Media & Communication
‘They are us’: Orientalist perspective challenged in New Zealand newspapers’ coverage
It has frequently been debated that western media coverage of Islam and Muslims constructs an Orientalist image of Islam – often that Islam is a threat to the West – that sidelines and dehumanizes Muslims. However by examining the terrorist incident that occurred in Christchurch New Zealand in March 2019 in which 51 Muslims were killed at a Mosque this study discursively argues that an Orientalist view was not manifest in the coverage of New Zealand’s newspapers. Focusing on two mainstream newspapers the New Zealand Herald and The Press this study also argues that New Zealand’s newspapers played a constructive role in their opposition to and condemnation of the terrorist attacks. This study argues that while covering the attacks these media outlets fully supported and reinforced the view that the people of New Zealand belong to a society of which Muslims are an essential part. The way these newspapers framed the issue the terminology used and the metaphors they selected to construct the terrorist attack challenged Orientalist perceptions and thereby rejected any perceived clash of civilizations. The selected newspapers were supportive of the victims the victims’ families and the Muslim community as a whole. This study also observes that a shift in media coverage from negative to positive perceptions of Muslims is possible.
The digital navigator programme in the time of COVID-19: A case study on Philadelphia’s programme
The onset of the COVID-19 pandemic posed dire challenges for digital inclusion and digital literacy among marginalized communities. This article adopts a case study approach to analyse how the digital navigator programme (DNP) in Philadelphia addresses these challenges. The DNP in this city implements a policy design and governance strategy which presents a novel approach to bolstering universal access to information and communication technology (ICT) infrastructure digital inclusion and digital literacy in order to combat the pandemic’s pernicious impact in worsening the digital divide in the city. This policy approach entails collaborative governance and cross-sector partnerships to address digital equity issues exacerbated by the pandemic. This study offers empirical evidence on the demands that the city’s residents placed on the DNP to address their digital inclusion and digital literacy issues. It also provides an understanding of the measures that the DNP’s partners adopted to respond to the citizens’ needs for digital equity.
Neorealist portrayal of refugee children in Capernaum (2018)
This article explores the social and form-related similarities and differences between the film Capernaum and Italian neorealism focusing on the portrayal of refugee children. The Syrian Civil War has displaced millions of people and children who have sought refuge in Syria’s neighbouring countries such as Lebanon and Turkey have become victims of poverty and moral degeneration. Similarly the Second World War left children orphaned and many harsh realities emerged such as child labour delinquency abuse and neglect. The Italian neorealism movement highlighted post-war issues such as these in cinema. Capernaum reflects the new realities of the Syrian Civil War as sociological concepts such as forced migration due to war extreme poverty and the victimization of children. This film is important because of its power to generate empathy and (pro-)activism. With an analysis of the mise en scène and contents of Capernaum we show that the film bears significant traces of neorealism and that nothing has changed for Syrian refugee children. In a spatial sense the phenomenon of migration brings a new reality to Capernaum and neorealist films give a voice to victims via actors who express their experiences. Children in both countries have been victims of extreme poverty and moral degeneration due to war.
‘Press the Start Button’
This short take is a reflective piece that describes the author's personal relationship with a handheld games console in which through thinking of their connection to this material object the author experienced sensations of nostalgia memory and familial ties.
On, Off, and in the Map: Materializing Game Experiences Through Player Cartography
This chapter focuses on maps produced and used by players seeking to understand them as recording devices that capture and preserve narratives and experiences. It takes the position that the materiality of maps emerges both in their very existence and relation to place and in the way they chronicle experience and record a past. For fictional gameworlds this distinction is arguably emphasized because the relation to ‘real’ place is weakened or non-existent.
Cartographic practices in games are however also enmeshed in discussions about colonialism. In many games exploration is connected with conflict and mapping often represents the objectification of space in the service of player narratives. Such objectification surely limits the forms of narrative that can emerge so what narratives – and what pasts – can and do such maps record? How do they offer an account of experience? And what is it that is made material in their materiality?
Conclusion: Shifting Horizons of Possibility
This concluding chapter addresses the materiality of media – devices storage formats platforms – as tied up with feeling; the sense of things. If media technology presents a material ever-shifting horizon of possibility for what can or cannot be done at any given point in time it also gives rise to modes of sensation as sounds and images materialise in different ways and as they become differently experienced.
Media Materialities
Provides new perspectives on the increasingly complex relationships between media forms and formats materiality and meaning. Drawing on a range of qualitative methodologies our consideration of the materiality of media is structured around three overarching concepts: form – the physical qualities of objects and the meanings which extend from them; format – objects considered in relation to the protocols which govern their use and the meanings and practices which stem from them; and ephemeral meaning – the ways in which media artefacts are captured transformed and redefined through changing social cultural and technological values.
Each section includes empirical chapters which provide expansive discussions of perspectives on media and materiality. It considers a range of media artefacts such as 8mm film board games maps videogames cassette tapes transistor radios and Twitter amongst others. These are punctuated with a number of short takes – less formal often personal takes exploring the meanings of media in context.
We seek to consider the materialities which emerge across the broad and variegated range of the term’s use and to create spaces for conversation and debate about the implications that this plurality of material meanings might have for the study of study of media culture and society.
Materialities of Television History
This short take reflects on the process and experience of accessing fanzines about television. These fanzines published in the 1970s and 1980s account for the materiality of historical relationships with television in at least three directions: 1) Reflecting on working with paper documents and their digital copies; 2) Noting where collections overlap but the handwritten annotations on archived pieces differ; and 3) Material conditions of watching television are part of fans’ accounts of being an audience.
Thirty-Seven Retweets
Despite its many immaterial qualities the digital world has acquired a certain symbolical authority. In recording and registering all our acts it enacts formal control over what we do. But what is likely to disturb us most is not a lack of control over our digital lives but how we are somehow both passive and instrumental in its symbolic power over us. In this chapter I will argue how the tension resonating between the materiality of the physical and the digital world stems from a difficulty in reconciling how subjectivity emerges from the distance both have from one another. Inevitably as the digital domain leeks further into our physical worlds what we experience is a short-circuiting of subjectivity in which fantasy and reality collide with one another.
Making Order Out of Chaos
How a simple solar powered calculator has provided a narrative to my professional career and as a result. The calculator has followed my journey of mathematical development from failed Maths O'Level to managing millions of pounds.
Location, Agency, and Hashtag Activism During the COVID-19 Pandemic
I have always been torn between my physical home in the UK and my sense of home in Africa. I use ‘Africa’ deliberately because in the last few years I have become increasing connected to a continental outlook and not a national one focused solely on Nigeria where I am from. While I continue to reflect on the word to describe my identity I cogitate ‘Afropolitan’ a word coined by Taiye Selasi (2005) and which Eze (2014; 239) describes as a term used in an “effort to grasp the diverse nature of being African or of African descent in the world today”. For me I use it to describe an empowered stance which does not take its starting point from a resistance to the West and that rejects notions of victimhood.
The Solid State of Radio
The ephemerality of radio is one of its defining characteristics. And yet the artefact of a radio is certainly real enough. This chapter explores the interplay between the physicality of radio and its existence as an intangible medium. It reflects on the attachment that can develop between a listener and their radio before considering how modern radio manufacturers have influenced this relationship through design and functionality. While the proliferation of platforms content and station choice provide an inexhaustible supply of radio via a series of simple swipes or clicks for many listeners there remains a preference for the human-machine interface of traditional knobs and dials. Unpicking this nostalgia for the medium's supposed ‘golden age’ and its associated aesthetics provides insight into the bond between the listener and the materiality of the radio.