Spectacular memory: Zombie pasts in the themed shopping malls of Dubai

Memory invariably involves sifting and sorting historical traces and reassembling them into societal representations of the past. Usually this has been done by social groups of different kinds or the cultural institutions associated with them, and has provided materials for the construction and maintenance of group identity. In what I term “spectacular memory,” however, the sifting and sorting of memory traces is performed by commercial and media institutions within a globalized cultural framework to create spectacles for mass consumption. Spectacular memory is enabled by the progressive breakdown of Halbwach’s “social frameworks of memory”—the association of memory with face-to-face relations within social groups. In late modern societies, “memory” as a coherent body of representations which is the property of more-or-less bounded social groups has largely devolved into a globalized store of representations curated and diffused through the media, advertising, tourism and entertainment industries. This article uses the example of the history-themed shopping malls of Dubai to characterize this form of memory.

Post-regime-change Afghan and Iraqi media systems: Strategic ambivalence as technology of media governance

This article investigates the governance of post-US invasion Afghan and Iraqi media systems by analyzing provisions pertinent to public broadcasting, licensing, and defamation in 14 laws and policy documents in the two nations. The author argues that the results point to a regime of regulatory ambivalence whereby state authorities have established an ontologically incongruent complex of legal and policy structures characterized by a simultaneous cohabitation of democratic and authoritarian tendencies. This ambivalence, born of struggles and contestations between state authorities, domestic civil societies and external supporters and donors, is a deliberate technology of media governance. The authoritarian tendencies of this regulatory regime have implications for media/journalists’ self-regulation as they are designed to curtail the agency of media institutions and journalists, and assert government control over speech and the flow of information.

Elite Media Trends Towards the Extent of Commitment of Kurdish Websites to the Ethics of the Profession in the Kurdistan Region - A field Study

The study aims to explain and identify the trends of the Kurdish media elite with regard to the level of commitment of Kurdish websites to professional ethics in the Kurdistan Region. This study is a descriptive study in which the survey method was used. The community of this study is consists of the media elite in the Kurdistan Region, whether it is the lecturers in the media departments in the universities and institutes of the region, or the experienced media professionals who are in charge of managing media institutions. The most prominent results of the study are: The majority of the study sample agrees that the content of Kurdish websites is a mixture of adherence to the principles of professional ethics, especially in presenting all the information related to the event and avoiding intentional exaggeration, and also non-compliance with these principles, especially in their lack of commitment to the sources of information contained in the news.

Fortifying boundaries

This article examines how recent changes in the hybrid media environment have led media actors to define the “how and why” of their practices. We consider the discussion on the differences and similarities surrounding both the legacy media, and newcomers such as countermedia, to be part of journalism’s boundary work: the ongoing, yet temporally fickle, process of marking the boundaries between journalism and non-journalism. We demonstrate how both legacy and countermedia actors drew boundaries through vocabulary, institutional reflection, demarcation practices, and ethos. While the Finnish media underlined its institutional autonomy and dominance by defending the social good of journalism and dubbing countermedia as fake media, countermedia actor MV-lehti drew its own boundaries by ridiculing media professionals, media institutions, and journalists. Our findings illustrate how these actors consistently asserted the flawed ideological foundations of “the other”, with the consequence that boundaries have become fortified, rather than crossed or blurred.

The Shifting Terms of Religious Authority in North Atlantic Politics and Culture

Religion continues to evolve on both sides of the North Atlantic. In both contexts, traditional ways of understanding religion are confronted by new realities. The emerging and growing influence of modern media and media institutions are important causes of these changes. It is no longer possible to think of ‘religion’ and ‘secular’ as separate categories when ‘secular’ media increasingly define and deploy religious images, interests, and networks, displacing the influence of traditional authorities. The role of media in these trends is especially obvious in relation the emerging politics of populism, nationalism, and retrenchment. The media operate in a number of registers in these relations, including their textual, institutional, and practical dimensions.

DECISION-MAKING PROCESS OF NEWS PRODUCTION IN THE CONGOLESE NATIONAL RADIO AND TELEVISION

In the Democratic Republic of the Congo as in several African countries, the news are made by several national media institutions. From the collection stage to the diffusion of news, several stages of decision-making are requested. The objective of this study is to analyse the decision-making process in the news production, its stages, the departments involved and the factors influencing the decision-making stages of news between collection, processing, selection, dissemination and evaluation of news. To achieve the objective and to verify the assumptions, the study adopted the mixed methodology combining the collection of qualitative and quantitative data in the continuous or simultaneous approach to presentation of results. A literature search allowed for the design of the theoretical model and a semi-structured interview survey was conducted to collect relevant data in a non-probabilistic, occasional or intentional sample consisting of 26 journalists of the Congolese national radio-television. The activities of collection, processing, selection, diffusion as well as evaluation and monitoring of news are the stages of the news production. These steps can be grouped into three: design and elaboration of news, publications of news and feedback. And several actors are involved. <p> </p><p><strong> Article visualizations:</strong></p><p><img src="/-counters-/edu_01/0894/a.php" alt="Hit counter" /></p>

Cyber Community Towards Society 5.0 And The Future Of Social Reality

Abstract—In cyber community towards the Society 5.0 era, the use of industrial technology 4.0, especially communication media technology plays an important role. The information era causes digital communication media technology to develop very rapidly and encourage the birth of digital media that have real time capabilities and create new media. Currently mass media institutions that are not innovative are experiencing a fall. Then the existence of the construction of reality is also increasingly obscured by the mixing of life in the real world with the virtual world. Therefore, the study wants to criticize the existence of reality in the midst of the development of communication technology that is so fast. This study uses the interview method in collecting data and analyzing it using the narrative method. The results of this study are that in society 5.0 and industrial technology 4.0, a pseudo social reality constructed by communication technology media causes mass media to die, social harmony is confused and even lost, and hoaxes are attacks on harmony.technological advances in industry 5.0 increase above 70%.

A cline of enregisterment and its erasure: Intersections of ideology and technology in minority-language news

Audiences often ascribe monolithic linguistic authority to news media institutions, viewing journalists as the bearers of language standards. Yet media are in fact heteroglossic, with journalists across different media platforms negotiating competing practical demands and different understandings of the social purposes and possibilities of their work. This article examines a case of hyperideologized minority-language media to show how the interplay of deep-seated language ideologies, the local sociohistorical context of media, and the material, technological affordances of different platforms produces a cline of enregisterment. It focuses on media produced in Buryat, a Mongolic language of southeastern Siberia whose speakers are shifting to Russian. Comparing journalists’ linguistic practices and audiences’ interpretations across the coexisting media platforms of newspapers, radio, and television shows how media enregisterment and, in turn, the enregisterment of a standard literary language occur along a cline that is shaped by the intersections of ideology with technology. (Media, language ideology, enregisterment, standardization, purism, materiality, Russia, Russian, Buryat)*

What Is Data Literacy?

Decades after the public journalism movement attempted to redefine the relationship between news outlets and the communities they cover, local journalists are still grappling with how best to cultivate audiences in civic spaces. Community news providers—battling against diminished levels of trust in media institutions—are seeking to counter these sentiments by building closer partnerships with their readers. In this light, data journalism is often heralded for its ability to coalesce fragmented audiences in conversation around salient civic issues. Yet despite its promise, successful storytelling requires basic data literacy skills on behalf of both practitioners and the public. To understand the story, all parties must understand the data. This chapter tackles programmatic efforts to address societal shortfalls in data knowledge and accessibility across the news production/consumption spectrum (with an emphasis on journalism experiments in community news).

Psychedelic medicalization, public discourse, and the morality of ego dissolution

Emerging from a diverse and long history of shamanic and religious cultural practices, psychedelic substances are increasingly being foregrounded as medicines by an assemblage of scientific research groups, media institutions, government drug authorities, and patient and consumer populations. Considering scientific studies and recent popular media associated with the medicalization of psychedelic substances, this article responds to scholarly debates over the imbrication of scientific knowledge and moral discourse. It contends that, while scientific research into psychedelic medicine presents itself as amoral and objective, it often reverts to moral and political claims in public discourse. We illustrate how psychedelic medicine discourse in recent popular media in the United States and the United Kingdom is naturalizing specific moral and political orientations as pharmacological and healthy. The article traces how psychedelic substances have become ego-dissolving medicines invested with neoliberal and anti-authoritarian agency.