International Journal of Media & Cultural Politics - Volume 2, Issue 1, 2006

This paper argues that class analysis contains important tools for understanding contemporary socio-economic inequality in the new media environment. For research seeking to promote the reduction of inequality, the Marxian class analytical tradition has two important features: (1) it identifies collectively-held interests in contrast to the methodological individualism of neo-classical economics, thus providing a basis for political action; and (2) it understands those interests as relational and socially constituted, and therefore processual and able to be changed. Class analysis has declined in effectiveness due to its failure to respond to critiques emanating from identity-based new social movements (e.g. feminism, anti-racism, etc.). These critiques have required universalist social theory such as classical Marxism to reflexively understand its cultural and historical specificity. I argue that such an understanding is becoming possible through analysis of the role of information in the economy. The evidence suggests that the economy is fundamentally a cultural/informational entity, rather than a base for a cultural/ideological superstructure. The paper sketches a revised class theory from a cultural perspective to yield a class analytical framework that will be useful for those excluded from the dominant networks of economic and cultural exchange.

In this paper, we look beyond the textual implications of programmes where the audience has an on-screen role and consider the practice of television programme enhancement through voting, and the provision of spin-off products for mobile phone audiences. While creating options for audience engagement that are increasingly personalized and customized, enhanced television programmes engage in a neo-liberal rhetoric that erases the distinction between consumer and citizen. The juxtaposition of consumer and citizen is used to motivate television voting. Increasingly the programmes resort to the use of tactics that mirror party political electioneering to gain publicity and arouse public interest in the programmes. These tactics result in additional revenue for the telephone service provider, the broadcaster, the production company and for the vote processing company. While the jargon of nationalism aids the assimilation of global formats (Waisbord 2004), it is argued that participation in interactive television voting should be recognized as a commercial transaction, that the television hosts are salespeople for interactive services devised for voting, and that their rhetoric is predominantly a technique of persuasion aimed at motivating audiences to watch the programme and to lodge votes.

Large-scale temporary art exhibitions such as biennials present special characteristics which in turn illuminate broader questions of art practice, curatorship and cultural management, as well as cultural and social affect. This article considers the third Berlin biennale for contemporary art, focusing its initial discussion on questions of exhibition space including hub forms that attempt to break from conventional art-viewing practices. The article further considers the relationship of specific exhibition sites with prior social, cultural and economic histories to the reception of art, inquiring what is at stake in the semiological management of sites of representation, with particular focus on three Berlin locations. Contrasting neo-liberal approaches to large exhibitions structured as commodities in major sites such as the Palais de Tokyo in Paris or London's Tate Modern, with less consumerist and more participative approaches, the analysis considers alternatives to current practice on the part of cultural managers and curators, and debates what is at stake for cultural politics in developing modes of art practice and exhibition.

This essay explores the economic and cultural subordination of British cinema to Hollywood. In particular it analyses how the subsidiary mode of corporate organization allows Hollywood to drill down into national and regional cultures and talent. It offers a case study of Working Title, a nominally British company and Billy Elliott to show how the subsidiary mode works and with what culturally detrimental effects.

Every person, place, or thing has a significant name by which the individual is known and identified. Appellation is simply a system of names. In this article, the author presents a comprehensive analysis of the spectrum of appellation in the broadcasting industry of Nigeria. Observations of development in Nigeria's various states were complemented with data gleaned from radio, television and the Internet. The findings indicate that political realities play a predominant role in determining the call sign of each broadcasting station in Nigeria.

Entertaining the Citizen: When Politics and Popular Culture Converge, Liesbet van Zoonen, (2004) Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 181 pp., ISBN 0742529061 (hbk), 69.00; ISBN 074252907X (pbk), 26.95.

Courting The Abyss: Free Speech and the Liberal Tradition, John Durham Peters, (2005) Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 316 pp., ISBN 0226662748 (hbk), 29.00.

Mixed Media: Feminist Presses and Publishing Politics, Simone Murray, (2004) London: Pluto Press, 260 pp., ISBN 0745320163 (hbk), 55.00; ISBN 0745320155 (pbk), 16.99.

Simone Murray's book looks at the contribution of the second wave feminist presses to the advancement of feminist ideas in the United Kingdom from the early 1970s to the first years of the twenty-first century. These presses, she claims, have profoundly reshaped the publishing industries and the wider literary culture and education. To appreciate the complex interrelations between feminist politics, feminist presses, mainstream publishers, academic feminist publishing, and feminist bestsellers, Murray argues for the development of a publishing centred analysis. This approach enables movement beyond a focus on individual texts so as to contextualize them within the dynamics of the broader publishing industry. Such presses have experienced great difficulties (most are now defunct). Moreover, many mainstream publishers now have extensive gender lists. Nevertheless, Murray argues that feminist presses continue to be a crucial safeguard, against the vagaries of a publishing industry whose interest in feminist texts lies in their ability to generate profit rather than in any real commitment to a feminist political agenda.