The last technological developments have introduced a huge amount of hardware, communication systems, and information systems into life of human beings. But also has brought a multiplicity of images, objects and sensitive experiences having a direct effect in social life. It can be said that this amount of current elements deserve to be analyzed in order to try to clarify the nature of information technology and its political impact. That means that far over history of scientific developments, it is precise (...) to take into account a critical task of the role of the information techniques in different levels of society (moral, social and economic levels), but after all the role playing in the way we perceive the world. For that, we treat some of the technological developments related to virtual reality; then, we handle the concept of simulation, and finally we establish the distinction between reality and virtuality. (shrink)

Deconstruction and the Visual Arts brings together a series of new essays by scholars of aesthetics, art history and criticism, film, television and architecture. Working with the ideas of French philosopher Jacques Derrida, the essays explore the full range of his analyses. They are modelled on the variety of critical approaches that he has encouraged, from critiques of the foundations of our thinking and disciplinary demarcation, to creative and experimental readings of visual 'texts'. Representing some of the most innovative thinking (...) in the various arts disciplines, these contributions offer important challenges to existing disciplinary orthodoxies. Also included in this volume is a long interview with Derrida, published here for the first time. (shrink)

A funny, touching look at the life of a social media influencer who starts to question the #goals life she has created for herself. Every day, Élie motivates her hundreds of thousands of followers to become the best versions of themselves by posting videos of exercise routines and high-protein breakfast recipes. Far from the shy teenager that she was, she is now in a very public relationship with singer Samuel Vanasse, and together they have become one of the most (...) popular influencer couples in the country. She has succeeded. She shines. And yet, Élie worries that her life is not as flawless as she makes it seem on YouTube and Instagram. Between her obsession with the "ideal weight," her growing attraction to another man, her family's disdain for her career as a content creator and a collaboration with another influencer who Élie can't stand, a thought haunts her. What if, by trying to become everything she wanted to be, she's lost herself along the way? Suck it In and Smile is an intimate exploration of our obsession with appearances and the hypocrisies that appear when you must craft the perfect online life. (shrink)

Titles of modern interviews are studied on the material of German mass media texts. Leading syntactic structures, communicative signs and pragmatical aspects of titles are analyzed. The most attention is paid to titles in form of questions or exclamation, which have the strongest communicative pragmatical effect. Exclamation and questions in the position of titles lose value of incentive and interrogative, incentive or interrogative remain only formally, which makes them quasi-incentive and quasi-interrogative. Exclamation and question functions go by the (...) wayside, in the first place extends forecasting capabilities for the content of subsequent title text. Besides, in article the titles in the form of question containing the address are analyzed. Illocutionary goal of these titles is an invitation to a discussion of the potential reader, and a joint search for common perspectives in this or that activity, for selected search of the most appropriate of all the possible solutions to a problem. They seem to reproduce the process of reflection of the author and cause to think about the issues raised by recipients. (shrink)

Since seminal essays like Adorno’s ‘The Culture Industry’ and Benjamin’s ‘The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction,’ the mass media has been of central concern for Critical Theory. Yet Critical Theorists have produced relatively little in the way of systematic analysis of the concrete institutions of mass communication. Early on, Habermas seemed to be headed in this direction, especially with the publication of The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere. However, in Habermas’s later years, (...) this concern is eclipsed, on the one hand by an ideal theory of communication which says relatively little about non-ideal institutions that “systematically distort” communication, and on the other hand by an increasing focus on properly “political” institutions and the formal structure of law, exemplified by his later work Between Facts and Norms. In this essay, I will show how the colonization of public space by private interests, via technological media, remains sorely under-theorized in Habermas’s work, and that this is not just a peripheral oversight but a central problem that Habermas fails to resolve. I will then give some preliminary suggestions as to how one might expand and develop the critique of systematically distorted communication in more fruitful directions by developing the idea of a politics of meaning. My argument is located within the extensive discussion generated by the relatively recent translation of The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere into English, which has produced many useful and important criticisms. (shrink)

This paper is concerned with the role of self-observation in managing complexity in meaning systems. Revising Niklas Luhmann's theory of mass media, we approach the mass media system as a social sub-system functionally specialized in the coupling of psychic systems' self-observation and social systems' self-observation.According to Autopoietic Systems Theory and von Foerster's second order cybernetics, self-observation presupposes a capability for meta-observation that demands a specific distinction between observer and actor. This distinction seems especially relevant in those (...) social contexts where a separation between the action of observation and other social actions is required. However, in those social contexts where the defining action is precisely observation, the border between observer and actor is blurred.We shall consider the significant divergence between the implicit and the explicit epistemologies of the mass media system, which appears to be characterized by the explicit assumption of a classic objectivist epistemology, on one side, and a relativist epistemology on the other, posing a hybrid epistemic status somewhere in between science and arts. (shrink)

It is to an over-all situation based upon the complex play of political, social, economic and scientific factors, along with technological and mass media factors unique to our own era, that we owe the general trend toward multi-pluri-inter-trans-disciplinary questions so generally prevalent in our world today.

In this essay the visual arts of the machine age morph into literature and theory and then back again to images, gestures, and thought.

The mass media promotes terrorism by stressing fear and an uncertain future. Major changes in US foreign and domestic policy essentially went unreported and unchallenged by the dominant news organizations. Notwithstanding the long relationship in the United States between fear and crime, the role of the mass media in promoting fear has become more pronounced since the United States `discovered' international terrorism on 11 September 2001. Extensive qualitative media analysis shows that political decision-makers quickly adjusted (...) propaganda passages, prepared as part of the Project for the New American Century, to emphasize domestic support for the new US role in leading the world. These messages were folded into the previous crime-related discourse of fear, which may be defined as the pervasive communication, symbolic awareness, and expectation that danger and risk are a central feature of everyday life. Politicians marshaled critical symbols and icons joining terrorism with Iraq, the Muslim faith, and a vast number of non-western nations to strategically promote fear and use of audience beliefs and assumptions about danger, risk and fear in order to achieve certain goals, including expanding domestic social control. (shrink)

In company with its sister volume, Arts-Based Research Across Textual Media in Education explores arts-based approaches to research across media, including film and comics-related material, from a variety of geographic locations and across a range of sub-disciplines within the field of education. This first volume takes a textual focus, capturing process, poetic, and dramaturgical approaches. The authors aim to highlight some of the approaches that are not always centered in arts-based research. The contributors represent a variety of arts-based (...) practices and methods, and they weave this marrying of artistic and scientific expertise and experience into the fabric of the chapters themselves. Authors from international contexts speak to the importance of utilizing artistic approaches for research processes. From multimodal field notes to poetic forms to the dramaturgical, chapters in this book represent steps forward in educational inquiry to bringing together both the creative and credible. The book includes multiple images and rich descriptions shared from the field. This first volume covers amongst other topics: co-created narratives; creative fiction in research; analytic portraits; dramatic representation, and critical poetic inquiry. It would be suitable for graduate students and scholars interested in qualitative inquiry and arts-based methods, in Education and the social sciences. (shrink)

Les quatre textes qui suivent tentent d'analyser dans la littérature québécoise et française récente les manifestations d'une société en mutation, désireuse ou non de rompre avec les stéréotypes de sexes, de revisiter et réconcilier féminin et masculin. Les écrivaines, avec quelques belles longueurs d'avance, continuent de vouloir à la fois le corps et l'esprit, la vie et la fiction, de jongler avec l'altérité et les identités plurielles et de travailler des textes ûctionnels, théoriques et incamés, qui prennent en compte le (...) réel Leur travail de réflexion et de création ne cesse, en fait, d'interroger les artifices de l'art, les mensonges de la petite et de la grande histoire, et de prouver qu'on ne peut impunément dissocier éthique et esthétique ! Le thème de l'autobiographie foetale qui hante la littérature masculine récente est très représentatif de la masculinité en crise; il cristallise ses angoisses, ses résistances ou sa nouvelle quête émotive, affective et corporelle.The following four-part paper try to analyse in recent quebecer and french littérature the manifestations of a changing society, wether it be willing or not to break with gender stereotypes and reconcile the masculine/feminine dichotomy. Female writers still show leadership in wanting both body and mind, life and fiction; in thinking ofalterity and multiple identities; and in working at fictionnal, theoretical and incarnate texts wich take reality into considerations. Their reflexion and creation in effect never stops questionning the artistic device, the lies of both small and big history to prove that we cannot inconsiderately dissociate Ethics from Esthetics ! The foetal autobiography team now haunting recent male littérature is very representative of the masculinity crisis; it cristallizes his anguish resistances or his new emotive, affective and corporeal quest. (shrink)

Analyzes twentieth-century media and cultural theories as they relate to changes in political economy, communication technology, popular culture and collective consciousness in the United States. It argues that much of contemporary media environment is operating as Western capitalist media have for more than a century, making these theories more relevant than ever.

Few today can escape exposure to mass art. Nevertheless, despite the fact that mass art provides the primary source of aesthetic experience for the majority of people, mass art is a topic that has been neglected by analytic philosophers of art. The Philosophy of Mass Art addresses that lacuna. It shows why philosophers have previously resisted and/or misunderstood mass art and it develops new frameworks for understanding mass art in relation to the emotions, morality, (...) and ideology. (shrink)

Adults spend most of their conscious life speaking, comprehending, writing, and reading discourse. It is entirely appropriate for cognitive science to investigate discourse especially as transmitted texts or printed media, such as books, newspapers, magazines, and computers. However, there is another reason why text understanding has been one of the prototypical areas of study in cognitive science: Interdisciplinary work is absolutely essential. As cognitive scientists have unraveled the puzzles of text comprehension, they have embraced the insights and methodologies from (...) several disciplines. (shrink)

The article focuses on the possibility of reconsidering the relationship existing between monstrosity and sublime in the light of Jean-François Lyotard’s interpretation of the Kantian sublime. Sublime and monstrosity unveil a system of analogies and differences, which can depict the aesthetic experience mediated by mass media, rather than by art. The lack of form and the sometimes obscene drift, which are typical of media experience, configure indeed a sensibility that oscillates between the ascension to sublime heights and (...) the emergence of monsters. (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)

The aim of this article is to examine the potential influence of mass-media on public’s opinions and attitudes towards economic liberalism. It shows that, without relying to the assumption that journalists pursue such a purpose, the nature of the media system leads them to give a rather negative image of how the market economy works and doesn’t give the same place to liberal thesis with respect to others. Our argument is founded on a critique of the economic (...) model of spatial competition currently used in this field, on the crucial role that norms inherent to the profession of journalist play and the characteristics of the demand which media face. L’objet de cet article est d’examiner la question de l’influence éventuelle des médias de masse sur les opinions et attitudes du public à l’égard du libéralisme économique. On y montre que, sans recourir à l’hypothèse que les journalistes poursuivent consciemment un tel objectif, la nature du système médiatique les conduit à donner une image plutôt négative du fonctionnement de l’économie de marché et à ne pas donner une place équilibrée à l’exposé des thèses libérales par rapport aux autres. L’argumentation suivie repose sur la critique du modèle économique de la concurrence spatiale habituellement utilisé à ce sujet, sur le rôle déterminant que jouent les normes propres à la profession de journaliste et les caractéristiques de la demande s’adressant aux médias. (shrink)

Nursing has evolved, yet media representation has arguably failed to keep up. This work explores why representation has been slow in accurately depicting nurses' responsibilities, impacts on public perceptions and professional identity. A critical realist review was employed as this method enables in-depth exploration into why something exists. A multidisciplinary approach was adopted, drawing from feminist, psychological and sociological theories to provide insightful understanding and recommendations. One main feminist lens has been implemented, using Laura Mulvey’s ‘Male-Gaze’ framework for content (...) analysis of three nurse-related advertisements to explore how the profession's female status influences representation, public perception and how this might impact nursing. Nurse representation has important real-world consequences. It is essential to improve unnecessary negative portrayals and contest ingrained stereotypes as there are costs to public opinion and nursing's self-identity. Nursing's female status has an impact within a male-dominated media industry, with a leisurely approach adopted toward changing representation. Media images become societally ingrained, this reiterates the significance of accurate/positive depictions. Social media is an instant method of communication with the public to combat stereotypes and maintain engagement to provide better understanding of what nurses do. (shrink)

Against Transmission introduces the technical history and phenomenology of media, a field of study that explains the characteristics of contemporary life by looking to the technical properties of machines. By studying the engineering of signal processing, the book interrogates how the understanding of media-as-machine exposes us to a particular phenomenological relationship to the world, asking: what can the hardware of machines that segment information into very small elements tell us about experiences of time, memory and history? This book (...) offers both a detailed and radical investigation of the technical architecture of media such as television, computers, cameras, and cinematography. It achieves this through in-depth archive research into the history of the development of media technology, combined with innovative readings of key concepts from philosophers of media such as Harold A. Innis, Marshall McLuhan, Friedrich Kittler, Siegfried Zielinski and Wolfgang Ernst. Teaming philosophical inquiry with thorough technical and historical analysis, in a broad range of international case studies, from early experimental cinema and television to contemporary media art and innovative hardware developments, Barker shows how the technical discoveries made in these contexts have engineered the experiences of time in contemporary media culture. (shrink)

Theoretical substantiations and practical recommendations on media educational contain against gender stereotypes in the Ukrainian mass media are given in the work. Attention is paid to the pathogenic factor of the use of gender-sensitive content. The work is based on propedeutic theoretic studies of cultural and psychosocial background of Ukraine. We also used a content analysis of news and advertising materials of heterogenic media; sociologic methods ; modelling of educational situations and forecasting of expected results. That (...) was an end-to-end method of generalization that covered theoretical and practical stages of the study. It is proved that despite the weakening of gender divisions in the socio-cultural sphere in the world, in developing countries gender stereotypes remain a powerful tool for affective approach of media and advertising to the consumer. Author's ways to increase the level of media literacy and critical thinking with the help of gender-sensitive experiments, mini-projects, filling the media space with "mirror" about sexist content and creating a personal media field are proposed. (shrink)

The interrelationschip of culture, nation and communication is one of the key themes in the study of collective identities and nationalism. In this opening article to this special issue this interrelationship is being assessed. The article aims to contribute to a discussion ofthe assumptions on which the above interrelationship is built.It is argued that nationhood is at the point of intersection with a plurality of discourses related to geography, history, culture, polities, ideology, ethnicity, religion, matriality, economics, and the social. The (...) discourse of nationhood can best be understood in relation to boundedness, continuities and discontinuities, unnity and plurality, the authority of the past, and the imperative of the present.Contributions of a number of contemporary thinkers are incorporated in this article in order to underline the complex and contested discursive terrain that nationhood undoubtedly is. It is concluded that various cultures also manifest different and fragmented identities. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Journal of Aesthetic Education 37.4 (2003) 41-50 [Access article in PDF] Encounter Between Hyper-Media and Art Education:A Retrospection of Jean-Jacques Rousseau or Memories of Art and EducationToday both art and education are experiencing profound change as a result of emerging technologies. This essay attempts to redefine art education by considering the latest media art as the culmination of change in art. Statements about art education are (...) only viable in the meta-context of art, as art education must start with the work to objectify, as well as structure, "art." Atthe same time, these meta-statements can cast light on the "foundation" of art.Attempts to view the totality of art up to the present time from the "end" of history (meta) and questioning of the "beginning" of art and mankind (foundation) are two sides of the same phenomenon.Media art is an example of this phenomenon which reflects both the meta-context and foundation of art. For example, the work of Jean-Louis Boissier boasts both a radical as well as refined image. 1 His exhibition, "Salle Rousseau" further extends the scale of his conventional work based on the texts of Jean-Jacques Rousseau. 2 This essay revises the text written for the catalogue for the exhibition and aims at analyzing the close relationship between media art and art education, sketching the phases of [End Page 41] meta-statements and foundations which emerge as a result of the interaction of art, media, and education. A Place for Retrospection Boissier's work is well-known for its references to Rousseau. Having been involved in art education, it was natural for me to develop a strong interest in Rousseau, whom I consider to be a founder of modern art and education. The fact that the Boissier's exhibition was held at the "Kyoto Art Centre" in Muromachi, Kyoto supports this belief. Kyoto was the first place in Japan where primary schools based on the school district system were introduced. The Kyoto Art Centre is located at the former Meirin Primary School which was founded at the dawn of modern Japanese education. In its turn, Meirin Primary School succeeded Shingaku-juku. 3 Thus, the location for the BoissierExhibition, dating back to the very beginning of education in Japan, is a place that encourages reflection on the past.While Boissier recollects Rousseau with his unique interactive texts, Rousseau recollects his own past. We, the spectators, are immersed in multiple layers of memories and recollections. Sometimes, however, Rousseau's recollections break through the intricacy and multiple layers and appear to achieve a rapport with the people and flowers which once existed. I have long been attracted by the fresh literal expressions particularly evident in "The Confessions" and other works. The beauty of such expressions must have been born from his affectionate view of nature as illustrated by his hobby of plant collection. View of Nature I cannot help recalling Rousseau whenever I think about the relationship between nature and mankind. Rousseau was a person who could talk beautifully about the direct relationship between nature and mankind. In his writings of "Les riveries du promeneur solitaire" and "Quoted Passage," Rousseau recollects his peaceful life on St. Pierre Island in Lake Bieler in Switzerland where he spent nearly one and a half months after being deported from France as well as his hometown, Geneva because of problems caused by the publication of The Social Contract and Emile. For me, this text is inseparable from the looped image of shallow water which forms the background of the work entitled Flora petrinsularis (1993 and 1994) by Boissier.The beautiful text by Rousseau captivates us without any external help and, at the same time, shows what nature meant to him. The relationship with nature described here is the food as well as foundation of his life. This attitude of accepting nature in the deepest part of his mind is pure agreement with nature as pointed out by Jean Starobinski and represents an experience of fusion... (shrink)

The new mass media technologies now make information processing and distribution more accessible to people globally. Marshall Mcluhan’s “global village” has given birth to a “global palour”. However, perpetrators of crimes now bask on the philosophy of communication media practitioners that people have the right to know what is happening within and outside their environment. This stance is rapidly dismantling, in an amazing fashion, the hitherto accorded respect for media ethics. Neil Postman, a New York (...) class='Hi'>media analyst, describes the creator of technology as the list judge of its consequences, especially with regards to the technology of the media. True, every communication medium is potent with the possibility of occasioning other consequences not directly intended by it. This paper, therefore, attempts to bring to the fore the way communication media are inadvertently promoting crimes and terrorist activities globally. It is the stand of this paper that a global overhaul of mass communication media is needed for balance reportage that would bring about global and meaningful developments of human and material resources under an atmosphere of peace and mutual tolerance. (shrink)

David Berry and Michael Dieter: Introduction -- Florian Cramer: What is post-digital? -- Malcolm Levy and Christine Paul: Genealogies of the new aesthetic -- David Berry: The post-digital constellation -- Lukacs Mirocha: Communication models, aesthetics and ontology of the computational age revealed -- Katja Kwastek: How to be theorized: a f*** academic essay on the new aesthetic -- Daniel Pinkas: A hyperbolic new aesthetic -- Stamatia Portanova: The genius and the algorithm: reflections on the new aesthetic as a computer's vision (...) -- Lev Manovich and Alise Tifentale: Selfiecity: exploring photography and self-fashioning in social media -- David Golumbia: Judging like a machine -- Caroline bassett: Not now? : feminism, technology, postdigital -- Geoff Cox: Postscript on the problem of temporality in the post-digital -- Michael Dieterdark: Patterns: interface design, augmentation and crisis -- Sean Cubitt: Data visualisation and the subject of political aesthetics -- Mercedes Bunz: School will never end: on infantilization in digital environments: amplifying empowerment or propagating stupidity? -- Jussi Parikkathe : City and the city: London 2012 visual (un)commons -- Shintaro Miyazaki: Going beyond the visible: new aesthetic as an aesthetic of blindness? -- Thomas Apperley: Glitch sorting: minecraft, curation and the postdigital -- Marc Tuters: Through glass darkly: Google's gnostic governance -- Vito Campanelli: New aesthetic in the perspective of social photography -- Søren Bro Pold and Christian Ulrik Andersen: Aesthetics of the banal: "new aesthetics" in an era of diverted digital revolutions -- Wendy Chunnet: Works now: belated too early. (shrink)

Posthumanism has come to synthesize philosophical, literary, and artistic responses to the pressures of technology, globalization, and mass extinction in the Anthropocene. It asks what it can mean to be human in an increasingly more-than-human world that has lost faith in the ideal of humanism, the autonomous, rational subject, and it models generative alternatives cognizant of the demands of social and ecological justice. Posthumanism in Art and Science is an anthology of indispensable statements and artworks that provide an unprecedented (...) mapping of this intellectual and aesthetic shift in a global context. It extends across a broad range of fields such as art theory, media studies, continental philosophy, natural science, literary studies, aesthetics, psychoanalysis, environmental humanities, social and political theory, and animal studies. The reader features a diverse sampling of major thinkers including Donna Haraway, Rosi Braidotti, Michael Marder, Karen Barad, Alexander Weheliye, Jay Prosser, Anna Tsing, Graham Harman, Timothy Morton, N. Katherine Hayles, Jane Bennett, Bruno Latour, Francesca Ferrando, and Cary Wolfe, as well as innovative, acclaimed artists and curators such as Yvonne Rainer, Chus Martínez, William Wegman, Nandipha Mntambo, Cassils, Pauline Oliveros, Doo-sung Yoo, and Gavin Steingo. Their provocative and compelling works, including previously unpublished interviews and essays, speak to the ongoing conceptual and political challenge of posthuman theories in a time of unprecedented cultural and environmental crises. An essential primer and reference for educators, students, artists, and art enthusiasts, this volume offers a powerful framework for rethinking anthropocentric certitudes and reenvisioning equitable and sustainable futures. (shrink)

There have been different approaches to the study of the relations between mass media on the one hand and science and technological activities on the other. In this article, I summarize consumption approaches, point out some of their limitations, and then show how these limitations can be addressed by drawing on an ethnographic study I conducted of an academic engineering research laboratory. I analyze the discursive practices lab members use to interpret mass media. One practice treats (...) media as reference points that mark a lab member’s growing alignment with the profession of electrical and computer engineering, and this constructs an engineering self by providing an opportunity for lab members to display knowledge of the prevalence and shapes of robots and align themselves with the firsthand knowledge prized in engineering culture. Another practice uses the discourse-in-practice of religion to construct an engineering self by aligning the speaker with things that are valued in engineering culture such as objectivity, science, evolution, and literature reviews. The final practice I analyze involves repurposing media technologies in ways that are helpful for both current and future lab research projects, which constructs selves by giving lab members an opportunity to show they know which features of media are relevant for engineering and how these features can be used to address engineering problems. I conclude with a discussion of how this contributes to studies of engineering identity and the relations between science, technology, and media. (shrink)

Mass media campaigns are widely and successfully used to change health decisions and behaviors for better or for worse in society. In the United States, media campaigns have been launched at local offices of the states’ department of motor vehicles to promote citizens’ willingness to organ donation and donor registration. We analyze interventional studies of multimedia communication campaigns to encourage organ-donor registration at local offices of states’ department of motor vehicles. The media campaigns include the use (...) of multifaceted communication tools and provide training to desk clerks in the use of scripted messages for the purpose of optimizing enrollment in organ-donor registries. Scripted messages are communicated to customers through mass audiovisual entertainment media, print materials and interpersonal interaction at the offices of departments of motor vehicles. These campaigns give rise to three serious concerns: (1) bias in communicating information with scripted messages without verification of the scientific accuracy of information, (2) the provision of misinformation to future donors that may result in them suffering unintended consequences from consenting to medical procedures before death (e.g, organ preservation and suitability for transplantation), and (3) the unmanaged conflict of interests for organizations charged with implementing these campaigns, (i.e, dual advocacy for transplant recipients and donors). We conclude the following: (1) media campaigns about healthcare should communicate accurate information to the general public and disclose factual materials with the least amount of bias; (2) conflicting interests in media campaigns should be managed with full public transparency; (3) media campaigns should disclose the practical implications of procurement as well as acknowledge the medical, legal, and religious controversies of determining death in organ donation; (4) organ-donor registration must satisfy the criteria of informed consent; (5) media campaigns should serve as a means of public education about organ donation and should not be a form of propaganda. (shrink)

The mass media of communications have often been charged with making our life more vulgar than need be. The assumption which underlies what I have to say is that the influence of unique artistic sensitivities on society has also been increased by the mass media of communications. This is good news and I am aware of the risk I am courting when I attach importance to a promising kind of social change: the academic respectability of pursuing (...) optimistic lines of thought is strictly limited in sociological circles. (shrink)

The mass media of communications have often been charged with making our life more vulgar than need be. The assumption which underlies what I have to say is that the influence of unique artistic sensitivities on society has also been increased by the mass media of communications. This is good news and I am aware of the risk I am courting when I attach importance to a promising kind of social change: the academic respectability of pursuing (...) optimistic lines of thought is strictly limited in sociological circles. (shrink)

This is not the first time the title ‘Art and Technology’ has been used, but to distinguish what I have to say from Walter Gropius's Bauhaus exhibition of 1923, I am subtitling my paper ‘an old tension’, where the architect spoke of ‘a new unity’. In a way, Gropius has been proved right; the structures of the future avoiding all romantic embellishment and whimsy, the cathedrals of socialism, the corporate planning of comprehensive Utopian designs have all gone up and some (...) come down. We have a mass media culture also largely made possible by technology. Corporatist architecture, whether statist ‘social housing’ or freemarket inspired, films, videos, modern recording and musical techniques are all due to technological advances made mostly this century. Only in a very puritanical sense could what has happened be thought of as inevitably bringing with it enslavement. All kinds of possibilities are now open to artists and architects, which would have been imaginable a few decades ago. No one is forced to use these possibilities in any specific way. (shrink)

The claim that media ‘simulate’ political transparency is misleading. It suggests that the ‘simulated’ exists in opposition to the ‘real’ or ‘true’ and, in turn, that transparency should give access to a political reality or ‘truth’ otherwise distorted. This truth or reality is, however, illusory. Transparency should be seen as a process of requiring persons in relations of community with others to account for their actions, understandings and commitments as regards matters directly relevant to those relations. Such an approach (...) denies any simple public‐private divide, emphasises breach of trust in relations of community as the justification for publicising personal conduct and circumstances, and treats scandal as the public revelation of these breaches of trust. (shrink)

Provides guiding principles and values for practising responsible global media ethics.

This paper analyses mass media exposure and its effect on family planning in Bangladesh using data from the Bangladesh Demographic and Health Survey (BDHS) 1993s place of residence, education, economic status, geographical region and number of living children appeared to be the most important variable determining mass media exposure to family planning. Multivariate analysis shows that both radio and TV exposure to family planning messages and ownership of a radio and TV have a significant effect on (...) current use of family planning methods. These factors remain significant determinants of contraceptive use, even after controlling socioeconomic and demographic factors. The study reveals that both socioeconomic development policies and family planning programmes with a special emphasis on mass media, especially radio, may have a significant effect on contraceptive use in Bangladesh. The principal policy challenge is to design communications strategies that will reach the less privileged, rural and illiterate people who are by far the majority in Bangladesh. (shrink)

Employing mapping research, this study mapped the populations of environment-focused social media, audiovisual media and art, in Sweden, over a one-year period. The study explored what is being communicated about the environment in Sweden in these fields, by whom, and how it circulates in diverse communicative spaces. The research identified 502 units across the three fields and a multitude of voices addressing environmental issues through these fields. These channels and voices give visibility to diverse topics and perspectives about (...) the environment and human-nature relations. Simultaneously, there is considerable homogeneity, as a majority of the identified social media, audiovisual media and art units clearly align with ecocentric positions that contest the hegemony of anthropocentrism. These ecocentric voices strongly oppose the dominance of human-centered apprehensions of nature that legitimate nature’s exploitation and the drainage of natural resources for economic profit. Instead, they argue for structural changes promoting environmental protection and the rebalancing of human-nature relations. (shrink)

The aim of this article is to adapt Peirce’s semiotics to the study of media and arts. While some Peircean notions are criticized and rejected, constructive ways of understanding Peirce’s ideas are suggested, and a number of new notions, which are intended to highlight crucial aspects of semiosis, are then introduced. All these ideas and notions are systematically related to one another within the frames of a consistent terminology. The article starts with an investigation of Peirce’s three sign constituents (...) and their interrelations: the representamen, the object, and the interpretant. A new approach to the interrelations of these three sign constituents is then suggested and manifested in a distinction between representation and neopresentation. This is followed by a critical discussion of Peirce’s three types of representation—iconicity, indexicality, and symbolicity—and their interrelations, which sets the stage for a presentation of what is referred to as the material and mental representation model. This model aims to illuminate the problematic relation between material and mental facets of signification triggered by media and art products, and other material things and phenomena. (shrink)

The language specificity of modern media texts and the aspects of studying it in the courses ‘Language and style of modern mass media‘ and ‘Modern mediatext‘ are considered in the article. The language specificity of contemporary media texts is connected, on the one hand, with the subjectivization of the text, enforcement of personality, democratization and with the increase of proportion of a foreign word, intertexuality, intellectualization of the text on the other hand. Subjectivization of the text (...) is connected with the personality enforcement, is determined by the influence of social processes - freedom of speech declaration - and demonstrates itself in the actualization of the author, in a high level of evaluation, emotionality, abundance of metatextual means. Democratization in the modern mass media texts shows itself in the joint functioning of means of different styles: bookish, substandard, jargon. Intertextuality is opposed to the excessive subjectivization of the text and demonstrates itself in the increased usage of foreign words, it is realized with the help of precedent phenomena. Intellectualization shows itself in the active usage of the means of indirect communication by the journalists: tropes, wordplay. Unnecessarily liberal usage of language means for the expressive-evaluating and wordplay on purposes is often contiguous to speech aggression. Consequently studying modern media texts allows students to not only detect and characterize the main features of the modern mass media language and style, structural-semantic peculiarities of a modern mediatext, but also to give its socio-ethical evaluation. (shrink)