Dr. Excellent: The Systemic and Personal Conditions for Being an Academic Star in Communication Studies

Pursuing excellence is a legitimate ambition of many scholars worldwide. However, between wishful thinking and real facts lies a great leap that can only be bridged using a myriad of resources. We label these the excellence repertoire. Based on 25 interviews with successful communication scholars, we show the key role of accumulating social, economic, and institutional capital in shaping the excellence repertoire. The study argues that the fetishization of productivity might jeopardize the traditional ethos of science, in a context where research excellence may be disconnected from the quality of education.

Tug of War: Social Media, Cancel Culture, and Diversity for Girls and The 100

Hate the most recent season of a television show? Create a viral petition! Better yet, find an old tweet of a cast member to publicly shame them. These are examples of audience participation and expectations when it comes to television. Audiences react to several types of fiction, but this article mostly focuses on the impacts of television shows and audience reception. Analyzing audience and critical reception of certain TV shows may reveal motivations for subsequent creative decisions by the creators. On shows like Roseanne, audience reception has influenced decisions concerning creative control. Audience demands help sway the market and have opened up diversity initiatives in speculative media. The theoretical base for this article is formed from reception theoryand primary research of Twitter posts. To further explore the phenomenon of audience sway over artistic ownership, two television shows, Girlsand The 100, will be examined in context with audience and critical reception, cancelculture, and diversity initiatives across media.

Fractured implicitness : Why implicit populism matters?

This paper aims to refine a theoretical and methodological approach in social sciences, namely implicit populism. To achieve this goal, the study aims to connect implicit populism and its counterpart, explicit populism to a specific research approach, namely the political communication style and introduce their contributions to the literature. Additionally, the paper introduces implicit populism’s possible effects on content analyses to demonstrate its methodological potential. Finally, the study attempts to provide an aspect by which the antagonist part of implicit populism can be subcategorized. Therefore, new subdimension of antagonism might emerge in populism studies. The first focuses on the articulated enemy by employing, for instance, the signifier of ‘dangerous people.’ The second aims to explore the more sophisticated populist political style embedding the ‘culprit others’ in a concealed way. Consequently, expressions such as ‘danger,’ ‘threat,’ ‘anger,’ and ‘hatred’ are also parts of antagonism representing a universal and unarticulated problem that harmfully affects people.

Participation of young people in online social communities: an exploration of attitudes among university students in a case study in Spain

This study aims to examine the different dimensions of online citizen participation for the purpose of delving into the types of engagement that are being developed in order for citizens to benefit from the opportunities offered by the Internet. A self-administered survey has been carried out with 420 students from a Spanish public University (Universidad Rey Juan Carlos) from its five campuses in Madrid. A typology of attitudes has been developed, firstly with factor analysis, and then with a varimax rotation. Moreover, a hierarchical linear regression has been applied in order to discover the variables that might predict the typology of participation. The study shows that online participation is a complex phenomenon influenced by multiple personal and social factors. The results have revealed three points of view: 1. Scepticism toward the ability to exert influence; 2. Social networks as a channel for maintaining social contact and expressing opinions; and 3. Capability of empowering users. Certain attitudes toward social networks can predict online participatory behaviour in different types of profiles on these networks. Furthermore, age does not affect online participation, and gender only has an influence on sports and media profiles.

Prestige and Independence-Controlled Publication Performance of Researchers at 14 Hungarian Research Institutions between 2014 and 2018 : A Data Paper

This data article describes a dataset showing the five-year performance of 471 researchers from 14 Hungarian research institutions, with a total of 3219 observations. Each observation represent items produced between the 1st January 2014 and the 31th December 2018 by a researcher employed in the sampled research institutions from one of six research output types. Due to a prestige and independence-controlled categorization of research output, and the scarcity of easily accessible, well-structured data curated for research performance evaluation, this dataset can play an important role in new research evaluation policies at Hungarian research institutions aiming to enhance global competitiveness by fostering scientific excellence and innovation.

A Case for Psychoanalytic Visual Dispositif? : Birdman after the “Cinematographic Capture”

This paper investigates how the notion of “superhero” in popular imagination, evident in the multiple live-action adaptations of Detective Comic’s and Marvel Cinematic Universe’s comic book heroes for their commercial value, has been debunked by Alejandro Inarritu’s 2014 Birdman. While the aforementioned dream factories affirm the fantasmatic “flight” inherent to these cinematic creations, especially symbolised by the aviating capacities of most of their superheroes, it is Inarritu’s Birdman, although not commercially comparable, that is theoretically significant here: the “flight” motif paradoxically gestures to the “capture” that is the very cinematic essence. Working with some key psychoanalytic theorists of the apparatus and later the suture, I shall argue that the messianic in this film, embodied by the male lead, whose waning career is resurrected from oblivion given Keaton’s subsequent work acknowledgement despite his Oscar nonsuccess, is revealed by this author to be ultimately the cinematographic apparatus that gives us Baudry’s transcendental subject, a concept arguably bound to his cinematic effect, a term with epistemological import. This paper will also redirect attention to the interpretative liberation associated with “flight", insisting that Baudry’s discussion of the cinematic dispositif is among the first to address the real, albeit with an emphasis on intelligibility, so that release from what I call the “cinematic capture”, a term that Todd McGowan defines as “uncritical subjectivity”, can be enacted. This thesis asserts that Birdman, proposed here as a case for psychoanalytic film theory, unintentionally exposes the traumatic real within the imaginary because of cinematic capture, thus leading to this discussion of the gaze, identification, narration, control and desire. In addition, it will appraise what Baudry calls the “knowledge effect” by responding to the following inquiries that encapsulate the critical stake here. How can one call this effect “knowledge” when the “subjective” of the transcendental subject becomes more pronounced with the other title of Baudry’s apparatus theory, which is suture theory? What can one say about the “reality effect” of the apparatus theory in an age of digitisation the emphasis of which is virtuality and, last but not least, can one argue that Inarritu’s Birdman is an illustrative intervention of the digitised post-cinematic?

Beyond the Classroom Walls: The Case of Israeli Youths’ Sense of Group Climate in Online and Offline Educational Environments

The study examined Israeli youths’ sense of group climate in online and offline educational settings, i.e., in Instant Messaging (IM) groups organized by homeroom teachers for their respective students and in the physical classroom environment. Participants included 550 students (152 boys, 398 girls), of ages 10-18, who completed an online survey. The findings reveal that the students perceived the classroom climate to be more positive than that of the IM group in which the homeroom teacher is present. Furthermore, the more positive the perceived face-to-face (FtF) classroom climate was, the more positive the perceived IM group climate. In addition, when both class and IM group climates were perceived to be highly positive, a sense of non-violence among the participants was found to be the highest. These findings shed light on the unique phenomena of homeroom teachers who participate with their students in IM groups. Based on the findings, implications for educators and school counsellors are discussed.

Spiritualreligiosity in the Workplace between Media and Organizational Logics: A French Perspective

This exploratory research focuses on how mainstream media apprehends religion in the workplace in the specific French socio-cultural and ideological framing through the media coverage analysis of the French Observatory of Religious Phenomenon in Organization’s annual survey, published in September 2018. Findings reveal that media operates with a meaning of religion still subject to a conception of laicitythat corroborate antagonism between science and religion onthe one hand, and, secularization as an indicator of transition from traditional society to modern society on the other hand. Managers and companies implicitly use a more elastic meaning, in accordance with the specificities of the workplace and labor market that has integrated a more deinstitutionalizing vision of religion, in the context of the emergence of new religious representations in touch with alternative spiritualities.

Reporting on suicide in Malaysia: Problem characterization and solution advocacy by media

Rising incidents of suicide capture the attention of healthcare providers, government agencies, non-governmental organizations and media. Furthermore, public conversations about social problems are largely mediated by the media. It is noteworthy that media have the power to shape the way the public thinks about an issue by suggesting what the issue is about, what the cause is, and what should be done as a solution. The current study aims to examine suicide coverage in Malaysia, particularly the problem characterization and solution advocacy by The Star in reporting suicide from 2014 to 2018. The Star is the English-language daily newspaper with the largest circulation in Malaysia. Through content analysis, the study found that there was a statistically significant difference between the number of articles reporting suicide and the different years. Most of the coverage was published in the form of straight news with a negative depiction of suicide. There was reporting on both local and international suicide news. In addition, suicide was linked to various issues (e.g. mental health, relationship or marriage problems, financial problems, workplace stress, etc.) in the coverage. The study also found a significant difference between issue narrative styles and suicide solutions. The practical implications of the findings are discussed with regard to the role of media in raising awareness of suicide, promoting prevention and intervention efforts at the institutional level, as well as undertaking a more robust interpretive approach in addressing the issue.