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Media Environment (media + environment)

Distribution by Scientific Domains
Humanities and Social Sciences100%

Selected Abstracts

Reconceptualizing Collective Action in the Contemporary Media Environment

COMMUNICATION THEORY, Issue 4 2005
Bruce Bimber
Collective action theory, which is widely applied to explain human phenomena in which public goods are at stake, traditionally rests on at least two main tenets: that individuals confront discrete decisions about free riding and that formal organization is central to locating and contacting potential participants in collective action, motivating them, and coordinating their actions. Recent uses of technologies of information and communication for collective action appear in some instances to violate these two tenets. In order to explain these, we reconceptualize collective action as a phenomenon of boundary crossing between private and public domains. We show how a reconceptualized theory of collective action can better account for certain contemporary phenomena, and we situate traditional collective action theory as a special case of our expanded theory. [source]

Community engagement for counterterrorism: lessons from the United Kingdom

INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS, Issue 4 2010
RACHEL BRIGGS
This article explores the development of community engagement within the UK's strategy to tackle international terrorism linked to and inspired by Al-Qaeda, commonly known as CONTEST. It focuses mostly on the ,Prevent' strand of the strategy which seeks to prevent radicalization towards violence, reduce tacit support for violence, and increase the resilience of communities to tackle radicalization and extremist messages themselves. Community engagement for counterterrorism also relates to certain aspects of the ,Pursue' strand of CONTEST, and these are highlighted. The article outlines the case for a community-based approach to counterterrorism and outlines a number of the key developments in its emergence from 2005 onwards. It analyses the performance of this aspect of the counterterrorism strategy, pointing to a number of shortcomings in relation to the establishment of partnerships, the integration of the approach, capacity shortfalls at the local level, and the wider challenges of a hostile political and media environment. Written as the new UK coalition government announces a review of the ,Prevent' strategy, it offers a number of recommendations for the future direction of this area of policy. It calls for an overhaul in working styles, a focus on people rather than projects, and the need to draw a much clearer line between downstream and targeted ,Prevent' work and the broader and longer-term community development work, with the latter encapsulated within the government's Big Society Programme and aimed at all fragile communities, not just Muslims. [source]

No Shades of Gray: The Binary Discourse of George W. Bush and an Echoing Press

JOURNAL OF COMMUNICATION, Issue 2 2004
Kevin Coe
Binary communications represent the world as a place of polar opposites. Such conceptions of reality, although not uncommon in Western thought, take on a heightened importance when political leaders employ them in a concerted, strategic discourse in a mass media environment. With this in mind, this research offers a conception of binary discourse and uses this as a foundation to examine (a) the use of binaries by U.S. President George W. Bush in 15 national addresses, from his inauguration in January 2001 to commencement of the Iraq War in March 2003, and (b) the responses of editorials in 20 leading U.S. newspapers to the president's communications. [source]

STRATEGY AND STRUCTURE OF MARKET COMPETITION: THE TAIWANESE CABLE TV INDUSTRY IN THE 1990s

THE DEVELOPING ECONOMIES, Issue 3 2002
Lu-Lin CHENG
Cable TV plays a dominant role in the media environment of Taiwanese society. Before the passage of the Cable TV Law in 1993, the industry was a vibrant informal sector; it was highly differentiated, and acted as a democratic alternative to the formal media. The 1993 Cable TV Law, which designed a competitive market with five licenses issued in each area, was touted as a victory for democracy by the opposition parties. In less than a decade, however, drastic merger movements led to a monopolistic structure. The abuse of monopolistic power has become pervasive. This article studies this unexpected historical twist by examining the industry's market dynamics during the country's democratization in the 1990s. To show the path-dependent mechanisms in the nonlinear development trajectory of the market, a sociological approach is applied that emphasizes firms' competitive strategies in controlling the multiple dimensions of uncertainties and rules that induce this competition. [source]

Introducing the PCMC Model: An Investigative Framework for Young People's Processing of Commercialized Media Content

COMMUNICATION THEORY, Issue 4 2010
Moniek Buijzen
There is a vital need for an updated evaluation of children's and adolescents' changing commercial media environment. In this article, we introduce an investigative framework for young people's processing of commercial media content (PCMC) that can deal with current and future developments in the media landscape. To develop this framework, we (a) introduce an integrated model of young people's persuasion processing, adopting a developmental perspective on adult persuasion models; (b) theorize how communication can predict persuasion processing, based on a limited capacity information processing approach; (c) identify specific message characteristics that affect persuasion processing (e.g., prominence, interactivity, integration). Thus, the PCMC model provides a theoretical framework as well as specific guidelines for future research investigating young people's commercialized media environment. Une présentation du modèle TCMC : un cadre d'étude pour le traitement des contenus médiatiques commerciaux chez les jeunes Il faut remettre à jour l'évaluation de l'environnement médiatique commercial changeant des enfants et des adolescents. Dans cet article, nous présentons un cadre d'étude pour le traitement des contenus médiatiques commerciaux chez les jeunes (TCMC). Ce cadre peut gérer les développements actuels et futurs dans le paysage médiatique. Pour développer ce cadre, (1) nous présentons un modèle intégré du traitement de la persuasion chez les jeunes, en adoptant une perspective développementale des modèles de persuasion des adultes; (2) nous théorisons sur les manières dont la communication peut prédire le traitement de la persuasion, à partir d'une approche du traitement de l'information à capacité limitée; (3) nous identifions des caractéristiques spécifiques des messages qui influencent le traitement de la persuasion (p. ex., la saillance, l'interactivité et l'intégration). Ainsi, le modèle TCMC offre un cadre théorique ainsi que des directives spécifiques pour la recherche future sur l'environnement médiatique commercialisé des jeunes. Das PCMC-Modell: Ein investigatives Bezugssystem für die Verarbeitung von werblichen Medieninhalten durch Jugendliche Es gibt einen Bedarf für eine aktualisierte Bewertung der sich veränderten werblichen Medienumgebung von Kindern und Jugendlichen. In diesem Aufsatz diskutieren wir ein investigatives Bezugssystem für die Verarbeitung von werblichen Medieninhalten durch Jugendliche (PCMC-Modell), welches sich aktuellen und zukünftigen Entwicklungen der Medienlandschaft anpasst. Um dieses Bezugsystem zu entwickeln, stellen wir (1) ein integratives Modell der Verarbeitung von Persuasion durch Jugendliche vor, welches eine Entwicklungsperspektive in die Auseinandersetzung mit Persuasionsmodellen für Erwachsene einbringt; (2) theoretisieren basierend auf einem Ansatz der Informationsverarbeitung mit begrenzten Kapazitäten (limited capacity approach), wie Kommunikation persuasive Prozesse vorhersagen kann und (3) identifizieren spezifische Botschaftseigenschaften, die die Verarbeitung von Persuasion beeinflussen (z.B. Prominenz, Interaktivität, Integration). Damit bietet das PCMC-Modell einen theoretischen Rahmen sowie spezifischen Anweisungen für zukünftige Forschungsarbeiten, die die kommerziellen Medienumgebungen Jugendlicher untersuchen. Un Modelo de Procesamiento para el Contenido Comercial de los Medios Resumen Hay una necesidad vital de actualizar la evaluación del cambiante ambiente comercial de los medios para niños y adolescentes. En este ensayo, introducimos un marco investigativo para el procesamiento del contenido comercial de los medios por parte de las personas jóvenes (PCMC) que permita abordar los desarrollos corrientes y futuros del paisaje de los medios. Para desarrollar este marco, (1) introducimos un modelo integrado del procesamiento persuasivo de las personas jóvenes, adoptando una perspectiva de desarrollo de los modelos persuasivos adultos; (2) teorizamos cómo la comunicación puede predecir el procesamiento persuasivo, basado en un enfoque de la capacidad limitada de procesamiento de la información; (3) identificamos las características específicas de los mensajes que afectan el procesamiento persuasivo (a saber, prominencia, interactividad, integración). Así, el modelo PCMC provee de un marco teórico así como también de guías para la investigación futura sobre el ambiente de comercialización de los medios para la gente joven. [source]

Front and Back Covers, Volume 26, Number 3.

ANTHROPOLOGY TODAY, Issue 3 2010
June 2010
Front cover caption, volume 26 issue 3 Front cover A Greenpeace activist dressed as Justice protests in front of the Japanese embassy in Buenos Aires. She draws attention to the trial of Toru Suzuki and Junichi Sato, two Greenpeace activists seeking to expose corruption in the Japanese whale meat industry, who are being prosecuted in the Japanese courts for theft and trespass, in a trial that has continued since 2008. Back in 1993, Arne Kalland analyzed the notable success of the Western environmental movement, Greenpeace in particular, in mobilizing public opinion against continued whaling in the northern hemisphere. The key to this success, Kalland argued, lay in the environmentalists' construction of the ,superwhale', an imaginary, mythic creation which displayed numerous positive qualities with which people could closely identify. Environmentalist thinking has now become intertwined with the discourse of animal rights, including the claim that whales are special to the extent that they are entitled to legal rights on a somewhat similar basis to human beings. In this image, the script on the dress, the Japanese emblem of the rising sun, the blindfold and the scales of justice unbalanced by Japanese-caught whale meat all work to signify that the Japanese are entirely out of step with such progressive ideas. In this issue, Adrian Peace argues that the conflicting attitudes of Japan and Australia to whales and on the practice of whaling stem from diverging cultural and historical factors , the most basic among which is that, whilst Australians construe whales as awesome mammals, the Japanese perceive them as mere fish. Back cover FOOTBALL IN AFRICA On 11 June 2010, all eyes will turn to Johannesburg, South Africa, for the start of the 19th FIFA World Cup. The month-long tournament is one of the world's biggest sporting events, and this year will involve 32 teams from all over the world, attracting a worldwide audience of over 3 billion people and involving commercial agreements worth more than US $21 billion. Significantly, this is also the first time the competition has been held on the African continent. On the eve of the tournament, Richard Vokes reflects on the history and meaning of ,the beautiful game' in Africa, on the basis of a case study from southwestern Uganda. Football was introduced to Uganda by early European missionaries, and later gained in popularity as a result of the patronage it received from first colonial, and later post-colonial, state enterprises. However, the game's current mass appeal is a more recent phenomenon, due in large part to the media reforms introduced in Uganda after 1986, and the advent of satellite broadcasting technology. Vokes examines the nature of this new fandom, and of the media environments which have generated it. He argues that whilst certain features of the current craze , in particular, its peculiar fascination for specifically English football , can be seen as an outcome of spectatorship, this does not mean that the phenomenon is superficial. On the contrary, the new interest in football in Uganda has frequently produced unexpected, and in some ways quite profound, social effects. In his editorial Keith Hart uses the occasion of the World Cup to reflect on South Africa's significance for the world, as both the most developed African nation and the chief victim of the HIV/AIDS epidemic. [source]