Encoding polysemy in the news

Although media-audience encounters are always potentially open to different interpretations, little is known about the textual mechanisms that encourage polysemy. Focusing on a story about a CEO who pledged to drastically cut his pay to increase his employees’ salaries, this study compared news reports that covered the same event but were met by different levels of polysemy in their reception. Through a combination of frame and semiotic analysis, the study pinpoints differences in content and style between news stories that were met by interpretive convergence from audiences (low polysemy) and those that were met by interpretive divergence (high polysemy). Based on these differences, a typology of three textual mechanisms is offered to explain the range of polysemy in the news: the attributes and representation of characters, the use of empiricism versus mythology in structuring conflict, and the level of closure versus uncertainty in the story’s conclusion.

PRODUCING THE “PROBLEM” OF PARENTAL OVERSHARE

With the rise of social media, the term overshare has become shorthand for concerns about people, especially parents, disclosing seemingly excessive amounts of information. Prior work shows that the term overshare does not simply describe an action, but reinforces problematic boundaries that marginalize women. In this paper, I examine how social media discourse actively produces oversharing and then instructs parents to self-censor in the name of satisfying their social media audience. I focus on STFU, Parents, a once-popular blog dedicated to mocking parental overshare. I analyze STFU, Parents materials through the framework of governmentality, a Foucauldian-inspired means of examining how authorities intervene in people’s lives. I find that STFU, Parents defines overshare as the posting of gross or overly emotional content on social media. It materializes overshare through the technologies of screenshots, which supply evidence of overshare, and editing software, which anonymizes the people in the post and enables STFU, Parents to distance itself from the consequences of publishing other people’s information. STFU, Parents portrays itself as simply curating a phenomenon—overshare—that exists in the world. However, I argue that STFU, Parents brings overshare into being by pulling information out of context and using it as a reason to judge parents, particularly mothers. Presenting overshare as a problem of individuals not knowing proper social media etiquette enables STFU, Parents to distance itself from its role role in constructing the very problem it claims to critique.

FEATURES OF MODELING IMAGES OF INTERVIEWER AND INTERVIEWER IN PRINTED MEDIA

The aim of the research in the article was to clarify the features of modeling the images of the interviewer and the interviewee in print media. The study allowed expanding the theoretical basis in the study of interviews, filling in some gaps and outlining discussion points. The author's vision of the specifics of modeling the images of the interviewer and the interviewee in print media is proposed. A three-stage mechanism for modeling the images of the interviewer and the interviewee is presented. The specificity of the emergence and functioning of the communicative manipulative field between the participants of communication has been determined. A list of communicative manipulative techniques that can be activated when a manipulative field appears.Methods of description, analysis, synthesis and generalization were used. The following research procedure has become the methodology: 1) among the theoretical material, scientific works related to the topic we are going to have been selected; 2) scientific articles, monographs are analyzed, 3) controversial statements are highlighted in them and the author's point of view regarding the subject of research is presented; 4) the author's concept of modeling the image of the interviewer and the interviewee is proposed.The results and discussionmade it possible to formulate conclusions. Firstly, the images of the interviewer and the interviewee go through the followingstages of modeling: the formation of the aforementioned images during the communicative process, the transformation of the images of the interviewer and the interviewee while working on a journalistic text, modeling in the mind of the recipient the imagesof the interviewer and the interviewee, determined by the specifics of the perception and interpretation of the proposed information by the representative. media audience. Secondly, the images of the interviewer and the interviewee are multivariate. The factors of multivariate are the purpose of the interview, the communicative situation, the participants in communication, their worldview orientations, discourse, epistemic characteristics of the participants in communication, the transformation of images due to the work process and the specifics of perception, as well as the interpretation of information by the media audience.

The Homebody During/In Crisis

The Covid-19 pandemic ushered in a new paradigm of domesticity that manifested in and through the body. The complexities of domestic corporeality, however, predate this particular crisis. The inhabitation of the domestic realm is inherently riddled with contradictions of space, subjectivity, and sociality. In this article, I consider the many paradoxes imbuing the homebody both before and during the onset of the pandemic, arguing that crisis exacerbates the existing tensions that the homebody engenders, but it does not produce them. I examine the case of home dancer Marlee Grace and her Instagram activity prior to and during the quarantines, lockdowns, and stay-at-home orders of 2020. Grace's performed contradictions for her new media audience demonstrate that the homebody—though its complexities are amplified by the pandemic—has always been in crisis.

The media myth creation in the anthropocentric dimension (the english social and political discourse studies)

The paper considers linguistic and discursive features of anthropocentric myth creation in the social and political media. Myth creation in the social and political context is viewed as creation of social and political myths correlating with real and fictional events, public persons or social and political phenomena. The author brings into light the role of the media audience as one of the leading factors ensuring successful creation of the media mythological image appealing predominantly to the emotional sphere in the mass recipient’s consciousness. Strange as it might seem, the anthropocentric mythological discourse demonstrates the minimal amount of explicit emotiveness, which creates conditions for independent evaluation of the information by the audience itself. Narrative is considered to be the basic myth creation format. It is represented as a series of stories about the myth creation object. Given the diachronic aspect of myth creation and its chronotope which can span quite a long period of time, it is suggested to speak of the narrative continuum focused on a media person who is in the centre of public attention. It is pointed out that media myth creation takes place on the basis of implications which appear in the process of reception of factual information by the media audience. The interaction of verbal and non-verbal means typical of the media fosters creation of a full-bodied anthroponymic mythological image, which calls for a special study.

Sonic branding: a conceptualization of the mass media audience

This Major Research Paper (MRP) explores sonic logos, which are short sound bites used in commercial advertising to represent brands to the public. I discuss how these types of sounds are increasingly being used to attract audience attention in the current corporate and mass media landscape. My research is informed by scholarly debates about the role of the audience in contemporary media environments and traces key positions in this debate, including Celia Lury’s (1993) suggestion that contemporary audiences are passive and Philip Napoli’s (2010) suggestion that social media audiences now play a more active role in producing and sharing media content. Henry Jenkins (2004) provides a synthesis of these two views and states that while the audience has the option to be participatory on social media platforms, there is still an increasing trend toward concentrated ownership in the entertainment industry. I conducted interviews with advertising and branding professionals and analyzed the manner in which producers’ conceptualizations of the audience shape sonic branding practices. One key finding of my study is that media producers believe that changes in technology have changed the way that brand and media institutions interact with their audience. Another key finding is that producers view the contemporary media audience as distracted but also ore sophisticated due to their access and use of communication technologies.

Sonic branding: a conceptualization of the mass media audience

This Major Research Paper (MRP) explores sonic logos, which are short sound bites used in commercial advertising to represent brands to the public. I discuss how these types of sounds are increasingly being used to attract audience attention in the current corporate and mass media landscape. My research is informed by scholarly debates about the role of the audience in contemporary media environments and traces key positions in this debate, including Celia Lury’s (1993) suggestion that contemporary audiences are passive and Philip Napoli’s (2010) suggestion that social media audiences now play a more active role in producing and sharing media content. Henry Jenkins (2004) provides a synthesis of these two views and states that while the audience has the option to be participatory on social media platforms, there is still an increasing trend toward concentrated ownership in the entertainment industry. I conducted interviews with advertising and branding professionals and analyzed the manner in which producers’ conceptualizations of the audience shape sonic branding practices. One key finding of my study is that media producers believe that changes in technology have changed the way that brand and media institutions interact with their audience. Another key finding is that producers view the contemporary media audience as distracted but also ore sophisticated due to their access and use of communication technologies.