Popular Television Research Articles

Conversation Structure in Talk Show

In Malaysia, the talk show is a popular television genre and has become an important place in television scheduling. A talk show that presents information about household matters is a favorite among women. Talk show Wanita Hari Ini does not only presents interesting and informative shows but also plays an important role in educating, influencing and entertaining audiences. Ordinary speech by the host and interviewees can attract the attention of the audience to keep up with the plan. Thus, this study was conducted to identify and discuss the structure of the conversation contained in the talk show Wanita Hari Ini. The data of the study is the chosen speech contained in the Asam Garam Rumah Tangga segment. The method of analysis of textual content by applying the Conversation Analysis Theory (Heritage, 1992) was applied in this study. The findings of the study show that the structure of the conversation in the talk show Wanita Hari Ini comprises the opening sequence, adjacency pair, insertion sequence, pre-sequence, preference sequence, dispreferred sequence, and closing sequence. In addition, research findings show that structured conversations create order and effectiveness in reaching the true purpose of a talk show. This study is thought to be of great use as a guide and reference to the cast for good conversation and understanding of what is being said.

Tackling Issues of Court Interpretation through Listening Skills and Language Awareness of World Englishes

This article aims to address the issue of dealing with varieties of English, namely upper and lower class English, and the paralanguage (use of stress and punctuation) within translation and interpretation. The study will use some episodes taken from a popular BBC television series entitled ‘The shadow of the Noose’ and from the film noir ‘The Raging Tide’ as a context to introduce the importance of how stress, punctuation, and pauses can turn a hopeless court case, as described in The shadow of the Noose, into a winning case. This provides much insight for interpreters to take non-verbal clues into account in their process of rendering the meanings conveyed by the witnesses apart from the content of the message.

Democracy and Theatre in Catalonia Since 1975

Democracy and Theatre in Catalonia Since 1975

Prime Time Affairs: A Quantitative Analysis of Infidelity in Popular Television Programs

Prime Time Affairs: A Quantitative Analysis of Infidelity in Popular Television Programs

Queering Ethnic Rites of Passage: Transparent and One Day at a Time

Abstract I take account of queered ethnic rites of passage in the popular television series Transparent (2014-19) and One Day at a Time (2017-20), shows through which directors Joey Soloway and Gloria Calderón Kellett explore the intersections between queer youth and Jewish and Latinx identities, respectively. Transparent uses flashbacks to character Ari’s decision to forego their bat mitzvah in such a way that is inexorable from both their vexed relationship to their family’s immigrant history and their burgeoning queer (and later nonbinary) identification as a twenty-something in the series’ present. Likewise, One Day at a Time presents character Elena’s process of coming to terms with whether or not to celebrate her quinceañera, which she perceives as a misogynist, patriarchal tradition, as she duly grapples with coming out. Both series include gendered rites of passages, the Latinx quinceañera and the Jewish bat mitzvah, in a way that shows sexuality and ethnicity to sit uncomfortably with one another for queer adolescents whose grandparents immigrated to the United States. The two storylines share a family as a site of compulsory heterosexuality, adolescent characters who negotiate their sexual identities as they grapple with a rite of passage, and the use of humor as a tactic to question, resist, and at times reify patriarchal norms.

Gillian Hanson: UK innovator in intensive care medicine

Decades of popular hospital television dramas and the experience of COVID-19 mean intensive care units (ICUs) are familiar to most people. Yet intensive therapy for critically ill patients is a surprisingly recent medical advance. One of those who pioneered the leadership of multidisciplinary ICUs in the UK was Gillian Hanson (1934–96). While other early intensivists typically came from an anaesthetics or cardiology background, she was a general physician who developed particular expertise in treating sepsis.

Quantifying Changes in the Language Used Around Mental Health on Twitter Over 10 Years: Observational Study.

BackgroundMental health challenges are thought to affect approximately 10% of the global population each year, with many of those affected going untreated because of the stigma and limited access to services. As social media lowers the barrier for joining difficult conversations and finding supportive groups, Twitter is an open source of language data describing the changing experience of a stigmatized group.ObjectiveBy measuring changes in the conversation around mental health on Twitter, we aim to quantify the hypothesized increase in discussions and awareness of the topic as well as the corresponding reduction in stigma around mental health.MethodsWe explored trends in words and phrases related to mental health through a collection of 1-, 2-, and 3-grams parsed from a data stream of approximately 10% of all English tweets from 2010 to 2021. We examined temporal dynamics of mental health language and measured levels of positivity of the messages. Finally, we used the ratio of original tweets to retweets to quantify the fraction of appearances of mental health language that was due to social amplification.ResultsWe found that the popularity of the phrase mental health increased by nearly two orders of magnitude between 2012 and 2018. We observed that mentions of mental health spiked annually and reliably because of mental health awareness campaigns as well as unpredictably in response to mass shootings, celebrities dying by suicide, and popular fictional television stories portraying suicide. We found that the level of positivity of messages containing mental health, while stable through the growth period, has declined recently. Finally, we observed that since 2015, mentions of mental health have become increasingly due to retweets, suggesting that the stigma associated with the discussion of mental health on Twitter has diminished with time.ConclusionsThese results provide useful texture regarding the growing conversation around mental health on Twitter and suggest that more awareness and acceptance has been brought to the topic compared with past years.

Book Review

Book Review

A content analysis of sports and energy drink advertising

This study identifies constructs from key persuasion theories that are present in popular sports and energy drink advertising. A theory-driven content analysis was conducted on 315 popular television and social media sports and energy drink advertisements from top selling brands. The advertisements were analyzed for the presence of persuasive cues as per the Elaboration Likelihood Model (e.g, onscreen consumption, presence of celebrities) as well as Reasoned Action behavioral expectancies and normative beliefs Approach related to consumption. Descriptive statistics were calculated. Differences between sports and energy drinks were assessed and reliability statistics for all codes were calculated. Advertisements relied on peripheral cues like sports and celebrities that were not related to the drinks themselves. Theory-relevant beliefs about improved athletic performance and consumption of the drinks onscreen were common. Sports drinks were more likely to focus on mainstream sports; energy drinks featured extreme sports, and energy drink advertisements promoted the drinks for use beyond sports (e.g., work settings). The cues and beliefs identified in these ads help to clarify the role of advertising in beliefs about sports drinks being healthy and energy drinks being helpful to achieve goals. Future research is needed that links exposure to coded advertisement features to adolescents’ beliefs about sports and energy drinks.

Discussions of Asperger Syndrome on Social Media: Content and Sentiment Analysis on Twitter.

BackgroundOn May 8, 2021, Elon Musk, a well-recognized entrepreneur and business magnate, revealed on a popular television show that he has Asperger syndrome. Research has shown that people’s perceptions of a condition are modified when influential individuals in society publicly disclose their diagnoses. It was anticipated that Musk's disclosure would contribute to discussions on the internet about the syndrome, and also to a potential change in the perception of this condition.ObjectiveThe objective of this study was to compare the types of information contained in popular tweets about Asperger syndrome as well as their engagement and sentiment before and after Musk’s disclosure.MethodsWe extracted tweets that were published 1 week before and after Musk's disclosure that had received >30 likes and included the terms “Aspergers” or “Aspie.” The content of each post was classified by 2 independent coders as to whether the information provided was valid, contained misinformation, or was neutral. Furthermore, we analyzed the engagement on these posts and the expressed sentiment by using the AFINN sentiment analysis tool.ResultsWe extracted a total of 227 popular tweets (34 posted the week before Musk’s announcement and 193 posted the week after). We classified 210 (92.5%) of the tweets as neutral, 13 (5.7%) tweets as informative, and 4 (1.8%) as containing misinformation. Both informative and misinformative tweets were posted after Musk’s disclosure. Popular tweets posted before Musk’s disclosure were significantly more engaging (received more comments, retweets, and likes) than the tweets posted the week after. We did not find a significant difference in the sentiment expressed in the tweets posted before and after the announcement.ConclusionsThe use of social media platforms by health authorities, autism associations, and other stakeholders has the potential to increase the awareness and acceptance of knowledge about autism and Asperger syndrome. When prominent figures disclose their diagnoses, the number of posts about their particular condition tends to increase and thus promote a potential opportunity for greater outreach to the general public about that condition.

‘Fix Her Mistake’: Abortion and Parenting Narratives in <i>Jane the Virgin, Riverdale, Pretty Little Liars,</i> and <i>The Fosters</i>

Recognising the impact that fictional stories can have in shaping viewers’ beliefs about abortion in the United States, I analyse unplanned pregnancy storylines in four popular television shows (Jane the Virgin, The Fosters, Riverdale, and Pretty Little Liars) with large young adult and adolescent audiences to critique how this issue is contextualised for this specific viewing demographic. The unintended pregnancy of each character is part of a larger, complex, and highly dramatic storyline that includes sex outside of a monogamous relationship, murder, rape, and forced or accidental insemination. Additionally, dialogue in two of the four shows does not include the word ‘abortion’. Pregnancy is shown as a punishment for bad behaviour in all four shows. Lastly, three of the five (60%) characters decide not to have an abortion, challenging the findings of current research where abortion is the most frequent pregnancy outcome. These findings imply that shows with large adolescent and young adult viewing audiences are more likely to show adolescent and young adult women choosing parenting over abortion, while simultaneously supporting and challenging existing research on abortion portrayals in television shows.

Once upon a time in Latin America: An interview with Lorenzo Codelli

In this interview, which was conducted during the COVID-19 pandemic in early March 2021, Lorenzo Codelli reflects on Latin American cinema and its underlying aesthetics, as well as on the global influence of Italian cinema, in particular neorealism, on filmmakers such as Ruy Guerra, Fernando Solanas and Alfonso Cuarón, among others. In recent years, the Latin American film industry has produced commercially successful films, such as Cuarón’s Roma (2018), but few movies receive international distribution in particular if directed by women. For example, Melina Léon’s Cancion sin nombre (Song Without a Name) (2019), which premiered at Cannes’ Directors’ Fornight and has won many awards, is a case in point. Of special interest is Codelli’s point of view on the status of contemporary national cinemas and the impact of popular television series on its very survival.

Producing Multiculturalism: Casting and Editing Migrants in Korean Reality Television

ABSTRACT This article examines the role of production techniques in shaping representations of cultural diversity in South Korean reality television. We first discuss the South Korean government’s evolving guidelines concerning the representation of minorities on television and identify in the guidelines exhortations against discriminatory framing of migrants. Next, we qualitatively examine three popular multicultural-themed reality television shows and demonstrate that the shows ultimately circumvent the government guidelines via specific production techniques, including voice-overs and format decisions. We argue that these techniques, in combination with genre constraints and financial constraints, play a crucial role in othering the migrants portrayed on South Korean reality television. We conclude by considering how reality television can, and should, more accurately reflect the country’s changing demographics, more positively represent minority guests, and more actively encourage transformative dialogue about South Korea’s multicultural present and future.

The mediating role of Iranian television comedy series: Mehran Modiri’s Barareh Nights and Bitter coffee

This article explores the contemporary and historical significance of comedy and humour in Iran. It indicates how social, economic, and political issues are veiled by pleasant comedic interactions as a way of expression. It uses satire, comedy, and humour theories to analyse Mehran Modiri’s Barareh Nights and Bitter coffee as two influential and popular television series. This paper will reveal how comedy features can be linked to character representation policies to create a satiric context. It will discuss how these comedy series play a mediator role in articulating prohibited facts or critiques, as well as expressing social and political issues. It will address what comic features these television series use to define their comic world, how they employ comedy to depict socio-political matters, how they represent their characters to shape their satiric attack, and how they introduce a central mediator character to place emphasis on their vital mediating role. These comedies compel the viewers to interrogate their socio-political status and encourage them to reform their social or political behaviour. By weaving their criticism with humour, these comedies not only cross the sharp edges of censorship that is inescapable for serious criticism but also act as a mediator in socio-political communications.

Blood in the water: An abductive approach to startup valuation on ABC's Shark Tank

Most negotiations over startup valuation take place behind closed doors. As a result, we lack knowledge about how valuation is negotiated between entrepreneurs and investors. We constructed a dataset by hand to exploit the unique nature of a popular business pitch television show, ABC's Shark Tank, to examine this issue. Our descriptive findings suggest that entrepreneurs who initially offer less of their company to investors are more likely to receive investment offers. We also discovered that startup valuation negotiations tend to take place over the relative equity percentage each party receives rather than investment amount. Finally, although investors are more likely to experience negotiation gains, entrepreneurs who successfully pit sharks against each other receive deal terms closer to their initial ask. These results add to the emerging literature on dynamic process of startup valuation.

Broadening the Story

Broadening the Story

A Comparative Study of Medical Dramas in China, South Korea, and the United States

The medical drama first appeared in the 1960s and since then it has become one of the most popular television genres, and always gets a relatively high score and audience rating. Many scholars have conducted extensive research on the subject, but mostly, such research has been limited to American medical dramas. Thus, this study conducted a comparative analysis to examine how the image of the physician and physician-patient relationships are represented in American, Korean and Chinese medical dramas. It aims to establish which form the dominant physician-patient relationship models within each national context. By implementing a content analysis on The Good Doctor, Dr. Romantic and The Surgeon, this paper has found that American medical dramas represent more positive characteristics of physicians than Korean and Chinese medical dramas. Chinese and Korean medical dramas pay more attention to representing the negative characteristics of physicians, especially the “corrupt” characteristic. Besides, medical disputes are a common social problem in both Chinese and Korean medical dramas, and different physician-patient relationship models depend on different circumstances.

Using popular media portrayals to investigate undergraduates’ perceptions of sexual consent

ABSTRACT Sexual assault is sexual activity without consent, but what is consent? Undergraduates’ understandings are often messier than the consensual/non-consensual binary. U.S. university undergraduates watched videos depicting consensual sexual interactions and sexual assaults. Scenes were drawn from popular television programmes and pornographic websites, and varied in their inclusions of verbal consent, alcohol consumption, and coercion. The results show promise for the method of using popular media vignettes to investigate undergraduates’ consent perceptions. Findings illustrate that women who never viewed pornography found the scenes less consensual than men who frequently viewed pornography. Despite U.S. law requiring universities to provide sexual consent education to incoming students, such sexuality education had only limited effects on perceptions of consent. Findings suggest that semester-long educational courses were more effective than one-time trainings in impacting perceptions of consent.

ENGLISH FAN FICTION: RESEARCH PROSPECTS

The article highlights perspective trends investigation of the English fanfiction. The work offers a brief outline of history, main forms and modern trends in fan fiction studies as a genre of web literature. The relevance of the study of fan fiction is due, above all, to the fact that these works are a bright example of the so called live language. They reflect all modern language trends, express the musical, literary and film preferences of young people. In addition, fan fiction is an understudied phenomenon that has existed in various forms, but has received the greatest impetus in development only in recent decades. The term fan fiction is defined as a kind of creativity of fans of popular works of art, a derivative literary work based on any original work that uses its ideas of the plot and characters. It is the genre of mass literature, created on the basis of a work of art by fans of this work, which do not pursue commercial purposes and are intended for reading by other fans. Early works on fan fiction often dealt with this phenomenon from a gender perspective, as the practice of fan fiction is mostly feminine. The most common source for fan fiction research was fandom material from popular television series at the time. The main focus of the study of fandoms was the practices and values of their participants, the characteristics of the fan as a person, as well as the distinctive features of the culture that the participants of the fandoms created. Fan fiction can be treated as a type of discourse within the scope of Internet linguistics and literary studies. Such main forms of fan fiction as alternative universe, crack, crossover, fix-it, POV, smut, RPF, angst, hurt / comfort, and others are being viewed in the article. Thus, despite huge diversity and versatility of fan fiction forms and genres, it is possible to classify them and analyze their peculiarities. Fan fiction can be regarded as a verbal (sometimes creolized) written message which is shared on the Internet and is aimed, first of all, at the admirers of the source book, film etc. The perspective of this study is the analysis of structural, stylistic and pragmatic features of fan fiction discourse.

COVID-Related suicide during the second wave of COVID-19 pandemic in India: A tip of the iceberg of mental health problems.

The coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic has influenced the entire world. There has been great surge of mental health problems after the pandemic has started. The second wave has almost exhausted the Indian Health care system. There has also been cases of suicide due to COVID-19 infection. The objective of study was to highlight various factors involved in COVID-19 related suicide (CRS) during second wave of COVID-19 pandemic in India. CRS reports on the websites of 10 popular newspapers and television news channels in North India and official government websites such as the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare were searched between February 1, 2020, and May 31, 2021. We also searched the Medline and Google Scholar databases for CRS reports from India using the terms "corona", "COVID-19", "SARS CoV 2", "India", and "suicide" in various combinations. A total of 62 articles were included for the study. Most common mode of suicide was hanging and most common site was the deceased's home. Fear of infecting family members was the most common cause of CRS during second wave of the ongoing pandemic in India. Many individuals lost their lives to suicide due to COVID-19 pandemic. The media report does not provide the exact picture of community suicide. Proper physician counselling at the time of providing treatment can help in reducing few CRS.