Media Criticism: Demand, Need, Responsibility

In the context of globalization, journalism, like all areas of information communication, has undergone unique innovations in theory and practice. Current issues of modern journalism, which operates as a means of mass communication based on the principles of traditional journalism, are emerging. Issues such as freedom of speech, ethics, and human rights require the development of media criticism. This article covers analyzes such as the demand and need for media criticism.

POSTFEMINISM

In the age of all "post" and "meta" things, when there has been more and more debates about the death of traditional categories, feminism makes no exception. Postfeminism has been discussed since the last decade of the twentieth century, when feminism was pronounced dead (by analogy with the many deaths that were pronounced in the period), or else it was noted as suffering from an "identity crisis." The multifaceted nature of the term depends on its uses in literary studies, academia, politics, and popular culture, respectively. It is part of the vocabulary and theories of feminist scholars working in the fields of gender studies, film studies and media criticism. Traditional feminism gives way to postfeminism. That is why the article deals with today's debates about the distinctions that postfeminism makes, declaring either that traditional feminism has failed or, on the contrary, that it has achieved all goals of its struggle and today there is no place for the topic of women's rights. The text also focuses on the links between postfeminism and popular culture, media, cinema, defending the ideology of successful women, of eternally young women. With its frequent emphasis on luxurious lifestyle, everyday pleasures and the small things in life, postfeminism is fully integrated into economic discourses and new market niches in Western societies.

Enthymemes Online

The final chapter addresses current issues in news and social media, as well as the tandem problems of public trust in journalism, democratic institutions, and everyday personal communications inaugurated by digital media’s proliferating resources for fabrication and obfuscation. After introducing a cognitive-rhetorical model for identifying promotional enthymemes online, this chapter carefully considers the ways in which media criticism is taught in higher education; it questions traditional methods of interrogation and deconstruction that individualize the ethics of media engagement and have the potential to breed further mistrust within already trust-poor cultures. Alternative modes of analysis are considered for their pedagogical merits, including the uses of postcritique and surface readings of media texts. Ultimately, I make the case that there is an imperative to guide a hopeful, forward-looking, normative search for solutions in our classrooms, in addition to describing the political problems we currently confront. The alternative is to prescribe a disempowering culture of suspicion for the next generation, who will be the inheritors of a fraught media ecology that scholars continue to document as it unfolds.

Corporate Social Responsibility Disclosure: Responding to Investors’ Criticism on Social Media

Companies use corporate social responsibility (CSR) disclosures to communicate their social and environmental policies, practices, and performance to stakeholders. Although the determinants and outcomes of CSR activities are well understood, we know little about how companies use CSR communication to manage a crisis. The few relevant CSR studies have focused on the pressure on corporations exerted by governments, customers, the media, or the public. Although investors have a significant influence on firm value, this stakeholder group has been neglected in research on CSR disclosure. Grounded in legitimacy theory and agency theory, this study uses a sample of Chinese public companies listed on the Shanghai Stock Exchange to investigate CSR disclosure in response to social media criticism posted by investors. The empirical findings show that investors’ social media criticism not only motivates companies to disclose their CSR activities but also increases the substantiveness of their CSR reports, demonstrating that companies’ CSR communication in response to a crisis is substantive rather than merely symbolic. We also find that the impact of social media criticism on CSR disclosure is heterogeneous. Non-state-owned enterprises, companies in regions with high levels of environmental regulations, and companies in regions with local government concern about social issues are most likely to disclose CSR information and report substantive CSR activities. We provide an in-depth analysis of corporate CSR strategies for crisis management and show that crises initiated by investors on social media provide opportunities for corporations to improve their CSR engagement.

A Lot of People Did Not Want This to Happen

Using three highly visible promotional videos from the Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC), we perform a critical examination of the UFC’s branding during the COVID-19 pandemic. The first is a recorded endorsement from President Donald Trump, the second introduces the origin of an international pay-per-view series called “Fight Island” and the third is an end of year retrospective of the UFC’s performance in 2020. Employing content analysis grounded in brand psychology and narrative persuasion, we deconstruct the visual communication and story-based elements within this advertising to reveal how the company has adopted an identity of heroic dominance and defiance. This persona is built from a cognitively biased and framed suggestive notion which the UFC uses to market themselves as the lone organization fearless enough to “conquer” COVID-19 through the continuation of live events and overcoming obstacles posed by government regulation and media criticism. Ultimately, we find three dominant narratives actively established from this identity and heavily employed in their subsequent branded content: “Sport Must Go On,” “Unstoppable Force,” and “World Gone Crazy.” We conclude by arguing that the UFC’s branding reifies the tenuous social and political position the young sport occupies by marketing the combat sports company as different than other mainstream sport leagues, through repeated celebration of the Dana White (President of the UFC) as a heroic figure, by their disavowal of caution in the face of a pandemic, and in portrayal of the mainstream media as a jealous enemy.

Delegitimizing the media?

A growing literature on the impact of “fake news“ accusations on legacy news outlets suggests that the use of this term is part of a much larger trend of increased and delegitimizing media criticism by political actors. However, so far, there is very little empirical evidence on how prevailing politicians’ delegitimizing media criticism really is and under which conditions it occurs. To fill these gaps, we present results of a content analysis of media-related Facebook postings by Austrian and German politicians in 2017 (N = 2,921). The results suggest that media criticism, in general, is actually rare and that about half of it can be described as delegitimizing (i.e., characterized by incivility or absence of argumentation). Most often, media criticism is used by populist politicians, who accuse “the media” in general of bias and falsehoods.

Divisions du travail médiatique entre journalistes et militants, de l'altermondialisme à Sivens

FR. Tiré de notre travail de thèse sur la médiatisation de l'opposition au barrage de Sivens sur Internet, cet article suit deux objectifs. Tout d'abord, il tente de réinscrire les mobilisations informationnelles contre les « Grands Projets Inutiles et Imposés » (GPII) dans leur contexte historique, politique, médiatique et technologique. En conséquence, à travers cette étude, nous revenons sur la genèse et la continuité du mouvement altermondialiste, avant de nous intéresser aux termes et aux modalités de sa critique du travail journalistique. En nous approchant progressivement des enjeux plus contemporains de Sivens, l'article se penche alors sur la pérennité de cette critique des médias, qui devient « critique en actes », avec la création puis l'enracinement de pure-players d'information en ligne explicitement politisés, en France. Ce cadre théorique et contextuel étant posé, l'article détaille ensuite le rapport problématique et paradoxal que les militants de notre enquête entretiennent vis-à-vis du champ journalistique. En effet, les acteurs de l'opposition au barrage de Sivens oscillent entre la mise en place de stratégies d'intéressement vis-à-vis des entreprises de presse et l'exploitation d'un potentiel d'autonomie médiatique en ligne (sites internet militants, réseaux socionumériques). Avec la couverture journalistique de la mobilisation par ces médias « de la critique des médias » situés à gauche du spectre politique, les relations entre acteurs évoluent sensiblement. L'article entre ainsi dans la boîte noire des interactions qu'ont entretenues les professionnels de l'information appartenant aux marges du champ journalistique, les entrepreneurs de cause et les média-activistes. Ces parties-prenantes de la médiatisation de la mobilisation ont ainsi cultivé « hors ligne » une proximité qui se décline « en ligne », suivant un mouvement de concentration info-communicationnelle. Autrement dit, l'article cherche à analyser les caractéristiques d'une certaine division du travail médiatique, entre militants-communicants et journalistes engagés, au cœur de l'événement politique en ligne. *** EN. Drawn from our thesis work on Internet media coverage of the Sivens dam opposition, this study has two objectives. First, it attempts to re-contextualize historically, politically, technologically and in the media information disseminated against Grands Projets Inutiles et Imposés (GPII) (Large, Useless and Imposed Projects). This study will go back to the birth and growth of the alter-globalization movement before focusing on definitions and methods in its critique of pertinent journalism. In culminating with the more current Sivens issues, the paper will study the sustainability of this type of media criticism, which becomes “critical in action,” (critique en actes) with the creation and subsequent entrenchment in France of explicitly politicized pure players of online news. After establishing the theoretical and contextual framework, the paper then lays out the problematic and paradoxical relationship activists in our study have with the journalistic field: opponents of the Sivens dam oscillate between strategies to garner press coverage and creating an autonomous online media presence (activist websites and social networks). Journalistic coverage of this movement (including media critical of media, which is situated left on the political spectrum) is significantly altering the relationship between actors. This paper thus enters the “black box” of interactions between news professionals from the fringe of the journalistic field, militants and media activists. These stakeholders in the mediatization of a cause have cultivated an “offline” closeness that is expressed “online,” reflecting the shift toward info-communicational concentration. In other words, the paper analyzes the characteristics of a certain division of media work (e.g., activist-communicators and socially-committed journalists) at the heart of an online political event. *** PT. Retirado de nosso trabalho de tese sobre a cobertura midiática da oposição à barragem de Sivens na Internet, este artigo segue dois objetivos. Em primeiro lugar, tenta registrar novamente as mobilizações de informação contra os “Grandes Projetos Inúteis e Impostos” (GPII) em seu contexto histórico, político, midiático e tecnológico. Consequentemente, por meio deste estudo, voltamos à gênese e à continuidade do movimento alter-globalista, antes de nos concentrarmos nos termos e métodos de sua crítica ao trabalho jornalístico. Aproximando-se gradativamente das questões mais contemporâneas de Sivens, o artigo examina a sustentabilidade dessa crítica midiática, que se torna uma "crítica em ação", com a criação e, posteriormente, a constituição de pure-players da informação online explicitamente politizados na França.Estabelecido esse quadro teórico e contextual, o artigo detalha a relação problemática e paradoxal que os militantes de nossa pesquisa mantêm com o campo jornalístico. Com efeito, os atores da oposição à barragem de Sivens oscilam entre a implementação de estratégias de incentivo às empresas de imprensa e a exploração de um potencial de autonomia dos meios de comunicação online (websites ativistas, redes sociais). Com a cobertura jornalística da mobilização por esses meios de comunicação de "crítica midiática" situados à esquerda do espectro político, as relações entre os atores estão mudando significativamente. O artigo entra, assim, na caixa preta das interações mantidas por profissionais da informação pertencentes às margens do campo jornalístico, empresários de causa e ativistas da mídia. Essas partes interessadas na midiatização da mobilização cultivam, assim, no “offline” uma proximidade que se expressa “online”, seguindo um movimento de concentração informacional-comunicacional. Em outras palavras, o artigo busca analisar as características de uma determinada divisão do trabalho midiático, entre comunicadores-ativistas e jornalistas comprometidos, no seio do acontecimento político online. ***

Framing Mass Hysteria Covid-19 dalam Berita Tempo dan Detikx

Coverage of the Coronavirus or Covid-19 in Indonesia was accompanied by confusion of information which resulted Mass Hysteria. Media criticism is also present as the vanguard of social control, which is not only limited to what and how it appeared, but also critically explores readiness from the political level of government to the social life of the affected community. How two "premium" media, namely Tempo and DetikX, build news construction about Covid-19? Then how do the media frame a topic or issue that has developed after Covid-19? and how is the concentration of the media in reporting on Mass Hysteria that developed after Covid-19 in Indonesia? This study takes news in March 2020, Especially on the main coverage presented by both media. This research uses qualitative research method and Pan and Kosicki's framing analysis model for explore data research. The Result is Tempo Magazine and DetikX generally drawing struggle toward Mass Hysteria and affair caused by Covid-19 on critics of handling policy government level and public with selectively choosing solution frame as shape of struggle.