Wiley: Communication, Culture & Critique: Table of Contents

Peripheral Stardom, Ethnicity, and Nationality: The Rise of the Argentinian Ricardo Darin From Local Celebrity to Transnational Recognition

Nahuel Ribke, Jerome Bourdon — Wed, 15 Nov 2017 00:00:00 -0800

Since the late 1990s, actor Ricardo Darin has been a key figure in the Argentinian film industry, and its most recognizable face abroad. With an impressive career that began with “lowbrow” national television and made the leap to prestigious transnational coproductions, Darin's unique journey to international stardom allows us to address important questions regarding current processes of star formation in globalized cultural industries. This article uses the case study as the basis for a broader argument about the main discursive devices and marketing strategies that encourage or impede the reception and consumption of peripheral stars in different geopolitical regions. Stardom beyond the Hollywood system is a multilayered construction of sometimes contradictory discourses regarding national, regional, ethnic, and cultural–historical identities.

Vlogging White Privilege Abroad: Eat Your Kimchi's Eating and Spitting Out of the Korean Other on YouTube

David C. Oh, Chuyun Oh — Wed, 15 Nov 2017 00:00:00 -0800

Over several years, the YouTube channel Eat Your Kimchi, a White expatriate video log about South Korea, generated a sizeable audience. In the videos, Martina and Simon Stawski draw upon discourses that empower their identities as a privileged group of cultural outsiders—valued and othered for their White difference. To benefit from their global advantage, they essentialize differences between the West/themselves and Korea/ns in order to emphasize White and Western superiority. As a consequence, they reject hybridity by both mocking Korea/ns as an exotic other and by consuming it as an exotic delight. Their strategies reflect colonial-era discourses seen in the travel logs of White “adventurers” that are transformed to the current social, global, and technological conjuncture.

How to Train Your Opioid Consumer: Branding Painkillers in the Opioid Epidemic

Melina Sherman — Wed, 15 Nov 2017 00:00:00 -0800

This article develops an analysis of the U.S. opioid epidemic that examines the ways in which opioid drugs have been branded and sold to a growing base of consumers. The article expands on existing literature related to branding, which argues that branding functions as a mechanism of governance—a means of “conducting the conduct” of potential consumers. Equally important, the author suggests, are the ways in which branding has been mobilized by opioid manufacturers as a tool for responding to the ongoing crisis of overdoses and deaths. Thus, examining the branding of opioids enables us to better understand why these drugs continue to be prescribed and consumed, despite public awareness of the dangers associated with their use.

Feminist Ephemera in a Digital World: Theorizing Zines as Networked Feminist Practice

Rosemary Clark-Parsons — Wed, 15 Nov 2017 00:00:00 -0800

Zines have made a resurgence in the United States. What functions do these humble, self-published booklets perform in the current media landscape, where digital reigns supreme? This article explores the political salience of zines for feminists, whose social media tactics have pushed feminism into popular culture and yet who continue to make zines. While much has been written about feminist zines, little research has considered their relevance in the digital age, nor have researchers grappled with the complex relationship between digital and print activist media. Drawing on interviews with zinesters, I argue that feminist zines and online feminism are not materially polarized outlets, but practices with distinct yet symbiotic advantages working in tandem within a repertoire of feminist media tactics.

“I Have the Government in My Pocket…”: Social Media Users in Turkey, Transmit‐Trap Dynamics, and Struggles Over Internet Freedom

Lisa Parks, Hannah Goodwin, Lisa Han — Wed, 15 Nov 2017 00:00:00 -0800

This article explores how social media users in Turkey conceptualize and navigate free speech challenges in the wake of recent government crackdowns on media institutions. The study is based on qualitative interviews with 40 social media users in Istanbul, including people from LGBTQ, feminist, Kurdish, journalist, activist, and academic communities, who have been on the front lines of free speech struggles in Turkey. Informants' comments converged around a theme of transmit-trap dynamics, which emphasizes user experiences in the context of “networked authoritarianism,” and speaks to the ways Turkish social media users find themselves simultaneously empowered by and targeted within social media platforms.

Rumors, Hatred, and the Politics of Multiculturalism: Unpacking Rumors About Jasmine Lee

Jinsook Kim — Wed, 15 Nov 2017 00:00:00 -0800

This study critically unpacks rumors about Jasmine Lee, the first naturalized Korean lawmaker. Since she is a symbolic figure of Korean multiculturalism, I argue that the consistent production and circulation of rumors about Jasmine Lee have crystallized from the tension between state-led multiculturalism and nativist anxieties about changing nationhood. An examination of the ways in which these rumors are discussed in a popular women's online community serves to explore how they articulate nativist anxieties and hateful affect in relation to gendered and ethnic purity in the context of Korea's multiculturalist transition.

Language Activism on the Airwaves: Pulaar Radio Broadcasting in the Senegal River Valley

John Hames — Wed, 15 Nov 2017 00:00:00 -0800

Community radio stations in Northern Senegal receive financial support from a range of NGOs and agencies, whose goals the radio stations earnestly attempt to serve. However, community radio broadcasting in Northern Senegal has also become a domain for the practice of language activism on behalf of Pulaar, a language spoken by a significant minority of Senegalese and Mauritanians. The stations devote many of their programs to discussions and talk shows intended to encourage linguistic loyalty and purity among audience members, who reside on both sides of the Senegal–Mauritania border. Drawing on recorded broadcasts, interviews, and participant–observation conducted among radio staff members and listeners, this article examines the connections that the stations have with a decades-old movement to promote Pulaar.

Representing Black Girlhood in Brazil: Culture and Strategies of Empowerment

Reighan Gillam — Wed, 15 Nov 2017 00:00:00 -0800

In this article, I examine how popular and alternative media depict Afro-Brazilian girlhood and young adulthood. In discussing representations of Black girlhood in Brazil I draw attention to the importance of Brazilian and Afro-Brazilian culture to understanding the empowerment of Black girls. In Brazil, girls of African descent operate in a national context that centers narratives of whitening, racial mixture, and the denial of Blackness as a category. Additionally, Black girls experience aesthetic standards that value Whiteness and their general invisibility in public culture, which can contribute to low self-esteem. The recent rise of MC Soffia, a Black girl MC, and short films by Afro-Brazilian women demonstrate that cultural traditions and acts are central to Black girls' empowerment.

Mediated Conflict: Shiite Heroes Combating ISIS in Iraq and Syria

Ahmed Al‐Rawi, Yasmin Jiwani — Wed, 15 Nov 2017 00:00:00 -0800

This article analyzes a number of Shiite media productions in Iraq in order to investigate the significance of heroism and religious symbols during a time of heightened sectarian tension. Many of the popular heroes and symbols discussed here have direct and indirect connotations that extend beyond the national boundaries of individual countries, especially since the regional sectarian conflict is very dominant. The article relies on YouTube videos and screenshots taken from a variety of sources and argues that these symbols, heroes, and media productions play an important role in propagating popular political and religious beliefs that contribute toward the solidification of a distinctly Iraqi Shiite Ummah identity whose shared values demarcate them from the rest of the society.

Medium of the Oppressed: Folk Music, Forced Migration, and Tactical Media

Ali Karimi — Wed, 15 Nov 2017 00:00:00 -0800

This article examines the mediatisation of folk music among the Hazara people. It demonstrates how the Hazara community, a religious and ethnic minority from Afghanistan, uses folk music as an alternative media form to resist official and exclusionary narratives. It argues that folk music among socially excluded minority groups serves as something more than mere entertainment—it functions as a tactical medium. Drawing on the song texts of Hazara folk music, particularly the works of the Sarkhosh brothers, this article explores how the experience of persecution and forced migration transformed the way this community makes music. The article also shows how the mediatisation of their folk songs helped the Hazara people overcome the Islamic stigmatization of instrumental music.

Regulatory Expectations of Offended Audiences: The Citizen Interest in Audience Discourse

Ranjana Das, Anne Graefer — Wed, 15 Nov 2017 00:00:00 -0800

In this article we analyze fieldwork with 90 people in the UK and Germany, exploring the expectations audiences articulate about regulatory processes behind television content they find offensive. First, mapping people's responses on to the conceptual pairing of citizens and consumers, we find audiences aligning themselves with citizen interests, even when, often on the surface, they respond to media regulation and institutions with suspicion. Second, we find that complaints that make it to media regulators are just the tip of iceberg. Third, in investigating people's expectations of actors and institutions in their responses to television content that startles, upsets, or just offends them, we note that it is crucial to treat a conversation on free speech and censorship with caution.