Media Studies - Page 2

Evolution of Concept “Black” in the US Media Discourse

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274 views

Tatiana Melnichuk1 & Natalia Saburova2

1North-Eastern Federal University, melnichuk.ta@gmail.com, ORCID 0000-0002-8126-0925

2North-Eastern Federal University, natalya_saburova@inbox.ru, ORCID 0000-0002-9743-4862

Volume 13, Number 4, 2021 I Full-Text PDF

DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v13n4.53 

Abstract

Media discourse is an effective tool for projecting and shaping the public perception of a certain idea or image. The article focuses on the linguistic and semantic representation of the concept “Black” in the American media discourse with a particular attention to how the concept representation has evolved from the 1990s to 2010s. The study employed corpus methodology (keyness, frequency, concordances) to analyze news articles from “The New York Times” and “The Los Angeles Times”, which were arranged into three corpora according to the publication date (1990s, 2000s, 2010s). The corpus analysis established a number of changes in the concept “Black” representation manifested primarily through the high relevance keywords and high frequency collocations. Dominant semantic components were identified in the concept representation in each corpus, as well as notable shifts in core and peripheral aspects within these semantic components. The analysis showed that although the semantic components ‘racial / ethnic inequality’ and ‘economic issues’ remain at the core of the concept in each corpus, they are expressed through connections with other semantic components which may vary throughout three decades, such as ‘culture’ in the 1990s, ‘education’ and ‘politics’ in the 2000s and ‘police brutality and profiling’ and ‘appearance’ in the 2010s.

Keywords: concept, black, representation, media discourse, keyness

New Media, Urban Marginals and Gerontocracy in India: A Study of Older Adults in Kolkata

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274 views

Dr. Debarati Dhar

Assistant Professor, School of Communications, XIM University, Bhubaneswar, India. Email: dhardebarati@gmail.com

Volume 13, Number 4, 2021 I Full-Text PDF

DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v13n4.17

Abstract

My paper seeks to explore the linkage between new media and the Urban Marginals with special emphasis on the ageing population in Kolkata. Conventional use of media for ageing has made the aged population a passive victim to be duped by the media messages. Given the structural locations and positions, mass media is of no use where the considerations are for younger populations. Although the ageing population may be a marginal category keeping in view the larger media ecology, new media provides the potential to the aged population to be inclusive of urban governance provided they have access and availability. With the help of substantive details, my paper would seek to address the idea of ‘precarity’ associated with the aged population and their way of coping with such precarity with the help of new media in Kolkata. This paper would provide a select reading of samples (qualitative data) from different regions of Kolkata. Through substantive details my paper would provide insights about a vulnerable population, otherwise, neglected in the making of urban governance.

Keywords: New Media, ageing population, older adults, urban governance, mass media, Kolkata.

Television and Material Culture: Mediating the Temporal and Consumerist Practices in Pre-liberalised Kerala

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316 views

Benita Acca Benjamin

Research Scholar, Institute of English, Kerala University. Email: benitabenjamin47@gmail.com

 Volume 13, Number 4, 2021 I Full-Text PDF

DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v13n4.16

Abstract

The introduction of television in Kerala was an event marked by the encounter between spatial practices, discursive structures and visual paradigms. As a result, it becomes important to contextualise television’s presence in Kerala in the socio-economic conditions that defined the region in and around the time when television was introduced. This would provide some seminal cues about the mutual imbrications between television and its politico-discursive context. The present paper tries to look into the ways in which television fashioned new spatio-temporal practices and embodied various consumerist tendencies in pre-liberalised Kerala to argue that television is an artifact grounded in the region’s cultural values and material aspirations. The first section looks at how television-viewing and the socialities formed around the act were ‘timed’ by television. In the second section, the paper studies the popular advertising strategies employed to market television as a ‘tamed’ object that is representative of the consumerist aspirations that defined the region.

Keywords: Television, Material Culture, Temporalities of television, Consumerist aspirations

Comic Memes and Sexist Humor in India: Tools for Reinforcement of Female Body-Image Stereotypes

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385 views

Deepali Mallya M1 & Riya Dennis2

1Assistant Professor (Department of English and Cultural Studies), Christ (Deemed to be) University, Bengaluru, Karnataka, INDIA. ORCID ID 0000-0002-7760-3593. Email: deepali.mallya@christuniversity.in

2Teacher, Oasis International School, Bengaluru, Karnataka, INDIA. Email: riya.dennis@eng.christuniversity.in

 Volume 13, Number 4, 2021 I Full-Text PDF

DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v13n4.15

Abstract

Memes have been described as communicative and aesthetic practices that serve cultural, social, political purposes on a digital platform. Several studies, in the last decade, have attempted to study this digital aesthetic knowledge production as a powerful tool for political, racial, and gender-related discourses. Most often this knowledge is produced through comic multi-media texts. Many theorists believe that, digital media reinforces inequality, marginalization and such other social issues through the audio-visual-textual medium as much as it establishes the counter-discourses for equality, body activism, racial activism and the like. Speed and lack of censorship can be the cardinal reasons for the popularity of these memes. Among the mass-influencing gender-related memes are those encouraging fat-talk and body-image stereotypes. In the Indian context, ‘Tag a Friend’ memes is one such widely circulated meme which communicates body-shaming messages through sexist humor. It mainly targets the fat/colored/transgender women. The current study examines these memes using multimodal discourse analysis methodology. The paper attempts to investigate the revival/reproduction potential of color-shaming and body-shaming stereotypes via comic memes through Shiffman’s memetic dimensions. The analysis establishes that memes can be a prominent site for the re-production of the problematic ideology of body/color shaming even in the 21st century.

Keywords: Body-shaming, comic-meme, female-body, ideology, interpellation, Tag a Friend.

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Binge Watching to Binge Serving in India: Revolution, Regulations and Restrictions of Over-the-Top (OTT) Platforms

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452 views

Dr. Biranchi Narayan P. Panda1, Dr. Swayampabha Satpathy2 & Isha Sharma3

1Assistant Professor (Law), Xavier Law School, XIM University. Email: biranchi@xim.edu.in

2Associate Professor (English), Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, ITER, SOA. Email: swayamsatpathy@soa.ac.in

3Ph.D. Scholar (English), Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, ITER, SOA. Email: Ishaasharma25@gmail.com

 Volume 13, Number 4, 2021 I Full-Text PDF

DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v13n4.14

Abstract:

Information technology has changed the living style of people in the last few decades by its evolution and revolution. So, ‘digitalisation’ is considered as very imperative in human history especially after the ‘industrial revolution’. With the changing paradigm, digitalisation has provided enormous space for the entertainment of Individuals through the Over-the-Top (OTT) video platforms on their demand. In India, the significant growths of OTT platforms have been noticed during the last decade with an increasingly growing number of consumers. With such huge demand, a surge of consumers in India, the OTT became a commodity rather than a luxury. Further, the demands of consumers & internationalisation open up its OTT market for domestic as well as international players. The OTT players like Hotstar and Jio Cinema has expanded a stouter position, whereas global players like Netflix and Amazon Prime have also extended progressively their market share in India. According to one report, the Video on Demand (VoD) industry is still at its emerging stage but the entry of 40 VoD companies in a span of just three years indicates the popularity and demand of such industry. This huge demand has exposed the concept of ‘Binge Watching’ in India as this platform provides on-demand, anywhere access, without a commercial break and unlimited access. However, these growing OTT players and online content have faced many controversies and fought legal battles in India due to the lack of regulatory mechanisms. This paper explores the emergence & growth of OTT platforms with their recent trends in India. Further, the paper specifically focuses on the regulatory regime of OTT platforms since the beginning and its current scenario.

Keywords: Over-the-top (OTT), Binge Watching, Digitalization, Video on Demand (VoD), Regulations & Legislations.

Culinary Transitions: Understanding the Kitchen Space through Advertisements

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348 views

Kashyapi Ghosh1 and V. Vamshi Krishna Reddy2

1Ph.D Scholar, IIT Tirupati. ORCID: 0000-0001-5394-6076. Email: hs18d504@iittp.ac.in

2Assistant Professor, University of Hyderabad. ORCID: 0000-0003-0383-6287

Email: vamshi.vemireddy@uohyd.ac.in

 Volume 13, Number 4, 2021 I Full-Text PDF

DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v13n4.13

Abstract

The kitchen is a ubiquitous space in the Indian domestic life. Yet there hasn’t been a lot of academic discourses around it possibly owing to its mundane nature. In this article, I aim to look into the gendered nature of the space through advertisements. Advertisements are digital documents of everyday life This article deliberates on the notion that the kitchen space in urban India is undergoing a change in representation and participation. This change is reflected in the advertisements, created keeping in mind the perception of its viewers. The gendered segregation of work done in the home space have been deliberated by a number of scholars. This article problematises those viewpoints and challenges DeVault’s notion of “womanly conduct” through the narrative of the advertisements.

Keywords: advertisements, gender, kitchen space.

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Agency and Self Expression: Fan Writing as Life Writing

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444 views

Renu Elizabeth Abraham

Assistant Professor of English and Cultural Studies, Christ University, Bengaluru. ORCID: 0000-0003-2043-1919. Email: renu.elizabeth@christuniversity.in

 Volume 13, Number 2, 2021 I Full-Text PDF

DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v13n2.47

PlumX Metrics

Abstract

Fans, fandoms and fan activities have been part of every culture from time immemorial. Homer’s epics, Plato’s work all could be considered in a broad sense as belonging to the larger domain of fan activity or fan ‘art’ as they are termed in modern-day parlance. This paper examines India Forums a digital fan community based in India for audiences and fans of Indian television soaps/serials and attempts to understand how fanfiction and fan activities within this forum act as means of self-expression and enable its fans to develop a sense of agency that is indigenous to the space in itself. This community is predominantly populated by women or ‘gender anonymous’ and function as a space that allows fans to construct their own voices, identities and thereby agency, which is most often restricted to that space alone. The fans though not subaltern, in the technical sense of the term, as they belong to the urban space, have access to a computer and can read, write and speak English although not fluently, are still urban middle-class women who have been spoken for and never spoken themselves; and India Forums enable these unheard voices to be heard. This reading analyses the dynamics of this agential space, the politics of this agency and argues that all fan writing within this space functions as life writing within a hypertextual metaconversational paradigm which is not necessarily reflective of traditional forms of life writing using notions of revisionist Freudian psychoanalysis and paradigms of life writing.

Keywords: Fanfiction, fandoms, life writing, self-expression, hypertextuality, Hindi TV soaps, psychoanalysis

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Non-Verbal Signs and Secret Communication as Universal Signs of Intercultural Communication

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557 views

Altyn N. Muratova1, Shara Mazhitayeva1, Bayan Zh. Sarybayeva2, Aiman Kelmaganbetova1, Zhanar Kulibekova3  

1Buketov Karaganda University, Ulitsa Universitatskaja, 28, Karaganda, Kazakhstan

2Pavlodar Pedagogical University, Kazakhstan

3M. Kozybaev North Kazakhstan State University, Kazakhstan

Contact: s_mazhit@mail.ru

­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­ Volume 13, Number 1, 2021 I Full Text PDF
DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v13n1.35

Non-Verbal Signs and Secret Communication as Universal Signs of Intercultural Communication

Abstract

The article is devoted to the study of the national cognitive nature, the hidden essence of non-verbal techniques. The main purpose of the study is to prove that, based on materials on nonverbal uses in language, they are used to convey a confidential, hidden message, to show that in international communication there is a change in the semantics of nonverbal actions depending on the culture and individual knowledge of each nation. Methods In human life, in parallel with verbal communication, an experiment was conducted on nonverbal techniques, sometimes used in pure form and used to convey a secret and hidden message. The article presents an analysis based on a statistical method compared with some kinemes used in a common language. In the studies on non-verbal techniques, it is noted that they perform a main function in the relations between people. In this article, in the course of analyzing the nature of nonverbal techniques, we characterized some kinemes used depending on the worldview of the Kazakh people, and concluded that their background is directly related to the mystery. Application of the study: the results, materials, and conclusions of the work can be used in the history of language, sociolinguistics, and paralinguistic studies, and allow researchers of gesture semantics to explore nonverbal techniques from a new perspective. Scientists-linguists, psychologists have created many works related to the definition of human nature, character, and the place of nonverbal techniques in the speech act. However, it was not said that auxiliary means located outside the language will be used to transmit confidential, non-public information. In this work, we stopped at the place of nonverbal methods of transmitting confidential, hidden information and analyzed the functions in confidential communication.

Keywords: nonverbal communication, communication, cognition, secret communication, kineme.

Cognitive & Pragmatic Approach to the Phraseological Intensifiers of Political Discourse

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300 views

Nadejda Zubareva1 & Iroda Siddikova2

PhD Candidate1.  DSc, Professor2. Comparative Linguistics Department, National University of Uzbekistan named after Mirzo Ulugbek. Contact: zubarevan@yahoo.com

 Volume 13, Number 1, 2021 I Full Text PDF
DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v13n1.29

Cognitive & Pragmatic Approach to the Phraseological Intensifiers of Political Discourse

Abstract

The present paper reports on a study that aims to explore the cognitive and pragmatic potential of leveraging phraseological intensifiers in English political discourse. The authors argue that the phraseological intensifiers of political discourse could not be discussed without any contribution to the extra-linguistic context. Therefore, the present study works with a cognitive linguistic explanation of the phraseological intensifiers used by English politicians and journalists as well as performed pragmatic impact that aimed to foster the relevant conceptualization process. The suggestion of phraseological intensifiers depends on context linguistic meaning in the employed by the authors cognitive-pragmatic paradigm. This paper also denotes a wide range of relative to intensity categories, which should be distinguished from it. Such an analysis allows the authors to account for the wide distribution of intensifiers and their co-occurrence with categories that do not encode degree variables. The results of the study show that phraseological intensifiers significantly outperformed in the degree of pragmatic suggestion in political discourse and made use of them in a more appropriate way.

Keywords: Intensification; Phraseological Intensifiers; Cognitive; Pragmatic; Political discourse.

Reminiscence on #EndSARS Protests of 2020 in Nigeria

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285 views

Florence O. Orabueze1, Victor O. Ukaogo2, Ifeyinwa David-Ojukwu3, Godstime Irene Eze4, Chiamaka I. Orabueze5

1PhD, Department of English & Literary Studies, University of Nigeria

2PhD, Department of History and International Studies, University of  Nigeria. ORCID: 0000-0002-3282-4288. Contact: victor.ukaogo@unn.edu.ng

3Use of English and Communication Unit, University of Nigeria

4Institute of African Studies, University of Nigeria

5Commercial and Cooperative Law, University of Nigeria

 Volume 13, Number 1, 2021 I Full Text PDF
DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v13n1.11
Reminiscence on #EndSARS Protests of 2020 in Nigeria

Abstract

Every misfortune of the black man, particularly in Africa, has been blamed on the Europeans because of Trans Atlantic Slave Trade and colonization of different parts of Africa. However, the present study on the #EndSARS protests that rocked Nigeria between October and November 2020 has proven that Africans, particularly Nigerians, should bear the burden of their problems and not point accusing fingers on foreigners. The study uses historical theoretical framework and qualitative and quantitative research methodologies to find out that the protest has an affinity, albeit in a milder degree, to the various agitations, including Boko Haram that have levied wars on the country. The corruption-riddled Nigeria and the re-enslavement and re-colonization of the citizens by the leaders have fired resistance in the youths of the country and it concludes that the only way the protest and agitations would stop is when the fundamental causes are addressed.

Keywords: #EndSARS, protests, enslavement, colonization

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