Industry Discourse Research Articles

Partnering in construction re-visited: gauging progress in industry practice and prospects for advances in academic research

Despite the ubiquity of partnering and alliancing in industry discourse and academic research, questions remain about the extent of transformational change within the sector towards more collaborative working. Revisiting earlier work that highlighted issues, problems and dilemmas of partnering related to definitional ambiguities, conflicting (commercial) orientations and cultural reach and readiness, this paper highlights continuing problems of definition, formalization, translation and performance. Attention is directed towards the lack of external validation and institutionalization, as well as the need for more comparative analysis, situated understanding, awareness of organizational pluralism and recognition of relational dynamics. From this critical review, a framework is presented that embraces the variety and indeterminacy in the many definitions, pathways to collaboration, realizations in practice and evaluative recipes used. Partnering is presented instead as being constituted through complex and interacting bundles of practices that cut across levels of interaction, and which reflect competing (and contested) institutional influences, situated practices, outcomes/effects and performance evaluations. This practice-based approach is more attuned to the diversity and fluidity of the institutional contexts, organizational processes, and project/programme settings wherein partnering is situated and through which it is instantiated, and thus affords new avenues of research into its nature and effects.

A Bibliometric Analysis Exploring the Acceptance of Virtual Reality among Older Adults: A Review

In recent years, there has been a widespread integration of virtual reality (VR) technology across various sectors including healthcare, education, and entertainment, marking a significant rise in its societal importance. However, with the ongoing trend of population ageing, understanding the elderly’s acceptance of such new technologies has become a focal point in both academic and industrial discourse. Despite the attention it garners, there exists a gap in understanding the attitudes of older adults towards VR adoption, along with evident needs and barriers within this demographic. Hence, gaining an in-depth comprehension of the factors influencing the acceptance of VR technology among older adults becomes imperative to enhance its utility and efficacy within this group. This study employs renowned databases such as WoS and Scopus to scrutinize and analyze the utilization of VR among the elderly population. Utilizing VOSviewer software (version 1.6.20), statistical analysis is conducted on the pertinent literature to delve into research lacunae, obstacles, and recommendations in this domain. The findings unveil a notable surge in literature studies concerning VR usage among older adults, particularly evident since 2019. This study documents significant journals, authors, citations, countries, and research domains contributing to this area. Furthermore, it highlights pertinent issues and challenges surrounding the adoption of VR by older users, aiming to identify prevailing constraints, research voids, and future technological trajectories. Simultaneously, this study furnishes guidelines and suggestions tailored towards enhancing VR acceptance among the elderly, thereby fostering a more inclusive technological milieu. Ultimately, this research aspires to establish an encompassing technological ecosystem empowering older adults to harness VR technology for enriched engagement, learning, and social interactions.

An essay on mining and the moral obligation not to harm others

The terms ‘harm’ and ‘harm avoidance’ are increasingly being utilised in the global mining industry, particularly in relation to occupational health and safety. However, avoidance of harm has not been given the same priority when it comes to dealing with the social impacts of mining. Rather, industry discourse has focused more on ‘mitigating adverse impacts’ (which is a broader concept than ‘harm avoidance’) and leveraging positive outcomes or ‘shared value’ for local communities. Companies should be expected to contribute to local level development, but we argue that avoidance of harm to people must always be the foremost social goal. In this article, we offer a working definition of harm, and make the case for viewing harm avoidance as a moral obligation. We also challenge the proposition that, in the case of mining, it may sometimes be acceptable to expose some communities and groups to harm to derive a broader societal benefit. The evidence that people can be harmed by mining is indisputable. We argue that a priority for the global mining industry should be to ensure that practices that cause harm are no longer tolerated or considered an unavoidable cost of development.

Anatomy of a film industry Redux: Notes on the West Australian case (1969–1993)

ABSTRACT Using the Western Australian (WA) film industry as a case study, this article revisits the framework proposed by Susan Dermody and Elizabeth Jacka in their anatomy of a film industry project. Acknowledging the power of Dermody and Jacka’s work, the article highlights a lack of detail surrounding the WA case. Drawing on the idea of an ‘imaginary’ industry as a key construct, it argues that a modified version of the framework is needed to account for the WA case, especially at the organizational level. The article proposes that the period 1969/70 to the present can be analysed in terms of three distinct eras and focuses on the first two (1969–1983; 1983–1993). It discusses the organization of film industry policy according to a logic of industry development, and a persistent tension between constructions of industry as production and culture. It gathers the extant scholarly resources for an anatomy of the WA industry (including works by Brian Shoesmith, Tom O’Regan, Tim Fetherstonhaugh, Vincent O’Donnell and others). Drawing on this writing, this article represents a belated contribution to the anatomy of a film industry project and a call to action in relation to the analysis of contemporary industry discourse in WA.

Loved everywhere?: Netflix’s top 10 and the popularity of geographically diverse content

Using Netflix’s weekly Global Top 10 lists for English-language and non-English-language series and films, this article highlights some of the ways in which the world’s most popular streaming platform misrepresents both the production and consumption of its most popular geographically diverse global content. First, the Global Top 10 lists create a series of false equivalencies between the popularity of English-language and non-English-language content that mask the difference in production budgets between the two categories. Second, Netflix’s publicized data isolates the global audience distribution of non-English-language content from other economic, technological, cultural, and political factors affecting local media ecosystems as demonstrated through an analysis of South Korea. Third, in failing to account for genre-related differences, the Global Top 10 lists distorts audience behavior in the Ibero-American region. Despite the variety of limitations presented by the incomplete audience data from Global Top 10 lists, when properly contextualized with recent academic research and economic information extracted from the specialized trade press publications, this article argues that the relationship between global streaming audiences and geographically diverse content is far more complex than it appears in the Netflix’s industrial discourses.

The role of metaphor in the corporate political strategies of health harming industries: Comparing the concept of balance in the gambling and opioid industry discourses

Scholars have identified notable similarities between the political strategies employed by health-harming industries. This includes similarities in the narratives employed by industry actors seeking to oppose public health regulations that threaten their commercial interests. This study seeks to examine the use of a specific concept – the balance metaphor – in the policy discourses of two health-harming industries. Namely, the pharmaceutical industry implicated in the prescription opioid crisis in the US, and the UK gambling industry, whose products and practices are associated with a serious, but largely neglected, series of harms. We first review research on metaphors, demonstrating how this provides additional theoretically-informed concepts with which to understand how industry discourse circumscribes the terrain of policy debates in ways amenable to commercial interests. Building from these insights, we conducted a rhetorical analysis, examining how the concept of balance is employed by different actors in distinct contexts to shape understandings of the social and policy problems associated with gambling and opioid products and to promote industry-favourable regulatory responses to these. This brings a micro-level of analysis to supplement previous meso- and macro-level scholarship in this space. We use our findings to argue that the depoliticization of the policy process and objectivization of the policy space – in ways that obscure its contingent and political nature – through discourses of balance is itself an arch political act. Examining the metaphors used in policy debates and their functions provides important insights that can be used to inform the construction of counter-narratives to industry-favourable discourses, including the creative use of novel metaphors in the service of public health goals.

‘An intellectual environment of ambition’: exploring questions of independence with film(-making) education in conversation with Ben Gibson

This article presents an interview with Ben Gibson, former distributor, programmer, film journalist and producer, who went on to run the London Film School from 2000 to 2014. In this interview, Gibson deconstructs what is meant by the term ‘independent film-making’ in an educational context. Drawing on his wealth of experience in a variety of contexts, Gibson takes apart current notions that dominate in contemporary educational and industrial discourses, surprisingly arriving at a conclusion which could lead emerging film-makers and their supporters towards a notion of independence after all.

Teaching sight translation to Economics and Management majors

Relevance. Teaching professionally oriented translation to students in non-linguistic areas of study is important and relevant, since future specialists will have to use the foreign language as part of their professional activities, which includes the translation of professionally oriented texts. Teaching visual-oral translation (sight translation) as a separate type of professionally oriented translation for economics and management majors is considered to be necessary to prepare future graduates for successful professional activities.Research Methods. The study used methods such as qualitative and quantitative analysis of the most typical difficulties of students (emotional, cognitive and motor difficulties), as well as the errors they make when sight translating.Results and Discussion. The authors provide typological characteristics of sight translation as a separate type of translation activity. We discuss the main obstacles that students of non-linguistic areas of training encounter when mastering the skills of sight translation of texts related to economic and managerial discourse. Among them are the following: translation of terminological vocabulary, recognition of syntactic connections at the level of sentences and phrases, translation of modern realities, stylistically colored vocabulary and idioms, translation of lexical inclusions of other industry discourse. The reasons leading to distortions in translation from the sheet are analyzed, ways of overcoming translation difficulties that have been tested and have shown their effectiveness in the Odintsovo branch of Moscow Institute of International Relations of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation are considered.Conclusions. Skills of translating from a foreign language (English) into one’s native language (Russian) contributes not only to the formation of professional translation competence, but also a number of other academic and professional skills. To successfully implement this, a clear and competent course structure is required, taking into account the need to learn to translate modern English-language texts of economic discourse.

Daria Dayter & Sofia Rüdiger, The language of pick-up artists: Online discourses of the seduction industry. London: Routledge, 2022. Pp. 226. Hb. $136.

Daria Dayter & Sofia Rüdiger, The language of pick-up artists: Online discourses of the seduction industry. London: Routledge, 2022. Pp. 226. Hb. $136.

'The Language of Pick-Up Artists: Online Discourses of the Seduction Industry' Daria Dayter and Sofia Rüdiger (2022)

The Language of Pick-Up Artists: Online Discourses of the Seduction IndustryDaria Dayter and Sofia Rüdiger (2022)Routledge, 217pp.

Imagining and emplacing net zero industrial clusters: A critical analysis of stakeholder discourses

AbstractDecarbonizing industrial sectors is a critical global challenge, involving the creation of new industrial spaces—‘net zero industrial clusters’—co‐locating energy sectors and ‘hard‐to‐abate’ industries such as oil refining and steelmaking. This paper provides the first empirically grounded geographical investigation of these emerging spaces. It employs a place‐based research agenda to unpack how UK net zero industrial clusters (ICs) are imagined and emplaced in policy and industry discourses through place‐based naming, spatial configuring and mapping activities. By conducting document analysis, 33 in‐depth stakeholder interviews and five field trips to three UK case studies, we show how cluster imaginaries vary across cases and policy contexts in terms of constituents, focus and purpose. Ontological complexity is compounded by different rationales among stakeholders in configuring clusters and by contested cluster naming and boundary setting. This ambiguous, evolving spatiality raises important political and justice concerns over who and where is excluded in cluster building. These findings advance the geographies of low‐carbon transitions by showing: (1) ways that ICs' spatial embeddedness, which underlies cluster spatial configurations, helps increase industry actors' recognition of their economic, social and cultural ties with the places of their making, even if this risks path dependency; (2) how fluid cluster boundaries, reflected in cluster names and maps, emphasize the value of a network topology of scale to enable spatially inclusive, multi‐scalar climate mitigation. Finally, we argue that a place‐sensitive net zero policy mindset is vital for fulfilling ICs and the UK's decarbonization potential in a manner that is both fair and locally grounded.

GET WITH THE PROGRAM: PROGRAMMATIC ADVERTISING AND THE DATAFICATION OF PODCAST AUDIENCES

The podcasting landscape has been reshaped in the past several years by acquisitions and mergers among players in the industry. Major platform services like Spotify, SiriusXM, iHeartMedia, Google, and Apple have all attempted to more closely bind consumers to their proprietary services, threatening the open architecture of distribution via RSS. While control and monetization of intellectual property is one key driver of platformization in podcasting, another key institutional shift is being accelerated these changes: the datafication of the audience. In short, datafication involves the quantification of human activity to enable surveillance, prediction, and mass customization of advertising. In this paper, I explore one significant impact of widescale platformization within podcasting: the emergence of programmatic advertising markets. By essentially “listening in” to these industry discourses about podcast advertising (in podcasts and in the Podcast Upfront presentations from Spring 2022), this essay outlines the importance of platform-to-platform data transactions and highlights the resulting shifts in the podcasting ecosystem: away from the intimate, relationship-driven ethos of the medium and toward a quantitative, surveillance-driven ecosystem.

Research on the Prediction of Copper Consumption and Recycling Changes in China under the Background of Carbon Neutrality

This paper examines the recent development of China's copper industry in the context of "carbon neutrality." The issues of low resource self-sufficiency rate increased equipment levels, and limited industry discourse power in the global copper market are addressed in a number of different ways. Finally, based on the foregoing analysis, this study concludes that in order to achieve maximum resource utilization efficiency and carbon emission reduction, China's copper industry needs to strengthen technological innovation and cooperation, promote the development of the circular economy, and strengthen its synergy with other industries. The government should also create pertinent regulations and laws to encourage and direct businesses to devote more time and resources to recycling.

Ecotourism, infrastructures, and the drama of sovereignty on a border island

AbstractThe Ruta 30 scenic road project in Argentine Tierra del Fuego has encountered significant resistance. In this article, we analyze a public hearing convened to assess the road's impacts as an event illuminating the daily dynamics of the region. In this borderland, narratives about sovereignty create a space of liminalities between pasts and futures, centers and peripheries, and living and the dead. In this context, and with Patagonia's expanding conservation and ecotourism frontiers, studying public reflexivity becomes crucial for understanding rapid changes. To this end, we employ Turner's “social drama” concept to analyze the hearing as a performance enacting authorized discourses of experts, policymakers, environmentalists, industry, and workers. We conclude by discussing “liminal governance” in a border territory that transcends neoliberal and sovereign designs, and “impossible opposition,” revealing how the hearing reframed the road conflict as a sovereignty crisis, ultimately mitigating potential disruptions to established settler‐colonial structures.

Platforming inclusion at U.S. media industry events: confronting Hollywood’s lack of representational diversity

ABSTRACT Incremental structural adjustments define attempts to advance representational diversity in Hollywood. This essay considers U.S. media industry events as catalysts for change. Using the 2020 Austin Film Festival and Writers Conference as a case study, I examine how attendees platformed the topic of inclusion after summer protests reignited calls for equity throughout media industries. Participant observation across the festival's virtual spaces locates my critical deconstruction of four panels wherein representation of historically underrepresented groups, including Black, Indigenous, and other people of color (BIPOC), was a focal point. Although the festival did not overtly engage with the political moment, it platformed people who did. Conversations on craft fed into a ubiquitous conference concern with “truth” in storytelling, foregrounding sociohistorical contexts and individual specificities when representing diverse experiences, and highlighting positionality when empowering writers to tell their stories. Despite the constraints of dominant production norms, events enable underrepresented groups and their allies to shape industry discourses.

The discourse of resistance against gold mining in Trenggalek

The issue of gold mining industry in Trenggalek has increasingly been a high concern among the local people. People are aware that the mining industry will give adverse impact for their life now and the next generation, because of the natural destruction resulted from the extraction industry. People’s concern is expressed through the texts produced by local people to be circulated locally and more widely. The texts analyzed in this study are the articles in the local portal of “Nggalek.co,” which is locally produced by young people in Trenggalek. As the unit of analysis, there are 6 articles, selected by using the keyword of “tambang emas” (gold mining). This study aims at understanding the discursive strategy of the writers (Trenggalek community) in producing the text in building resistance discourse of the gold mining industry for ensuring the local sustainable development. This research is based on Foucauldian critical framework and critical discourse analysis by employing the Fairclough’s framework of three levels of analysis: micro, meso, and macro. The analysis resulted in identifying the discursive strategies in the form of key themes (knowledge produced) through the text, explaining the social political context of the resistance discourse, and identifying the power relations among the actors.

Engineering the ‘Sense of Being There’: Electronovision and the Invention of the Stage Performance Documentary

This article investigates the stage performance documentary – the moving image record of a play, concert, comedy routine, or other type of onstage performance – as a mode of media production that has been historically constituted by a multimodal engagement across categories of media and culture. It chronicles the short-lived history of Electronovision, a 1960s moving image capture process that augmented television technologies to record and reproduce live stage events for theatrical exhibition. Electronovision’s history demonstrates how a production company sought legitimacy for the nascent stage performance documentary as more than ‘filmed theater’, but a modern hybridization of stage and screen via cutting-edge technology. Using archival memoranda, industry discourse, and an interview with its director, this article gives particular focus to Electronovision’s production of the rock ’n’ roll revue The T.A.M.I. Show (1964). The work that most convinced the entertainment industry of Electronovision’s ambitions, The T.A.M.I. Show suggests an alternate trajectory that stage performance documentaries might have taken outside of its 16-millmetre formalization by direct cinema.

Book Review: Daria Dayter and Sofia Rüdiger, The Language of Pick-Up Artists: Online Discourses of the Seduction Industry

Book Review: Daria Dayter and Sofia Rüdiger, <i>The Language of Pick-Up Artists: Online Discourses of the Seduction Industry</i>

“Home, Sweet Home”: Identity and Diaspora in Bai Jing-rui’s Qiong Yao Films

Abstract This paper discusses the Qiong Yao films directed by Bai Jing-rui in the 1970s, arguing that these romantic dramas took a proactive part in representing a cultural identity in Taiwan society of the time. The paper investigates how various issues, such as “home”, nationhood and diaspora, are treated in the films. In the process, the paper situates the filmic discussion in the wider context of a highly politicised environment in general and the industrial discourses of “healthy realism” and “healthy variety-show” in particular. The paper proposes that Bai Jing-rui’s Qiong Yao films grew out of a push-and-pull between three elements: (1) the authorities that wanted to promote certain moral and political messages; (2) Bai Jing-rui as an auteur strongly committed to the art of filmmaking; and (3) the audience at large whose support was needed to sustain a film industry. The paper gives close attention to how Bai’s Qiong Yao films tried various ways of reconciling those competing forces. As case studies, the paper examines closely two of Bai Jing-rui’s Girl Friend (1975) and Far Away from Home (1977) to show how they blended modernity with nativism in articulating a sense of cultural identity.

Remembering television as a new medium: Conceptual boundaries and connections

Academic and industry discourses in Sweden blamed the rapid decline of cinema-going in the late 1950s on the introduction of television. Complicating the issue, Swedish television ties in with radio as a domestic medium, making the conceptual links between television and cinema seem less obvious. If we write a history of media characterized by replacement, we tend to overlook how new and old media exist simultaneously in everyday life. Our article investigates how television features in memory narratives of cinema in the context of quotidian life in the late 1950s and 1960s in Sweden. The study draws on memories collected through 60 oral history interviews in two large-scale projects. With a focus on cultural practices and Lisa Gitelman’s concept of ‘associated protocols’ in media use, we ask how cinema and television are conceived in relation to each other in hindsight when remembering television as new.