Media Pseudologies

In this article, the author seeks to understand how any information society generates clusters of information that act to secure and reinforce ecologies of consumption for media conglomerates and its circle of consumers. Empirical case studies would show that news information may not be based in the larger realities of all the players involved. Societies may be described in such situations as desiring their ends by means of segmented branching, but more empirically, by imperatives of survival and growth. Pseudology comprise the only sustaining principle of discourse for such a world immersed and fragmented by its local interests and their recognizable patterns of behavior as they are retrospectively conditioned by media.

Bulgaria’s supine media are unlikely to change

Significance This ranking for the second year in a row caused consternation and furious debate among prominent Bulgarian journalists, but barely registered with the government in Sofia; the public seems transfixed by ongoing government scandals and the burden of over two months of tough COVID-19 lockdown. Impacts The pandemic has shifted attention away from media deficiencies, both domestically and among Bulgaria’s EU and NATO partners. Scandals and infighting have weakened the Borisov government against other parts of the establishment and well-entrenched media interests. Chief Prosecutor Ivan Geshev’s activist prosecution service has avoided challenging media conglomerates, and this is unlikely to change.

A Song of Transmedia Storytelling

This chapter describes how being one of the outcomes of new media, convergence culture enables individuals to participate in the production process of media. The active and participatory nature of the members of the modern web society has led media conglomerates to seek new methods. Transmedia storytelling is the concept which emerged as a response to this. It can be seen that this type of storytelling is commonly adopted for tv series which have lately become popular. In this chapter, being delivered with transmedia techniques, Game of Thrones tv series is analysed in terms of transmedia storytelling.

Brozo’s El Mañanero

Brozo, el payaso tenebroso (the creepy clown)—a misogynistic, alcoholic, coarse, and marginal character—is one of the most popular and influential “journalists” in Mexico. His show, El Mañanero, has been broadcast on Mexican TV since 2000, when the 71-year regime of the Partido Revolucionario Institucional (PRI) ended. Chapter 4 analyzes the carnivalesque role of Brozo as a subversive and profane court jester able to confront with impunity the elites at the heart of the Mexican power de facto: Televisa, one of the biggest media conglomerates in the world, which has a problematic adhesion to political power. Connecting with the Mexican tradition of clowns and satiric underdogs, this chapter also examines Brozo’s media performance and discursive configuration in relation to the history of institutionalized corruption and violence against journalists in Mexico.

Digital Religion and Media Economics: Concentration and Convergence in the Electronic Church

The economics that push every medium toward market concentration have historically done likewise to every religious medium. “Online religion” is now, in its turn, colonized by an “electronic church” industry that, due to media deregulation, is dominated by religious media conglomerates—through whom North Americans are most likely to engage in digital religion. The largest conglomerate alone generates 110 million computer sessions and 79 million mobile sessions per month. This study reviews the economics of media concentration and applications to religious media, surveys the digital footprint of the institutional electronic church, and advocates integration of media practices into Digital Religion Studies.

Argentina: Introduction

This introductory section and its account of the significant changes in Argentine filmmaking in the last twenty five years acts as a platform to the director-centred analyses of Juan José Campanella’s films in Chapter 6. It situates Campanella and his filmmaking practice as typical of one vector of Argentina’s changed filmmaking landscape (the ‘industry auteurs’ produced through the neoliberal reforms to the industry in the 1990s and fostered by transnational media conglomerates) but also addresses the vibrant independent filmmaking movement (the New Argentine Cinema) also a by- product of the 1990s reforms and fostered by the government and transnational funding bodies.