Kommunikationsstudier

The exhaustion, disappointment, and listlessness experienced under digital capitalism, explored through works by contemporary artists, writers, and performers.Sometimes, interacting with digital platforms, we want to be passive-in those moments of dissociation when we scroll mindlessly rather than connecting with anyone, for example, or when our only response is a shrugging "e;lol."e; Despite encouragement by these platforms to "e;be yourself,"e; we want to be anyone but ourselves. Tung-Hui Hu calls this state of exhaustion, disappointment, and listlessness digital lethargy. This condition permeates our lives under digital capitalism, whether we are "e;users,"e; who are what they click, or racialized workers in Asia and the Global South. Far from being a state of apathy, however, lethargy may hold the potential for social change.Hu explores digital lethargy through a series of works by contemporary artists, writers, and performers. These dispatches from the bleeding edge of digital culture include a fictional dystopia where low-wage Mexican workers laugh and emote for white audiences; a group that invites lazy viewers to strap their Fitbits to a swinging metronome, faking fitness and earning a discount on their health insurance premiums; and a memoir of burnout in an Amazon warehouse. These works dwell within the ordinariness and even banality of digital life, redirecting our attention toward moments of thwarted agency. Lethargy, writes Hu, is a drag: it weighs down our ability to rush to solutions and forces us to talk about the unresolved present.

With media content presented through channels of television drama, reality shows, TV commercials, and movies, this book presents findings that help us better understand the relationships between nostalgia and film tourism; how reality TV shows affect tourist experience and authenticity.

This book identifies the deep limitations and the violent consequences of the longstanding and constantly developing 'free speech debates' typical of so many contexts in the West, and explores the possibilities to combat racism when liberal values are 'weaponized' to target racialized communities.

Strategic communication is a pre-requisite for the achievement of organisational goals, and an effective strategic communication plan is vital for organisational success. However, systems and models dominant in the West may not necessarily be best suited for the sub-Saharan Africa reality, where many organisations lack adequate financial resources to develop and implement an effective strategic communication plan.This book examines current practices in sub-Saharan Africa, as well as the challenges faced and the intersection with culture. It packages inspiring debates, experiences and insights relating to strategic communication in all types of institutions, including private and public sector organisations, governmental organisations and NGOs, political parties as well as social movements in the sub-Saharan context. It explores how culture is integral to the attainment of strategic communication goals, and diverse case studies across socio-economic contexts offer insights into the successes of organisations across Africa, including Zimbabwe, Tanzania, Lesotho and Nigeria.This unique edited collection is a valuable resource for worldwide scholars, researchers and students of strategic communication and organisational studies, as well as related fields including public relations, advertising, political and health communication and international studies.

This book explores the dynamics and challenges that underlie the ability of organizations to speak with one voice. Contributions by experienced and emerging scholars shed light on the nature and regulation of the communication processes whereby the many and diverse voices of a collective can unite, act, and speak as a distinct entity, thus contributing to its organizing.By focusing on communicational events, whether in the context of for-profit and non-profit organizations, political protests or social movements, chapters guide the reader through the diverse manifestations and concrete ways of dealing with the imperative for organizations of all kinds to speak with one voice. In doing so, the book creates bridges between different perspectives with regard to the notion of voice and its significance for the study of organizing; between fields of study; and between theory and empirical research aimed at investigating organizing beyond the boundaries of the formal organization.Offering a thorough and comprehensive investigation of the dynamics between multivocality and univocality in the organizing of various collectives, this book will be an important resource for scholars and students of organizational communication, management studies, media studies and rhetorical studies.

This book examines the types, discourse modes, and effects of sex jokes in different African contexts, in a range of different cultural forms, from the internet to music, books, films, advertising, and images, thus filling the existing void in literature on the subject.Arguing that sex jokes are used to perform a number of functions in African society, the contributors show how they can be used to perpetuate violence against women, construct spaces, resist oppression, create conformity, build affiliations, and subvert morality. They consider jokes from Egypt, Ghana, Nigeria, Kenya, and Zambia in a range of forms including queer sex jokes, rape jokes, performed sex jokes, gendered humour, and resistance sex humour. The book places particular emphasis on the impact of new media platforms and the anonymity they provide.Providing an important analysis of this tabooed but culturally important facet of everyday life, this book will be of interest to scholars of African culture and society from a range of disciplines, including anthropology, gender studies, literary studies, and sociology.

This volume offers a critical and creative analysis of the innovations of Deathscapes, a transnational digital humanities project that maps the sites and distributions of custodial deaths in locations such as police cells, prisons and immigration detention centres.

This volume explores the instructional use of creative writing in secondary and post-secondary contexts to enhance students' language proficiency and expression in English as a second or foreign language (ESL/EFL).Offering a diverse range of perspectives from scholars and practitioners involved in English language teaching (ELT) globally, International Perspectives on Creative Writing in Second Language Education tackles foundational questions around why fiction and creative writing have been traditionally omitted from ESL and EFL curricula. By drawing on empirical research and first-hand experience, contributors showcase a range of creative genres including autobiography, scriptwriting, poetry, and e-Portfolios, and provide new insight into the benefits of second language creative writing for learners' language proficiency, emotional expression, and identity development. The volume makes a unique contribution to the field of second language writing by highlighting the breadth of second language users throughout the world, and foregrounding links between identity, learning, and ESL/EFL writing.This insightful volume will be of particular interest to postgraduate students, researchers, and academics in the fields of ESL/EFL learning, composition studies, and second language acquisition (SLA). Those with a focus on the use of creative writing in classrooms more broadly, will also find the book of interest.

This timely volume offers a comprehensive and rigorous overview of the role of communication in the construction of hate speech and polarization in the online and offline arena.Delving into the meanings, implications, contexts and effects of extreme speech and gated communities in the media landscape, the chapters analyse misleading metaphors and rhetoric via focused case studies to understand how we can overcome the risks and threats stemming from the past decade's defining communicative phenomena. The book brings together an international team of experts, enabling a broad, multidisciplinary approach that examines hate speech, dislike, polarization and enclave deliberation as cross axes that influence offline and digital conversations. The diverse case studies herein offer insights into international news media, television drama and social media in a range of contexts, suggesting an academic frame of reference for examining this emerging phenomenon within the field of communication studies.Offering thoughtful and much-needed analysis, this collection will be of great interest to scholars and students working in communication studies, media studies, journalism, sociology, political science, political communication and cultural industries.

This book examines the central role media and communication play in the activities of Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) around the globe, how NGOs communicate with key publics, engage stakeholders, target political actors, enable input from civil society, and create participatory opportunities.An international line-up of authors first discuss communication practices, strategies, and media uses by NGOs, providing insights into the specifics of NGO programs for social change goals and reveal particular sets of tactics NGOs commonly employ. The book then presents a set of case studies of NGO organizing from all over the world-ranging from Sudan via Brazil to China - to illustrate the particular contexts that make NGO advocacy necessary, while also highlighting successful initiatives to illuminate the important spaces NGOs occupy in civil society.This comprehensive and wide-ranging exploration of global NGO communication will be of great interest to scholars across communication studies, media studies, public relations, organizational studies, political science, and development studies, while offering accessible pieces for practitioners and organizers.

This collection critically examines the role of food programming on European early television and the impact this might have had on food habits and identities for the European audiences. It foregrounds various food programme genres, from travelog, cooking show and TV cooking competition, to more artistic forms. For the first time, it examines in one place eight European countries, from Portugal to Czechoslovakia and Britain to France and Yugoslavia, to explore ways in which television contributed to culinary change, demonstrating differences and similarities in which early food programme in Europe shaped and promoted progress, modernity, gender and national identities in both Eastern and Western Europe.Featuring a number of archival images that illustrate early food programme visually, this collection complements other research into postwar food history, adding a perspective of visual medium that is often neglected. As such, it should be interesting for food and media historians as well as those interested in European postwar history and culture.

This book focuses on the diverse tapestry of families in contemporary U.S. culture. Each chapter explores a different kind of family and examines their specific communication behaviors.We live in times of increasing diversity that complicate our understandings of ourselves as well as others who may be quite different from us. These complexities also impact our definition of "family" in addition to our interpretation of family communication behaviors. This book provides an examination of family communication practices in families that are underrepresented in the research of the discipline, and underserved in U.S. culture: immigrant families; family members in interracial relationships; LGBTQ families; low-income Latinx families; families with an incarcerated parent; and families headed by grandparents. The book is an initial effort to expand the lens of family communication scholarship to focus on "families on the margins". Through a variety of, sometimes unique, methods including textual analysis, in-depth interviews, and analysis of art projects collected at a Pride festival, each chapter in this collection adds to our knowledge of how we define family and how families communicate in the 21st century.The chapters in this book were originally published in a special issue of the Journal of Family Communication.

This book tells the stories of disabled people who have been influential in creating modern mass media.

This book addresses the issues raised by digital platforms in the Global South, with an emphasis on the cultural stakes involved.