Indeterminate and Intermediate or Animated Nonfiction: Why Now?

2018 ◽  
pp. 47-66
Author(s):  
Nea Ehrlich
Keyword(s):  
Visual Culture ◽  
News Media ◽  
Visual Media ◽  
Significant Rise ◽  
Daily News ◽  
Creative Practice ◽  
Perceived Credibility ◽  
News Broadcasts ◽  
Modes Of Representation ◽  
Short Films

In this chapter Nea Ehrlich proposes that the contemporary fascination with animated documentary stems from animated non-fiction’s challenging of traditionally perceived differences between animation and photography as seminal modern and postmodern visual media. In tandem with the huge proliferation of animated documentaries since 2008, there has also been a significant rise in the creative practice, academic study, and distribution of this medium. This chapter explains why this shift in visual culture is occurring now, and how it shapes viewership. Ehrlich advances a case for understanding animated documentary’s increasing contemporary usage and perceived credibility by exploring the wider context of animation’s use within news media. These range from daily news broadcasts made by the Taiwanese broadcaster Next Media Animation through to investigative short films produced by the UK’s Guardian newspaper. Ehrlich reflects upon different modes of representation that many deem “more real” and believable as legitimate documentation than traditionally privileged photographic and journalistic tools and strategies.

scholarly journals Wenceslas Looks Out: Monarchy, Locality, and the Symbolism of Power in Fourteenth-Century Bavaria

2019 ◽  
Vol 52 (02) ◽  
pp. 179-210
Author(s):  
Len Scales
Keyword(s):  
Visual Culture ◽  
Fourteenth Century ◽  
Visual Media ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political Purpose ◽  
Local Perspectives ◽  
Political Success

AbstractThis article reassesses the reputation enjoyed by Charles IV of Luxemburg, emperor and king of Bohemia (r. 1346/1347–1378), as the author of a program aimed at projecting his monarchy via visual media. Current scholarship, which stresses the centrally directed character of this program, regards it as serving clear political goals, as “propaganda” to unify Charles's far-flung territories. This article challenges that view. It contends that a straightforward political purpose is often less detectable than usually claimed, and the political “success” of Caroline image-making easily overstated. Above all, it argues for the necessity of decentering Caroline visual culture by stepping away from the familiar focus on the Prague court, to explore instead provincial viewpoints. Focusing on northeastern Bavaria, it shows that local examples of Caroline imagery are often best understood not as impositions from the “center,” but rather as products of interactions between court and locality, through which local perspectives and interests also found expression.

scholarly journals Being a journalist in a multilingual country: Representations of Dutch among Belgian French-speaking journalists

Multilingua ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 38 (3) ◽  
pp. 231-251 ◽  
Author(s):  
Catherine Bouko ◽  
Olivier Standaert ◽  
Astrid Vandendaele
Keyword(s):  
Qualitative Interviews ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Daily News ◽  
News Broadcasts ◽  
Flemish Community ◽  
Tv News ◽  
French Speaking ◽  
Public Broadcaster ◽  
Rhetorical Tropes ◽  
French Speaker

Abstract In this paper, we examine how the francophone TV audience is introduced to the Flemish community and its language through daily news broadcasts. More specifically, our research looks at how the Dutch language is used when francophone journalists prepare and produce their reports – during all stages of the process –, up until the actual broadcast. We therefore conducted 15 qualitative interviews with TV news journalists employed by the Belgian French-speaking public broadcaster. The interviews were organized around eight topics, e.g. the place of Dutch in the newsroom and the languages chosen during interactions with Dutch-speaking interviewees. From a discursive point of view, we focused on the selected lexical terms and rhetorical tropes (the various uses of the litotes, in particular) to unpack the journalists’ practices, in relation to their representations of Dutch. Our study provides notable insights into their representation of the differences between French- and Dutch-speaking Belgians as a generational issue, their tendency to assess their proficiency in Dutch measured against bilingualism, as well as their wish to beat the cliché of “the unilingual French-speaker”. These observations are coupled with criteria which explain why French might be preferred in the end: the TV audience’s comfort, general intelligibility and subtitling constraints.

scholarly journals The Nanking Atrocity: Still and Moving Images 1937–1944

2014 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 51-67
Author(s):  
Gary Evans
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Public Opinion ◽  
Visual Culture ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
Visual Media ◽  
World War ◽  
Moving Images ◽  
Mass Public ◽  
Racial Context ◽  
Film Clips

This manuscript investigates the facts of publication of the images of the Nanking Atrocity (December 1937–January 1938) in <em>LIFE </em>and <em>LOOK</em> magazines, two widely read United States publications, as well as the Nanking atrocity film clips that circulated to millions more in American and Canadian newsreels some years later. The publishers of these images were continuing the art of manipulation of public opinion through multimodal visual media, aiming them especially at the less educated mass public. The text attempts to describe these brutal images in their historical context. Viewing and understanding the underlying racial context and emotive impact of these images may be useful adjuncts to future students of World War II. If it is difficult to assert how much these severe images changed public opinion, one can appreciate how the emerging visual culture was transforming the way that modern societies communicate with and direct their citizens' thoughts.

scholarly journals How psychiatrists can engage with the media

2014 ◽  
Vol 20 (1) ◽  
pp. 71-78 ◽  
Author(s):  
Claire Bithell
Keyword(s):  
Mental Health ◽  
New Media ◽  
News Media ◽  
Mental Health Problems ◽  
Accurate Information ◽  
Daily News ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Media ◽  
The Uk ◽  
Time Frames

SummaryThe media offers opportunities for psychiatrists to communicate with a wide and varied audience, thereby influencing the views of the public and policy makers on mental health issues. There are many different types of media outlet, including daily news media, documentary makers, specialist media, features and comment, and new media. The Science Media Centre is an independent press office that aims to help ensure that the views of scientists, clinicians and researchers are heard in the UK national news media when their area of expertise hits the headlines. In the news media, journalists work to tight time frames and often focus on sensational and controversial topics, presenting challenges for those wanting to engage. For experts to work effectively with the news media it helps to understand more about the way the media works and how to develop necessary skills. Psychiatrists who do work successfully with the media can help ensure that the public receive accurate information about mental health problems, and gain an appreciation of the importance of research in the field and a better understanding of the role of the psychiatrist.

Hey Siri, tell me a story: Digital storytelling and AI authorship

2020 ◽  
Vol 26 (4) ◽  
pp. 808-823
Author(s):  
Sarah Thorne
Keyword(s):  
Artificial Intelligence ◽  
Language Processing ◽  
News Media ◽  
Future Directions ◽  
Daily Lives ◽  
Short Films ◽  
The Future ◽  
Commercial Applications ◽  
New Applications ◽  
Applications Of Ai

Surveying narrative applications of artificial intelligence in film, games and interactive fiction, this article imagines the future of artificial intelligence (AI) authorship and explores trends that seek to replace human authors with algorithmically generated narrative. While experimental works that draw on text generation and natural language processing have a rich history, this article focuses on commercial applications of AI narrative and looks to future applications of this technology. Video games have incorporated AI and procedural generation for many years, but more recently, new applications of this technology have emerged in other media. Director Oscar Sharp and artist Ross Goodwin, for example, generated significant media buzz about two short films that they produced which were written by their AI screenwriter. It’s No Game (2017), in particular, offers an apt commentary on the possibility of replacing striking screenwriters with AI authors. Increasingly, AI agents and virtual assistants like Siri, Cortana, Alexa and Google Assistant are incorporated into our daily lives. As concerns about their eavesdropping circulate in news media, it is clear that these companions are learning a lot about us, which raises concerns about how our data might be employed in the future. This article explores current applications of AI for storytelling and future directions of this technology to offer insight into issues that have and will continue to arise as AI storytelling advances.

scholarly journals In Front of the Lens: The Expectations, Experiences, and Reactions of Visual Journalism’s Subjects

2019 ◽  
Vol 21 (1) ◽  
pp. 4-65
Author(s):  
T. J. Thomson
Keyword(s):  
News Media ◽  
Word Association ◽  
Phenomenological Approach ◽  
Visual Media ◽  
Technological Changes ◽  
Private Lives ◽  
Visual Journalism ◽  
Depth Interviews

Visual journalism is a curious form of interaction usually involving strangers who have their private lives transformed—wittingly or not—into public objects of attention. Sometimes the interaction between journalist and subject is extended and in-depth, sometimes it is brief and shallow, and sometimes it is nonexistent. People are often reactive to cameras, and tension can exist between the idealized ways people want to be depicted and the ways journalists visually render them. Considering that visual media are “complex reflections of a relationship between maker and subject in which both play roles in shaping their character and content,” scholars have called for more research on journalists’ subjects and how they behave in front of the visual news media. This work answers that call and provides one of the first empirical glimpses into how people regard the experience of being photographed and video-recorded by journalists. As a primary arc of the work is concerned with the nature of experience, it adopts a phenomenological approach and seeks to identify (a) the expectations that news media subjects have of visual journalists, (b) how journalists’ subjects perceive the experience of being photographed and video-recorded in a news media context, and (c) how the subject’s identities and representational aspirations affect their perception of the imaging event. These questions are explored through a four-pronged approach: (a) nonparticipant observations, (b) word association exercises, (c) in-depth interviews, and (d) photo-elicitations. The findings suggest that subjects are more outcome- rather than process-focused; that technological changes and resulting behavior shifts are altering the nature of reality and experience, which has implications for privacy and consent; and that perception is quite fluid and can be affected by identity, habituation, and emotionally valenced experiences.

Nuclear disasters and invisible spectacles

Asian Cinema ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 30 (2) ◽  
pp. 169-185 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mitsuhiro Yoshimoto
Keyword(s):  
Visual Culture ◽  
Radioactive Contamination ◽  
Large Dose ◽  
Nuclear Weapons ◽  
Human Perception ◽  
Visual Media ◽  
The Other ◽  
Special Effects ◽  
Japanese Cinema ◽  
The One

The violence of nuclear catastrophe is fundamentally contradictory. On the one hand, when caused by nuclear weapons, it is highly visible and often spectacular. As is the case with exposure to a large dose of radiation, the consequence of this violence can be instantaneous, too. On the other hand, odourless and invisible, radiation is beyond direct human perception. Furthermore, the deadly effect of radiation often manifests itself gradually over many years or even decades. This paradox of nuclear violence on human lives and the environment, which is simultaneously hypervisible and invisible, poses a particular challenge to film and other types of visual media. In this article, I examine how Japanese cinema has long been struggling with the complex and contradictory relationship between the nuclear question and visual culture. Many Japanese filmmakers, including well-known auteurs like Kurosawa Akira and those who specialize in popular genre movies such as tokusatsu eiga (‘special effects movies’), have tried to overcome the challenge of representing the invisibility of nuclear violence and radioactive contamination of the environment. I discuss how popular Japanese cinema has experimented with various formal and stylistic means to make the invisibility of nuclear violence perceptible or imaginable.

Collaboration in Visual Culture Learning Communities: Towards a Synergy of Individual and Collective Creative Practice

2016 ◽  
Vol 36 (2) ◽  
pp. 164-175 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrea Karpati ◽  
Kerry Freedman ◽  
Juan Carlos Castro ◽  
Mira Kallio-Tavin ◽  
Emiel Heijnen
Keyword(s):  
Visual Culture ◽  
Learning Communities ◽  
Culture Learning ◽  
Creative Practice

scholarly journals Sorted for Memes and Gifs: Visual Media and Everyday Digital Politics

2018 ◽  
Vol 17 (3) ◽  
pp. 255-266 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jonathan Dean
Keyword(s):  
Visual Culture ◽  
Research Agenda ◽  
Recent Literature ◽  
Visual Media ◽  
Communication Studies ◽  
Everyday Practices ◽  
The Everyday ◽  
Methodological Approaches ◽  
Digital Politics ◽  
Media And Communication

This article identifies an unease, or even squeamishness, in the way in which political science addresses social media and digital politics, and argues that we urgently need to avoid such squeamishness if we are to adequately grasp the texture and character of contemporary digitally mediated politics. The first section highlights some of the methodological assumptions that underpin this squeamishness. Section ‘Visual Culture and the “Memeification” of Politics’, drawing on a recent research project on the changing shape of the British left, highlights a number of key trends in digital politics which deserve more attention from political scientists. In particular, I stress the ways in which politics is enacted in and through visual media such as gifs, memes and other forms of shareable visual content. Section ‘Re-Orienting the Study of Digital Politics’ then mines recent literature in media and communication studies to highlight a range of conceptual and methodological approaches that might be better able to capture the contours of these emergent forms of digitally mediated politics. In the section ‘The Pleasures and Passions of Socially Mediated Politics: Towards a Research Agenda’, I articulate a possible research agenda. Overall, I encourage political scientists to see the production and exchange of digital visual media not as some frivolous activity on the margins of politics, but as increasingly central to the everyday practices of politically engaged citizens.

The mental health impact of daily news exposure during the COVID-19 pandemic: An ecological momentary assessment study

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
John K. Kellerman ◽  
Jessica L. Hamilton ◽  
Edward A. Selby ◽  
Evan Kleiman
Keyword(s):  
Mental Health ◽  
News Media ◽  
Health Impact ◽  
Negative Effects ◽  
Daily News ◽  
Multilevel Mediation ◽  
Daily Exposure ◽  
Assessment Study ◽  
Ecological Momentary ◽  
Momentary Assessment

Consumption of distressing news media, which increased substantially during the COVID-19 pandemic, has demonstrable negative effects on mental health. The current study examines the proximal impact of daily exposure to distressing news on mental health. A sample of 128 college students completed daily ecological momentary assessments for 8 weeks measuring exposure to news about COVID-19, worry and optimism specifically related to COVID-19, hopelessness, and general worry. Participants completed &gt;22,700 surveys. Multilevel mediation models indicated that greater daily exposure to news about COVID-19 was associated with higher same-day and next-day worry about the pandemic. Elevations in worry specifically about COVID-19 were in turn associated with greater next-day hopelessness and general worry. Optimism about COVID-19 was not associated with daily exposure to COVID-19 news or to same-day or next-day hopelessness or general worry. This study demonstrates the mental health impact of daily exposure to COVID-19 news and highlights how specific worry contributes over time to hopelessness and general worry.

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