American Broadcasting Research Articles

A Metapragmatic Analysis of Iraqi and American Political Legal Discourse

Metapragmatics is a relatively new field of study that attracts the attention of many scholars in linguistics; it refers to the use of language about language use. In trials of political figures, such as Saddam Hussein and William Clinton, Iraqi and American legal discourses have not been addressed that much, if ever, metapragmatically; thus, the study aims to analyze these discourses metapragmatically. This paper attempts to answer central questions about identifying the metapragmatic expressions, explaining their functions, and describing the layers of metapragmatic monitoring of the detected metapragmatic expressions in the Iraqi and American legal discourse. Accordingly, the objectives are to identify the metapragmatic expressions detected by specific indicators and investigate their functions and role in monitoring the Iraqi and American broadcast political court discourses. Some extracts of the two figures mentioned above are analyzed according to a developed model encompassing Caffi’s (2016) model, Hubler and Bublitz’s (2007) metapragmatic parameters, and Culpuper and Haugh’s (2014) metapragmatic awareness indicators, and forms. The current study is hoped to be helpful for those researchers interested in the fields of pragmatics, politics, and applied linguistics. Since metapragmatics deals with the pragmatic meaning of language, this study highlights the importance of metapragmatic expressions in promoting productive interaction and organizing communication within the court, regardless of the language used. Further investigation of metapragmatics is recommended while analyzing political, literary, religious, social, and media discourse to understand the functions of the metapragmatic utterances used in different settings.

Selling to Wall Street: Theorizing the Financial Commodity Audience in Network Era Television

Although the business-friendly policies and neoliberal ideologies of the 1970s and 1980s certainly accelerated the financialized state of media industries, it is necessary to understand how cultural production has long been subject to the vicissitudes of finance capital. Complementing histories on the role of banking in the formation of the U.S. film industry, this paper explores the interrelationships between finance and a nascent U.S. television industry. Examining trade press discourses and contextualized quantitative data, this case study asks how financialization affected the structures of postwar U.S. broadcasting and the programming and audience targeting of the American Broadcasting Company (ABC) between 1953 and 1964. Rather than simply representing an external force constraining artistic production, the thrust of financialization created a fundamental reorientation of ABC from the inside out. Indeed, during this period, ABC shifted its target audience to, in part, please financial intermediaries but paradoxically alienated those financial elites in the process by turning away from culturally legitimate genres like anthology dramas and high-brow variety series. In charting these continuities and changes, this paper offers a theory of the “financial commodity audience” that helps articulate how financial stakeholders have valued a particular type of viewer: white coastal elites, particularly men. The evidence presented in this case also suggests that cultural industries have been well suited to the extractionary logics of financialization due to the intangibility of their assets and imagined audiences. In this way, media histories remain critical to understanding the power dynamics of financialization and contemporary media industries.

The Continued Olympic Agenda Shift: A Case Study of the Time on Camera for Men and Women During the 2022 Beijing Olympics on NBC

This case study assessed the differences in time on camera dedicated to men and women athletes at the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics. An analysis of the entirety of the programming on the the American broadcast television company NBC, including the prime-time broadcasts, the daytime programming, and the additional nightly content, yielded nearly 185 hr of coded Olympic content. When excluding mixed-sex events, in the 61.5 hr of prime-time coverage, women received 60.05% of the time on camera. During the non-prime-time coverage, which spanned 123 hr, men received the majority of clock time, accounting for 51.6% of coverage. In addition, differences by sport were uncovered, with the major differences occurring in alpine skiing, which saw more women’s coverage regardless of broadcast. In contrast, women received more coverage in freestyle skiing and snowboarding during the prime-time broadcast, but men were more emphasized in these competitions during the non-prime-time content. Utilizing agenda setting as the theoretical framework for this case study, ramifications for these broadcast trends and differences are discussed.

Palestinian female ‘suicide bombers’ and the masculinity of martyrdom: Comparing ‘scandalous subwomen’ reactions in British and American broadcast news media coverage of the Second Intifada

From grassroots activism to armed combatants, Palestinian females have been active in combating Israel’s occupation of Palestine since the early twentieth century. During the second Palestinian Intifada, however, western news media coverage of female-perpetrated ‘suicide bombings’ sensationalized these previously unseen acts. Utilizing Herjeet Marway’s ‘scandalous subwomen’ societal reaction as a framework, this article engages in a multimodal analysis of the largely unexplored UK and US broadcast news coverage of female-perpetrated Palestinian ‘suicide bombings’. Via a postcolonial perspective, it addresses this framework’s focus upon ‘exclusion’: the projection that Palestinian female suicide bombers’ political participation is subject to male influence. This article finds that exclusionary male figures, as well as Saudi Arabia, are framed by UK and US broadcast news media to afford Palestinian female suicide bombers a lack of political agency. Palestinian female ‘suicide bombers’, as a result, become victimized figures via the UK and US broadcast news media’s orientalist ‘perceived reality’ which fails to recognize these female actors’ agential will or their ability to freely participate in political acts.

Content Analysis of American Network News Coverage of Prevention Strategies During the Initial Wave of the COVID-19 Pandemic.

Broadcast media is a method to communicate health information to the general public and has previously been used in prior public health emergencies. Despite the current ubiquity of social media, traditional news programming retains relatively large audiences, which increased during the COVID-19 pandemic's early days. Viewership of broadcast media networks' evening news skews toward older groups (age 65 and up) which were vulnerable to health complications related to the COVID-19 pandemic. The current study explored the trends in American broadcast network news media coverage of prevention during the initial wave of the COVID-19 pandemic. Quantitative content analysis using the Public Health Framework for Prevention was used to analyze three major US media networks' evening news content for thematic trends in COVID-19 coverage during the first US pandemic wave from March to May 2020. A total of 117 episodes of the evening news, 39 from each of the three major US media networks, evenly divided among the first 13 weeks of the pandemic in the US. Outcome variables included average seconds of coverage per episode devoted to prevention strategies, COVID-19 coverage not related to prevention, and non-COVID-19 coverage. The proportion of coverage dedicated to COVID-19 sharply increased in the first 2 weeks of March and decreased in the last 2 weeks of May. Networks focused approximately half the COVID-19 coverage time on prevention issues (288 seconds/episode) compared to non-prevention issues (538 seconds/episode). Prevention coverage varied over time. Although coverage included COVID-19 prevention content, more of the coverage was on other pandemic-related issues (e.g., economic impacts). Because public network news outlets have broad reach and accessibility, they could be an effective partner for public health agencies disseminating prevention messaging for current and future disease outbreaks and threats to public health.

Cold War Frequencies: CIA Clandestine Radio Broadcasting to the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe by Richard H. Cummings

<i>Cold War Frequencies: CIA Clandestine Radio Broadcasting to the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe</i> by Richard H. Cummings

An Update From the North American Broadcasters Association and the World Broadcasting Unions’ Committees

The North American Broadcasters Association’s Technical Committee (NABA-TC) plays a key role in ensuring that the technical needs and goals of our members are addressed in the complex, rapidly changing technical environment of broadcasting and content distribution. NABA’s TC works to ensure that North American broadcasting interests are represented well in key international forums. A delegation representing NABA positions participates in Working Group meetings and World Radio communication Conferences (WRCs) of the International Telecommunication Union’s Radiocommunication Sector (ITU-R), the U.N. agency with legal authority over the world radio spectrum allocations and recommendations.

A Comparative Study of News Tweets of Tham Luang Cave Rescue by Thai, American, British, and Australian Broadcasters

This research investigated the typical grammatical structures, topics, and address terms for the victims in the news of Tham Luang cave rescue on Twitter published by four broadcasters: Bangkok Post, CNN International, BBC World News, and ABC News. The sample was 454 news tweets posted by the broadcasters between June 25, 2018 and July 15, 2018. The instruments were a syntactic analysis table, a topic analysis table, and an address term analysis table. The results showed that (1) the most typical grammatical structure used in the news by all broadcasters, except BBC World News, was simple sentence, (2) the most frequently-addressed topics in Bangkok Post and BBC World News were settings, while those in CNN International and ABC News were victims, and (3) the most frequently-used address terms for the victims in the news by Bangkok Post and BBC World News were address terms associated with age and gender combination and those associated with occupation, while this frequency order was in reverse in the news by CNN International and ABC News. Certain statistically significant correlations were also witnessed. The findings provided insights into certain similarities and differences in typical grammatical structures, topics, and address terms in the news tweets posted by the four broadcasters, and they also reflected English-language news publication on Twitter in general.

Coach Lasso and the embodiment of American exceptionalism:NBC Sports promotion of English Premier League football as the foreign sport

ABSTRACT This study considers the campaign of American broadcast network NBC to cultivate a US-based audience for the English Premier League (EPL) after purchasing broadcast rights in 2013. This involved the creation and introduction of a fictional character, American football coach Ted Lasso, who initially came to England to manage a soccer team and later to provide broadcast commentary. A series of videos chronicling the coach’s antics, soccer and cultural illiteracy, immense inexperience, and limited perspective, which debuted shortly before the network’s inaugural coverage began, garnered considerable attention. A thematic analysis indicated that the campaign portrayed Ted Lasso as an unknowing fool and cavalier clown accompanied by a knowledgeable sidekick, anchored his perspective on American football exclusively, and projected soccer as a foreign, feminine and youth sport. NBC Sports’ promotional campaign effectively combined comedic elements like farce and parody to critique and confront American exceptionalism and US historical indifference to soccer.

Violence against Women and Girls: Female Filmmakers Critique the Menace

Violence against Women and Girls: Female Filmmakers Critique the Menace

Transnational Environments and 'Mixed Signals' in Radio Propaganda: The Voice of America, the BBC, and the People’s Republic of China, 1949-1976

This paper explores Mandarin-language radio operations broadcast by the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC)’s External Service Programming and the United States Information Agency (USIA)’s ‘Voice of America’ (VOA) programming from 1949-1976, particularly the concerns over language among employees as they attempted to shape public opinion across a variety of Chinese-speaking audiences in the ‘Far East’ region. Using archival, memoir, and oral history sources, I argue that the broadcasting policy concerns of the BBC and the VOA were shaped by an entanglement between national and transnational pressures, particularly over the use of accent, dialect, and terminology which could evoke real or imagined feelings of national identity among transnational listening audiences. As the BBC and VOA staff prioritised certain language, from ‘pure’ accents to ‘acceptable’ phraseology for their diverse and disparate listening audiences across mainland China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Malaysia, ‘Burma’ and other Chinese-speaking overseas communities, they produced ‘mixed signals’ which upheld ideas of a unified and homogeneous Chinese nation-state while attracting few to their informational programmes, especially in mainland China. One result of these ‘mixed signals’ was that many listeners on the mainland and elsewhere valued foreign broadcasts with language-free musical entertainment over informational news. By reconsidering the transnational dimensions of British and American broadcasting in the region, which have long been considered only on national terms, this paper emphasises the role of transnational listening networks in shaping the development of news systems across this diverse linguistic region.

Revisiting the digital humanities through the lens of Indigenous studies—or how to question the cultural blindness of our technologies and practices

AbstractThis article examines the benefits of putting Indigenous perspectives and the digital humanities (DH) in conversation with each other in order to elaborate a DH approach that is suitable for Indigenous research and to suggest critical perspectives for a more sustainable DH. For this purpose, the article examines practices of data harvesting, categorizing, and sharing from the perspectives of groups in the margin, more specifically in relation to Sámi research. Previous research has emphasized the role of cultural and social contexts in the design, use, and adaptation of technologies in general, and digital technologies in particular (Douglas, 1987. Inventing American broadcasting; Nissenbaum, 2001. Computer, 34, 118–120; Powell &amp; Aitken, 2011. The American literature scholar in the digital age) and several scholars have argued for how the application of critical studies make a fruitful contribution to the DH (Liu, 2012. Debates in the digital humanities; McPherson, 2012. Debates in the digital humanities). This article suggests an approach that addresses a need to acknowledge the diversity of technoscientific traditions. The perspectives of Indigenous groups bring this matter to a head. In order to make the DH more sustainable and inclusive, the development of the DH should be driven by cultural studies to a greater extent than it has been so far. A sustainable DH also means a better rendering of the plurality of the cultural values, perspectives, and ethics that characterize our fieldwork and research subjects.

Bordering an Industry: KVOS-TV and Canawest Film Productions in the Pacific Northwest

In 1953, Bellingham’s KVOS-TV aired its first broadcast—Queen Elizabeth II’s coronation—to audiences in northwest Washington State and southwest British Columbia. KVOS was the second television station in Washington and the first in British Columbia. As the station—and the popularity of television—grew, KVOS turned a persistent focus to attracting television audiences in the Vancouver metropolitan region and Vancouver Island. The station established a subsidiary in Vancouver in 1960 to produce commercials for local Canadian advertisers. This subsidiary grew into a full-fledged film production studio, Canawest Film Productions, which produced commercials, industrial films and animation for clients on both sides of the border. For a brief period, KVOS and Canawest fostered a unique relationship among an American broadcaster, Canadian and American advertisers, and cross-border audiences. Canawest was shuttered in 1977 after the Canadian legislature passed Bill C-58, ending tax deductions for Canadian companies advertising on American TV stations. This paper gives insight into the cross-border design of KVOS as well as Canawest’s role in producing audiovisual material in the 1960s and 1970s. In doing so, this paper reflects on the tensions between culture and economics in the face of financial incentive and policy intervention.

Advertisers and American Broadcasting: From Institutional Sponsorship to the Creative Revolution

American broadcasting, unique among media industries, relied on sponsors and their ad agencies for program content from the 1920s through the 1950s. Some sponsors broadcast educational or culturally uplifting programs to burnish their corporate images. By the mid-1960s, however, commercial broadcasting had transformed, and advertisers could only buy interstitial minutes for interrupting commercials, during which they wooed cynical consumers with entertaining soft-sell appeals. The midcentury shifts in institutional power in US broadcasting among corporate sponsors, advertising agencies, and radio/television networks reflected a fundamental shift in beliefs about how to use broadcasting as an advertising medium.

Image of Russia in the Coronavirus Era: Verbal American, British, and Spanish Media Broadcast

Image of Russia in the Coronavirus Era: Verbal American, British, and Spanish Media Broadcast

Black Broadcast Journalists: Implications of Mentorship and Race in the Newsroom

In this study, 23 African American broadcast journalists, who graduated from college between 1994 and 2014, were interviewed about their experiences working in network television news, specifically the role their mentor played to help their professional success. Mentors largely provided both vocational and psychosocial support, but were overwhelmingly not seen as role models. The majority of mentees also believed race was a factor in their careers. The findings led to recommendations on how mentors can guide their mentees toward career progression, such as verbal encouragement, guiding mentees to position themselves so “Others” see the value they bring to the newsroom, and networking opportunities.

Shonda Rhimes’s TGIT: Representation of Womanhood and Blackness

For the first time in television history, Shonda Rhimes, a Black female showrunner obtained an entire prime time programming block on American broadcast television. She has been recognized as one of the most successful and influential TV showrunners and her shows are celebrated for promoting a strong feminist agenda that tends towards equality regardless of gender, race, class, religious belief or sexual orientation. Concentrating on ABC’s prime time night Thank God It's Thursday, our analysis focuses on Grey's Anatomy (ABC, 2005-), How to Get Away with Murder (ABC, 2014-) and Scandal (ABC, 2012-2018), respectively a medical, a legal and a political drama. The main goal of the paper is to propose a hybrid methodology, that moves at the intersection of several approaches to investigate which aesthetics, identities and relationships of race and womanhood are represented in these three case studies.

Reporting on Climate Change by Broadcast Meteorologists: A National Assessment

AbstractTelevision weathercasters are uniquely situated to inform their audiences about the local impacts of global climate change and a growing number of them are adopting the role of climate change educator. We surveyed all American broadcast meteorology professionals in 2015 (N = 2,059; response rate = 22.6%), 2016 (N = 2017; response rate = 31.2%), and 2017 (N = 2,177; response rate = 22.1%) to assess weathercasters’ interest in reporting about climate change; if, where, and how they report about climate change; and the reactions they get from their audiences when they do. Many participating weathercasters indicated that they were moderately or very interested in reporting about climate change, especially using local historical climate information (56%). Just over half of the weathercasters (57.9%) had used one or more communication mode to inform their viewers, or other people in their community, about the local impacts of climate change in the prior year. The most commonly used modes were social media (42.7%), school visits (36.3%), community events (33.1%), and on-air broadcasts (31.3%). Most weathercasters who had reported about climate change on air indicated they received either positive viewer feedback or little feedback (61.9%); conversely, weathercasters who had not reported about climate change expected to receive mostly negative feedback (44.2%). In sum, this analysis suggests that large numbers of weathercasters have adopted the role of climate change educator in their communities; they use a range of communication modes to share climate change information with their audiences and receive mostly positive feedback from their audiences when they do.

"WE SHALL TELL YOU THE TRUTH": "VOICE OF AMERICA" IN THE GLOBAL INFORMATION SPACE (1940-IES – BEGINNING OF THE XXI CENTURY)

The aim of the article is to provide a complex survey of the American broadcasting station "Voice of America’s" history since its establishment to the beginning of the XXI century. The methodology of the research is based on combination of the general and special historical methods and principles of historical cognition, namely scientificity, historicism, systematicity, objectivity. The principles of historicism, systematicity and scientificity provide for tracing the activity of "Voice of America" and its causal relationships with the historical and political background and, in particular, the foreign policy agenda of the US government. The objectivity principle is involved while highlighting the activity of the broadcasting station. Alongside with the critical analysis of the source base, it stands for defining the conceptual background of "Voice of America’s" operation, its regularities and certain aspects. The principle of systematicity makes it possible to create a holistic image of a broadcaster’s activity in 1940-ies-at the beginning of the XXI century. Taking into account the specifics of the topic, the article employs an interdisciplinary approach actualized due to categorial and scientific-research instruments of other social and humanitarian sciences, particularly politology. &#x0D; The scientific novelty of the article is attained by a pioneer attempt in the Ukrainian historiography to conduct a complex analysis of "Voice of America’s" activity throughout its history. The results obtained by the author prove that "Voice of America" has been an important constituent of the US policy in the global information space. Thereat, it is not a representative of a certain power or public group, the activity of journalists and editorial offices in forming the information content is independent and based on the principles of journalism ethics. Due to this factor, the broadcasting station has a reputation of an independent and reliable source of topical and balanced information. "Voice of America" has adapted to the qualitative transformations in the globalization epoch information space in the course of XX-XXI centuries and turned into a powerful multimedia system attracting the largest audience in the world.

Cold War (Post-)Truth Regimes: Radio Free Europe between “States of Affairs” and the Epistemology of Hope and Fear

In accord with recent scholarly appeals, this article advocates a certain intellectual tolerance and modesty in regard to the juxtaposition of conflicting or even supposedly rival approaches to questions of epistemology and truth. By rejecting the idea of a fixed epistemological standpoint and by moving the reader along a multiplicity of frames and truth situations, the author argues that if the post-truth problematic can teach us anything new about truth, it is the necessity to (re-)acknowledge that there is no omniscient position for the scholar and that none of our scholarly approaches taken separately enable us to grasp the totality. Hence, truth is investigated in this article as a variable shaping and being shaped by a highly dynamic and uncertain social reality – a reality that is neither constituted of “hard facts” nor of a “soft relativism” alone. From a consideration of the selected Cold War context and the laboratory-like setting of the American broadcaster Radio Free Europe, it can be concluded that a new media-archaeology of the fact requires not only a revision of our understanding of truth but of agency, rationality, and objectivity as well.