Do journalists cater to audience's social identity? Assessing the alignment of news content with readers’ national identity orientations

This study investigated the use of national stereotypes and home cultural referents (so-called “domestication”) in foreign news reporting, in relation to social identity theory which posits that individuals are drawn to information/assessments that positively describe the social groups to which they belong. Through a content analysis of influential newspapers from three different countries, this study finds that foreign news coverage tends to depict the home culture favorably while generally denigrating foreign societies, consistent with the theory's predictions. The study also finds that foreign news generally portrays the foreign society negatively with or without the stereotype but that stereotyping will enhance negativity. This research also employed cultural theories to probe the reciprocal nature between the audience and the journalists, both of who may share similar cultural frames.

Obrazy natsional'nykh kharakterovi yumoristicheskiye personazhi balkanskikhnarodov Yuzhnoy Slavii skvoz'prizmu ikh stereotipnogo otobrazheniya v sovremennykh anekdotakh

Images of national characters and humorous characters of the Balkan peoples of South Slavia through the prism of their stereotypical reflection in modern anecdotes. This article reviews one of the small forms of folklore – anecdote and, more specifically, ethno-anecdote (ethnic joke) as a way of reflecting national specifics, national colour, a form of expression of the most characteristic features of the mentality and way of life of a certain people, nation, social group. Based on texts of anecdotes that are most typical and widespread in the area of the Slavic Balkans, the characteristics of representatives of the so-called “Serbo-Croatian dialect continuum” are explored. National specific qualities reflected in ethnic jokes and stereotypes are discussed. It is concluded that ethnic jokes, as a special thematic kind of anecdote, contain, among other things, important extralinguistic information and can become an objective source when studying the ethnolinguistic and culturological characteristics of a particular country and its inhabitants. Keywords: anecdote, national stereotypes, view of the world, Serbs, Croats, Bosnians, Montenegrins, image, symbol, national character

TOPOGRAPHY OF THE ALIEN: NATIONAL STEREOTYPES OF GEOGRAPHY TEXTBOOKS AS A BASIS FOR CARICATURED VISUALIZATION OF IDEAS ABOUT SPACE AT THE TURN OF THE 20TH CENTURY

Рассматривается, как построение визуальных образов, отражающих культурные стереотипы, в то же время создает культурную карту. Анализируя взаимовлияние национальных стереотипов на уровне обыденного сознания, формируемых посредством преподавания географии, с одной стороны, и визуальную риторику Чужого, воплощенную в карикатуре, – с другой, мы фиксируем взаимные изменения обоих. Наша задача – воссоздать систему визуальных образов в политической карикатуре короткого периода истории русской культуры, названного империализмом, когда идеология романтического национализма, выражавшаяся в активном колониальном переделе мира, протекционизме, была на пике, то есть последнего десятилетия XIX века, фактически завершившегося в политической истории России русско-японской войной (1904) и началом первой русской революции (1905). Для выявления сложившихся национальных стереотипов привлекаются описания ментальных особенностей различных стран (народов) из российских учебников географии, использовавшихся для преподавания накануне исследуемого периода. Такой подход является новым для изучения политической карикатуры и приводит к неожиданным выводам. Авторы учебников исходят из романтической установки, что определения носят характер сущностных, неотъемлемых, а значит, изображение любого представителя является изображением каждого представителя народа (страны). Другими словами, учебники географии транслируют общие национальные стереотипы о других народах, фиксировавшиеся с помощью преподавания на уровне обыденного сознания, что позволяет понимать юмор карикатурных изображений практически всем. Карикатура является продолжением культурного или политического дискурса, чьи установки она транслирует, поэтому именно карикатурные визуальные образы и позволяют исследователю выявить типическое (стереотипное) содержание в повседневной культуре (на уровне обыденного сознания) и определить черты культурного и политического дискурса того периода, а также зафиксировать какие-либо изменения в стереотипах (правда, такие изменения могут произойти только под воздействием каких-то глобальных событий, таких как революция). В статье показывается, как ментальная карта мира из учебника географии, где в центре находится Россия, конкретизируется и трансформируется в ментальную карту мира, где существуют стереотипные чудовища – Другие, легко трансформируемые во врагов, а научный дискурс того периода легко трансформируется в инструмент политической пропаганды. Исследование строится от общего описания исторического и политического контекста, исследовательских установок, основных характеристик имагологического дискурса в карикатуре к рассмотрению более конкретных примеров, сопоставлению национальных стереотипов из учебников географии Германии, Франции, Турции, Японии, Китая с национальными стереотипами, фиксировавшимися карикатуристами в отношении этих же стран. The article discusses how constructing visual images that reflect cultural stereotypes simultaneously creates a cultural (mental) map. The objective of the paper is to reconstruct the system of visual images in political caricatures of a short period of history of Russian culture (the last decade of the 19th century and the first five years of the 20th century) culminating in fact in the Russo-Japanese war (1904) and the first Russian revolution (1905). Then the ideology of romantic nationalism was at its peak. That period is referred to as imperialism because it was characterized by an active colonial redivision of the world and protectionism. To reveal the main national stereotypes, the article draws on descriptions of the mental characteristics of various countries (peoples) from Russian geography textbooks used for teaching on the eve of the analyzed period. Attracting geography textbooks as a source of national stereotypes for political caricature studies is a new approach, and it leads to unexpected conclusions. The authors of textbooks proceed from the romantic attitude that definitions are essential, integral, which means that the image of any representative is the image of every representative of the population (country). Geography textbooks transmit common national stereotypes about other peoples, which, by teaching, are fixed at the level of everyday consciousness. It allows almost everyone to understand the humor of caricature images. Caricature is a continuation of the cultural or political discourse whose attitudes it translates, so it is caricature visual images that allow the researcher to identify (stereo)typical content in everyday culture (at the level of everyday consciousness), determine the features of the cultural and political discourse of that period, and record any changes in stereotypes. The article shows how the mental map of the world from the geography textbook in which Russia is located in the center is concretized and transformed into an everyday mental map of the world that has stereotypical monsters-Others, easily transformed into enemies. The scientific discourse of that period is easily transformed into a tool of political propaganda. The research develops from the general description of the historical and political context, research attitudes, and the main characteristics of imagological discourse in caricature to the consideration of more specific examples, comparisons of national stereotypes from geography textbooks (Germany, France, Turkey, Japan, and China) with national stereotypes recorded by caricaturists in relation to these countries.

Zreformowana Anglia w oczach polskich podróżników

Reformed England in the Eyes of Polish Travelers in the Early Modern Period The aim of this article is to reconstruct and present the image of reformed England and the English people as perceived by the inhabitants of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth between the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries. The primary source used is travel literature. The author analyses travellers’ impressions with research and educational journeys, “grand tour,” and diplomatic missions related to state or parliamentary activities. Travel literature containing descriptions of England reflect the author’s impressions, feelings, judgments and subjective opinions, as well as convey some knowledge about the world acquired not only during the trip, but also as a result of prior knowledge gained through learning and education. Moreover, the article discusses the emergence of a spectrum of perspectives and prejudices both for and against the English people, as well as the formation of national stereotypes.

Where the Dialogue Ends: Problems of Reception of Russian Literature in China

The article is devoted to the phenomenon of the conflict of interpretations in the perception of the text by a foreign recipient. The study explores reasons for the difficulty of understanding unrealistic works in the Chinese readership and proposes a variant of improving the commentary as an intermediary text. The research is based on the methodological approaches and provisions of the theory of intercultural communication, discourse theory, receptive aesthetics and hermeneutics. As a result of the analysis of the judgments and assessments of Chinese students and specialists in Russian, we identified their main receptive difficulties: difficult understanding of the tropes, omission of allusions, lack of mastery of the language of a particular literary phenomenon. The reason for the latter is the absence of interpretive reading models, which have not been formed due to the long-term ignorance in China of Russian modernist literature. As a result, even today there are conflicts of interpretations, attempts to interpret an unrealistic text in a realistic paradigm. The outdated, ideologically «correct» intermediary texts should be replaced by a new type of commentary. Its model, proposed by the authors of this article, includes the following structural elements: information about the cultural and literary context; clarification of the semantics of words that are important for understanding the text; designation of national stereotypes that can lead to false interpretation and assessment of the text; step-by-step algorithm for working with text; list of references. Such a commentary will allow not only to remove lexical difficulties, but also to form interpretation skills

Zwierzęcy bohaterowie w powieści Crobinhoodovi Dunji Kalilić. Na tropie stereotypów

This article analyses how animal characters were presented in the novel Crobinhoodovi by Dunja Kalilić, which belongs to the trend called ratni dječji roman in Croatian literature and shows the Serbian aggression against Croatia. The attention was paid in particular to the issue of stereotypes. The work consists of six parts. The first one is dedicated to the development of Croatian children’s animal studies. The second part shows the ways of portraying the war in Croatian literature for the youngest. The third part focuses on stereotypes about animals, the fourth one describes the stereotypical images of animals and people presented in the writer’s work, and the fifth part deals with national stereotypes. The last part is a summary of the considerations and presents the conclusion that the novel Crobinhoodovi makes it a goal to properly shape the child’s worldview, which is achieved by building and consolidating the negative stereotype of the Serbian soldiers.

Bas Jan Ader’s Ludic Conceptualism: Performing a transnational identity

Following Huizinga’s ideas in his Homo Ludens (1938), I propose the term Ludic Conceptualism to describe the art that flourished in the Netherlands from 1959 to 1975. Unlike the more severe strands of conceptualism developed in New York and the United Kingdom, play was central to its Dutch incarnation. In this chapter I will show how Dutch conceptual artist Bas Jan Ader’s fixation on his identity, as staged through satirical jokes based on national stereotypes, is key in understanding his art. While a great deal of the humor is obvious in Ader’s work, there has been no serious inquiry into his comedic practice. I will position Ader within the framework of post-war humorous conceptual art prevalente both in the Netherlands and California, locales in which Ader had lived and studied. Using theories of humor and identity I will demonstrate how Ader’s jokes are closely tied to social contexts on both sides of the Atlantic, environments relevant to the artist’s development in the course of his short career. A close examination of Ader’s work will reveal that the artist’s blurred identity as seen in his use of humor is, in fact, a central feature of his art.

Citizens of the world: National stereotypes do not affect empathic response in the presence of individuating information

Stereotyping is defined as generalising an attribute to a whole group and overlooking individual differences. In this study, we investigated whether Iranians' stereotypes of nations affected their empathy for the citizens of those nations. First, in a pilot study we explored common national stereotypes by using the stereotype content model (SCM) based on which six countries with different perceived warmth and competence scores were selected as nationalities of the protagonists of the vignettes in our experiment. In the next phase, 21 participants were asked to rate the degree of sadness associated with each vignette in an fMRI scanner. The results showed no significant differences in brain activity while participants were exposed to scenarios in which negative events befell people from different nations. This may be due to the individuation of victims by providing personal information about them.

Mental space of Russia in the media dimension

The article presents the results of the study of the conceptual sphere of the media space on the example of the concept “family”. This concept has a high communicative status, which is determined by the special influence of the family as a social institution on the mental space of Russia. The concept has a special meaning for the actualization of key cognitive national stereotypes, and it has axiological content. The analytical algorithm is based on the logic of analyzing the semantic structure of concepts and following the chronological principle of presenting empirical material, which is necessary in this case. It was supposed to rely on the interpretative method of research. The main conclusion: in modern mass media, the traditional semantic structure of the concept “family” meets serious opposition and is subject to rethinking when reformatting the evaluative periphery of the associative field of the concept, the figurative component of its semantic structure. The presented crisis changes are associated with the deactualization of the key axiological meanings of traditional culture, which for many centuries preserved the idea of ideal family relations as strictly repertory. The obvious conflict of the associative zone of the conceptual periphery testifies not so much to the intensity of modernization trends as to the sophistication of their manifestation, which needs to be investigated, since it can provoke a serious crisis of collective identity.