International Journal of Media & Cultural Politics - Volume 11, Issue 1, 2015

In retrospect it is easy to identify digital technology and the disruptive nature of the Internet as two key factors shaping the broader screen landscape over the last decade or so, but how did organizations deal with that process at the time? This article examines the role that digitization and its wider ramification across the UK film industry’s patterns of distribution and exhibition played in both the strategic thinking and the operational practice of the UK Film Council (UKFC) during its lifetime (2000–2011). It draws on interviews with key policy shapers and asks whether the UKFC was too slow to identify the transformative impact that digital would have on all areas of the film industry. By focusing on the origins and implementation of the Digital Screen Network, this article examines the impact of this programme on the UK film industry. It also offers insight into the organizational challenges of shaping digital film policy in an international industry.

If in the past, memory has been understood to be a biological phenomenon relating to the individual and his cognition, today it is clear that memory is a social construction effected by political and cultural processes. This study describes the laws used by the state of Israel in order to form its official memory. It describes how collective memory building is interwoven within the legislation that directs the undertakings of the country’s cultural institutions: the educational system, the national symbols, national holidays and memorial days, memory of the Holocaust, preservation of heritage through the erection of museums and physical monuments, commemoration of leaders, and the prevention of certain symbols from entering the public sphere. It demonstrates how the legal apparatus in Israel was mobilized to establish a nationalized collective memory by bridging the ‘essential’ and ‘epochal’ elements of nationbuilding and how law can be both a mnemonic practice and an enabler of mnemonic practices. The study of this process provides us with a general lesson on the role of law in collective memory building, with a particular understanding of elements in Israeli nation-building processes.

This article critically examines the use of elite interviews in media and communications policy research. It addresses the fit between various analytical frameworks and elite interviews as a primary source of data, interviewee selection, access, the conduct of interviews and data analysis. It is argued that there is a lack of methodological explanation and reflection in our field of study. Partly, this is determined by the preferences of publishers and space constrains but also a widespread reluctance to engage with methodological issues. This contributes to the diminishing relevance of large amounts of scholarship for policy-makers who tend to privilege studies based on narrowly defined and soundly elaborated empirical methods. Clear and concise methodological rigour, systematization and ethnographic reflexivity, thus, play an incredibly important role.

This article offers a case study of cultural policy in the post-World War II period in a transitional, often disputed, European region, the Saarland. It tries to illustrate how the French government struggled to infiltrate Saarland’s cinematic landscape from 1945 to 1955. Preferably by means of cultural and documentary films either respecting the specifities of a Saarland mentality and socio-structure or glorifying the region as a flagship European border country, Saarland’s inhabitants should be proselytized from their one-way orientation towards Germany and instead become more open to French culture and customs. However, in the final analysis we found that the impact of French cultural policy on Saarland’s filmic and cinematic landscape remained what it was from the outset: a top-down policy-programme control and ideal conception that was either totally rejected as French high culture or only slightly diffused into the everyday reality of their targeted recipients.

The current article explores a ‘cultural framing hypothesis’, the notion that the media have attributed significance to Huntington’s ‘Clash of Civilization’ theory, while rendering it salient in the public mind. Media framing theory has been utilized to assess Huntington’s visibility both in elite newspapers, as well as in web search engines. Huntington’s theory, despite its diminishing attention, remains salient almost five years after Huntington’s death, which seems to be affecting its overall visibility. The current article concludes: the media attribute significance to Huntington’s theory, despite its diminishing visibility. There is a co-variation between mainstream media coverage and web searching trends of Huntington’s theory. The diminishing salience of the Clash of Civilizations may indicate a shift towards alternative explanations of global conflicts.

In 2008, opponents of US President Barack Obama painted Hitler moustaches on his photographic likeness, and victims of Ponzi schemer Bernard Madoff likened him to Hitler for the way he destroyed lives. This article examines how the ‘Holocaust theme and metaphor’ has emerged through media coverage of significant events in the United States from 2008 to 2009, through an analysis of newspaper articles. This study is situated within the broader context of Holocaust memory in American life. The metaphoric memory involving the Holocaust has less to do with factual, historic events of the Holocaust and more to do with the intended invocation of fear and a strong reaction from the public. This research concludes that references to the ‘Holocaust’ and ‘Hitler’ in news coverage of current events represents a rhetorical device to trigger an emotional reaction from the public, to warn the public against looming danger and to bolster support for their ideological position.

The Hidden Agenda of the Political Mind: How Self-Interest Shap es Our Op inions and Why We Won’t Admit it, Jason Weeden and Robert Kurzban (2014) 1st ed., Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 376 pp., ISBN: 9780691161112, h/bk, $29.95; ISBN: 9781400851966, e-book

The Data Revolution: Big Data , Op en Data , Data Infrast ructures and Their Consequences, Rob Kitchin (2014) 1st ed., London: Sage, 240 pp., ISBN: 9781446287484, p/bk, £22.99; ISBN: 9781446287477, h/bk, £65.00; ISBN: 9781473908260, e-book (http://www.uk.sagepub.com/books/Book242780?subject=F00&fs=1)

Media Fram ing of the Muslim World: Conflicts , Crises and Contexts , Halim Rane, Jacqui Ew art and John Martinkus (2014) 1st ed., London: Palgrave Macmillan, 216 pp., ISBN: 9781137334824, p/bk, 18.99 pounds; ISBN: 9781137334817, h/bk, 60 pounds (http://www.palgrave.com/page/detail/media-framing-of-the-muslim- world-halim-rane/?K=9781137334817)