This article explores the notion of digital non-participation as a form of mediated political action rather than as mere passivity. We generally conceive of participation in a positive sense, as a means for empowerment and a condition for democracy. However, participation is not the only way to achieve political goals in the digital sphere and can be hampered by the ‘dark sides’ of participator…
Using the example of the former German Democratic Republic (GDR), this study deals with the public sphere in Eastern European countries before 1989. It supports the thesis that even the ‘guided’ and controlled daily press enabled the readers (even in a limited way) to observe the process of communication and to make up their own minds. The article is based on two main sources: files from the Fe…
This study examines the extent to which Spanish youth audiences appropriate television fiction and engage in the acceptance and construction of loving stereotypes. It specifically looks at how they identify different kinds of loving relationships. It also explores the intertextual and extratextual interactions they establish in their interpretations. The methodology undertaken is the focus grou…
This article argues that recent scholarly attempts to prescribe creative agency to a user subject rarely consider how the user functions in a broader legal and cultural context. I suggest that the user is a complex subject defined by various cultural and legal discourses, following a critical body of scholarship that calls for a more nuanced approach to the issue of user production. I show how …
Broadcast television faces new challenges in the rapidly changing media environment. This article proposes ‘para-interactivity’ as a concept that identifies the ways television addresses its audiences in the digital age. Para-interactivity is a term that brings together several salient elements in contemporary television texts as well as positing a contemporary context for established and famil…
Based on seven different sports broadcasting markets (Australia, Brazil, Italy, India, South Africa, United Kingdom and the United States), this article provides a comparative analysis of the regulation of television sports broadcasting. The article examines how contrasting perspectives on television and sport – economic and sociocultural – have been reflected in two main approaches to the regu…
The demands of flexible labour and the technologization of social networks are currently being felt in profound shifts in the ways in which we spend time with others. This article analyses the everyday communicative practices of adults living in Sydney surrounding their use of text messaging in shared social spaces. Asking the research participants when, how and why they rely on text messaging …
This article examines how politics, class, family, and morals form discourses of authority and resistance in the Brazilian television mini-series’ representations of national values. The Brazilian mini-series is first placed in a global perspective of genres and formats, including soap opera, the telenovela, the Brazilian series, and film. Following a methodological discussion, the article cons…
The Cultural Revolution ended more than three decades ago and is generally concluded to have been a disaster and trauma; however, it kept resurfacing at different points throughout the past and being interpreted from different perspectives addressing contemporary concerns. TV, one of the most important channels for political communication in China, is closely supervised by the censoring mechani…
While HBO’s The Newsroom presents itself as fictional television, its narrative is driven by critiquing American cable news culture and contemporary journalism ethics. This article analyses popular reflections on the programme to identify what these discourses reveal about public evaluations of the state of the US news media. Based upon 1115 lengthy audience posts and discussions and 49 news ar…
This article argues that the concept of national media systems, and the comparative study of media systems, institutions, and practices, retains relevance in an era of media globalization and technological convergence. It considers various critiques of ‘media systems’ theories, such as those which view the concept of ‘system’ as a legacy of an outdated positivism and those which argue that the …
This article offers a conceptualization of the interrelations between street art and social media in (post-)revolutionary Cairo by focusing on the reasons as to why certain politically engaged young people in Egypt select graffiti as their medium for political expression in a time in which many other media of communication, most notably social media, are available. It contends that the particul…
This article situates The Jeremy Kyle Show, a television talk show broadcast in the United Kingdom, in wider narratives of austerity politics in order to explore the reinforcement and legitimation through reality television of neoliberal measures for economic crisis management. In the first section, it is argued that technologies of confession – lie detectors, paternity tests, drug testing – ar…
In this article, I examine the use of social network website (SNS) as an influential factor for offline protest activities and organizational memberships. The properties of SNSs may help encourage interpersonal interaction, broaden social ties, and provide valuable information about how to become civically and politically involved. I test these hypotheses using data from a survey of attendees f…
Sports media offer a unique discourse site because the nationalistic nature of reporting is often radicalized and in most cases ‘the national flag is waved with eternal enthusiasm’. Therefore, this study examined changes in the coverage of the Israeli national soccer team between 1949 and 2006 through an exploration of the identity of the journalistic narratives’ storytellers and protagonists. …
More than two decades after China was first connected to the Internet, scholars still debate the political impact of online media. Yet, the debate is stalled by a limited view of both politics and the media’s role in political contestation. In order to offer a more nuanced account of the relationship between online media and politics, this article proposes a theoretical framework that pays atte…
Special legislation associated with mega sporting events has enabled new forms of cultural enclosure, effectively commoditising aspects of cultural expression that previously remained in the public domain. In this article, the authors examine the tension between economic and political justifications for hosting the Olympics and the intellectual property enclosures that are imposed upon host nat…
What does open source mean for culture? For knowledge? As cultural production has come to be characterized by contribution as well as consumption and as alternative modes of intellectual property transfer challenge the ‘dominant paradigm’ that knowledge and information should be protected and monetized, the logic of ‘open sourcing’ has extended into many cultural spheres. This article positions…
The position of copyright in the arena of sports content rights and property rights of sporting organizations is a highly contested area of legal and commercial interest in the digital age. At its core is the issue of whether copyright can be incorporated into sports rights contracts as it has been for many years. This article identifies the ramifications of this debate for the existing busines…