Farming on Facebook, Camera-less Food Photography and a New Indian Pastoral

2019 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 1-12
Author(s):  
Aileen Blaney
Keyword(s):  
Digital Media ◽  
News Media ◽  
Media Coverage ◽  
Food Production ◽  
Web Search ◽  
Rural India ◽  
Adobe Flash ◽  
Underlying Causes ◽  
Agrarian Crisis ◽  
Food Photography

Lacunae in media images and reports of death and agrarian based suffering, experienced by India's debt prone farmers, have only begun to be addressed in the Indian news media. While the agrarian crisis is spectacularized through 24 hour news cycle images, analysis of underlying causes is less common in print and digital media. Kheti Badi, a photo-series produced from screenshots of FarmVille (an Adobe Flash gaming application on Facebook), interrogates this media impasse. It critiques homogenized images of food and farming, which rise to the top of web search results, and photojournalistic images showing the dignified suffering of Indian agricultural workers. Kheti Badi's computer made images are an alternative to visual stereotyping of rural India in photojournalism. Its technological inventiveness neither spectacularizes farmer protests or suicides nor aestheticizes pastoral qualities associated with the land. To make visible the changing nature of food production and need to reform farming in India, and its media coverage, Kheti Badi supplants the Indian pastoral with a new pictorial.

scholarly journals Social Media, Professional Media and Mobilisation in Contemporary Britain: Explaining the Strengths and Weaknesses of the Citizens’ Movement 38 Degrees

2016 ◽  
Vol 65 (1) ◽  
pp. 42-60 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrew Chadwick ◽  
James Dennis
Keyword(s):  
Digital Media ◽  
News Media ◽  
Media Coverage ◽  
Political Activism ◽  
Political Efficacy ◽  
The Internet ◽  
Digital Activism ◽  
Digital Network ◽  
Current Thinking ◽  
Media Professional

Digital media continue to reshape political activism in unexpected ways. Within a period of a few years, the internet-enabled UK citizens’ movement 38 Degrees has amassed a membership of 3 million and now sits alongside similar entities such as America’s MoveOn, Australia’s GetUp! and the transnational movement Avaaz. In this article, we contribute to current thinking about digital media and mobilisation by addressing some of the limitations of existing research on these movements and on digital activism more generally. We show how 38 Degrees’ digital network repertoires coexist interdependently with its strategy of gaining professional news media coverage. We explain how the oscillations between choreographic leadership and member influence and between digital media horizontalism and elite media-centric work constitute the space of interdependencies in which 38 Degrees acts. These delicately balanced relations can quickly dissolve and be replaced by simpler relations of dependence on professional media. Yet despite its fragility, we theorise about how 38 Degrees may boost individuals’ political efficacy, irrespective of the outcome of individual campaigns. Our conceptual framework can be used to guide research on similar movements.

scholarly journals Scandal mining: political nobodies and remediated visibility

2017 ◽  
Vol 40 (6) ◽  
pp. 893-908 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniel Trottier
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Digital Media ◽  
News Media ◽  
Media Coverage ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political Accountability ◽  
Federal Election ◽  
First Pass ◽  
Media Channels

This article considers the 2015 federal election in Canada as the emergence of seemingly citizen-led practices whereby candidates’ past missteps are unearthed and distributed through social and news media channels. On first pass, these resemble citizen-led engagements through digital media for potentially unmappable political goals, given the dispersed and either non-partisan or multi-partisan nature of these engagements. By bringing together journalistic accounts and social media coverage alongside current scholarship on citizenship and visibility, this case study traces the possibility of political accountability and the political weaponisation of mediated visibility through the targeted extraction of candidate details from dispersed profiles, communities and databases.

scholarly journals Population Control, Deadly Vaccines, and Mutant Mosquitoes: The Construction and Circulation of Zika Virus Conspiracy Theories Online

2019 ◽  
Vol 44 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Scott S.D. Mitchell
Keyword(s):  
Digital Media ◽  
News Media ◽  
Zika Virus ◽  
Media Coverage ◽  
Population Control ◽  
Disease Outbreaks ◽  
Public Perceptions ◽  
Conspiracy Theories ◽  
Contagious Diseases ◽  
Virus Zika

Background  Disease outbreaks are often accompanied by sensationalist news media coverage, social media panic, and a barrage of conspiracy theories and misinformation. The Zika virus outbreak of 2015–2016 followed this pattern.Analysis  Drawing on frame analysis, this article examines the construction and circulation of a conspiracy theory concerning the 2015–2016 Zika outbreak, analyzing the flow of misinformation across online platforms including “conspiracy” websites, online discussion threads, and Twitter.Conclusion and implications  Conspiracy theories produced and shared on social and digital media platforms have the power to discursively construct contagious diseases such as Zika, which may fuel misguided public perceptions and impact health policy.Contexte  Les pics épidémiques suscitent souvent une couverture médiatique sensationnaliste, la panique dans les médias sociaux et une panoplie de théories du complot et de désinformation. La flambée du virus Zika en 2015–2016 en est un exemple.Analyse  Cet article se fonde sur une analyse des cadres pour examiner la construction et la circulation de théories du complot relatives à la flambée du Zika en 2015–2016, analysant la désinformation sur diverses plateformes en ligne, y compris des sites complotistes, des fils de discussion et Twitter.Conclusions et implications  Les plateformes en ligne développent et partagent des théories du complot qui ont le pouvoir de décrire des maladies contagieuses telles que le Zika de manière à entraîner des perceptions publiques erronées et à influencer les politiques sur la santé.

Welcome to the Party

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Khadijah Costley White
Keyword(s):  
Social Movement ◽  
Political Communication ◽  
News Media ◽  
Media Coverage ◽  
News Coverage ◽  
Tea Party ◽  
Audience Appeal

This chapter lays out the Tea Party’s history as a mass-mediated construction in the context of journalism, political communication, and social movement studies. It argues that the news coverage of the Tea Party primarily chronicled its meaning, appeal, motivations, influence, and circulation—an emphasis on its persona more than its policies. In particular, the news media tracked the Tea Party as a brand, highlighting its profits, marketability, brand leaders, and audience appeal. The Tea Party became a brand through news media coverage; in defining it as a brand, the Tea Party was a story, message, and cognitive shortcut that built a lasting relationship with citizen-consumers through strong emotional connections, self-expression, consumption, and differentiation.

scholarly journals Mobile bystanders and rubbernecks, disaster tourists, and helpers. Towards a theoretical framework for critically studying action possibilities at accident sites

2021 ◽  
pp. 205015792098482
Author(s):  
Linus Andersson ◽  
Ebba Sundin
Keyword(s):  
Digital Media ◽  
News Media ◽  
Well Being ◽  
Theoretical Framework ◽  
Communication Studies ◽  
Mobile Media ◽  
Ethical Implications ◽  
Theoretical Perspectives ◽  
Media And Communication ◽  
Media Practices

This article addresses the phenomenon of mobile bystanders who use their smartphones to film or take photographs at accident scenes, instead of offering their help to people in need or to assist medical units. This phenomenon has been extensively discussed in Swedish news media in recent years since it has been described as a growing problem for first responders, such as paramedics, police, and firefighters. This article aims to identify theoretical perspectives that are relevant for analyzing mobile media practices and discuss the ethical implications of these perspectives. Our purpose is twofold: we want to develop a theoretical framework for critically approaching mobile media practices, and we want to contribute to discussions concerning well-being in a time marked by mediatization and digitalization. In this pursuit, we combine theory from social psychology about how people behave at traumatic scenes with discussions about witnessing in and through media, as developed in media and communication studies. Both perspectives offer various implications for normative inquiry, and in our discussion, we argue that mobile bystanders must be considered simultaneously as transgressors of social norms and as emphatic witnesses behaving in accordance with the digital media age. The article ends with a discussion regarding the implications for further research.

scholarly journals Associations between News Media Coverage of the 11 September Attacks and Depression in Employees of New York City Area Businesses

2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (3) ◽  
pp. 29
Author(s):  
Betty Pfefferbaum ◽  
Jayme M. Palka ◽  
Carol S. North
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
New York City ◽  
News Media ◽  
York City ◽  
Media Coverage ◽  
Structured Interviews ◽  
Mass Trauma ◽  
High Prevalence ◽  
General Populations ◽  
Disaster Trauma

Research has examined the association between contact with media coverage of mass trauma events and various psychological outcomes, including depression. Disaster-related depression research is complicated by the relatively high prevalence of the major depressive disorder in general populations even without trauma exposure. The extant research is inconclusive regarding associations between disaster media contact and depression outcomes, in part, because most studies have not distinguished diagnostic and symptomatic outcomes, differentiated postdisaster incidence from prevalence, or considered disaster trauma exposures. This study examined these associations in a volunteer sample of 254 employees of New York City businesses after the 11 September 2001, terrorist attacks. Structured interviews and questionnaires were administered 35 months after the attacks. Poisson and logistic regression analyses revealed that post-9/11 news contact significantly predicted the number of postdisaster persistent/recurrent and incident depressive symptoms in the full sample and in the indirect and unexposed groups. The findings suggest that clinical and public health approaches should be particularly alert to potential adverse postdisaster depression outcomes related to media consumption in disaster trauma-unexposed or indirectly-exposed groups.

scholarly journals From audiences to data points: The role of media agencies in the platformization of the news media industry

2021 ◽  
pp. 016344372110298
Author(s):  
Ida Willig
Keyword(s):  
Digital Media ◽  
News Media ◽  
Media Industry ◽  
Ethical Challenges ◽  
Media Audiences ◽  
Data Points ◽  
The Public Sphere ◽  
The Many ◽  
Marketing Budgets

Media agencies have become one of the key actors in the contemporary media industry: by channelling marketing budgets to some media and some platforms and not to others, media agencies play an important role in creating the digital media infrastructure and laying the tracks of the public sphere. Yet we know very little about these commercial middlemen between advertisers and audiences, what they do, and how we should understand their role in the digital media ecology. This article discusses the role of media agencies in relation to platformization with a focus on the news media sector. Based on interviews, publicly available material and trade journals, the article depicts an industry deeply engaged in digitizing, tracking and commodifying media audiences, while at the same time aware of ethical challenges of the digital media infrastructure. This leads to a call for more political attention and critical research on the democratic implications of the new value chains between platforms, advertisers, audiences, media agencies and news media as well as the many tech companies providing derived digital services and products.

scholarly journals Media and compassion after digital war: Why digital media haven't transformed responses to human suffering in contemporary conflict

2020 ◽  
Vol 102 (913) ◽  
pp. 117-143
Author(s):  
Andrew Hoskins
Keyword(s):  
Digital Media ◽  
Compassion Fatigue ◽  
News Media ◽  
Mass Movement ◽  
Mass Action ◽  
Human Suffering ◽  
New Era ◽  
Public Response ◽  
Digital Disruption ◽  
Instant Availability

AbstractThere is a persistent belief in the power of media images to transform the events they depict. Yet despite the instant availability of billions of images of human suffering and death in the continuous and connective digital glare of social media, the catastrophes of contemporary wars, such as in Syria and Yemen, unfold relentlessly. There are repeated expressions of surprise by some in the West when the dissemination of images of suffering and wars, particularly in mainstream news media, does not translate into a de-escalation of conflict.In this article I consider today's loosening of the often presumed relationship between media representation, knowledge and response under the conditions of “digital war”. This is the digital disruption of the relationship between warfare and society in which all sides participate in the uploading and sharing of information on, and images and videos of, conflict.Is it the case that the capacity of images of human injury and death to bring about change, and the expectation that they would stir practical intervention in wars, is and has been exaggerated? Even if we are moved or shocked upon being confronted by such images, does this translate into some form of action, individual or otherwise? In this article I contend that the saturation of information and images of human suffering and death in contemporary warfare has not ushered in a new era of “compassion fatigue”. Rather, algorithmically charged outrage is a proxy for effects. It is easy to misconstrue the velocity of linking and liking and sharing as some kind of mass action or mass movement.Humanitarian catastrophes slowly unfold in an age of continuous and connective digital glare, and yet they are unseen. If the imploded battlefield of digital war affording the most proximate and persistent view of human suffering and death in history cannot ultimately mobilize radically effective forms of public response, it is difficult to imagine what will.

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