ABSTRACT Targeted advertising lies at the heart of digital economic models and has been scrutinized with respect to the potential pathologies of discriminatory job and housing advertising along with concerns about harmful forms of manipulation and the invasive character of online data harvesting. This article takes as its focus the non-transparent forms of cultural association reproduced by targeted

ABSTRACT On 25 September 2020, the ABC released a documentary film to mark the twentieth anniversary of Cathy Freeman’s gold medal victory in the women’s 400 metres at the 2000 Sydney Olympics. Media interest in Freeman’s victory still erupts periodically, most recently, to commemorate the twentieth anniversary. This article revisits Cathy Freeman’s historic gold-medal-winning performance in order

Over the last years, there has been a growing attention on the impacts generated by festivals both on the host territories and the internal dynamics of the celebrated cultural industry. However, extant literature has overlooked the impact that festivals produce on the image of the industry. This study thus aims at filling this gap by exploring how a festival improves the image that the professionals

ABSTRACT Using ethnographic methods to investigate the ways in which the COVID-19 pandemic affected two Makerspaces, we discuss the limits of the of Maker movement’s ideological foundations. Both spaces moved their activities online but differ in their engagement with Corona-specific projects: While the eLab Berlin decided to avoid any involvement due to legal and practical issues, the South London

ABSTRACT In April 2020, the Civic Imagination Project at the University of Southern California, funded by the MacArthur Foundation, asked participants around the world to share some of their reflections on what the world of 2060 might look like, and what roles the COVID-19 pandemic may have played in transforming how we live and relate to each other. For the past six years, the Civic Imagination Project

ABSTRACT This article draws on the work of Raymond Williams to argue that under covid-19 the dominant ‘ways of seeing’ the countryside and the city in Britain are working to obscure the structural violence of capitalism. Cultural narratives of ‘exodus’ from the city abound in British media, fuelling a material ‘race for space’ as the middle class rush to buy up rural properties. The ‘cottagecore’ social

The resonance of media output plays an important role in the age of misinformation and fake news. While scholars have extensively studied resonance, they have mostly focused on whether and why particular messages align with the predispositions of their intended audience rather than systematically analyzing how they are interpreted by the wider population. Based on computational text analyses of the

(2021). One for the boys: an affirmative feminist boys studies. Continuum. Ahead of Print.

ABSTRACT There is a common perception that people do not care for the clothes they own. We regularly hear that clothing users discard garments early and replace them frequently with inexpensive, poor quality items. Although these points are justifiable when considered in relation to the 92 million tonnes of textile waste generated annually, it is inaccurate to suggest that all clothing users care little

ABSTRACT This industry dialogue, facilitated by Harriette Richards, co-founder of the Critical Fashion Studies research group at the University of Melbourne, is an edited version of an industry panel discussion that took place during the International Critical Fashion Studies conference at the University of Melbourne in February 2020. The panellists, Yatu Widders Hunt, Courtney Holm and Teslin Doud

In the arts, brand has often been seen as a ‘dirty word.’ This paper critically analyzes the shaky relationship between artists and an arts council by examining a unique data set of annual reports from the Australia Council for the Arts, over a period of thirty-one years (1982–2013). This longitudinal study charts how and why brand legitimacy in the arts council was lost through the use of institutional

ABSTRACT The emergence of deepfakes is the latest form to prompt anxieties over the wider implications of misinformation. This chapter explores possibilities for how these technologies extend the repertoire of modalities available for documentary makers. While these ‘synthetic media’ offer a disruption of the documentary genre, they are also a continuation of long-standing trends within software culture

This article focuses on the novel Les villes assassines ( 2011) by the Martinican writer Alfred Alexandre that shows his decolonial and critical vision of the politics indirectly established from France on overseas territories. The author paints a topography of misery where mafia, drugs and prostitution reign, showing the mechanisms of control and subjection of popular minorities, belonging to the

ABSTRACT This article examines the relations of creativity, enterprise, and activism that define Aranya, a luxury fashion brand based in Dhaka, Bangladesh. It argues that these relations disrupt existing theorizations of the local and global in fashion scholarship, and help to undo the knowledge practices which position the global North as fashion’s centre. The brand is instructive for understandings

ABSTRACT The artist as ‘star-text’ remains intrinsic to the music industry's understandings of ‘authenticity’ and subsequent commodification of the music artist (and circulations of celebrity). Partial band ‘reunions’ and touring acts with few original band members speak to the economic rewards in continuing well-known bands as brands. This article examines the cultural and intellectual property contexts

(2021). Gestures of concern. Continuum. Ahead of Print.

ABSTRACT The global reality of the COVID-19/Corona pandemic paradoxically boosted national politics, broadcasting and citizenship. Media coverage, especially initially, praised citizen solidarity and the creative solutions that were pioneered to care for each other. A year later, a lasting social learning curve throughout and after this crisis seems illusory. The pandemic, this paper argues, needs

ABSTRACT As the COVID-19 pandemic rapidly escalated in early 2020 and shelter-at-home orders cascaded around the world, celebrities streamed live performances from living rooms, home studios, and empty opera houses. Social media buzzed with gratitude for the entertainment, inspiration, and camaraderie that developed between ordinary citizens and celebrities sharing music from isolation via media technology

ABSTRACT In a special report for Entertainment Weekly in January 2011, Jennifer Armstrong noted that ‘gay characters have gone from one time guest stars, whispered tragedies, and silly sidekicks to not just an accepted but an expected part of teen-centric television’ (36, original emphasis). Within this genre, the coming out narrative has gained prominence as the dominant means of articulating and

ABSTRACT The emergence of digital fashion activism in the second decade of the twenty-first century coincides with ‘popular feminism’. As trend forecasting site, Worth Global Style Network (WGSN) noted in 2014 ‘the idea of feminism in itself has become almost fashionable’. In this paper we explore how the appropriation of feminism as a fashionable slogan relates to the framing of fashion as a feminist

(2021). Feminism and the politics of resilience: essays on gender, media and the end of welfare. Continuum. Ahead of Print.

This paper aims at unpacking the cultural, historical and political significance behind the representations (including pictures, caricatures, journalistic articles, etc.) and self-representations of Rachel Félix (1821–1858), the first prominent Jewish performer on the French and British and American stage, as a prism which may afford a broader discussion about the literary formations of the figure

ABSTRACT This paper analyzes the evolution of a small electronic music scene in Brisbane from the mid-1980s to the present. Drawing upon the concept of scene and highlighting its local and trans-local dimensions, we assess how the place-bound attributes of Brisbane (cultural and political history, climate, built form) are still relevant when analyzing the emergence and development of an electronic

In 1935, the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) incorporated film into a museum collection for the first time. During MoMA screenings in the 1930s, the film department drew a symbolic line between cinema as art and as entertainment, a continuing effort until today. Based on ethnographic research, in this paper I examine four practices that sustain film as art at the museum: 1) the establishment of rules of

ABSTRACT For fashion, which is connected so intimately to our bodies, senses, emotions, and memories, value is more than a matter of cost. In order to illustrate the true value of fashion ‘radical transparency’ is framed as a tool through which brands can counter supply chain opacity and tell stories about the production of their garments. However, models of transparency often conceal more than they

ABSTRACT Indonesia’s bid to be the world’s Muslim fashion capital involves a growing number of female Muslim fashion designers and business owners. With more urban Indonesian young women adopting modest clothing, increasing state support for creative and digital economy, and ease of access and distribution, the market expansion of the Muslim fashion industry allows young Muslim women to become successful

ABSTRACT Transitioning fashion towards sustainability will require changes in practices including the design, production, promotion, sale and consumption of clothing. Using data gathered through a qualitative method termed ‘wardrobe examinations’, this article examines fashion consumption through the lens of social practice theory in order to better understand how the practice of fashion consumption

(2021). Introduction: digital cultures and acts of refusal, secrecy and power across privacy-enhancing technologies. Continuum. Ahead of Print.

(2021). Fashion futures and critical fashion studies. Continuum. Ahead of Print.

Prestige is widely considered to positively influence the careers of artists, and the Venice Biennale is arguably the most prestigious event in the international visual arts calendar. This article examines the impact that appearing in the Venice Biennale has on artists’ careers. With a sample of 98 artists from six countries who participated in the Biennale in the 20 years between 1997 and 2017, we

ABSTRACT As the urgency around the environmental impact of fashion production grows, biotechnologies that engineer microbes and other biological organisms such as plants offer cleaner, greener processes and entirely new products. Bacteria and yeasts may be engineered to colour fabric, generate synthetic fibre precursorss, and produce enzymes used to break down and convert waste. Biotechnology can also

ABSTRACT Searching for and selling real estate in Australia and worldwide changed this century with the proliferation of web and mobile platforms for real estate, now often known as Realtech. These platforms offer enticing images of homes as commodities, emphasizing desirable lifestyles and opportunities for renovation and capital gains. In comparison with previous advertising media, real estate platforms

This study examines the discourse emerging from cultural heritage content shared online during the COVID-19 pandemic. It aims to understand the different affective and cognitive dynamics that are associated with the online sharing of cultural heritage in difficult times. To do so, we analyzed two Instagram hashtags – #ShareOurHeritage and #ShareCulture – that are promoted by UNESCO on a global scale

Spain is the global leader in organ donation and transplantation since 1992, an achievement that has become a source of national pride, in a country where national symbols are heavily contested. In this article I demonstrate that Spain's organ procurement organization is an active producer of national identity discourses oriented to increasing the legitimacy of the Spanish national project and generating

This article analyses how diverse communities are formed through storytelling and mythmaking in Wajdi Mouawad's theatrical tetralogy, Le Sang des promesses (1999–2009). Mythic origin stories, which Mouawad's migratory characters collect and share on their journeys from one community to the next, draw individuals from their pasts on stage to act out the events from each narrative. Mouawad thus reveals

This study investigates the main determinants of opera attendance in Italy over the period 2006-2018 using monthly data. To this purpose, a novel Unobserved Component Model that captures tastes and habits, in addition to the traditional demand drivers, is adopted. The results show that opera is a superior good, with an inelastic price and cross-price response. In addition, supply factors and education

This article draws on Michel de Certeau's notion of tactical resistance to examine the practices of reading and of using urban space in Raymond Queneau's Zazie dans le métro. Departing from formalist approaches that frame Queneau's Paris as a ‘construction verbale,’ I offer a historically situated analysis of the novel's representation of post-war Paris, demonstrating that the theme of semiotic instability

ABSTRACT Property television is an increasingly popular form of lifestyle media, but its practical impact on the housing market is mostly unknown. In this analysis, I reveal one way that property television intervenes in the housing process by describing how it is interpreted and deployed as a cultural resource by real estate agents. Drawing on diverse forms of data, I find that while real estate agents

ABSTRACT Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, representations of irresponsible gay men partying with little regard for viral transmission have circulated across social media; a construction of gay men that has a history that long precedes the coronavirus conjuncture. In this article, we draw on in-depth qualitative interviews with 43 queer men in London and Edinburgh, to investigate experiences of sexual

ABSTRACT Discussions on media and fakery are usually premised on the general public being manipulated by mainstream media bias or fabrications emanating from the Internet. It is less common in the discipline of media and communication to speculate about users’ reasons for accepting what appear to be basic untruths: I will suggest here that discussions about users’ complicity must become more central

ABSTRACT In this paper we bring together media logics, affordances and affect theory to ask how conspiracy theory moves through WhatsApp groups and moves people through their encounters with these contents towards ‘conspiracy thinking’. Firstly, we draw upon media logic theory to examine the extent to which WhatsApp’s architecture, design and technical functions ‘steer’ users’ towards particular communication

ABSTRACT Newly emerging technologies for digital communication facilitate rapid data collection, storage and processing whereby subsequent interactions can be unpredictable. This creates a ‘darker turn’ in neo-communicative practices. That, which is 'dark' is understood as communication that has either limited distribution, is not open to all users – closed groups by way of example – or is veiled.

LDOCE uses a defining vocabulary to make their definitions intelligible to the user. Critics claim this policy may result in imprecise definitions, something especially noticeable in certain concrete and abstract words that are difficult to define by a definition only. This paper examines to what extent LDOCE definitions of such words help learners identify the objects and words being defined. In our

ABSTRACT This paper analytically responds to the collaborative performance work Writing the Feminist Internet as a motif of fourth wave feminism. It probes at the edge of Internet dark spaces that are often occupied by those who point to complacency in engagement with networking systems, by drawing auxiliary attention to the apparatus. Further examination sheds light on the valences and anarchy of

Whatever Happened to My Revolution offers a French feminist perspective on the impact today of the uprising by the left in Paris in May 1968. The continuing appeal of the events of ‘68 are considered to be in decline, yet the film suggests that the energy of 50 years ago continues to mobilize cultural politics through cinematic appeals that amount to the radical recuperation of some of the ambitions

This article examines an episode of goat sacrifice performed on an airline tarmac in Pakistan and the feelings and interpretations various audiences expressed in response to it, to make two specific contributions to the literature on cultural performance. First, by focusing on the ways that affective responses to the performance were socially structured, it describes how cultural performances, like

From business events such as content trade fairs, we can learn about the institutional logics of contemporary cultural industries. In our ethnographic fieldwork at six different trade fairs in three industries (book, music and TV), we identified five ways of legitimating the commercial production and distribution of cultural goods: cultural industries are represented as an idealized form of business

The challenge in this study is to ‘do justice’ to ethnic diversity in research on young people and sexuality in the Netherlands. I argue that current research practices are unintentionally implicated in constructing and maintaining ethnic boundaries, tending to (re)produce very limited views of ethnicity and culture as fixed identities that steer youths towards adopting adverse and risky sexual behaviours

ABSTRACT May Gibbs’s gumnut stories are central to the development of an Australian national imaginary. By connecting the natural ‘bush’ environment to settler-colonial social issues and scenes, Gibbs’s imagery and narrative reimagined the bush as a ‘home’ for colonizers, essentially ‘indigenising’ them in the image of white gumnut babies. The most comprehensive and influential interpretations of Gibbs’s

How does a community with a history punctuated by responding to disasters understand the slow risk posed by industrial toxic exposure? Drawing on 13 months of ethnographic fieldwork in a contaminated informal settlement in Esmeraldas, Ecuador, I explore the neighbors’ understanding of toxicity as mediated by previous experience with disaster and displacement. Esmeraldas is home to the largest refinery

ABSTRACT Drawing on Raymond William’s concept of the ‘magic system,’ this article argues that advertising on the Dark Web is a ‘dark magic system’. The article first defines ‘Dark Web’ and then analyzes over 300 banner advertisements appearing on Tor onion service search engines. The advertisements are categorized into navigation, individual vendors, services, and markets. Next, the article traces

ABSTRACT Drawing on a qualitative content analysis of roughly 700 articles published on the Breitbart News ‘Cartel Chronicles’ site between 2015 and 2021, this article analyzes the ways conservative citizen journalism projects strategically mobilize key tropes from international human rights to justify calls for militarization on the US/Mexico Border. Specifically, it details how widely accepted human

ABSTRACT This paper contributes to a project that maps the concept of ‘data provenance’ into qualitative data research. Data provenance is a concept from computer science that allows us to trace the history of sets of data to determine the accuracy and validity of a database. We transform this into a critical concept by arguing that data provenance can be used to trace the acts of governance and rhetoric

ABSTRACT From inventive memes to fan films, contemporary popular culture continues long-standing traditions of adapting existing content to new formats. Despite the centrality of adaptation to popular culture, adaptation studies methods are rarely applied by researchers working in this area. Cosplay, in which enthusiasts dress as characters from popular culture at fan gatherings, is an increasingly

ABSTRACT Using Reddit as a case study, this article blurs the boundary between the ‘dark’ and ‘clear’ web, arguing that in between these spaces there is what I describe as a ‘brackish web’, inhabited by ‘brackish social spaces’. Reddit, I argue, sits in a murky space between the dark and clear, with its technological rationality, politics, and technological affordances exhibiting elements of both the

The current study aimed to examine how mediated portrayals of popularity relate to adolescents’ well-being. We hypothesized that exposure to malleability messages in entertainment television and magazines related to a higher belief in the malleability of popularity, which was, in turn, believed to relate to a duality of well-being outcomes. On the one hand, such malleability beliefs might be beneficial

AbstractThis article presents DiCo, an inventory of the changes in the nomenclature of four French dictionaries (Dictionnaire de l’Académie française, Dictionnaire Hachette, Le Petit Larousse and Le Petit Robert). For each modification recorded, DiCo provides additional information on the microstructural level, such as the linguistic labels included in the article where the change occurred. Based on

ABSTRACT A growing body of scholarship is combining studies of automated decision-making’s potential to alleviate challenges of development with critical perspectives on discourses and deployment of technologies in developing contexts. This article builds on this literature by drawing links between ‘dreams of development’ and the imaginings and aspirations surrounding automated decision making in the

ABSTRACT The self-proclaimed front page of the internet, Reddit is a many faceted site, described variously as an assemblage of online communities, a social news aggregation website and a social media site. Reddit is one of the most popular sites online both in terms of visitation and interaction. Central to Reddit’s popularity is its active community of users who contribute posts, comments and votes

ABSTRACT This article contrasts the dark with the electrified light of datafied life to bring into relief the impact of data surveillance upon social transformation. Our argument is that darkness remains fundamental to creative social experimentation and thus to a society’s capacity for change and sustained transformation. This argument might seem antithetical to the age of information. Yet, we find