Suchergebnisse

This is an Accepted Manuscript of an article published by Taylor & Francis in Javnost - The Public on 25 Feb 2017, available online: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13183222.2017.1288779 ; In this article I make a case for the importance of public engagement and political commitment on the part of communication scholars. I do this initially by drawing on the work of Michael Burawoy who, in his 2004 Presidential Address to the American Sociological Association, made an impassioned argument for the rebirth of a public sociology. Burawoy's provocation has, however, been largely overlooked by scholars working in the field of communication and media. I then discuss the impact of the Research Excellence Framework on public communication research in the United Kingdom, a development that I so far consider to be, on the whole, positive for the field of communication and media research because it has provided incentives for academics to engage with publics. However, it is crucially important to ground this public engagement in critical theory, which means that we should question the traditional dichotomy between academic and activist. The grounds for engagement in theories of reciprocity and generality have implications for what "good" and "bad" public communication research might be. Clearly, however, we need to understand who our publics are. To this end, I discuss some of the difficulties, encountered personally, in conducting critically-informed public communication research.

AbstractIn a late October 2022 international YouGov public opinion poll, findings indicated that more Indians attributed responsibility for the Russian invasion of Ukraine to 'the West' rather than Russia (28% compared to 27%, while 45% indicated both were accountable or expressed uncertainty). This study seeks to elucidate why such perceptions prevail, drawing upon the longstanding strategic partnership between the former Soviet Union and, subsequently, Russia, with India dating back to the 1950s and the portrayal of the Russian invasion within Indian broadcast news media. We argue that the media coverage of the conflict exhibits three main frames: the invasion as an attack by Russia on Ukrainian sovereignty, an anti-West pro-Russia frame, and a perspective aligning with Indian national interests. Both international and domestic proponents of these frames actively seek to shape the narrative presented, with media organizations deciding which frames to prioritize and which political actors to endorse. Consequently, we argue that the news media plays a pivotal role in shaping public perceptions of the conflict, influencing the Indian government's approach toward the war.

The study of mundane, everyday uses of the Internet remains an emerging field of inquiry. Analysing data from a large seven country survey of Internet use and adapting concepts and methods developed by Bourdieu, we show that there are distinct clusters of users who use the Internet in diverse ways to solve everyday problems, such as buying a mobile phone or diagnosing an illness. Such everyday problem-solving is dependent upon degrees of economic, social, digital and cultural capital, and varies across countries. A comparative methodological strategy combined the use of multiple correspondence analysis (MCA), hierarchical cluster analysis (HCA), and for the first time in the field, multiple factor analysis for contingency tables (MFACTs). Extending the work of Bourdieu and the sociology of class more generally, we argue that digital capital functions as a bridging capital aiding the convertibility of other forms of capital to the benefit of already advantaged groups.

This paper was accepted for publication in the journal Media, Culture and Society and the definitive published version is available at http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0163443716671494 ; In this response to our critics and fellow-travellers we reaffirm our claim that contemporary media studies should reinvent a critical concept of ideology. We do this through addressing some of the problems with older critical conceptions of ideology and suggesting potentially fruitful ways forward through engaging with research traditions that have become neglected or are overlooked in the field. This avowedly inter-disciplinary position draws on political philosophy, critical realism, ordinary language philosophy, and discursive psychology. At the end of the essay we show how a critical concept of ideology can be applied in analysis of news reporting.

The concept of mediatization has received considerable scholarly attention in recent years in communication research aimed at analyzing the extent to which media influence politics or the political process (Esser 2013; Landerer 2013; Lilleker 2006; Mazzoleni and Schulz 1999; Stromback 2008). Mediatization has intensified alongside technological innovation since the 1990s that has afforded new types of mediatized political experience beyond newspapers, radio and television. During the same timescale, traditional media have become the most important source of political information in many less developed countries where television, for example, now with a mass audience is considered 'new' to many, soon to be followed by the growth of the internet. Mediatization is not confined to politics, but has permeated all aspects of human lives, which has led Deuze (2011: 138) to proclaim that "our life is lived in, rather than with, media" although the spatial, class and gendered limits of our media immersion remain to be seen. Despite the importance of the process of mediatization in a large number of societies and the growing literature on the topic, the study of mediatization in developing countries such as India has been almost non-existent.