard in the public sphere of the Internet. This article explores blogging as a form of popular history making; the blog as a public history document; and how blogging is transforming the nature of public history and practice of history making in Singapore. An analysis of two Singapore ‘historical’ blogs illustrates how blogging is building a foundation for a more participatory historical society in the island nation. At the same time, the case studies also demonstrate the limitations of blogging and blogs in challenging official versions of history.


Screen Bodies ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-18
Author(s):  
Mari E. Ramler

Breastfeeding mothers and their babies are simultaneously in the public sphere and hidden from public view. Although social media has the potential to normalize attitudes toward breastfeeding by increasing visibility, Facebook and Instagram maintain an unpredictable censorship policy toward “brelfies”—female breast selfies—which has undermined progress. Combining Iris Marion Young’s “undecidability” of the breasted experience with Brett Lunceford’s rhetoric of nakedness, this article investigates what breastfeeding mothers communicate online via digital images when they expose their breasts. By deconstructing controversial case studies, this article concludes that brelfies have increased breastfeeding’s accessibility and acceptability in the material world.


2012 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 83-104 ◽  
Author(s):  
Pierre Monforte ◽  
Pascale Dufour

In this article, we demonstrate that the collective actions of undocumented migrants possess similar symbolic dimensions, even if the contexts of their actions differ. We explain this finding by focusing on the power relations that undocumented migrants face. Given that they occupy a very specific position in society (i.e., they are neither included in nor completely excluded from citizenship), they experience similar forms of power relations vis-à-vis public authorities in different countries. We argue that this leads them to participate in collective actions as acts of emancipation. Our analysis illustrates this argument by comparing marches by undocumented migrants in three countries: France, Germany and Canada-Quebec. Through an in-depth analysis, we demonstrate that these marches redefine the legal order and politicize the presence of undocumented migrants in the public sphere. By highlighting the cognitive, emotional and relational dimensions of collective actions, we show that the symbolic dimension of these three marches relates to the empowerment, pride and solidarity of undocumented migrants.


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