A phenomenological account of the forms of life characteristic of late capitalism--including television, celebrity culture, and personal electronics--culminating in an ontology of the gadget-commodity that brings together Marxist theories of commodity fetishism and ideology with Heidegger's attempt to think truth as unconcealment.

During the past decades, the culture industries have multiplied media spectacles in novel spaces and sites, and spectacle itself is becoming one of the organizing principles of the economy, polity, society, and everyday life. An Internet-based economy has been developing hi-tech spectacle as a means of promotion, reproduction, and the circulation and selling of commodities, using multimedia and increasingly sophisticated technology to dazzle consumers. M edia culture proliferates ever more technologically sophisticated spectacles to seize audiences and augment (...) their power and profit. The forms of entertainment permeate news and information, and a tablodized infotainment culture is more and more popular. New multimedia that synthesize forms of radio, film, TV news and entertainment, and the mushrooming domain of cyberspace, become spectacles of technoculture, generating expanding sites of information and entertainment, while intensifying the spectacle-form of media culture. Political and social life is also shaped more and more by media spectacle. Social and political conflicts are increasingly played out on the screens of media culture, which display spectacles like sensational murder cases, terrorist bombings, celebrity and political sex scandals, and the explosive violence of everyday life. M edia culture not only takes up expanding moments of contemporary experience, but also provides ever more material for fantasy, dreaming, modeling thought and behavior, and constructing identities. Of course, there have been spectacles since premodern times. Classical Greece had its Olympics, thespian and poetry festivals, its public rhetorical battles, and bloody and violent wars. Ancient Rome had its public offerings of bread and circuses, its orgies, its titanic political battles, and the spectacle of Empire with parades and monuments for triumphant Caesars and their armies, extravaganzas put on display in the 2000 film Gladiator.. (shrink)

This book argues that we have moved into a new cultural period, automodernity, which represents a social, psychological, and technological reaction to postmodernity. In fact, by showing how individual autonomy is now being generated through technological and cultural automation, Samuels posits that we must rethink modernity and postmodernity. Part of this rethinking entails stressing how the progressive political aspects of postmodernism need to be separated from the aesthetic consumption of differences in automoderntiy. Choosing culturally relevant studies of The Matrix, Grand (...) Theft Auto, Eminem and Jurassic Park, he interprets these medias through the lens of eminent theorists like Slavoj Zizek, Frederic Jameson, and Henry Jenkins. Ultimately, he argues that what defines postmodernity is the stress on social construction, secular humanism, and progressive social movements that challenge the universality and neutrality of modern reason"--Provided by publisher. (shrink)

It is with great pleasure that I remember my visit to the University of Alberta in Fall 1995, and I would like especially to thank Eric Higgs, Andrew Light, and Ray Morrow for making my visit an especially memorable one. During my visit, we participated in a series of seminars on postmodern theory, critical theory, media culture, cultural studies, and the philosophy of technology and not surprisingly these themes were the focus of the symposium of my book (...) class='Hi'>Media Culture, which we are now committing to print. Accordingly, I shall respond to each of the three commentators, focusing on the themes which they highlighted. This will enable me to clarify my positions on media culture, the philosophy of technology, and the Internet (Higgs); social theory, media culture, and cultural studies (Morrow); and media culture, identity, and identity politics (Light). The interconnection of these issues in Media Culture and my work in general points, I would argue, for the need to develop transdisciplinary theories to confront the issues, problems, and challenges of the contemporary moment as we negotiate the troubled terrain between the modern and the postmodern. (shrink)

Radio, television, film, and the other products of media culture provide materials out of which we forge our very identities; our sense of selfhood; our notion of what it means to be male or female; our sense of class, of ethnicity and race, of nationality, of sexuality; and of "us" and "them." Media images help shape our view of the world and our deepest values: what we consider good or bad, positive or negative, moral or evil. (...) class='Hi'>Media stories provide the symbols, myths, and resources through which we constitute a common culture and through the appropriation of which we insert ourselves into this culture. Media spectacles demonstrate who has power and who is powerless, who is allowed to exercise force and violence, and who is not. They dramatize and legitimate the power of the forces that be and show the powerless that they must stay in their places or be oppressed. (shrink)

This paper investigates how young people give meaning to gender, sexuality, relationships, and desire in the popular social networking site Netlog. In arguing how SNSs are important spaces for intimate politics, the extent to which Netlog is a space that allows contestations of intimate stories and a voicing of difference is questioned. These intimate stories should be understood as self-representational media practices; young people make sense of their intimate stories in SNSs through media cultures. Media cultures reflect (...) how audiences and SNS institutions make sense of intimacy. This paper concludes that intimate stories as media practices in the SNS Netlog are structured around creativity, anonymity, authenticity, performativity, bricolage and intertextuality. The intimate storytelling practices focusing on creativity, anonymity, bricolage and intertextuality are particularly significant for a diversity of intimacies to proliferate. (shrink)

All the utopian talk of information superhighways and the great media societies of the future helps to mask the fact that contemporary capitalist societies are in a situation of seemingly permanent crisis with increased human suffering due to deteriorating social conditions. In the United States, more than 34 million people live below the poverty level; over 3 million are homeless; over ten million are out of work; and millions lack basic health insurance and guaranteed medical care (Hoffman 1987).

In classrooms, museums, health clinics and beyond, the educational uses of visual media have proliferated over the past fifty years. Film, video, television, and digital media have been integral to the development of new pedagogical theories and practices, globalization processes, and identity and community formation. Yet, Brian Goldfarb argues, the educational roles of visual technologies have not been fully understood or appreciated. He contends that in order to understand the intersections of new media and learning, we need (...) to recognize the sweeping scope of the technologically infused visual pedagogy—both in and outside the classroom. From Samoa to the United States mainland to Africa and Brazil, from museums to city streets, _Visual Pedagogy_ explores the educational applications of visual media in different institutional settings during the past half century. Looking beyond the popular media texts and mainstream classroom technologies that are the objects of most analyses of media and education, Goldfarb encourages readers to see a range of media subcultures as pedagogical tools. The projects he analyzes include media produced by AIDS/HIV advocacy groups and social services agencies for classroom use in the 1990s; documentary and fictional cinemas of West Africa used by the French government and then by those resisting it; museum exhibitions; and TV Anhembi, a municipally sponsored collaboration between the television industry and community-based videographers in São Paolo, Brazil. Combining media studies, pedagogical theory, and art history, and including an appendix of visual media resources and ideas about the most productive ways to utilize visual technologies for educational purposes, _Visual Pedagogy_ will be useful to educators, administrators, and activists. (shrink)

This article discusses issues related to the origins of media culture by concentrating on the invention of the kaleidoscope, and the early debates it incited. The kaleidoscope was invented by the Scottish scientist David Brewster and first publicly announced in 1817. This article is the first published element of a broader research project that discusses the changing meanings attached to the kaleidoscope during the past two hundred years. The author approaches the topic from a media archaeological perspective. (...) Beside the material kaleidoscopes, attention is paid to what the author calls “discursive kaleidoscopes” – the traces the kaleidoscopes left in cultural and textual traditions. (shrink)

인터넷을 기반으로 하는 현대인의 삶은 디지털 미디어의 연장이라고 말해질 정도로 현 대 사회에서 미디어의 역할과 의미는 크다. 그리고 이것은 미디어를 기반으로 변모하는 소통 방식에 대한 이해의 중요성을 말하는 것인 동시에 이것은 미디어가 가지는 물성(物性)에 대한 적극적인 해석과 접근이 새롭게 요구된다는 것을 말하는 것이기도 하다. 이와 같은 맥락에서 본다면 디지털 미디어의 확장성을 보다 적극적으로 해석하고, 이해하는 트랜스미디어 문화연구는 미디어의 물성(物性)에 대한 종래의 접근과 해석방식이 갖는 소극적인 제한성으로부터 벗어나 디지털 미디어의 물성(物性)이 가지는 빠른 속도의 확장성과 운동성을 적극적으로 평가한 사례에 해당한다. 또한, 이것은 (...) 도구적 기능주의의 해석 방식에 천착한 미디어 물성(物性)에 대한 제한적인 해석을 넘어 향상된 인터넷 기술을 기반으로 확대되는 디지털 문화의 새로운 변모를 긍정적으로 해석하는 입장을 견지한다는 점에서 디지털 미디어의 물성(物性)에 대한 이해는 새로운 사회의 문화변동을 설명하는 중요한 논의의 토대가 된다. 그러므로 장자 천망(天網)의 생성론을 통한 미디어 문화의 확장성에 관한 비판적 연구는 디지털 미디어의 빠른 속도와 확장의 운동성에 주목하여 인터넷을 기반으로 발전하는 디지털 미디어 문화의 특징, 즉 시간과 공간의 형식이 갖는 정형성의 파괴를 장자의 철학사상에서 강조되는 물화(物化)의 비선형적 관계성과 비교고찰 하는 작업을 수행한다. 이 점에서 장자 천망(天網)의 생성론을 통한 미디어 문화의 확장성에 관한 비판적 연구는 우리사회의 미디어 문화에 대한 보다 적극적인 해석과 이해를 동양철학의 관점에서 시도하는 것인 동시에 우리의 디지털 미디어 문화가 가지는 문제를 극복할 수 있는 대안을 장자의 철학사상에서 강조되는 만물제동(萬物齊同)의 전일적(全一的) 세계관을 통해 새롭게 모색하는 일련의 과정이 된다. (shrink)

Philosophy & Social Criticism, Ahead of Print. Douglas Kellner emerged in the late 1980s as a media theorist. This article reconstructs his intellectual trajectory, analyzing the developments and problems of his media theory. His path was influenced by so-called Western Marxism, notably by the Frankfurt School and, later, by British cultural studies. Kellner made both currents of European thought dialogue and incorporated them into French postmodernism, in a context configured by the ‘culture wars’ in the United States. (...) All of this shaped the analysis of what he called ‘media culture’ and, a few years later, ‘media spectacle’, as well as his proposal for critical media literacy. It is argued that Kellner proposes an innovative synthesis in theoretical and methodological terms, outlined with Cultural Marxism. On the other hand, his proposition is not exempt from conceptual contradictions that generate analytical simplifications during the practice of research, as it moves between immanent to transcendent critique. (shrink)

Philosophy & Social Criticism, Ahead of Print. Douglas Kellner emerged in the late 1980s as a media theorist. This article reconstructs his intellectual trajectory, analyzing the developments and problems of his media theory. His path was influenced by so-called Western Marxism, notably by the Frankfurt School and, later, by British cultural studies. Kellner made both currents of European thought dialogue and incorporated them into French postmodernism, in a context configured by the ‘culture wars’ in the United States. (...) All of this shaped the analysis of what he called ‘media culture’ and, a few years later, ‘media spectacle’, as well as his proposal for critical media literacy. It is argued that Kellner proposes an innovative synthesis in theoretical and methodological terms, outlined with Cultural Marxism. On the other hand, his proposition is not exempt from conceptual contradictions that generate analytical simplifications during the practice of research, as it moves between immanent to transcendent critique. (shrink)

Media in Question sets the agenda for a revitalized debate on the hybrid communicative practices that constitute the postmodern media landscape: practices that cross the boundaries between fact and fiction, information and entertainment, public knowledge, and popular culture. In this challenging and provocative collection, the individual contributors rethink key issuesùthe meaning of the public interest, the quality of media performance, and deregulation. In the process they raise questions rarely addressed in normative media theories, for example, (...) the ethics of sports reporting, the moral reasoning in popular culture, and the required professional standards for infotainment genres such as reality television and gossip journalism. Accessible and wide-ranging, The Media in Question will be essential reading for students in mass communication and political communication studies. (shrink)

Douglas Kellner emerged in the late 1980s as a media theorist. This article reconstructs his intellectual trajectory, analyzing the developments and problems of his media theory. His path was influ...

This article examines three cases of mid-20th-century oil media—oil-related imagery, iconographies, and media—in visual culture: a series of popular science books entitled The Story of Oil published in the US, an oil-themed set of Kuwaiti postage stamps (1959), and an art exhibition in Zurich (1956) titled Welt des Erdöls: Junge Maler sehen eine Industrie (World of Petroleum: Young Artists See an Industry). While depicting crude oil in its natural habitat was a common photographic theme in the early (...) 20th-century United States, the material discussed shows that, by the mid-20th century, crude oil no longer had the same visual presence. The iconography of oil in the three case studies came to rely increasingly on images of oil infrastructure and on context-specific depictions of living within petro-modernity or petro-culture, meaning lifestyles fueled by cheap fossil energy. However, it is not just the changes in visual representations of petroleum that matter; any debate about the visibility and invisibility of petroleum has to take into account the very media through which petroleum has become visually communicated—that is, the precise forms of oil's mediatization. The aesthetic negotiation of petroleum through media-based visual representations has been crucial for the dematerialization of fossil matter in its conversion to fossil energy, as well as the decoupling of sites of extraction from sites of production and consumption in the public imagination. As petro-culture has morphed into national or even global culture (rather than representing just one possible energy source among many), oil media has paved the way for our intimate relationship with fossil energy-dependent lifestyles, which is one of the biggest drivers of climate change. (shrink)

Introduction. The development of legal culture and a culture of human rights in the modern world through media technologies, is acquiring special significance in connection with the processes of globalization and the spread of media in recent decades. The purpose of the article is to study the prospects for the use of media education in the formation of the legal social culture and a culture of human rights. Materials and methods. Based on a (...) study of domestic and foreign sources, issues of media education, media literacy, spiritual and moral education, the legal culture of society, the phenomenon of post-truth and ways of forming critical, creative thinking are considered. The use of general scientific, philosophical, and socio-pedagogical methods has made it possible to study media education as a dialogue of learning, stimulating the development of rational, critical thinking, focused on the search for the value foundations of intellectual and social activity. Results. The development of the field of information and communication technologies determines the principles for the formation of the content and orientation of modern education. Media education is interlinked with the development of democracy and human rights. It influences the formation of a culture of citizen participation, their active social position, civic and political culture. Media education plays a significant role in shaping the legal culture of society since critical media research and information research focuses on the analysis of power structures and structures of dominance in the media. A study of the interpretations of the concepts of "media education" and "media literacy" made it possible to show that media education focuses a person on a critical approach to media content. One of the main issues of media education is teaching a person the skills to critically study media and media technologies, which involves addressing the technological, cultural and historical specifics of specific media used at a specific time and place. Information and communication technologies have changed the way of life, work, communication, and ways of selfpresentation, the formation of values, participation in socially significant events. Therefore, a critical approach to mass media should be based on knowledge of socio-philosophical theories, ethics and research in the field of mass media. Discussion. Mass media are constructing a history of human rights, which updates the topic of the media policy of human rights, combining socio-legal, cultural and media theories. Education in the field of acquiring information perception skills, the ability to correctly understand the importance of audiovisual images, to competently handle and navigate information flows are necessary for the life of a modern person in society. (shrink)

In the postmodern era the impact media have on our lives is continuously growing. Not only do media reflect reality, but they also shape and reconstruct it according to the public's hopes, fears or fantasies. Reality itself is not the sum of all objective processes and things, but it is socially constructed by the discourses that reflect and produce power. On the other hand, the public does not simply accept or reject the media messages, but interprets them (...) according to its social background (Zoonen, 1994, p. 41). My interest lies in identifying how are women represented in the media and what are the dominant images of femininity, as well as the alternative ones. There is a strong connection between image and identity as the latter can not be constructed without the former. Basically, the postmodern subject has been reduced to an image, therefore the image plays an important part in constructing the feminine identity. (shrink)

This contribution, by a mathematician, to the Common Knowledge symposium “Fuzzy Studies” examines some mechanisms that seem essential for the “ratchet effect” that, in Michael Tomasello's use of the term, refers to the ability of human cultures to preserve their achievements even through serious crises and even where preservation entails substantial loss. By taking the word culture to refer to any group of individuals who closely cooperate over an extended period, this article evaluates mathematicians and mathematics as its main (...) example. The assessment of the enterprise of mathematics as a culture corresponds to the author's personal experience — and mathematics, he argues, is both historically old and simply structured, despite the formidable complexity of mathematical knowledge as it has been compiled over the centuries. The preserving, restructuring, and enlarging of this knowledge may be regarded as the main cultural goals of mathematics and are the objects of study here. This article concentrates first on the techniques used in pursuing the tasks of preservation, enlargement, and restructuring — techniques such as counting methods and geometric diagrams — and it emphasizes their use in communication, when they function as media. The cultural techniques of mathematics, known to and used by all members of that culture, are media that, through intensity of communication, add symbolic functions to mere procedures. (The prototypical example of a cultural technique, in this sense, is language.) Knowledge, as the additional symbolic value, is distributed and at the same time preserved in the process of permanent communication. (shrink)

IntroductionIn recent years, with the popularity of many social media platforms worldwide, the role of “virtual social network platforms” in the field of cross-cultural communication has become increasingly important. Scholars in psychology and neuroscience, and cross-disciplines, are attracted to research on the motivation, mechanisms, and effects of communication on social media across cultures.Methods and AnalysisThis paper collects the co-citation of keywords in “cultural psychology,” “cross-culture communication,” “neuroscience,” and “social media” from the database of web of science (...) and analyzes the hotspots of the literature in word cloud.ResultsBased on our inclusion criteria, 85 relevant studies were extracted from a database of 842 papers. There were 44 articles on cultural communication on social media, of which 26 were from the perspective of psychology and five from the perspective of neuroscience. There are 27 articles that focus on the integration of psychology and neuroscience, but only a few are related to cross-cultural communication on social media.ConclusionScholars have mainly studied the reasons and implications of cultural communication on social media from the perspectives of cultural psychology and neuroscience separately. Keywords “culture” and “social media” generate more links in the hot map, and a large number of keywords of cultural psychology and neuroscience also gather in the hot map, which reflects the trend of integration in academic research. While cultural characteristics have changed with the development of new media and virtual communities, more research is needed to integrate the disciplines of culture, psychology, and neuroscience. (shrink)

This paper seeks to introduce cultural techniques to an Anglophone readership. Specifically geared towards an Anglophone readership, the paper relates the re-emergence of cultural techniques to the changing intellectual constellation of postwar Germany. More specifically, it traces how the concept evolved from – and reacted against – so-called German media theory, a decidedly anti-hermeneutic and anti-humanist current of thought frequently associated with the work of Friedrich Kittler. Post-hermeneutic rather than anti-hermeneutic in its outlook, the reconceptualization of cultural techniques aims (...) at presenting them as chains of operations that link humans, things, media and even animals. To investigate cultural techniques is to shift the analytic gaze from ontological distinctions to the ontic operations that gave rise to the former in the first place. As Siegert points out, this shift recalls certain concurrent developments within the North American posthumanities; the paper therefore also includes a discussion of the similarities and differences between German and North American posthumanism. (shrink)

In the face of differences between the ethical religio-philosophies believed across the globe, how should a media ethicist theorize or make recommendations in the light of theory? One approach is relativist, taking each distinct moral worldview to be true only for its own people. A second approach is universalist, seeking to discover a handful of basic ethical principles that are already shared by all the world's peoples. After providing reasons to doubt both of these approaches to doing media (...) ethics, consideration is given to a third. This under-explored approach offers moral claims that would be reasonable for nearly all long-standing cultures to accept even though they currently do not, with the aim of creating new common ground among them. The chapter advances some rights and responsibilities, particularly as they concern the media's role in respect of self-government and self-expression, on which many of those with African, Confucian, Islamic, and Western foundational commitments could sensibly converge. (shrink)

The extensive use of digital platforms has presented considerable challenges to democracy, particularly in the realms of politics and ideology in Brazil. The emergence of digital echo chambers and the rise of extreme viewpoints pose threats to social cohesion, informed decision-making, and the development of individual identities. This analysis focuses specifically on identity formation, the creation and dissemination of information, emphasizing its repercussions on social identity and cultural diversity. Consequently, the influence of these echo chambers in promoting extremist views in (...) this context is just one facet of the broader ideological, racial, and class polarization facing the nation. To face these challenges, it is imperative to defend critical and reflective education on the role and use of social networks, both in the educational system and in the daily lives of young people and society. (shrink)

With the disenchantment with independence in Africa, economic failure, the crimes of the elites from the independence years, the paralysis of symbolism, and finally the states' loss of dynamism, the 1990s ushered in a so-called phase of democratization. This was about rethinking citizenship and the relationship to politics. This democratization was a response to the notion of diversity. This paper claims that the answer to this diversity issue fell far short of expectations and proceeds different examples taken from social, cultural (...) and political life, including the struggle for recognition and the appearance of terrorist violence in sub-Saharan Africa. Multiparty systems designed to respond to the diversity question produced only many versions of the same by ignoring that true diversity is the encroachment on the same of the strange, the different and the unexpected. (shrink)

The main thesis of my article is that the viability of the European Union does not depend so much on its political structure as on its being anchored in a culture-based public sphere and on the establishment of a cultural European citizenship. The public sphere could be defined as an unique world, characterized by consensus and cooperation, in which only public goods can be sought and acquired, or as an unique world, characterized by rivalry and competition, in which everyone (...) could pursue their private interests, but only if there is a consensus regarding an objective and fair procedure. In any way, we cannot speak of a pluralism of public spheres - like the black public sphere, the LGBT public sphere, etc. - but (at the most) a plurality of interests represented in the public sphere, under the reserve of respecting a fair procedure, which allows the expression of axiological judgments. The EU needs a progressive citizenship, from civil citizenship to cultural citizenship, depending on the acquired skills, behavior and virtues. One deserves cultural citizenship and have the right (or, perhaps the privilege) to manifest - in the public sphere - a way of life and a cultural identity only if promote authentic values: virtues, rationality, free will etc. The problematic aspects of the European media sphere are obstacles on the way to establishing an authentic European cultural citizenship. They can be kept under control by assuming a healthy reactionary attitude and associating every element of change and contingent progress (speed, reductive simplicity, user's solitude, pictoriality, lateralness, data overload, immediacy, segmentation, social amnesia, etc.) with an element of moderation and equilibrium. Only thus can the media contribute in the making of a viable union of the European peoples, grounded on a well articulated European cultural citizenship. (shrink)

This article outlines the relationship that cultural capital, which is identified as a media user’s education level, shares with news media consumption patterns, civic engagement, and cultural participation. The article’s findings are based on data gathered during a 2015 investigation on news media consumption conducted by a group of European researchers as part of a comparative research project, supplemented with data from a survey on a random sample of Polish citizens conducted in May 2019. The project for (...) the empirical 2015 study aimed to examine the principles of building individual media repertoires as a representation of media usage patterns and experiences related to news media consumption. The study focused on universal aspects of news media consumption, while simultaneously allowing for the discovery of aspects of news media use that are specific to the individual countries participating in the study: Germany, Denmark, Israel, Belgium-Fr., Belgium-Flanders, Portugal, Spain, the Netherlands, Croatia, and Poland. (shrink)

This book introduces the critical concepts and debates that are shaping the emerging field of game studies. Exploring games in the context of cultural studies and media studies, it analyses computer games as the most popular contemporary form of new media production and consumption. The book: Argues for the centrality of play in redefining reading, consuming and creating culture Offers detailed research into the political economy of games to generate a model of new media production Examines (...) the dynamics of power in relation to both the production and consumption of computer games This is key reading for students, academics and industry practitioners in the fields of cultural studies, new media, media studies and game studies, as well as human-computer interaction and cyberculture. (shrink)

The originality of Kittler is not his preference for technical media, but his insight in the linking of media with the technique of time axis manipulation. The most elementary experience in human existence is the irreversibility of the flow of time. Technology provides a means for channeling this irreversibility. Media are practices that use strategies of spatialization to enable one to manipulate the order of things that progress in time by transforming singular events in reproducible data. Human (...) bodies cannot be seen as media because they are subject to the linearity of time. Are media a priori functioning universals for Friedrich Kittler? The answer is: no. Media history has a beginning (writing) and an end (computer). (shrink)

In an information age of youth social movements, Youth Media Matters examines how young people are using new media technologies to tell stories about themselves and their social worlds. They do so through joint efforts in a range of educational settings and media environments, including high school classrooms, youth media organizations, and social media sites. Korina M. Jocson draws on various theories to show how educators can harness the power of youth media to provide (...) new opportunities for meaningful learning and "do-it-together production." Describing the impact that youth media can have on the broader culture, Jocson demonstrates how it supports expansive literacy practices and promotes civic engagement, particularly among historically marginalized youth. In Youth Media Matters, Jocson offers a connective analysis of content area classrooms, career and technical education, literary and media arts organizations, community television stations, and colleges and universities. She provides examples of youth media work--including videos, television broadcasts, websites, and blogs--produced in the San Francisco Bay Area, Los Angeles, New York, and St. Louis. At a time when educators are increasingly attentive to participatory cultures yet constrained by top-down pedagogical requirements, Jocson highlights the knowledge production and transformative potential of youth media with import both in and out of the classroom. (shrink)

In _Media, Modernity and the Dynamic Plant_, Janet Janzen traces the motif of the “dynamic plant” through early 20th century German culture. In examples from film and literature, she demonstrates a shift in the perception of plants to living beings.

This article, which looks at exposure to and the use of host and home media by Turkish diaspora in Belgium, illustrates that media use is determined by cultural as well as socio-demographic features. By means of a quantitative survey among four hundred respondents of Turkish origin between the ages of eighteen and sixty, the use of host and home media in general and news contents in particular were analyzed in relation to culture-specific features such as ethnic (...) cultural position, religion, and command of language, alongside with socio-demographic features such as age, gender, education, years of residence and socio-economic status. Our investigation showed religion, ethnic-cultural position and command of the Turkish language to be the strongest determinants for home language news media use, while host language news media use was strongly determined by command of the Dutch or French language, length of residence and educational level. These findings, especially those pertaining to news use, bring nuance to a certain number of earlier findings with Turkish youngsters in the Netherlands and Flanders, whose media use was predominantly related to socio-demographics. (shrink)

Worldwide, the COVID-19 pandemic has forced people to adapt quickly, and to reexamine interactions and responsibilities toward communities in creative ways. This paper presents a qualitative media analysis of 50 online news articles published between March 17th and August 6th, 2020 using the key-words “creativity” and “COVID-19.” Informed by a definition of creativity as actions that are considered both “new” and “appropriate”, articles describing a “creative action” were kept for analysis. These articles highlight creative responses to the COVID-19 quarantine (...) in various domains including architecture, fashion, and faith. In this paper, we discuss the themes derived during this analysis- “renewal and continuity” and “the multidimensionality of creativity” which elaborate and contextualize a perspective of socio-cultural creativity theory and propose two implications of this study. The first implication posits that creativity was an observable, cultural response to the COVID-19 pandemic. The second implication offers a broader concept of how cultural resources function as dynamic constraints or “affordances” within the Five A’s model of creativity. Discussion of further research through the lens of socio-cultural creativity is discussed. (shrink)

This text reflects cultural techniques in relation to other concepts in cultural and media studies by addressing their relation to selected Anglo-American and French discussions. It also investigates the relation of cultural techniques to more recent material and speculative turns. Suggesting that the cultural techniques approaches introduce their own important material dimension to media-specific analysis of culture, the article argues that cultural techniques should be read in relation to recent post-Fordist political theory and explorations of the post-human (...) in order to develop conceptual hybrids that are able to inject politics into media theoretical accounts, as well as excavate histories of cultural techniques of cognitive capitalism. (shrink)

Walter Benjamin’s 1936 essay, ‘The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction’, constitutes one of the earliest reflections on the way in which the cultural experience and interpretation is transformed by the advent of what were then the ‘new’ media technologies of photography and film. Benjamin directs attention to the way in which these technologies release cultural objects from their unique presence in a place and make them uniformly available irrespective of spatial location. The way in which (...) old media technologies apparently obliterate the place of cultural objects is also a feature of new media. However, the apparent obliteration of place that occurs in this way is itself problematic, in giving rise to a loss of the sense of spatial and temporal distance, and so of the relative locatedness of both experiencing subject and interpreted object. The loss of a sense of the place of the object threatens a loss of the sense of place of the subject, and with it, a loss of a proper sense of heritage as such. (shrink)

This article examines whether the attention to cultural products on the internet is more democratically structured than in traditional print media, and how these types of media attention affect commercial success. For the U.S. fiction book releases in February 2009, I analyze consumer ratings at the web store Amazon.com and the social networking site Goodreads.com. The results show that on the internet far more books receive attention, and that this indeed comes to the advantage of female authors and (...) authors of popular fiction. Moreover, online publicity positively affects commercial success. These outcomes suggest that online attention to cultural products dampens the effects of institutionally embedded evaluations, while word-of-mouth mechanisms are becoming increasingly prominent in terms of how cultural products are discussed. (shrink)