Magazine Pages Research Articles

Beyond Needle and Thread

Beyond Needle and Thread

Making Pictorial Print: Media Literacy and Mass Culture in British Magazines 1885–1918

Making Pictorial Print: Media Literacy and Mass Culture in British Magazines 1885–1918

Non-destructive DNA recovery from handwritten documents using a dry vacuum technique.

Investigations of many crimes such as robberies, kidnappings, and terrorism are often associated with the recovery of a paper document which has been written by the perpetrator. Paper can provide a variety of forensic evidence such as DNA, latent fingermarks, and indented writing. The focus of this study was DNA recovery from handwritten notes through a vacuum suction device while preserving the other evidence types and the integrity of the document. Copy paper was used to create handwritten documents and sheets with deliberate fingerprints, and indentations. The homemade vacuum device consists of a glass pipette blocked with a moistened swab and attached to a vacuum source. The method collected sufficient DNA amounts for DNA typing analysis with 80% of the 11 copy paper samples tested giving probative DNA profiles with five being eligible for DNA database entry. DNA recovery was also tested on other commonly encountered paper types. DNA quantities would have been sufficient for STR typing for approximately 50% of manila envelopes and notebook paper samples, but not for magazine pages and bank deposit slips. Deliberate sebaceous and eccrine latent fingermarks placed onto copy paper and developed with magnetic fingerprint developer or 1,2 indanedione were not affected by the vacuum swabbing technique. Simulated robbery notes with indented writing and processed using an Electrostatic Detection Apparatus (ESDA) demonstrated no interference through the DNA collection. This vacuum-based collection method enables laboratories to reverse the current questioned document workflow and start with DNA collection.

Venice Biennale May We Live in Interesting Times curated by Ralph Rugoff

Venice Biennale May We Live in Interesting Times curated by Ralph Rugoff

Men over women: The social transmission of gender stereotypes through spatial elevation

People draw from physical properties like spatial location to better understand complex concepts like power (Landau, Meier, & Keefer, 2010; T. W. Schubert, 2005). We examined the cultural implications of such associations for gender stereotypes. Specifically, we hypothesized that people would make location-based attributions of power and dominance when targets are situated in noisy, real-world environments (i.e., magazine pages; Study 1); that men generally appear higher than women across print media (Study 2: Content Analysis); and that this gender-location association would ultimately cause perceivers to think that men (in general) are more powerful and dominant people than are women (Study 3; meta-analysis). Results supported hypotheses and indicate that exposure to this cultural pattern in which men are higher than women (i.e., male spatial elevation) causes perceivers to endorse gender stereotypes of dominance. Accordingly, gender-location associations may account in part for the social transmission of gender stereotypes.

Репрезентация ресторанной критики на страницах гастрономических периодических изданий (на примере журнала «Гастрономъ»)

Репрезентация ресторанной критики на страницах гастрономических периодических изданий (на примере журнала «Гастрономъ»)

Cultural snapshots: Theory and method

AbstractCausal influences of culture on cognition are challenging to examine scientifically. We here introduce a method to address this challenge.Cultural snapshotsenable scientists to (a) characterize the cultural information commonly and frequently encountered by a collective, (b) examine how such cultural information influences the cognitions of individuals, and (c) draw conclusions about the emergence of shared cognition. Specifically, cultural snapshots are recorded samples of public environments commonly encountered by many people. Television scenes, photographs of public spaces, magazine pages, and social media conversations are all examples of cultural snapshots. Representative sets of cultural snapshots can be coded to index the systematic patterns of information encountered by a collective (i.e.,cultural patterns). These same materials can be used to experimentally manipulate those cultural patterns, allowing scientists to examine cultural influences on cognition and behavior. We here review and provide guidelines for cultural snapshots research, trace cultural snapshots to classic theories of culture, and describe how cultural snapshots balance the constraints of representative design (Brunswik,) with those of causal inference. We then illustrate how this approach is used to address (a) questions of causality in cultural psychology and (b) questions of applicability in social cognition research. We conclude by evaluating the strengths and weaknesses of the approach.

Can the Media Help Women Be Better at Math? Stereotype Threat, Selective Exposure, Media Effects, and Women's Math Performance

This study examines women's media selections when under the gender–math stereotype threat and the subsequent media effects on their math performance through the lens of the Selective Exposure Self- and Affect-Management (SESAM) model, mood management theory, and social comparison theory. Female college students were randomly assigned to the stereotype threat condition or the control condition; then, they selectively browsed magazine pages showing female role models in stereotypical domains (beauty or family) and counterstereotypical domains (career or science) before taking the math test. The results show that women spent more time on career magazines when under threat, and this selective exposure's effect on their math performance was moderated by their assimilation to the role models.

Media Impacts on Women’s Fertility Desires: A Prolonged Exposure Experiment

Media exposure may have implications for family planning, a public health issue of key importance. Drawing on social comparison theory and social identity theory, a prolonged exposure experiment examined whether media portrayals of women’s social roles affect fertility desires among 166 American, nonstudent, never married, childless women ages 21–35 years old. After sign-up and baseline sessions, participants viewed magazine pages five days in a row. Stimuli presented women in either mother/homemaker roles, beauty ideal roles, or professional roles. Three days later, participants again indicated their number of desired children and time planned until first birth. Exposure to mother/homemaker and beauty ideal portrayals increased the number of desired children across time. Exposure to professional portrayals increased the time planned until 1st birth compared to beauty ideal portrayals—this impact was partially mediated by a shift toward more progressive gender norms (per social identity theory) and assimilation (per social comparison theory).

Beauty or Business Queen: How Young Women Select Media to Reinforce Possible Future Selves

Dynamic management and maintenance of self-concepts shape everyday selective media use. The present work examines related processes per the Selective Exposure Self and Affect Management model with a focus on young women’s magazine use. In a prolonged selective exposure study with seven online sessions, women ( N = 181, 18-25 years, all Caucasian) completed a signup and a baseline session, four daily sessions with selective browsing of magazine pages (from beauty, parenting, business, and current affairs magazines), and 3 days later, a follow-up. Participants made 16 selections and viewed 80 pages in total. The online application logged magazine content selections and length of exposure. Participants’ possible future selves as romantic partner, parent, and professional at baseline affected the extent to which beauty, parenting, and business pages were viewed. In turn, possible future selves as romantic partner and professional were reinforced through selective exposure to beauty and business magazines.

A Research on Presentation of Violence in Social Media: Opinions of Facebook Users

Element of violence which was seen almost every day in all media but in no way could be prevented is reflecting a bitter side of life. Today that we called age of information, technology rapidly improved, and thanks to this there found solutions for a lot of matters, we are unfortunately are living violence more heavy day by day. Consequently, elements of violence lived are taking part in television and computer screens, and magazine and newspaper pages. Although it is an un approved and unwanted matter of fact, violence’s existing in life is keeping this phenomenon fresh in media’s agenda. It is known that there executed researches and studies about in what direction violence was presented in almost all units of media organs. In this study, how violence was used on Facebook that was used especially among young ones in last ten years and had high popularity had been searched. With this aim, a focus group study had been executed in November 2015 on university students. Information that representation of violence was done over Facebook had been obtained in the study. Violence done over Facebook is conceiving alienation, polarization and hate together with itself. As a consequence, shares done through Facebook can last with very close friends’ erasing each other from their personal Facebook pages in time, and this situation is called as violence.

Dante, Bruno, Vico, S.Nob: The Wake in Mexico

The inaugural issue of the avant-garde arts magazine S.Nob, published in June 1962 in Mexico City, featured a translation of the first page of Finnegans Wake. The translation, which featured two full pages of notes on the text, was the work of the magazine's editor, Salvador Elizondo, a young poet and cinema buff whose magazine served as a digest of recent experimental art and literature from Europe and the Americas. At once a critical survey, a critical guide, and a gesture of appropriation, Elizondo's annotated translation of the Wake's first page presents a microcosm of Joycean interpretation and contributes to the productive excess of this field. For this very reason, Elizondo's Primera Pagina serves as a constitutive gesture for the avant-garde group congregated around S.Nob, whose ranks featured European artists such as Leonora Carrington and Kati Horna as well as Latin-American artists and authors such as Elizondo, Jorge Ibarguengoitia, Juan Garcia Ponce, and Alejandro Jodorowsky-Prullansky. As demonstrated in the magazine's pages, Joycean avant-gardes such as the S.Nob group are as invested in rethinking the genealogies and mythic histories compiled in and by the Wake, as they are in standing at the forefront of the unfolding history of the immediate present.

Book Review: The Language of Journalism: A Multi-genre Perspective, by Angela Smith and Michael Higgins

The Language of Journalism: A Multi-genre Perspective. Angela Smith and Michael Higgins. New York: Bloomsbury, 2013. 152 pp. $29.95 pbk.Angela Smith and Dr. Michael Higgins explore the media's use of language to purposely and inadvertently maintain the societal status quo. Smith, a Reader in Language and Culture at the University of Sunderland, United Kingdom, and Higgins, the Director of the and Creative Writing program at the University of Strathclyde, United Kingdom, use Critical Discourse Analysis to examine how journalistic language reflects and shapes social realities and how it articulates values. CDA's explicitly political agenda seeks to raise awareness of the ideological frameworks that inform language choice, and the construction, representation and positioning of its subjects in discourse. In other words, they look at how language is used in different media outlets and how these choices reflect political values.After outlining their method and framework, they divide the rest of the book by media genre: broadcast, magazine, newspaper, sports, and online. In the broadcast section, for example, they talk about language as a means of establishing informality (e.g., anchors referring to each other by first name) and a close broadcaster-audience relationship (e.g. using the pronoun you when talking to the viewers). They talk about newspapers' lack of space necessitating news headline register-or the American headlinese-which causes headlines to lack the nuance of the articles. Across all outlets, they discuss verb tenses quite a bit, in terms of using present tense to convey a sense of immediacy, while using past-perfect tenses (i.e., had said) to distinguish recently conducted interviews from background information. The book provides a unique application of critical discourse to an analysis of popular media.The Language of Journalism is accessible for seasoned researchers and undergraduate students. The introduction provides clear definitions of terms used in critical analysis for those unfamiliar with them (e.g., discourse, ideology, intertextuality). The introductory chapter could stand alone as a text for introductory students. The chapters also are clearly organized with plenty of subheadings throughout and a labeled conclusion, which, again, could be helpful for students. The book also uses relatively modern media examples, such as references to twenty-four-hour networks, Twitter, and reality television. They also make good use of journalistic artifacts, including broadcast transcripts, newspaper articles, photos, and magazine pages. Although some of the British media references might not be familiar to some, the book has a clear and simple tone that makes it accessible for readers across countries. …

Exploiting Multimedia Content: A Machine Learning Based Aproach

This thesis explores use of machine learning for multimedia content management involving single/multiple features, modalities and concepts. We introduce shape based feature for binary patterns and apply it for recognition and retrieval application in single and multiple feature based architecture. The multiple feature based recognition and retrieval frameworks are based on the theory of multiple kernel learning (MKL). A binary pattern recognition framework is presented by combining the binary MKL classifiers using a decision directed acyclic graph. The evaluation is shown for Indian script character recognition, and MPEG7 shape symbol recognition. A word image based document indexing framework is presented using the distance based hashing (DBH) defined on learned pivot centres. We use a new multi-kernel learning scheme using a Genetic Algorithm for developing a kernel DBH based document image retrieval system. The experimental evaluation is presented on document collections of Devanagari, Bengali and English scripts. Next, methods for document retrieval using multi-modal information fusion are presented. Text/Graphics segmentation framework is presented for documents having a complex layout. We present a novel multi-modal document retrieval framework using the segmented regions. The approach is evaluated on English magazine pages. A document script identification framework is presented using decision level aggregation of page, paragraph and word level prediction. Latent Dirichlet Allocation based topic modelling with modified edit distance is introduced for the retrieval of documents having recognition inaccuracies. A multi-modal indexing framework for such documents is presented by a learning based combination of text and image based properties. Experimental results are shown on Devanagari script documents. Finally, we have investigated concept based approaches for multimedia analysis. A multi-modal document retrieval framework is presented by combining the generative and discriminative modelling for exploiting the cross-modal correlation between modalities. The combination is also explored for semantic concept recognition using multi-modal components of the same document, and different documents over a collection. An experimental evaluation of the framework is shown for semantic event detection in sport videos, and semantic labelling of components of multi-modal document images.

Color rush: American color photography from Stieglitz to Sherman

Today color photography is so ubiquitous that its hard to believe there was a time when this was not the case. Rush: Seventy-five Years of Color Photography in America explores the developments that led us to this point, looking at the way color photographs circulated and appeared at the time of their making. From magazine pages to gallery walls, from advertisements to photo journalism, Rush charts the history of color photography in the United States from the moment it became available as a mass medium to the moment when it no longer seemed an unusual choice for artists. book begins with the 1907 unveiling of autochrome, the first commercially available color process, and continues up through the 1981 landmark survey show and book, The New Color Photography, which hailed the widespread acceptance of color photography in contemporary art. In the intervening years, color photography captured the popular imagination through its visibility in magazines like Life and Vogue, as well as through its accessibility in the marketplace thanks to companies like Kodak. Often in photo histories color is presented as having arrived fully formed in the 1970s; this book reveals a deeper story and uncovers connections in both artistic and commercial practices. A comprehensive chronology and examples of significant moments and movements mark the increasing visibility of color photography. Rush brings together Ansel Adams and William Eggleston, Eliot Porter and Cindy Sherman, Edward Steichen and Stephen Shore, and examines them in a fresh context paying particular attention to color photographys translation onto the printed page. In doing so, it traces a new history that more fully accounts for colors pervasive presence today.

Weighing Women Down: Messages on Weight Loss and Body Shaping in Editorial Content in Popular Women's Health and Fitness Magazines

Exposure to idealized body images has been shown to lower women's body satisfaction. Yet some studies found the opposite, possibly because real-life media (as opposed to image-only stimuli) often embed such imagery in messages that suggest thinness is attainable. Drawing on social cognitive theory, the current content analysis investigated editorial body-shaping and weight-loss messages in popular women's health and fitness magazines. About five thousand magazine pages published in top-selling U.S. women's health and fitness magazines in 2010 were examined. The findings suggest that body shaping and weight loss are a major topic in these magazines, contributing to roughly one-fifth of all editorial content. Assessing standards of motivation and conduct, as well as behaviors promoted by the messages, the findings reflect overemphasis on appearance over health and on exercise-related behaviors over caloric reduction behaviors and the combination of both behaviors. These accentuations are at odds with public health recommendations.

A Crack in the Crystal Ball? Prolonged Exposure to Media Portrayals of Social Roles Affect Possible Future Selves

A prolonged-exposure experiment, spanning 10 days, investigated how gender-typed portrayals in magazines affect young women’s visions of their personal future. Competing hypotheses regarding impacts on possible future selves were derived from social cognitive theory and social comparison theory. Women ( N = 215) viewed magazine pages with females in either professional or caretaker roles, as beauty ideals, or without individuals (control group). Gender-typed roles remained salient 3 days after last exposure. Portrayals of professionals and caretakers instigated more negative responses related to personal future than beauty ideals. Thus, despite much advocacy for increasing the number of strong female role models in the media, the perpetuation of traditional beauty ideals makes women feel more positively about their future.

Visual language: perspectives for both makers and users

The power of a visual image is determined by a complex array of elements. Anyone who creates a page for a magazine, makes a PowerPoint presentation, designs a brochure, prepares a poster, or dreams up an idea for an infographic is faced with some important questions: Why is it better to position this photograph here rather than there? What background color should be used for a presentation? What is necessary to bear in mind when creating an internet page? Is it better to use a table, a graph, or an infographic as a visual aid? Should permission be sought to use an image for a weblog? These are the kinds of questions that Visual Language will answer. Following an introduction to the subject, the book explains three important theories relating to visual images: Gestalt, semiotics, and visual rhetoric. Using these theories, the book then explores the fundamental elements of visual language: composition, typography, perspective, and color. Additionally, it presents applications from everyday practice: photos, graphs and tables, infographics, web pages, and magazine pages. The combination of theory and practice makes this guide an excellent reference work for both academic programs and vocational studies. *** Recommended. - Choice, Vol. 50, No. 08, April 2013.

The Paper House (review)

Reviewed by: The Paper House Hope Morrison Peterson, Lois . The Paper House. Orca, 2012. [128p]. Paper ed. ISBN 978-1-4598-0051-9 $7.95 Reviewed from galleys R Gr. 4-6. Ten-year-old Safiyah digs through the Kibera garbage dump on the outskirts of Nairobi, Kenya, searching for magazines that she can use to seal the cracks in the shack she shares with her grandmother, Cucu. At the dump, Safiyah gets into a scuffle with a boy named Chindi, who, she later learns, is the cousin of Blade, local bad boy and gang leader. Chindi and Blade turn into valuable allies for Safiyah, helping her get Cucu, who has been coughing up blood to the free medical clinic. After Cucu has healed and they have returned home, Safiyah sets about using the leftover magazine pages to create complex mosaic collages on the exterior walls of their home, collages that begin to draw attention and create opportunities for Safiyah. Despite the dingy setting and omnipresence of poverty in Safiyah's story, this is not a sad tale; it is rather an uplifting story of a girl with pure and unselfish motives learning to trust others and being rewarded for her talent. Not that it glosses over the darker side: Safiyah's struggle is realistically portrayed, and her feelings of desperation and shame thoughtfully depicted. This is a solid and accessible offering for young readers eager to experience life in someone else's shoes. An author's note with facts about life in the Kenyan slums is included. Copyright © 2012 The Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois

Optimal pagination and content mapping for customized magazines

Abstract Traditional media such as magazines and newspapers are undergoing deep transformations as they cope with the high volume and dynamicity of currently available information. In addition, with the emergence of decentralized publishing models, there is an increasing need for automated tools for authoring high-quality documents. Moreover, much of the dynamic information on the Web could also profit from such mechanisms for automatic presentation and summarization. This paper describes a solution to the problem of automatically producing a camera-ready magazine from a set of page templates and a sequence of variable content to be placed on those templates. The algorithm is able to find the optimal number of pages to hold the content, selecting the best templates to be used in the magazine in such a way that all pages are optimally used. The algorithm was integrated to Adobe’s InDesign® software, extending it to perform text fitting and rendering of magazine pages. The complete workflow is described in this paper, as well as an empirical evaluation and a discussion of future research directions.