-
Coming out online: Memetic authenticity in Rebecca Black’s “Friday (Remix)” Popular Communication Pub Date : 2024-01-09 Lucy March
Rebecca Black was thirteen when her music video “Friday” went massively viral after it was uploaded to YouTube in 2011. Black re-entered the news cycle in 2020 after coming out as queer, and shortl...
-
“Bones are life!” true-crime podcasting, self-promotion and the vernaculars of Instagram with Cult Liter Popular Communication Pub Date : 2024-01-09 Stella Marie Gaynor
Social media engagement is becoming a significant part of true-crime fandom, providing spaces for true-crime fans to share their knowledge and obsessions. This article explores the storytelling tec...
-
Girl Dads: spectacular girlhood, paternal appropriation, and the cultural dynamics of father-daughter filial attachment Popular Communication Pub Date : 2024-01-09 Anthony P. McIntyre, Diane Negra, Odin O’Sullivan
This article examines the cultural figure of the girl dad, which has emerged as a prominent masculine sub-type in the 2020s, celebrating and spectacularising the father-daughter relationship. A dif...
-
Laughing at death: Facebook, the ‘haha’ reaction, and death coverage on local US news pages Popular Communication Pub Date : 2024-01-09 Justin Bonest Phillips
Is it inappropriate to “like” a Facebook post announcing death? That was the concern of Meta’s leadership in 2016, when they implemented emoji reactions (e.g. sadness and love) to help users more a...
-
Book Review of Pettini, S Silvia (2021) The Translation of Realia and Irrealia in Game Localization: Culture-Specificity between Realism and Fictionality, New York: Routledge, 244 pp., USD $39.71 (paperback), USD $127.50 (hardcover), ISBN: 9780367432324 Popular Communication Pub Date : 2024-01-09 Masood Khoshsaligheh, Amir Arsalan Zoraqi
Published in Popular Communication: The International Journal of Media and Culture (Vol. 22, No. 1, 2024)
-
‘Experimentation will be at the forefront’: Industrial reflexivity and data science on Disney Streaming’s The Art of Possible blog Popular Communication Pub Date : 2023-12-10 James N. Gilmore
As media companies develop dedicated streaming platforms, they rely on teams of data scientists and engineers to operate, iterate, and maintain those platforms. At the same time, the data users gen...
-
#mamanblogeuse and #mamablogger_de. A cross-country comparison on the concept of mothers and motherhood on Instagram Popular Communication Pub Date : 2023-12-10 Helen Knauf, Annamareike Schramme
In social networks such as Instagram, many mothers present themselves together with their children („sharenting“). The present study investigates how this (self-) presentation takes place and which...
-
Inculcative address, commercial worldbuilding, and transmedia economy in the children’s franchise Bamse Popular Communication Pub Date : 2023-12-10 Johan Nilsson
Capitalist enterprises continuously push consumption of commercial products on children, for instance in the form of transmedial worlds in which multiple stories can play out across media and over ...
-
Colonial comedy: scale inversion and minority dislocation in the domesticated terrorism of Derry Girls Popular Communication Pub Date : 2023-12-10 June Deery
Can the sitcom allude to violence and ethnic hatred? Can it engage a global audience with localized history? If so, what does this reveal about the parameters of political comedy? Broadcast by UK’s...
-
Animating infrastructures, or how an illicit tunnel becomes a global media spectacle Popular Communication Pub Date : 2023-12-10 Juan Llamas-Rodriguez
This article explains the affordances of animation to create compelling and emotionally resonant stories for global consumption by analyzing the animated depictions of the tunnel used by Mexican ca...
-
In rhetorical sense(s): exploration of difference reflected through Black Mirror Popular Communication Pub Date : 2023-12-10 Akie Fukushige Wenk
This article attempts to expand the world in which rhetorical scholarship exists in general, and the positionality and subjectivity of the rhetorical scholar who engages in theory building specific...
-
‘When I lose the weight, we’ll go on a date’ – fatness, singleness and liminality in Fat Chance Popular Communication Pub Date : 2023-08-31 Susanne Ritter
In contemporary Western culture, fatness and singlehood are constructed as requiring change: from fat to thin, from single to coupled. Makeover shows with a dating theme that focus on both aspects ...
-
The glocalization of The Daily Show Popular Communication Pub Date : 2023-08-29 David Lipson, Mark Boukes, Samira Khemkhem
This article analyzes the domestic success and international growth of The Daily Show (TDS) targeting specifically the Jon Stewart period (Comedy Central, 1999–2015), It then focuses on the glocali...
-
The adaptation of species in the fashion media ecosystem: the case of Vogue Popular Communication Pub Date : 2023-07-21 Marta Torregrosa, Teresa Sadaba
ABSTRACT Digitalization has reconfigured the landscape in the fashion media ecosystem. New species have emerged within the environment. Today, fashion magazines compete with numerous fashion and lifestyle content providers, questioning their role as the sole authority when it comes to deciding “what is fashionable” and challenging their monopoly when it comes to prescribing aesthetic tastes. The purpose
-
Living with LEGO: A fan’s re-interpretation of the interior domestic space Popular Communication Pub Date : 2023-06-26 Vlada Botorić
ABSTRACT The interconnectedness between an individual and the inhabited interior space is articulated through literature, philosophy, and critical theory. The interior, in theory as in practice, is understood even as dialectical where the domestic space is experienced. The role of fans as inhabitants of a space and their subjective fandom experience reflected through their specific expressions within
-
“It’s about time”: Twitter responses to gender change with Doctor Who’s 13th Doctor Popular Communication Pub Date : 2022-08-04 Rebekah Grome, Kristina Drumheller, Emily S. Kinsky
ABSTRACT Quantitative content analysis was used to examine social media responses to the BBC’s announcement of the first female Doctor in the science-fiction show Doctor Who. Tweets reacting to the BBC’s framing of the decision (N = 2,971) were coded for mentions of representation, impact on the character, political correctness, feminism, impact on ratings, and impact on younger generations. Results
-
Toward a popular theory of algorithms Popular Communication Pub Date : 2022-07-28 Ignacio Siles, Edgar Gómez-Cruz, Paola Ricaurte
ABSTRACT This paper establishes dialogs between theories on the popular and critical studies on algorithms and datafication. In doing so, it contributes to reversing the analytical tendency to assume that algorithms have universal effects and that conclusions about “algorithmic power” in the Global North apply unproblematically everywhere else. We begin by clarifying how Latin American scholars and
-
An epistemic proxy war? Popular communication, epistemic contestations and violent conflict in Ethiopia Popular Communication Pub Date : 2022-05-16 Matti Pohjonen
ABSTRACT This paper highlights an understudied perspective on post-truth ideas in online popular communication through an examination of online popular communication during the Ethiopian conflict (or the Tigray War). It argues, in particular, that the epistemic contestations characteristic of the hybrid media environment needs to always be understood as double-layered: contemporary digital media functions
-
“Just hanging with my friends”: U.S. Latina/o/x perspectives on parasocial relationships in podcast listening during COVID-19 Popular Communication Pub Date : 2022-05-03 Arthur D. Soto-Vásquez, M. Olguta Vilceanu, Kristine C. Johnson
ABSTRACT There is a need to delve into major subgroups among U.S. Latina/o/xs and identify emerging patterns in their understanding and consumption of new media. This study used six small-group interviews to explore the fluidity of parasocial dynamics with podcasts among young Latina/o/x podcast listeners experiencing the COVID-19 lockdown. Recent literature has focused on the parasocial nature of
-
Televising popular feminism Popular Communication Pub Date : 2022-05-03 Sarah Kornfield, Elizabeth Bassett
ABSTRACT Recently, televisual programs such as TV Land’s Younger (2015), Freeform’s The Bold Type (2017), The CW’s Charmed reboot (2018), and Netflix’s Sex Education (2019) joined consumer culture’s era of popular feminism by hailing audiences through feminist appeals. Pilot episodes sell series to network executives and viewers – establishing series’ central tensions. Thus, we analyze how feminism
-
“This attack is intended to destroy Poland”: bio-power, conspiratorial knowledge, and the 2020 Women’s Strike in Poland Popular Communication Pub Date : 2022-04-04 Kinga Polynczuk-Alenius
ABSTRACT This article analyzes how conspiratorial knowledge and bio-power were entangled in the Polish government’s discourse to undermine the 2020 Women’s Strike protests against the curbing of access to legal abortion. Theoretically, it uses Foucault's “bio-power” to conceptualize both the assault on reproductive rights and the securitization of ensuing protests based on “conspiratorial knowledge
-
Circulation of conspiracy theories in the attention factory Popular Communication Pub Date : 2022-04-03 Katja Valaskivi
ABSTRACT The article argues that the hybrid media environment contributes to contemporary epistemic contestations. Framing the argument with the historical and social scientific contexts of our present media landscape it discusses the logic governing the content confusion that permeates this landscape in relation to the construction of world views and social reality. Then, it examines the notion of
-
Introduction: epistemic contestations in the hybrid media environment Popular Communication Pub Date : 2022-03-31 Katja Valaskivi, David G. Robertson
ABSTRACT “Post-truth era” and “fake news” have been the talk of the day for around 10 years now. In our understanding, these terms are used to refer to the contestations of epistemic hierarchies in Western liberal democracies experiencing political shifts toward populist political style and polarization. The contestation takes many forms but is mainly expressed through digital media technologies and
-
How conspiracy theorists argue: epistemic capital in the QAnon social media sphere Popular Communication Pub Date : 2022-03-17 David G. Robertson, Amarnath Amarasingam
ABSTRACT What is the role of different epistemic modes in how authority is established in right-leaning conspiratorial narratives? This paper sets out to answer this question through a mixed methods analysis. The first section sets out a model for the analysis of epistemic contestations, using six epistemic modes. This is then applied to a data set of Telegram posts in which key terms are used to identify
-
The rise of “gaslighting”: debates about disinformation on Twitter and 4chan, and the possibility of a “good echo chamber” Popular Communication Pub Date : 2022-03-10 Tommy Shane, Tom Willaert, Marc Tuters
ABSTRACT Public concern about “gaslighting” has increased significantly in recent years, both in sociology and the public imagination. As well as describing abuse in romantic relationships, the term has provided a lens for popular understanding of “post-truth” politics. Given that metaphors influence how problems are conceptualized and responded to, we ask how “gaslighting” shapes popular responses
-
Essential Popular Communication Pub Date : 2022-03-09 Vicki Mayer
ABSTRACT A reflection on my uncomfortable laugh on hearing the news that film workers would be considered “essential workers” during the COVID-19 lockdown, I argue that all cultural workers might be considered essential at this time.
-
Creating virtual homes during COVID-19: #HomemadeDisney and theme park fandom’s response to crisis Popular Communication Pub Date : 2022-02-25 Carissa Baker
ABSTRACT Theme parks are sites of popular imagination and cultural touchstones. What the COVID-19 pandemic taught is that they are also compelling when closed. This article focuses on fannish activities exemplified by imaginative posts and sweding videos from #HomemadeDisney and others during the period when global Disney theme parks were closed. This hashtag became a virtual communal space, the site
-
A public sphere, on-demand: an assessment of local podcasting Popular Communication Pub Date : 2022-01-19 David Crider
ABSTRACT Commercial radio is slow to join the growing podcasting industry, particularly at the local level. This study documents attempts by radio stations to create and sustain local podcasts. A sample of 482 stations from across the United States was analyzed for podcast availability. Nearly two-thirds of stations offer no podcasts at all; less than 20% offer more than one. Podcast offerings were
-
Political sorting in U.S. entertainment media Popular Communication Pub Date : 2021-10-29 Sarah Bachleda Fioroni, Amanda D. Lotz, Stuart Soroka, Dan Hiaeshutter-Rice
ABSTRACT Analysis of public opinion, news consumption, and social media has examined increasing political polarization and/or partisan sorting; however, few have explored the potential connection between entertainment programming and political sorting. This paper examines viewership of U.S. television entertainment from 2001 to 2016 and finds increasing differentiation in the shows watched in primarily
-
“Fact-based dreaming” as climate communication Popular Communication Pub Date : 2021-10-28 Erin Hawley, Gabi Mocatta
ABSTRACT Documentaries have become an important avenue for climate change communication due to their ability to galvanize social change. Environmental documentaries have traditionally sought to motivate audiences through fear appeals, shock tactics, and a mode of address that is enraged, gloomy, chiding or disappointed. More recently, communication strategies for environmental documentary-makers have
-
Istanbul Greek identities in film discourse Popular Communication Pub Date : 2021-10-26 Anastasia G. Stamou, Kornilia P. Petraki
ABSTRACT Considering the prominent role of popular culture in forming our perceptions about national/ ethnic identities and historical memory, in the present study, we explore the way in which Greek-Turkish relationships as well as the ethnic identities implicated are depicted in the Greek blockbuster film Α Touch of Spice/ Politiki Kouzina, which deals with the Greek community of Istanbul in the 1950s
-
Illusion of life in Bob Dylan’s “murder most foul” Popular Communication Pub Date : 2021-10-26 Noah Franken, Trudy L. Hanson
ABSTRACT This article examined the Bob Dylan song, “Murder Most Foul,” using the illusion of life rhetorical perspective. The song’s music and lyrics together speak to an American experience defined by the fallout of the JFK assassination: a public consumed with doubt, distrust, and conspiracy; however, a public that can perhaps still spark change. Overall, the song presents an incongruity between
-
Headlocks in lockdown: working the at-home crowd Popular Communication Pub Date : 2021-10-04 Jessica Fontaine
ABSTRACT This article draws on media studies and professional wrestling studies to examine how the major American wrestling company All Elite Wrestling (AEW) renegotiated the “liveness” and affective “excess” of crowded, live events during the COVID19 pandemic. I demonstrate how affective and physical work expanded for wrestlers in the pandemic, as AEW developed production strategies to engage at-home
-
“Only in theaters” in an on-demand culture: Event movies as media events Popular Communication Pub Date : 2021-08-19 Carter Moulton
ABSTRACT What is so eventful about an event movie’s arrival to the multiplex, and how does this eventfulness function as both an industry strategy and audience experience? Synthesizing an analysis of trade discourses, promotional campaigns, and manually-curated box office data, this article considers how the concept of eventfulness emerged as a discursive construction and spatiotemporal formation used
-
The converged promoter, the calculating professional, and the autonomous critic – the presentation of musical authority on social media Popular Communication Pub Date : 2021-08-13 Madis Järvekülg
ABSTRACT This article examines how Estonian music critics and journalists present their selves on social media. Based on in-depth interviews and observations of their social media activities, it proposes a typology of overlapping positions that music critics can adopt on Facebook: the converged promoter, the calculating professional, and the autonomous critic. These positions illustrate how musical
-
Extraordinarily ordinary: Us Weekly and the rise of reality television celebrity Popular Communication Pub Date : 2021-07-16 Shannon E. M. O’Sullivan
(2021). Extraordinarily ordinary: Us Weekly and the rise of reality television celebrity. Popular Communication: Vol. 19, No. 4, pp. 321-324.
-
Review of Resisting Rape Culture through Pop Culture Popular Communication Pub Date : 2021-06-24 Elizabeth Fish Hatfield
(2021). Review of Resisting Rape Culture through Pop Culture. Popular Communication: Vol. 19, No. 4, pp. 318-320.
-
The global politics of celebrity Popular Communication Pub Date : 2021-06-17 Mehdi Semati, Kate Zambon
ABSTRACT The proliferation of celebrity studies across multiple fields and disciplines demonstrates an emerging scholarly consensus about the importance of celebrity for understanding the present conjuncture, contemporary capitalism, and its cultural politics. However, celebrity studies have largely neglected transnational and global theories and contexts, which, with the notable exception of studies
-
The commodified celebrity-self: industrialized agency and the contemporary attention economy Popular Communication Pub Date : 2021-06-06 P. David Marshall
ABSTRACT This article looks at the emerging comfortability with how selling the self has become normalized transnationally. Commodifying the self has been the natural province of celebrities: they use their visibility for their own ends, but also to draw attention to particular issues that are beyond their celebrity value. These activities represent a form of agency and a means of effecting change
-
Offshoring & leaking: Cristiano Ronaldo’s tax evasion, and celebrity in neoliberal times Popular Communication Pub Date : 2021-04-13 Ana Jorge, Mercè Oliva, Luis LM Aguiar
ABSTRACT This article examines how the news media framed the allegations made in 2016 against Cristiano Ronaldo for evading taxes through offshores, and how audiences discussed this online, in Portugal, where he is originally from, and Spain, where he played football at the time. These countries were amidst an “austerity culture” justifying welfare cuts, promoting entrepreneurialism as “success”, and
-
Speaking for the youth, speaking for the planet: Greta Thunberg and the representational politics of eco-celebrity Popular Communication Pub Date : 2021-04-16 Patrick D. Murphy
ABSTRACT Greta Thunberg is the world’s best-known environmental activist. She has been covered by the international press, featured on television talk shows, presented in music videos, and been the object of social media memes – a visibility that has made her a global celebrity. But unlike other public figures whose stardom is attached to, rather than driven by environmental activism, Thunberg’s eco-celebrity
-
Celebrity migrants and the racialized logic of integration in Germany Popular Communication Pub Date : 2021-04-22 Kate Zambon
ABSTRACT Since the turn of the millennium, “integration” has become a predominant floating signifier in discourse and policy regulating the place of immigrants and minorities in European societies. This study analyzes a self-described “integration campaign” that used celebrity exemplars to promote the German language to immigrants and their descendants. This case demonstrates the interrelationship
-
Turkey’s TV celebrities as cultural envoys: the role of celebrity diplomacy in nation branding and the pursuit of soft power Popular Communication Pub Date : 2021-04-16 Ece Algan, Yeşim Kaptan
ABSTRACT With the increasing popularity of Turkish television dramas, actors from Turkish TV series have become global celebrities with hundreds of millions of fans worldwide. In this paper, drawing on a political economy of communication analysis, we investigate the ways in which the Turkish government utilizes Turkish TV series’ actors’ celebrity status to further its foreign policy agenda with respect
-
Micro-celebrity practices in Muslim-majority states in Southeast Asia Popular Communication Pub Date : 2021-04-09 Siti Mazidah Mohamad
ABSTRACT We have witnessed the growth and spread of celebrity culture worldwide, from A-list celebrities to ordinary individuals turned micro-celebrities. However, celebrity studies are still lacking in exploring celebrity culture in the global South that has recently seen growth in their micro-celebrities afforded by rising individualism, commodification, and social media penetration. This paper aims
-
Acknowledgments Popular Communication Pub Date : 2021-06-10
(2021). Acknowledgments. Popular Communication: Vol. 19, Bergman World, pp. 65-65.
-
Situating Ingmar Bergman and world cinema Popular Communication Pub Date : 2021-06-10 Hamish Ford, Daniel Humphrey
ABSTRACT Introducing four essays and a stage play that make up the “Bergman World” special issue of Popular Communication, the authors argue for an expanded understanding of world cinema, one that attends to critical and scholarly voices beyond the hegemon of the United States, the United Kingdom, and Western continental Europe, one that, indeed, attends to “their” (the non-West’s) perspective on “us”
-
The transpositions of a filmmaker—Ingmar Bergman at home and abroad Popular Communication Pub Date : 2021-05-02 Birgitta Steene
Abstract Ingmar Bergman’s cinema has been distributed around the world to varied, constantly evolving public response. In this 1998 essay, Birgitta Steene assesses data collected from film viewers in five countries – Brazil, France, India, Sweden, and the United States – to ultimately illuminate a complex transcultural circulation process comprised of three stages that are discussed at length: transmittance
-
The democratic roles of satirists Popular Communication Pub Date : 2021-05-31 Sara Ödmark, Jonas Harvard
ABSTRACT In the high-choice media landscape, satire has the potential to help news and politics break through information apathy barriers and reinvigorate democratic debate. While scholarly attention to the genre of satire has increased, interest in satirists themselves has been sparse. Using a theory of non-deliberative forms of public discourse and the idea of role conceptions, this study presents
-
Not streaming near you: FilmStruck’s failure and the demise of the cinema-specific model Popular Communication Pub Date : 2021-05-12 Anne Major
ABSTRACT This article charts the rise and fall of FilmStruck – Turner Classic Movies (TCM) and Criterion Collection’s cinema-specific streaming service. Despite its premier specialty film catalog (e.g., art-house, international, independent, and classic cinema) and loyal fans, WarnerMedia shuttered the service in 2018 – after two years in business. This article argues that FilmStruck’s demise revealed
-
Perpetual motion, by Harmony Bench Popular Communication Pub Date : 2021-05-06 Carrie M. Murawski
(2021). Perpetual motion, by Harmony Bench. Popular Communication: Vol. 19, No. 4, pp. 315-317.
-
Correction Popular Communication Pub Date : 2021-04-28
(2021). Correction. Popular Communication: Vol. 19, No. 4, pp. 328-328.
-
Story movements: How Documentaries Empower People and Inspire Social Change (2020) Popular Communication Pub Date : 2021-04-19 Courtney Darian Tabor
(2021). Story movements: How Documentaries Empower People and Inspire Social Change (2020) Popular Communication: Vol. 19, No. 4, pp. 312-314.
-
Earthquake aftersongs: music videos and the imagining of an online Nepali public Popular Communication Pub Date : 2021-04-16 Michael Hutt
ABSTRACT The major earthquake that struck central Nepal in April 2015 inspired a flurry of literary and cultural production, including the creation and online publication of over 50 earthquake-related music videos. Although they share a common thematic focus, these videos’ representations of the earthquake aftermath and the Nepali people’s response to the disaster diverge from one another in some important
-
Emo: how fans defined a subculture Popular Communication Pub Date : 2021-04-12 Margaret A. Murray
(2021). Emo: how fans defined a subculture. Popular Communication: Vol. 19, No. 4, pp. 325-327.
-
The digital city Popular Communication Pub Date : 2021-03-07 Barbara Ruth Burke
(2021). The digital city. Popular Communication: Vol. 19, No. 1, pp. 60-63.
-
“I’m just here to enjoy the Ponies”: My Little Pony, Bronies and the limits of feminist intent Popular Communication Pub Date : 2021-03-25 Kyra Hunting, Rebecca C. Hains
ABSTRACT The unexpected adult, primarily male, audience of the children’s series My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, known as Bronies, has been the subject of extensive commentary for their apparent violation of gender norms. Drawing from a qualitative survey of a 2915 Bronies we argue that the fandom is deceptively heterogenous. In particular, we explore the attitudes of members of the Brony Fandom
-
The “absent circus master”: the “arrival” of Ingmar Bergman in Australia Popular Communication Pub Date : 2021-02-10 Adrian Danks
ABSTRACT By exploring the critical, journalistic and popular reception of Ingmar Bergman’s films in Australia in the late 1950s and ’60s, as well as tracing their patterns of exhibition and distribution, this essay examines how particular discourses and approaches to Bergman were already well and truly in place by the early ’60s and prior to the arrival of most of the director’s films in the country
-
Tracing Bergman in Contemporary Indian Cinema: Philosophical Cross-Connections in Through a Glass Darkly, Ship of Theseus and Dear Molly Popular Communication Pub Date : 2021-01-08 Ashvin Devasundaram
ABSTRACT Ingmar Bergman’s cinema has most often been framed within strictures of a Eurocentric scholarly template and structuralist or modernist philosophical approaches. Meanwhile, the filmmaker’s monumental influence on and relevance to global cinema beyond the West has often been overlooked or elided in Anglophone writing. Against the canvas of this gap in scholarship, this article ultimately discloses
-
K-pop idols: popular culture and the emergence of the Korean music industry Popular Communication Pub Date : 2020-12-29 Mary Alice Adams
(2021). K-pop idols: popular culture and the emergence of the Korean music industry. Popular Communication: Vol. 19, No. 1, pp. 57-59.
-
Representing rape culture on teen television Popular Communication Pub Date : 2020-12-28 Emily D. Ryalls
ABSTRACT Increasing cultural attention to sexual assault in the U.S. has raised questions about consent, leading some states to implement “yes means yes” laws. In order to provide insight into how mainstream discourse take into account feminist understandings of sexual violence and affirmative consent, this article considers representations of rape culture and affirmative consent in two recent teen