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Era of the Individual Viewer? Taste, Value, and Creative Media Work in India’s Streaming Industries Television & New Media (IF 3.252) Pub Date : 2024-03-15 Tupur Chatterjee
How do key players in Bombay’s screen industries—producers, directors, writers, and business developers—understand, imagine, and navigate the dizzying new world of streaming platforms in India? Tracking the emergence of symbiotic relationships between new streaming platforms and established media professionals, I discuss how a restructuring of industry dynamics is elemental to the processes of cultural
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Your Home Made Perfect Television & New Media (IF 3.252) Pub Date : 2024-03-11 Jan Smitheram, Akari Nakai Kidd
This paper investigates a new, popular, award-winning reality television show, Your Home Made Perfect. Drawing on insights from Sara Ahmed’s work on the promise of happiness, our thematic analysis of nineteen episodes of Your Home shows how architectural entertainment is uniquely positioned through its use of Virtual Reality (VR) technology to circulate happiness and uplifting emotions and to critique
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Unplayable: Why Video Games Can’t and Won’t Be Played Television & New Media (IF 3.252) Pub Date : 2024-02-23 Ryan Banfi
This article argues that unplayability must be a considered component of game analysis and further discussed in new media studies. The concept that games cannot be or should not be played does not limit game analysis. On the contrary, the “unplayable aspect” of a particular game or genre of games is what must be investigated. This essay hopes to expand upon why new media such as video games are becoming
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Make Room for VR: Constructing Domestic Space and Accessibility in Virtual Reality Headset Tutorials Television & New Media (IF 3.252) Pub Date : 2024-02-14 James N. Gilmore, Browning W. Blair
This article analyzes how the Meta Quest virtual reality headset’s implementation requires one’s domestic space to be rearranged to accommodate for its use. Analyzing tutorials, help videos, and advertisements for Quest, we demonstrate how its production of space relies on classist and ableist biases which presume easy access to an open play grid and user mobility. We additionally draw from user-generated
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Rip It Up and Start Again: Creative Labor and the Industrialization of Remix Television & New Media (IF 3.252) Pub Date : 2024-01-31 Alessandro Delfanti, Michelle Phan
Creative industries rely on workers who use sampling and remix to produce new content assembled from existing materials. In the process, remix cultures are commodified and reshaped by industrial logics. Rip-o-matic videos provide an example. These scissor reels are used as visual storyboards for television commercials. They are produced by video editors who cut and paste clips found on video sharing
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The Contemporary Afterlives of Serial Drama: Considering New Audience Readings of “Old” Television Television & New Media (IF 3.252) Pub Date : 2024-01-31 Alexander Hudson Beare
In recent years several older, serialized TV dramas have experienced surges in popularity among young viewers. The 2020-21 online resurgence of The Sopranos (1999–2007) is perhaps the most compelling example of this. Using the data from a series of semi-structured interviews conducted with fans who watched the show for the first time in 2020-21, this study considers what draws audiences to “old shows”
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Journalistic Practices in Difficult Times: The Cases of Fictional Television Series Borgen and El Caso in Denmark and Spain Television & New Media (IF 3.252) Pub Date : 2024-01-24 Maxine De Wulf Helskens, Karen Arriaza Ibarra
This study sets out to understand how journalism is represented in the Danish fiction series Borgen and the Spanish series El Caso: Crónica de Sucesos. The aim is to provide an understanding of how journalism is conceptualized in non-American fiction. Through textual analysis, we found out that Borgen (years 2010 and up) represents a generational and evolutionary conflict in which journalistic values
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The Kardashians, Live! Fabricating Liveness in the Sex-Tape-Derived Reality Series Television & New Media (IF 3.252) Pub Date : 2024-01-23 Blake Karsten Beaver
This article explores the fabrication of liveness, understood as a category of affective urgency and narrative motivation, in two reality series derived from a sex tape scandal: Keeping Up with the Kardashians and The Kardashians. The reality programs narratively incorporate Kim’s live TV appearances to compensate for the sex tape intertext’s incomplete liveness. Consequently, the Kardashian series
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A View from the Top (Dog): Intersections of Incarceration, Motherhood, and Trauma on Foxtel’s Wentworth Television & New Media (IF 3.252) Pub Date : 2023-05-16 Lauren J. DeCarvalho, Nadia Martínez-Carrillo
In this essay, we extend conversations around motherhood depictions in popular culture to women inmates on television. Specifically, we explore intersections of incarceration, motherhood, trauma, a...
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Nationalization of Spatiotemporal Artifacts: National Chronotope, Authenticity, and Local Colors in Danish TV Dramas Television & New Media (IF 3.252) Pub Date : 2023-05-12 Yeşim Kaptan
This article investigates the conceptualization of spatiality and temporality in television drama series in the age of extensive digital media consumption by focusing on Turkish audiences’ receptio...
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Music Video, Remediation, and Generic Recombination Television & New Media (IF 3.252) Pub Date : 2023-05-05 Laurel Westrup
Music videos continue to be one of the most adaptable forms of media due to their unique ability to remediate everything from Western films to Zoom meetings. Their relatively low budgets and ever f...
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Understanding Genre as Atmospheric Assemblage: The Case of Videogames Television & New Media (IF 3.252) Pub Date : 2023-05-05 Andrea Andiloro
This article advances an affect-based theorization of genre as atmospheric assemblage by applying such a framework to an analysis of videogame genre. The affective excess originating from the relat...
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Temporal Dispersions of Disgust: Or, Reconceiving Genre Through Direct-to-Video Horror Television & New Media (IF 3.252) Pub Date : 2023-05-03 Caetlin Benson-Allott
Many scholars have noted that the US video rental boom of the mid-1980s led to a surge in horror production, yet few acknowledge that these features were not in fact films. Direct-to-video (DTV) ho...
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From Brand to Genre: The Hallmark Movie Television & New Media (IF 3.252) Pub Date : 2023-05-03 Andrea Braithwaite
Hallmark movies are a hit. While most broadcast networks in the United States and Canada are struggling to maintain an audience, Hallmark has launched three additional cable networks and services i...
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The Idea of Genre in the Algorithmic Cinema Television & New Media (IF 3.252) Pub Date : 2023-05-02 Gerald Sim
This article questions the way that movie recommendation systems designed to microtarget spectators are thought to operationalize microgenres, highly specific groupings that appeal to narrow niches...
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Creative Genre Matters: Trendy Drama and the Rise of the East Asian Global Media Market Television & New Media (IF 3.252) Pub Date : 2023-04-29 Hsin-Pey Peng
The trendy drama, a new TV genre coined to signify contemporary trends, initially emerged in Japan in the 1980s and became popular with middle-class audiences across East Asia for portraying Wester...
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Neo-Cult and the Altered Audience: Reviving Cult TV for the Post-TV Age Television & New Media (IF 3.252) Pub Date : 2023-04-28 Bethan Jones
From The X-Files to Friends, Gilmore Girls to Twin Peaks, revivals of beloved TV series have dominated the airwaves and streaming services over the last decade. The media landscape has changed sign...
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The Ethical Cringe, or the Dated Film as Revelatory Genre Television & New Media (IF 3.252) Pub Date : 2023-04-28 Jaimie Baron
In this essay, I propose both a definition and a pragmatic reclamation of the dated text—and specifically the dated film—not as endorsement or nostalgia or camp, but as embodied temporal revelation...
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The Technological Carnivalesque in Niantic’s Pokémon Go Television & New Media (IF 3.252) Pub Date : 2023-04-18 Grant Palmer
This article explores the networked, affective, and embodied gameplay and potential of Niantic’s 2016 augmented reality smartphone game, Pokémon Go. Following affective critique in videogame and di...
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The Great Australian TV Delay: Disruption, Online Piracy and Netflix Television & New Media (IF 3.252) Pub Date : 2023-03-30 Ren Vettoretto, Christopher Moore
Netflix’s arrival in Australia in 2015, almost a decade after its start as a streaming media platform, helped to close the cultural and technological gap in televisual content legitimately availabl...
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What’s So Great About GTO?: Evolving Discourses of Japanese Masculinity in Great Teacher Onizuka Television & New Media (IF 3.252) Pub Date : 2023-03-25 Aiden James Kosciesza, Fabienne Darling-Wolf
This paper explores evolving discourses of masculinity in the Japanese socio-cultural context through a textual analysis of two live-action television adaptations of Great Teacher Onizuka (GTO), a ...
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The Fantasy of Do What You Love and Ludic Authoritarianism in the Videogame Industry Television & New Media (IF 3.252) Pub Date : 2023-02-27 Ergin Bulut
Like other creative workers, videogame developers believe doing what you love (DWYL) brings success and happiness. Drawing on three years of ethnography in a U.S. based studio, I theorize DWYL as a...
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“Let’s Go Make Some Videos!”: Post-Feminist Digital Media on Tween-Coms Television & New Media (IF 3.252) Pub Date : 2023-02-11 Tamar Faber, Natalie Coulter
Our paper looks at three popular tween shows premised on tween girls creating digital content—iCarly, Bizaardvark and Coop & Cami Ask the World. Using the theoretical frameworks of critical digital...
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Digital Domestic (Im)material Labor: Managing Waste and Self While Producing Closet Decluttering Videos Television & New Media (IF 3.252) Pub Date : 2023-01-16 Zizi Li
This article examines (im)material digital labor essential to the production of closet decluttering videos on YouTube by analyzing two case studies: Leighannsays and Bestdressed. I highlight three ...
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The Millennial Medium: The Interpretive Community of Early Podcast Professionals Television & New Media (IF 3.252) Pub Date : 2023-01-16 Corrina Laughlin
Through evidence gathered from sixteen interviews with producers and businesspeople in the podcast industry, this paper argues that the professionals that populated the early phase of the formalizi...
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Where are the Women? Gendered Indian Digital Production Cultures Post #metoo Television & New Media (IF 3.252) Pub Date : 2022-12-16 Smith Mehta
My article examines the influence of platformization in labor exchanges to assess how gendered expectations impact digital production cultures. It investigates the socio-cultural transactions that ...
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Exploring the Virtual Culture of Reality Television Communities: Lessons From #Date My Family Television & New Media (IF 3.252) Pub Date : 2022-12-09 Mthobeli Ngcongo
The socio-technological affordances of Twitter have steadily enabled audiences of reality television shows to form virtual communities through the use of hashtags to organize and share commentary a...
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Search Engines and Free Speech: A Historical Analysis of Editorial Analogies and the Position of Media Companies and Users in US Free Speech Discourse Television & New Media (IF 3.252) Pub Date : 2022-12-03 Jennifer Petersen
This article analyzes current debates over search engine regulation and free speech. In these debates, Google and other companies have relied on the “editorial analogy”: that search results are equ...
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Reaction Media: Archeology of an Intermedium Television & New Media (IF 3.252) Pub Date : 2022-12-03 Lauren Bliss, Bjørn Nansen
This paper unearths the archeology of reaction media across cinema, television and the Internet. We show how reaction content exists in high and low modes, tracing their reoccurrence and remediatio...
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Platformization as a Structural Dimension for Public Service Media in Germany: The funk Content Network and the New Interstate Media Treaty Television & New Media (IF 3.252) Pub Date : 2022-11-19 Sven Stollfuß
As social media is constantly gaining in importance, public service media (PSM) is forced to create content that fits the environment of social media platforms (SMPs). In Germany, the content netwo...
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When Brands Become Stans: Netflix, Originals, and Enacting a Fannish Persona on Instagram Television & New Media (IF 3.252) Pub Date : 2022-11-06 Casta Sligh, Crystal Abidin
While brand-run accounts of Twitter have attracted many a meme for their hit-and-miss attempts at relatable humor, on Instagram one type of brand account is quietly thriving: the Netflix Original s...
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The Politics of Female Anger in Older Age: The Good Fight, Older Femininity and Political Change Television & New Media (IF 3.252) Pub Date : 2022-11-03 Ella Fegitz
This article identifies an important conversation about the politics of female anger in older age in the CBS show The Good Fight (2017–). By centring the narrative around the emotional life of a wo...
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The Magical Work of Brand Futurity: The Mythmaking of Disney+ Television & New Media (IF 3.252) Pub Date : 2022-10-27 Jake Pitre
The Walt Disney Company has maintained an aggressive approach to brand management for nearly a century. With the acquisition of a number of highly reputable companies, this aggression has become un...
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On Digital Reproductive Labor and the “Mother Commodity” Television & New Media (IF 3.252) Pub Date : 2022-10-17 Lachlan Ross, Lyn Craig
Reproductive domestic labor is shifting from its old norm of invisibly creating and maintaining labor power in the highly private and ostensibly non-economic zone of the household. This paper asks ...
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Netflix & Big Data: The Strategic Ambivalence of an Entertainment Company Television & New Media (IF 3.252) Pub Date : 2022-09-26 Karin van Es
Netflix actively fueled what is known as the myth of big data, promoting their recommender system and data-driven production as cutting-edge, all-seeing, and all-knowing. Today, however, the compan...
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When Mainstream and Alternative Media Integrate: A Polysystem Approach to Media System Interactions Television & New Media (IF 3.252) Pub Date : 2022-09-17 Matan Aharoni
In a diverse media ecosystem of transitions and integrations, this research uses polysystem theory to conceptualize the integration of alternative media systems within their mainstream media counte...
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Optimizing Looking and Buying on Instagram: Tracing the Platformization of Advertising and Retail on Mobile Social Media Television & New Media (IF 3.252) Pub Date : 2022-09-09 Nicholas Carah, Maria-Gemma Brown, Sarah Hickman
Over its first decade Instagram became central to Facebook’s dominance of audience and advertising markets. In this article, we critically examine how marketing and advertising trade press document...
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Comparing Populist Media: From Fox News to the Young Turks, From Cable to YouTube, From Right to Left Television & New Media (IF 3.252) Pub Date : 2022-08-12 Reece Peck
This article compares populist media styles on US cable news and in online video. It juxtaposes the conservative cable giant Fox News with the progressive YouTube-based network the Young Turks (TYT...
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Why Can’t We Believe in That? Partisan Political Entertainment in the Mexican YouTube Sphere Television & New Media (IF 3.252) Pub Date : 2022-08-09 Frida V. Rodelo
The YouTube video platform has provided fertile ground for creators outside the journalistic field to produce programs that combine elements of entertainment with information on public affairs. Beh...
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“Action on the Game”: Sports Gambling as Fan Identity and Transactional Participation Television & New Media (IF 3.252) Pub Date : 2022-07-31 Ethan Tussey
This article describes Fox Sports’ depiction of sports gambling following the Supreme Court decision legalizing this activity at the federal level. The gambling personas offered by Fox Sports progr...
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BSkyB and the 1991 World Student Games: The Transformation of Live Sports Television Acquisition and Coverage in the UK in the Early 1990s Television & New Media (IF 3.252) Pub Date : 2022-07-11 James Fenwick
In 1991, Sheffield was the host city for the XVI Summer Universiade, better known as the World Student Games (WSG). Studies of the 1991 WSG commonly assert that it received little to no television ...
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Institutional Polymorphism: Diversification of Content and Monetization Strategies on YouTube Television & New Media (IF 3.252) Pub Date : 2022-07-11 Jacob Ørmen, Andreas Gregersen
Through guidelines, terms of service and algorithmic curation, digital platforms such as YouTube encourage creators to produce content that fits with the commercial goals of the platform. Scholars ...
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Spanish-Language Television and Diaspora in Detroit and Los Angeles: Toward Latinx Media Enfranchisement Television & New Media (IF 3.252) Pub Date : 2022-07-08 Catherine L. Benamou
Spanish-language media have often been portrayed as catering to a “niche” market, because of presumed ethnic specificity and issues of linguistic proficiency and preference. Constructed as such, th...
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Making a “Hate-Watch”: Netflix’s Indian Matchmaking and the Stickiness of “Cringe Binge TV” Television & New Media (IF 3.252) Pub Date : 2022-07-07 Suryansu Guha
Netflix’s 2020 release Indian Matchmaking drew a massive backlash particularly from South Asian and diasporic audiences who felt it normalized the experiences associated with arranged marriages. Audiences took to the internet to express how much they loved hating the show but at the same time also continued to obsessively watch despite their reservations. My paper takes up this paradox of simultaneously
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The Masks We Wear: Watchmen, Infrastructural Racism, and Anonymity Television & New Media (IF 3.252) Pub Date : 2022-06-30 Benjamin Burroughs, Benjamin J. Morse, Travis Snow, Michael Carmona
As COVID-19 has led to the politicization of masks and the donning of masks, the prescient commentary that emerges from HBO’s Watchmen speaks to our contemporary moment, replete with animosity, distrust, and wounding. Race, the legacy of racial injustice, and anonymity are major themes found throughout the series, which highlight the complicated nature of social control and the infrastructural legacy
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Television Production of Yesteryears, Today and in the Future: Impact of Reduced Collaboration in TV News Production on Job Satisfaction in Nigeria Television & New Media (IF 3.252) Pub Date : 2022-06-09 Felix Olajide Talabi, Tokunbo Alex Adaja, Samson Adepoju Bello, Omowale Adelabu, Oberiri Destiny Apuke, Gever Verlumun Celestine
The objective of this study was to determine the impact of reduced collaboration in TV news production on job satisfaction and to explore the contributing effect of modern technologies on reduced collaboration in TV news production in Nigeria. The researchers utilized a descriptive survey research design with a structured questionnaire as the instrument for data collection. The data for the study were
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Picturing Diversity: Netflix’s Inclusion Strategy and the Netflix Recommender Algorithm (NRA) Television & New Media (IF 3.252) Pub Date : 2022-06-09 Olivia Khoo
This essay asks two related questions: what is unique about streaming services (and Netflix specifically), that generates a greater investment in the diversity of its content, and how does the technology associated with streaming, in particular algorithmic recommendation systems, facilitate an engagement with diversity and inclusion? To answer these questions the essay considers the relationship between
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“We Don’t Aspire to Be Netflix”: Understanding Content Acquisition Practices Among Niche Streaming Services Television & New Media (IF 3.252) Pub Date : 2022-06-08 Michael L. Wayne, Matt Sienkiewicz
Using the media industry studies approach, this article examines the acquisition strategies and licensing practices employed by three recently launched niche Jewish/Israeli subscription video on-demand (SVOD) services. Drawing on qualitative interviews with executives and publicly available materials, this analysis argues that these services acquire film and television titles through a combination
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First-Run Syndication and Unwired Networks in the 1980s: Viacom’s Superboy and Buena Vista TV’s DuckTales Television & New Media (IF 3.252) Pub Date : 2022-05-19 M. J. Clarke
This article historically examines the boom in US first-run syndication during the 1980s. At this time, Hollywood-based major distributors eagerly entered this market, thanks to regulatory and industrial changes, in an effort to create competing unwired television networks. The article presents a contextual history to describe these changes and uses two sustained case studies—Viacom’s Superboy and
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Stuck in a cul de sac of care: Therapy Assistance Online and the platformization of mental health services for college students Television & New Media (IF 3.252) Pub Date : 2022-05-13 James N. Gilmore, Bailey Troutman, Madeline DePuy, Katherine Kenney, Jessica Engel, Katherine Freed, Sidney Campbell, Savannah Garrigan
Many reports indicate higher education counseling centers are finding it difficult to keep pace with the growing rates of stress, anxiety, depression, and sleeping difficulties in undergraduate populations. Some universities are turning to telepsychology, or means of providing mental health care through videoconferencing, software, and other digital tools. This article analyzes one such platform, therapy
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Wrap You Up in My Blue Hair”: Vocaloid, Hyperpop, and Identity in “Ashnikko Feat. Hatsune Miku – Daisy 2.0” Television & New Media (IF 3.252) Pub Date : 2022-05-13 Lucy March
In 2020, hyperpop artist Ashnikko released a remix of her single “Daisy” with virtual idol Hatsune Miku. While the rights to any commercial use of Miku’s voice and likeness are owned by Crypton Future Media, anyone with Vocaloid software can produce songs for her. While scholars have found that fan-produced performances are foundational to Miku’s development as a performer, less attention has been
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The Refractive Comic: Nanette and Comedy From Inside Identity Television & New Media (IF 3.252) Pub Date : 2022-05-13 Kiah E. Bennett
This essay theorizes a millennial-era iteration of stand-up comedy: refractive comedy. Through close textual analysis of Hannah Gadsby’s Nanette (2018), I argue refractive comedy alters the message, affective nature, and form of stand-up comedy through a rejection of the dominant worldview and subsequent centering of marginalized standpoints. This essay examines Gadsby’s refraction in a broader discourse
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“Shudder” and the Aesthetics and Platform Logics of Genre-Specific SVOD services Television & New Media (IF 3.252) Pub Date : 2022-05-13 Jessica Balanzategui, Andrew Lynch
Major subscription-video-on-demand (SVOD) services including Netflix and Apple TV+ target a wide range of consumers through catalogs that house a diverse variety of genres. However, as the SVOD ecology has evolved, services have emerged that focus on particular genres, and thus target enthusiasts of specific content types. This article examines the horror-focused SVOD service “Shudder” to highlight
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Digital Intimacy in Real Time: Live Streaming Gender and Sexuality Television & New Media (IF 3.252) Pub Date : 2022-04-04 Bo Ruberg, Johanna Brewer
This article serves as the guest editors’ introduction to the Television and New Media special issue dedicated to gender and sexuality in live streaming. Live streaming is a key part of the contemporary digital media landscape; it sits at the center of wide-reaching shifts in how culture, entertainment, and labor are expressed and experienced online today. Gender and sexuality are crucial elements
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Televisual Drag: Reimagining South Asian Film and Media Studies Television & New Media (IF 3.252) Pub Date : 2022-03-30 Aswin Punathambekar, Padma Chirumamilla
This article engages with the history of television and television studies in South Asia to reflect on how “media” can be re-imagined as an object of analysis and critique. Questioning the analytic primacy accorded to film, we develop the concept of televisual drag and argue that bringing television to the fore can reveal different temporalities, modalities, and logics for the evolution of South Asian
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“Never Battle Alone”: Egirls and the Gender(ed) War on Video Game Live Streaming as “Real” Work Television & New Media (IF 3.252) Pub Date : 2022-03-24 Christine H. Tran
From 2018 to 2021, the “egirl” witnessed a radical shift from her origins as a sexualized slur in online gaming. Through critical discourse analysis of news media of this period, this paper interprets this transformation within two primary phenomena: (1) the growth of women game influencers who reclaimed “egirl” slurs in their self-branding and (2) the launch of “Egirl.gg,” a platform for paid gaming
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Why Do We Only Get Anime Girl Avatars? Collective White Heteronormative Avatar Design in Live Streams Television & New Media (IF 3.252) Pub Date : 2022-03-24 Noel Brett
With live streaming rising in popularity, many people stream the creation of 3D avatars However, many of these avatars end up following a similar output: a hyper-feminized anime girl. Why is this? What are the social and technological processes constructing these avatars? To answer these questions, I propose that human (streamer and audience) and non-human (streaming platform and 3D modeling software)
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Bilingualism and the Televisual Architecture of Linguistic (dis-) Encounters in the Israeli Television Show Arab Labor Television & New Media (IF 3.252) Pub Date : 2022-03-14 Nahuel Ribke
Considered the first fully Hebrew-Arabic bilingual television show on Israeli prime time television, Arab Labor (2007–2013) attracted the attention of critics and scholars for its sharp satire and criticism of the daily dilemmas and discrimination faced by Israeli Arab citizens. Although its success among audiences and critics opened the door for other bilingual television shows spoken in Hebrew and
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A Labor of (Queer) Love: Maintaining “Cozy Wholesomeness” on Twitch During COVID-19 and Beyond Television & New Media (IF 3.252) Pub Date : 2022-03-06 Jordan Youngblood
This article explores the idea of “cozy wholesomeness” in streaming on the Twitch platform through the example of an LGBTQ+ content creator, her partner, and her development of an ongoing domestic space which welcomed queer audiences during the COVID-19 pandemic. Focusing on a span of streams from November 2020 to January 2021, the article first seeks to define cozy wholesomeness as a streaming process
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How Not to Be Seen: Notes on the Gendered Intimacy of Livestreaming the Covid-19 Pandemic Television & New Media (IF 3.252) Pub Date : 2022-03-05 Daniel Lark
Livestreaming during the Covid-19 pandemic has become a staging ground for a kind of virtual socialization that favors gendered and middle class norms of intimacy, affective labor, and domesticity, despite a grave lack of material support for the transition to online learning and working from home. In this paper, I focus on key images and discussions circulating in the press and on social media around