Media Production Process Research Articles

This is Undignified! Comparing the Representation of Human Dignity on Cheaters and Uyajola 9/9

Calls have resonated within media scholarship and practice for more ethical oversight in the production and distribution of media content by producers through ethical frameworks. This article intervenes in the literature on the global debate around media ethics frameworks by focusing on the underexploredvalue of human dignity in the context of television reality shows. The article makes two interventions in relation to the value of dignity, one theoretical and another applied. The theoretical intervention, contrary to the tendency to rely on Western cultures and theories to conceptualise human dignity, draws from a Global South perspective, specifically from the African ethical idea of Ubuntu that proffers a relational (as opposed to an individualist) conception of human dignity. The applied ethics intervention responds to the scant literature focusing on the representation of human dignity in media ethics. The article uses Ubuntu’s theory of human dignity to compare the representation of participants on similar factual television shows from the United States of America (USA) and South Africa depicting relational infidelity. Multimodal critical discourse analysis from three episodes of Cheaters and three episodes of South Africa’s Uyajola 9/9 (n=6) reveal that human dignity in the representation of the participants in these two shows is often neglected in the media production process, leaving many questions about the global and local media ethics of these two reality shows.

육아 예능 TV프로그램과 시청자 반응에 나타난 아동 권리 침해에 대한 소고(小考)

Recently, parenting entertainment tv programs are gaining popularity and response from audience. Most audiences want to get help with childcare, learn the role of parenting, and have fun at the same time through parenting entertainment tv programs. Parenting entertainment programs are highly trusted by audiences due to their reality, and they affect on audiences’ parenting values, attitudes. Considering the impact and the influence of parenting entertainment tv program, it is necessary to explore to the respect for and protection of children's rights in parenting entertainment TV programs. This study aims to enhance social awareness of child rights by examining the recognition of child rights in parenting entertainment tv programs, and to provide implications for the production of child-centered parenting entertainment tv programs. For this, content analysis was conducted by monitoring a total of 70 videos and audience’s responses on parenting entertainment tv programs posted on the YouTube account of the broadcasting company. The study results were as follows: First, it was found that thumbnails and subtitles of parenting entertainment program videos are attribution-biased and infringe on child rights by caricatures of personality and behavior. This is an area that requires discussion of the appropriateness of children's developmental problems as a program with an entertainment format. Second, it was found that caricatures of children in parenting entertainment programs infringe on child right. This includes exposing the child's body, covering the child's face with food such as seaweed, adorning the child's dissatisfaction with adhesive tape, intentionally surprising the child with a hidden camera, and creating false discipline situations. Third, it was found that viewers' insulting comments about children appearing in parenting entertainment programs infringe on child right. This is an act that infringes on a child's privacy and does not consider the child safety. The insults of children are further reinforced as responses are induced and radicalized through “like” replies from third-party users to written comments. In view of the large social and cultural impact of childcare entertainment programs, child right and protection should be considered first in the media production process. Based on the above research results, suggestion were made so that the parenting entertainment TV program could enhance the public's awareness and sensitivity of children's rights. Through follow-up research, it is expected that academic discourse on media and children's rights will be formed and active research will be conducted.

“Did you know that David Beckham speaks nine languages?”: AI-supported production process for enhanced personalization of audio-visual content

The introduction of artificial intelligence (AI) into the media production process has contributed to the automation of selected tasks and stronger hybridization of man and machine in the process; however, the AI-supported production process has expanded from the traditional, three-stage model by a new phase of consumer evaluation and feedback collection, analysis, and application. This has opened a way for far-reaching content personalization and thus offers a new type of media experience. Powering the production process with a constant stream of consumer data has also affected the process itself and changed its nature from linear to cyclical.

The Dynamic of News Production in Online Media

The news content in online media is loaded with "political" interests that tend to ignore the substance and mechanism of a media. This research aims to explain that there has been a politicization of the media in the production of online news content that ignores its actual functions of the media. The study relies on qualitative research with data collection through reporting with the keyword "Bakrie" as reported by TvOneNews.com for July - August 2021 and then analyzed using qualitative content analysis methods. A phenomenon issue that needs a mapping of this textual data is related to the news that has been reported. The production process becomes the conceptual basis for the framework of this study. The media's process and function are the contents of the dynamics that occur in a media. This then raises the question of how exactly the media's production process is faced with the ideal of media functions. The results from the study showed the existence of "malasuai" between the production process and the functions of media carried out by TvOneNews.com and ideals of the Indonesian nation related to the media function as the "pillar of democracy". A suggestion for the media owners is that they should prioritize the nation's interests above personal and a suggestion for the other media crew that they should comply consistently with the journalistic code of ethics. The limitations of this research are that the data used are relatively minor, in the form of news carried out during the second wave of Covid-19 in Indonesia. This study only reviewed one media, TvOneNews.com.
 Keyword: production process, media function, reporting, tvonenews.com, malasuai

Screening Black Lives Matter: on-screen discourses, distortions, and depictions of Black Lives Matter

ABSTRACT The proliferation of popular culture depictions of Black Lives Matter (BLM) yields questions about media and marketing professionals’ (mis)use of representations and rhetoric associated with social justice movements, and, more precisely, Black activism. This commentary is titled “Screening Black Lives Matter” in an attempt to: 1) reflect on how BLM has been re-mediated and re-presented on screen in mainstream media and popular culture, and 2) consider who and what is typically excluded (“screened out”) from such images, narratives, and media production processes. Make no mistake about it, inclusion in anti-Black institutions, including media organizations and industry discourse, is far from being a liberationist goal. However, reflecting on who and what is foregrounded in on-screen depictions and discourses related to BLM in TV and film can contribute to important understandings of how Black social justice organizing is typically framed in contemporary mainstream media in ways that distort the reality of activism, such as by sidelining the work of Black LGBTQ+ people and diminishing or denying the radical politics at the core of such collective and transformative efforts. What does all of this suggest about the relationship between media, marketing, and Black activism? This commentary considers such issues.

The Graphic Communication Actor: Generating Visual Rhetoric for Development Initiatives

The art of using language for public expression in order to persuade target audience to support development initiatives is a key reason for graphic communication. This requires communication actors particularly, the graphic encoder to know salient input and output variables of communication for effective mediation. However, the prevalence ignorance of these variables, often results in ineffective media production that is counter-productive to development. Therefore, this paper focused on production of practical rhetoric in graphic language for development programmes. The paper employed the critical-historical-analytic examination and content analysis methods. It introduced the reader to the need for practical rhetoric in visual communication. Furthermore, it highlighted the salient input and output variables that the graphic communication actor need be conversant with in order to produce visual rhetoric, using the McGuire’s Communication/persuasion Matrix. And it exemplified graphic media that result from application or neglect of the knowledge of the variables. The paper found that consideration of the variables afforded production of effective rhetoric in graphic language. The paper ended with the need for graphic encoders to internalize knowledge of the input and output variables and utilize it during the process of media production to generate visual rhetoric with desired effect.

The Complicated Digital Fandom: Empowerment and Exploitation of Fans in Digital Media Era

Over the past several decades, the once despised fans have been introduced to the central stage of audience study, challenging people’s stereotype about fans. Fans are considered as the most active and visible audiences since they are active producers rather than passive consumers. With the pervasiveness of the digital media, fans are provided with more opportunities to engage with the media production and challenge the authority of media industry. However, there are still some scholars argue that fans in digital era are prone to be exploited by media industry as free labor. These two contradictory aspects illustrate the main characteristics of fans in digital media era. This research aims to explore the reconfigured relationships between fans and professional media producers, critically discussing the extent to which fans are empowered and exploited in the digital media era. The analysis in this paper is organized from three main aspects: first, the transformation of fans’ images in the ever-changing media landscapes is illustrated, emphasizing the trend that fans are increasingly considered to be more active and influential in the media production process; second, the ways that fans engage with media production in the digital media era are explored in details, which supports the opinion that fans are empowered in digital media era; third, the emerging exploitations of fans online practice are demonstrated by employing the concept of free labor. By critically discussing both the empowerment and exploitation of fans in digital media era, in this paper, it is concluded that although the increasing productivity and influence of fans imply the reconfigured relationships between fans and media producers, the emerging exploitation of fans’ free labor should not be ignored which indicates that the power discrepancy between fans and media producers still exists. The empowerment and exploitation of fans in digital media era should not be considered as a zero-gum game. Since the digital fandom is more complicated than before, the binary opposition between empowerment and exploitation should be revisited and revised. Within the context of the emerging digital economy, fans and media producers are continuously negotiating with each other.

‘Helping our beneficiaries tell their own stories?’ International aid agencies and the politics of voice within news production

International aid agencies often claim to give the poor and disenfranchised a voice by helping them tell their stories to others located far away. But how do aid workers conceptualize and operationalize a politics of voice within media production processes? How do ideas about giving voice to others shape aid agencies’ engagement with mainstream news organizations? This article explores two contrasting news production case studies which took place in South Sudan and Mali, involving Save the Children, Christian Aid and their local partners. It finds that different approaches to giving voice exist in aid work, creating tensions within and between agencies. In addition commercialized notions of value for money, the influence of mediated donor reporting, and aid workers’ weak understandings of linguistic and intercultural interpretation combined to make aid agencies’ values-in-action far less empowering than they assumed.

Os lugares onde os estudos de audiência e os estudos de produção se encontram

Os estudos de audiência e os estudos de produção possuem trajetórias de pesquisa bastante distintas, apesar de suas compartilhadas preferências pela teoria baseada na realidade empírica e metodologias de pesquisa. A partir de uma ampla etnografia de mídia das audiências e produtores, esse artigo mostra como os sujeitos humanos dos estudos de audiência e estudos de produção podem ser estudados em conjunto, para revelar as relações de poder envolvidas nos processos da produção dos meios de comunicação de massa. Nesse estudo de caso específico, fãs e figurantes da série de televisão Treme (2010-2013) compartilharam um discurso sobre o lugar da espectatorialidade e o da produção que se esforça para articular uma cultura comum, apesar das barreiras concretas hierárquicas entre públicos e equipe de produção.

Digital resources in popular media practices in Brazil: strategies to reduce asymmetries in the public debate

This article discusses issues related to the development of popular media in the context of an asymmetric democracy, such as Brazil. It is mostly based in an empirical study which included 55 media experiences all over the country. The objective is to observe the use of digital resources in media practices developed by social movements and community associations, analyzing how it can contribute to the emergence of a plurality of voices in the public debate. The findings suggest a concrete improvement in the media production process and also in the capacity of reaching audiences, especially those outside their niches. But as long as this enlargement of diffusion range can be read as a progress, it also reveals paradoxes while grassroots communities stand far from a stable connected world. The answer could come from a stronger articulation between digital and analogical media strategies.

Major development communication paradigms and practices: Implications for graphic communication

Modernization, Dependency, and Multiplicity are three major concepts of development, which have occasioned the use of hierarchical and/or participatory communication practices in our society today. These significantly impact on the mediation role of the graphic encoder during media production process that could either afford or hinder development. Therefore, in order to adopt communication strategies that would produce desired outcomes, this paper focused on the implications of the major paradigms of development and communication practices on graphic communication. It employed a triangulation of research methods, the Critical-Historical-Analytic Examination, In-depth interviews, Focus Group Discussion and Content Analysis. The paper started with the centrality of graphic communication media to the success of development initiatives. Furthermore, it aptly presented an overview of the major paradigms of development vis-a-vis the key models of communication on which practices are hinged. Moreover, it copiously discussed the impact of the Source’s concept of development on mediation role of the graphic encoder during communication development. And it examined the impact of communication practices on produced media for campaigns in Africa. The paper ended with the need to adopt communication approaches that embed the graphic encoder and other stakeholders in order to produce effective graphic communication.Keywords: Major Development Paradigms, Communication Practices, Graphic Communication, Graphic Encoder’s Mediation, Media Production Process

Is the Process of Media Production and Educational Intervention in Iran Standard?

Is the Process of Media Production and Educational Intervention in Iran Standard?

Mis/Representations in School-Based Digital Media Production: An Ethnographic Exploration with Muslim Girls

In this article, the authors discuss findings from a digital media production club with racialized girls in a low-income school in Toronto, Ontario. Specifically, the authors consider how student-produced media is impacted by ongoing postcolonial structures relating to power and representation in the school and in the media production work of Muslim and other racialized girls. From this standpoint, the authors interrogate how technological tools and particular media genres embedded in a postcolonial order impact the form and content of student media production in a school-based context. Focused on two in-depth examples from an ethnographic study, the authors question how Muslim and other racialized girls are portrayed in media they make and explore how that work is perceived and re/presented (or mis/represented) throughout the digital media production process.

From Pink Slips to Pink Slime: Transforming Media Labor in a Digital Age

This paper examines some of the labor processes involved inthe expansion of digital journalism to comment on the nature and implications of transformations in journalistic work in a digital age. Specifically, I survey four practices that stand out as putting pressure on traditional journalism production: outsourcing, unpaid labor, metrics and measurement, and automation. Although these practices are unevenly incorporated into mainstream news production (and in some cases are still marginal), they demonstrate viable options for media corporations seeking to streamline production. Drawing on labor process theory, I emphasize that media corporations use strategies of efficiency and rationalization to lower labor costs. Unpaid labor, robot reporters, algorithms, and outsourcing demonstrate that changes in the media production process are not the inevitable results of technology but, as the long history of journalism and technological change demonstrates, strategies for lowering labor costs.

Making Sense of Society Through Social Media

All media are social—they are after all media, in between, intermediating between producers and consumers of content, information, conversation, between the actors in the media and the audiences who read, listen, and watch. And the sociality of the media does not stop there: the processes of media production are social processes just as much as the activities of media audiencing. So strictly speaking, all media are social media. But only a particular subset of all media are fundamentally defined by their sociality, and thus distinguished from the mainstream media of print, radio, and television. It is the actual uses which are made of any medium which determine whether it is indeed a social medium—so let us investigate their roles in and interplay with the societies in which they operate.

Reconsidering Reflexivity: Audience Research and Reality Television

Critiques of reality television assume that audiences enjoy watching participants’ humiliation or adopt the reforming injunctions of the shows. This audience research project investigates how people who watch personal makeover shows (The Biggest Loser, Queer Eye for the Straight Guy, Starting Over, and What Not to Wear) use these texts in meaningful ways. Data from 1,800 survey respondents and 130 interviewees demonstrate that audiences use the shows to be self reflexive, while they also are highly reflexive about media production processes. Furthermore, they are reflexive about their participation in research about a disparaged television genre. Audiences’ perception of surveillance and shame in the shows suggest how reflexivity can provide a critical distance from the programs but is not necessarily ideologically freeing.

Analysing and Understanding the Changes in Media Production and Consumption Carried by IT

INTRODUCTION Changes that occurred at the beginning of the 21st century heavily influenced physical and cultural productions within media organizations. ICTs provided alterations in the production and consumption processes of media narratives. Media production processes were especially influenced by the changes undergone by digital technologies. Who would have told us 10 years ago that US news weekly Newsweek would declare its print edition obsolete and replace it for a version that is exclusive available for tablet computers and other online gadgets, would be considered losing his or her mind. Newsweek took this decision because they expect that on the long run the audience for an online only magazine would be bigger and not less important more profitable. UK daily newspaper The Guardian is seriously considering making the same switch in the coming years. From Hollywood movies to TV shows, from hard news to people magazines, the content production process is exposed to drastic transformations. For Caldwil (2008) and Alvares & all. (2013), such transformations occurs much more in meaning production process. At the end, since communication boundaries loses their clarity, roles of the producers and media users also change. Communication tools turns more and more effective, less expensive, and easier to use than in the past; access and collaboration are increasing, and we are evolving from being mostly media consumers to include many media producers – or ‘produsers’, as the current jargon calls it. In short, the borders between media turn more and more fuzzy and the role of producers and audience are shifting. In order to deconstruct the dichotomy between production and reception, this paper consider the narrative as a whole in transmedia storytelling. But what is transmedia storytelling exactly and how does it change the way we produce and consume media?

(Re)placing School: Middle School Students' Countermobilities While Composing With iPods

This article describes five middle school students' experiences as they moved with mobile devices to produce digital narratives in a twelve-week digital media enrichment course designed and led by the authors. In the course, iPod Touches were often the exclusive tool for media composition. The authors, as teacher-researchers, designed the course to investigate students' literacies and digital media production processes with mobile devices and apps. Analysis focuses on how students' movements with these devices affected their meaning-making and their experiences of and connections to people, places and things in their school. Data presented in two vignettes describe how students developed counter-mobilities essential to their development as mobile composers. The article develops a framework for considering the mobilities of bodies within socially constructed spaces for literacy learning, and contributes to the nascent body of research on youths' literacies with digital, mobile devices.

Ambivalence on the front lines? Attitudes toward Title IX and women’s sports among Division I sports information directors

In light of continuing research that assesses how dominant ideology is communicated via mediated sport, this study examines the attitudes of sports information directors (SIDs), arguably initial “gatekeepers” in the media production process and, thus, critical players in shaping sports media messages. A random sample of Division I SIDs was surveyed on questions clustered around gender and sexuality issues. The results showed that Division I SIDs are likely to help gay athletes stay in the closet, although they express more progressive attitudes toward sexuality than sports journalists, who were similarly surveyed in 2009. The results also showed mixed support for women’s sports and Title IX – with implications for coverage – and strong support for a gendered division of labor that could be problematic for the future prospects of women in the profession. The authors use the survey to question assumptions that female SIDs will advocate on behalf of women’s sports, Title IX and other related issues.

Sentiments of Disdain and Practices of Distinction: Boundary-Work, Subjectivity, and Value in the Hindi Film Industry

This article complicates the discussion of commercial mass media production and takes it beyond simplistic assertions of the “bottom-line” by focusing on a specific feature of the everyday life of film production in Mumbai, India, home to the Hindi-language film industry, and more commonly known as “Bollywood.” It examines the inordinate amount of criticism and contempt expressed by Hindi filmmakers about the workings of the industry as well as filmmakers’ efforts to assert their difference from a generic norm—ranging from discourses about behavior to a fetishization of technology. These sentiments and discourses operate as a form of “boundary-work,” which serves to create alternate regimes of value and criteria of prestige that are independent of commercial outcome. The article also demonstrates how it is possible to carry out ethnographic research within large-scale media industries that addresses core anthropological concerns about subjectivity, social life, and social practice. It illustrates how the sites and processes of media production, and not simply the finished outcomes, are invested with social and cultural meaning.