Thoughts on Media and Culture

Chris Rojek is a professor of sociology and culture at Brunel University’s School of Social Sciences and Law in West London. His books include: Leisure Theory: Principles and Practice (2005); Cultural Studies (2007); Brit-Myth (2007), and Stuart Hall (2002), which is described here as the “first full-length study of Hall’s work.” He is an occasional columnist – on issues of celebrity culture – for the online newspaper The Faster Times and is working on another book called Fame Attack. Here’s a link to an article and mp3 of an interview of him by a DJ in New Zealand last fall, when Rojek was a visiting fellow at University of Auckland.

Chris Rojek, image courtesy of The Faster Times

In his article Sports Celebrity and the Civilizing Process, Rojek builds on work done by Eric Dunning and Norbert Elias to dig deeper into fans’ relationships with their sports idols. Norbert Elias had spent decades researching and writing about interdependent networks of people, described as figurational sociology, and social interactions as processes. Elias advocated for a realistic, pragmatic and scientific approach to gathering long-term data about society and social changes, particularly related to the shifting balance of power.

Under such an approach, Rojek describes functional democratization as the “historical tendency for individuals to become more interdependent as specialization in the division of labour and the institutions of normative coercion increases” (678). As specialization increases, workers depend more on each other. This fosters a meritocracy that undermines the authority of ruling bloodlines and instead shifts the balance of power to those who are the highest achievers, whether they are pursuing an education or seeking a job (679).

Rojek applies this concept to sport and celebrity in society by drawing on Dunning’s work. Dunning used a figurational approach to the sociology of sport starting in the 1960s, when pursuing popular culture studies were unpopular (a parallel to technical and professional writing in the early to mid-20^th century, for those who remember this article from 715/815).

Dunning defined sport as “a form of non-scripted, largely non-verbal theatre and emotional arousal,” and Rojek describes four of the most important functions that Dunning said were performed by sport. They are: forming identities through contests; establishing a collective definition by providing a means to negotiate autonomy and dependence (“We-I balance”); providing an emotional outlet; and breaking the routinization of daily life.

Sport, Rojek says, is another means for boosting interdependence within society and reinforcing the meritocratic ideal: “Status is achieved through participation in a contest system of reward” (680). It also fuels commodification and egoism, particularly in a society where niche media, including those that focus solely on sports, thrive and public attention is focused on health and fitness matters (682). These factors mean star athletes are increasingly seen as role models, and consequently, they increasingly command higher salaries, sponsorship fees and prize money (683). The elevation and commodification, however, creates a wedge between the athlete and fans. Rojek notes several scholars (Hock, Cashmore, Whannel and Kellner) who suggest corporations, such as sponsors, turn top-performing athletes into “idealized objects” and then use their celebrity to influence fans’ purchases. “The inference is that social integration is galvanized around the commodification process which, in effect, operates as a system of control and manipulation. Cultural intermediaries assemble the sports celebrity as a system of representation that is designed to make spectators consume commodities” (685).

Rojek focuses more on the celebrity-athlete’s position as a role model and notes that they can offer “parables to modern men and women of how how to live their lives” (687). The sports star has gained significantly more power in the decades since Dunning began researching the sociology of sport, and celebrity-athletes today now cross into other social groups, including television and music, business and politics. However, Dunning suggests the idealized vision of the athlete and its corresponding system of commodification carry risks for the athlete because both subvert reality and the functions of sport offered by Dunning. Niche coverage, the 24/7 availability of news and increased levels of social isolation and mobility have contributed to the development of “invasive egoism,” in which fans build a life around an imaginary relationship with the idealized celebrity-athlete and blur the boundary between fantasy and reality. As examples, he notes a delusional fan’s on-court stabbing of tennis star Monica Seles (here’s video of the aftermath) and a fan’s stalking of tennis star Martina Hingis. There were many other examples of aggressive fan behavior toward celebrity athletes in the late 1990s and early 2000s that drew widespread media coverage. Several are described in this ESPN story published in 2005, about a year before Rojek’s scholarly article was published.

Jay Scherer and Steven Jackson have collaborated on at least three scholarly articles focusing on the adidas All Blacks commercial that is the focus of Cultural Studies and the Circuit of Culture: Advertising, Promotional Culture and the New Zealand All Blacks.

Scherer is an assistant professor at University of Alberta in Canada, where he teaches in physical education and recreation.His curriculum vita is here. He previously worked with Jackson at the University of Otago, in New Zealand, and the All Blacks’ relationship with adidas was the focus of his Ph.D. thesis.

Jay Scherer, courtesy of University of Alberta

Jackson is a  professor at University of Otago, where he teaches sociology of sport and sport, media and culture courses. He has written scholarly articles about sports and athletes in New Zealand, Canada and South Korea. Read more about him here.

Steven Jackson, courtesy of University of Otago

Scherer and Jackson provide an analysis of the planning, production and reception of the 1999 adidas “All Blacks” rugby team commercial and the risks involved when an international corporation commodifies a local tradition. Adidas had recently acquired sponsorship rights to New Zealand’s storied All Blacks rugby franchise and wanted to create an advertisement that positioned the team as one of the company’s “core global icons” and showed the company understood the essence of the All Blacks identity (511). Aimed at 14- to 25-year-olds, the ad was to be “primal, scary,” and revolve around the indigenous Maori war challenge Ka Mate haka. View it here. The 60-second commercial took a year to produce and included a film crew of 75 (513).

Scherer and Jackson note that company officials said they included Maori in the development of the advertisement and tried to be sensitive to the tribe’s cultural heritage. The scene selection and order, however, reinforced stereotypes that offended many Maori and drew criticism as culturally insensitive. They included: splicing images of a Maori warrior and an All Blacks team captain – of Maori descent – both chanting the Ka Mate haka; splicing images of Maori warriors apparently racing toward battle and images of All Blacks players running on the rugby field; the pairing of an extended shot of a white All Blacks player with the adidas company slogan;

The first example, involving the Maori warrior and an All Blacks team captain, established a textual meaning that some viewers could decode as “contributing to the stereotypical construction of Maori as natural, primitive athletes, genetically advantaged to participate in physical activities as opposed to intellectual ones” (516). The simulated markings on the Maori warrior’s face signified a commodification of tribal tradition and heritage, potentially in an effort to demonstrate what Paul Gilroy called “vitality, inclusivity, and global reach” (517).

The splicing of images of Maori warriors running toward battle and images of players running across a field led many to incorrectly decode the Ka Mate haka as a war dance, when in fact it is a war challenge (517). Scherer and Jackson note that this was particularly true among audience members unfamiliar with New Zealand’s political or social history. The commercial was broadcast in more than 70 countries.

Finally, near the end of the commercial, the linking of an extended shot of a white All Blacks player with the adidas slogan was decoded to suggest an evolution of the team from savage Maori roots to colonized, according to Scherer and Jackson. It also separated the Maori (or, as Scherer and Jackson describe them, “the black Other”) from the brand and positions it as safe to the consumer (517).

The commercial’s underlying messages illustrate the risks involved with cross-cultural advertising, although there is no mention of the criticism in the Wikipedia post for adidas. An image of the All Blacks players apparently performing the Ka Mate haka is on the top of the teams website. A more recent – and more obvious – example of a culturally-insensitive ad was released by Intel.

Image courtesy of Huffington Post

The company quickly apologized and scrapped the ad (Read about it here).  A few more examples (some are better than others) can be found here and here. But apparently the Chevy Nova example doesn’t belong in the category of insensitive or flawed cross-cultural marketing campaigns, at least not if we’re to believe this Snopes post.

I have attached a PowerPoint presentation and a draft of the paper that I presented Friday morning at the PCA/ACA National Conference in St. Louis. The paper focuses on the use of Twitter as a strategic communications tool in the 2009 Virginia race for governor. Here is the abstract:

Professional communicators must find new and creative ways to spread their message across an increasingly fragmented media landscape. Online social networks, which have surged in popularity in recent years, are well-positioned to serve this role. These user-centered open systems allow professional communicators to unify a message across multiple platforms and harness the dissemination power of the networked space. Political communication teams in particular can apply these systems as part of a comprehensive campaign strategy that fosters the transformation of audience members into active supporters helping to promote a candidate’s official message. This paper examines the use of the online social network and micro blogging service Twitter in the 2009 Virginia gubernatorial campaign. A qualitative analysis of messages posted by Republican Robert F. “Bob” McDonnell and Democrat Creigh Deeds provides the foundation for discussion of effective social media campaign strategies.

Keywords: social media, new media, professional communication, politics, campaigns, social networks.

Feel free to share or cite, but please give credit.

Thanks.

Photo courtesy of University of Western Sydney

Ien Ang is a distinguished professor of cultural studies, as well as founding director of the Centre for Cultural Research, at the University of Western Sydney in Australia. She earned her undergraduate and graduate degrees at the University of Amsterdam in the Netherlands and has worked at universities around the world, including in Sweden, the U.S. and Hong Kong.

Ang’s research is focused on audience formation; multiculturalism and migration in Australia and Asia; representation in contemporary cultural institutions; and the politics of identity. She is considered a leader in the field of cultural studies and has authored numerous journal articles and books, including the widely-cited cultural studies work The Living Room Wars: Rethinking Media Audiences. Her qualifications and a list of selected publications can be viewed here.

In “The politics of empirical audience research,” Ang uses David Morley’s book, The Nationwide Audience, to delve into issues of audience activeness, media hegemony and the external social factors that inevitably affect textual encoding and decoding. In doing so, she proposes a critical perspective toward empirical audience research that is rooted in context and cognizant of the power relations network in which knowledge is produced (175), and she contends that qualitative ethnographic studies provide the most effective strategy for empirically researching audiences. These studies enable the researcher to position their findings within an interpretive framework that advances an agenda in a process that relies heavily on context and, therefore, is capable of yielding different interpretations (184).

An audience’s decoding of a text is heavily shaped by personal experience and external factors, including the power structure of consumers and producers and the dominant ideological views, and Ang supports Morley’s claim that “a certain text can come to mean different things depending on the interdiscursive context in which viewers interpret it” (177). Empirical audience research, therefore, results in an interpretation that researchers can then insert into the network of power relations (184).

Ang rejects the characterization of two research camps – mainstream and critical – as fixed paradigms, and instead describes them as holding relative positions, contingent on context, “within a larger discursive field” (175).  As time passes and attitudes shift, mainstream views can lose standing and assume the role of the weaker, or “critical,” view, and vice versa (175). She also dismisses the construction of a binary of consumers versus producers, and instead describes an evolving, yet constant struggle across levels of power exercised by the audience, media producers and audience members who are also producers (181).

Ang also rejects claims of convergence among mainstream and critical views of audience research. Instead, she suggests that the two views differ primarily in their assignment of agency to the audience, and that the critical perspective toward research requires a recognition that the audience has an ability to negotiate meanings – but only to a certain degree due to limits imposed by external forces. She also notes that any efforts to unite the two views should be viewed politically, because the issue of power and bias are ever-present and one school would inevitably overtake the other.

Ang’s call for a flexible, evolving approach to empirical audience research places a heavy emphasis on timing and context. Such an approach not only addresses how an audience interprets a text, but why the audience reaches the interpretation(s) that it does. It also offers a more moderate view of the role of the audience within the power system of media, but tempers the Marx/Engels view by quoting Stuart Hall’s description that “people make their own history but under conditions not of their own making” (179). This allows for constant revision of interpretations, depending on the political, historical and social context of the audience (184). This also means definitive conclusions are impossible, and all interpretations are suspect because researchers are partial to an agenda.

Ang’s work was published in 1991, during the ascent of cable television and long before Internet use became widespread. Her characterization of the audience as engaged in constant struggle at various levels of power with media systems is increasingly visible in the digital era, and many are described in Henry Jenkins’ book Convergence Culture.

Ang cites Morley’s research on television viewing habits as one interpretive framework. What are some other examples of texts that have been part of separate interpretive frameworks? Has the emergence of new media contributed to a convergence of critical and mainstream views?

Photo courtesy of MIT

Henry Jenkins is a professor at University of Southern California and the founder and former director of MIT’s Comparative Media Studies program. He is a leader in the field of new media cultural studies, and his books include Convergence Culture, Textual Poachers and Fans, Bloggers and Gamers. He gives a more detailed account of his research, career and personal life here. Also, check him out on Youtube, where there are several videos, including the one below, of Jenkins discussing the impact of digital media on society and the growth of participatory culture.

Jenkins on Youtube

His Confessions of an Aca/Fan is the introduction to Fans, Bloggers and Gamers, which was published in 2006. Jenkins writes in his introduction that the book is comprised of three sections, the first of which deals “most directly with the politics and poetics of fan cultural production” (4). He notes his decision to reveal himself as a fan in the introduction to his first book, Textual Poachers (published in 1992), drew mixed reviews, but was built on concepts of transparency and the researcher’s own contextual view.

The second section of the book focuses on the role digital media has played in our everyday lives, while the third section, he writes, wades into issues of public policy and popular culture.

The introduction itself is a who’s who for name-dropping, with Jenkins paying homage to everyone from his mentor John Fiske, Ien Ang, and other cultural studies researchers who favor the ethnographic approach, to authors Hunter S. Thompson and Tom Wolfe, whose creative nonfiction writing styles inspired his own writing. He shares the credit for the surging academic interest in fandom, and notes the spread through multiple disciplines. Among them: education, law, marketing, anthropology, and philosophy. While his initial research focused on the pre-digital era of fandom, Jenkins is now an authority on the impact that digital media have played on the fan’s role as producer and consumer within an increasingly participatory culture.

Jenkins asserts himself as a fan and advocate researcher, noting on page 6 that the subjects of his writing are those that are “deeply personal” to him,  and his research efforts are aimed at breaking “down the walls that prevent scholars from having a more direct role in shaping and guiding our media environment.” In this regard, he illustrates Ang’s claim that researchers are partial to a cause. However, Jenkins attempts to temper his bias by adopting a writing style that makes clear his personal position. The result is a more authentic report that gives the appearance, at least, that he is being transparent and truthful.

A brief presentation on the findings of a case study of Twitter as a campaign tool in the 2009 Virginia gubernatorial race is here.

In their article, “Where Everybody Knows Your (Screen) Name: Online Games as ‘Third Places,’” Constance Steinkuehler and Dmitri Williams examine relationships and behavior among participants in massively multiplayer online games (MMOs). Their research, conducted through the lenses of sociology and new media theories, aimed to address the value of Internet communities as “third places,” a term coined by urban sociologist Ray Oldenburg to denote those places other than home or work where relationships are formed.

Steinkuehler, an assistant professor at University of Wisconsin at Madison, teaches courses about the social impact of gaming and new media. She also leads the university’s PopCosmo project, in which she and student researchers study MMOs and the learning that takes place in those digital environments. Williams, an assistant professor at University of Southern California, also teaches about gaming, online communities, and the social impact of new technologies. PDF and Word versions of dozens of his articles are available here. He worked as an assistant professor at University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign when he and Steinkuehler published “Where Everybody Knows Your (Screen) Name: Online Games as ‘Third Places.’”

Photo from http://website.education.wisc.edu/steinkuehler/blog/

Dmitri Williams, photo from USC

In the article, the two scholars analyze the MMO participants’ through a participant observation study that involved random interviews of players of varying skills and backgrounds, and a two-year qualitative, ethnographic study, in which the researcher spent eight to 40 hours a week in game witnessing players’ interaction, relationships, and behavior. The studies focused on Lineage I and II, and Asheron’s Call I and II, all of which took place in medieval-like settings and served as predecessors to the increasingly popular World of Warcraft MMO. In fact, by the time this article published, Asheron’s Call II had already met its end. Read this article, from Wired magazine, about the impact that the decision to close the community had on its members.

Steinkuehler and Williams heavily cite Oldenburg’s work as they position MMOs as virtual “third places.” Third places, which Oldenburg said were disappearing due to the rise of television and other media that fostered isolation, share eight characteristics. They are:

1. Neutral locations.
2. Unimpressed with a visitor’s real-life status.
3. Centered around conversation.
4. Accessible and accommodating.
5. Frequented by regulars.
6. Low-profile and unpretentious.
7. Playful.
8. Homely (and a virtual home away from real-life home).

Read more about Oldenburg, a professor emeritus at University of West Florida, and his oft-cited book, The Great Good Place, here.

Steinkuehler and Williams found through their research that MMOs were not well-suited for deeply “emotional, practical or substantive support” among participants. The scattered geographical locations of users, and the playful nature of MMOs, were among the explanations for their finding. The games, however, were more effective at “bridging social capital,” or creating many shallow relationships among users. Invoking the work of Oldenburg, Steinkuehler and Williams describe MMO game play as “more akin to playing five-person poker in a neighborhood tavern that is accessible from your own living room.” This description is used to debunk the claim that new media – MMOs in particular – are contributing to a decrease in civic and social engagement. The authors recast the claim through their observations and the work of Marshall McLuhan when they conclude that “a decline in civic and social engagement has led to retribalization through contemporary media” – such as MMOs.

As more users engage in MMO gaming, it will be interesting to see whether these virtual communities are able to bridge social capital and develop bonding social capital (deeply emotional relationships) among participants. One game, the web-based Sociotown.com, is trying. The online social community gives users a clear graphical illustration of the level of relationship they have with certain “friends” (See below).

Illustration of a Sociotown user's "Inner Circle" of friends.

If you’re interested in more, Henry Jenkins did a fantastic job tying Steinkuehler’s research on MMOs, the role of games in education, and James Gee’s (and others’) research on affinity spaces, in this 2006 guest column on PBS.org.

Click here to view my updated profile on LinkedIn. Or, click here for my public profile.

Shawn Day
Paper proposal

A case study of the usage of Twitter

by Virginia’s 2009 gubernatorial candidates

For my research paper, I intend to analyze the use of Twitter by Virginia gubernatorial candidates Bob McDonnell and Creigh Deeds, both of whom are using the social network to connect with voters. The Twitter accounts that I’ll be following are BobMcDonnell and CreighDeeds. I plan to code Tweets from each candidate during the final 30 days of the 2009 gubernatorial campaign (Oct. 5 through Nov. 3). This qualitative study is aimed at evaluating the candidates’ rhetorical strategies in an online social environment, and findings will be positioned in the context of participatory and user-centered theories.
The study is designed to offer insight into questions such as:

• • Do the messages appear to be part of a dialog, or are they simply mass-media style messages sent through a digital channel?
  • Is the tone conversational and personal, or is it primarily detached and business-like?
  • Do the messages empower fellow users to become participants and advocates, or do the candidates’ messages treat their “followers” as a passive audience?

Coding for this study will be comprised of multiple data fields for each candidate’s Tweet stream.

They will include:

• • Frequency of Tweets.
  • Frequency of use of hashtags, @ symbols, and retweets.
  • Number and type of destination links (candidate’s website, mainstream media site, other social website).

The analysis of these messages, and the answers to these questions, will show which candidate has better harnessed the social media system in the 2009 campaign. I intend to draw on theories advanced by Henry Jenkins (participatory culture) and Richard Johnson (user-centered theory), among others. I also intend to locate the study in the context of convergence, audience fragmentation and the use of new media technologies to empower audiences and promote their participation in the political process.

I’m interested in the use of the short-message-system social network as a tool in advertising and political campaigns. In this case, I am particularly interested in reviewing the dueling political communication strategies deployed in a relatively new online environment. I think that a side-by-side comparison of the two campaigns in the context of relevant New Media and Professional Writing theory will be instructive to scholars of new media communication and political science, as well as to political candidates, their staff members, and the increasing number of voters who find themselves exploring this digital platform.

http://odu.academia.edu/ShawnDay

A few thoughts on creating a profile on academia.edu:

This environment is designed to provide a social network primarily for those who have – or are seeking – careers in academia. The site allows users to search by institution, and then displays a flow chart-style breakdown of the institution’s academic departments, and then the users whose profiles are attached to each. The environment allows for easy linking to other academics; with a simple click on “Follow” on a user’s profile, another user can become linked to that person. The barrier to learn “who’s researching what” (the site’s slogan) is extremely low, allowing for rapid network growth. But, for all the fuss about how well this site brings a high search return on a Google search, my profile still didn’t crack the first page of search results.

The product seemed effective and appropriate for the intended goal. It’s extremely easy to check a university’s membership on the network, as well as the users’ research interests, papers, websites, and the books they’ve read. In addition to following each other, users can communicate through a message system on the site.

Creating a profile on academia.edu is as easy as any other social networking site, and it requires very little effort. It has a simplistic, transparent design, and membership isn’t even necessary to view users’ profiles. I realize this may sound easier said than done, but membership desperately needs to be improved. With such few barriers to participate, it’s surprising that so many institutions have little or no representation. I wonder whether the social-network market is saturated, or if academia.edu was just late to the game and is now struggling to draw users who’ve become accustomed to MySpace, Facebook or LinkedIn.