Media Producers Research Articles

Participation and democracy in German public service broadcasting

Public media systems have a core role in making European democracies functional. Their independence should mean that they ensure the accountability of democratic political frameworks, while also offering audiences a safe space for plurality, diversity, accessibility and quality. Publicly funded media broadcasters countervail private media's profit maximisation strategies of commercialisation, commodification and individualisation to allow a spectrum of public-serving media producers to challenge the parameters of public debate. There are a range of issues here which apply to the BBC and other public service broadcasters, but the German public service broadcasting system (including its main national PSB stations, ARD and ZDF) has its own specificities, which are outlined here. There are structures in place that allow for a limited degree of democratic accountability in Germany, but these are becoming increasingly ineffective. This article, drawing on extensive research, including discussion with the online content network funk, puts forwards proposals that could introduce into the system a greater degree of accountability, civic participation, transparency and accessibility. It argues that German public service broadcasters need to establish a reciprocal relationship with their audiences through allowing more participation, in order to break the mould of its outdated structures, and the concentration of representation within elite and unrepresentative hands.

Review of Media and the Affective Life of Slavery by Allison Paige (University of Minnesota Press)

In 'Media and the Affective Life of Slavery,' Allison Page interrogates how media culture from the 1960s to the present has mobilized the legacy of slavery for affective governance, or "the production and management of affect and emotion to align with governing rationalities" (6). Throughout the book, Page’s analysis succeeds in providing a rich mapping of the converging interests of state actors, media producers, educational organizations, and other stakeholders as they narrate their own desire to manage emotions in the wake of the civil rights movement and to maintain white supremacist order.

Hungarian Religious Creatives—Comparative Analysis

The research on the relationship between religion and the media has expanded in the past decades with many new directions, one of which is the examination of the creators of religious media content—more precisely, the exploration of their different role perceptions, commitment, motivations, and goals. Religious content creators are those media producers whose content appears on various media surfaces (printed press, radio, television, film, digital media), regardless of whether they perform their activities as employees of a media company or voluntarily. This study presents the research we conducted among Hungarian religious content creators between 2019 and 2020. The purpose of the study is to develop a well-founded role typology based on the defining features and modes of operation of different role types.

Real Talk: The Power (and Limits) of Audio Storytelling in Museums

ABSTRACT The current digital age offers exciting possibilities for communicating with our audiences through recorded media to personalize the museum experience – think podcasts, immersive experiences, mobile experiences, in-gallery videos. But how should we talk to them? How can we express a cogent institutional voice and also encourage independent inquiry and fresh perspectives? Media producers Erin Fleming and Dia Felix explore best practices for audio storytelling in museums and reveal approaches to writing for the ear, establishing trust with audiences, and delivering audience-centered media that stands the test of time.

Archiving Africa: Notes for the Contemporary African Filmmaker

First presented as a keynote at the 8th I-Rep International film festival in Lagos, Nigeria, in March 2018, this paper triangulates the links between processes of archivization, African filmmaking, and activist cultural work. The central task I set for myself in the paper is to answer the question, why should the African filmmaker be interested in archives and processes of archivization, especially in the age of digital media and the politicization of culture? By “archives,” I am referring to the artefacts generated for the filmmaker in the form of historical traces in the public domain and the texts s/he creates in the form of cultural narratives. Drawing links between archival work, film-making and the politicization of culture, I argue for a recognition of the strong relations between culture, politics, and social transformation, and submit that an awareness of how these three realms are interconnected should occupy the interest of the modern African filmmaker. Part of the wider argument I make about the potential of archives as a narrative resource in African filmmaking is to nudge contemporary African screen media producers to embrace what Hal Foster refers to as “an archival impulse at work internationally in contemporary art” in which art functions to reinvent archives from mere “excavation sites” into “construction sites” for counter narratives and memory.

Producing Radio Programs, Mainstreaming Gender Equity: A Case Study of Radio Sonora Semarang

There has been an increase in discussion about gender mainstreaming-related issues on media. Mass media producers’ awareness about gender equity has remained questionable, even regarded as not presenting gender equity as expected. This study attempts to focus on how the production of news programs in Radio Sonora Semarang regarding the issue of gender equality, particularly to what extent the role of women in the process of radio program production. Using a qualitative approach and conducting interviews with Radio Sonora's journalists and the production program team, the findings have revealed that Radio Sonora Semarang highly upholds the values of gender equality in the production process of its programs. There has been mutual respect amongst media workers both men and women in the radio Sonora during program production process. Indeed, women can take roles equally to men without leaving their nature as women.

‘They don’t need us’: Affective precarity and critique in transnational media work from the margins of ‘Cultural China’

Creative labour studies has yielded much critical insights from workers’ experiences of ‘precarity’ and ‘self-exploitation’ with increasing neo-liberalization. This important work’s overwhelming focus on the critique of neoliberalism based on Euro American case studies risk overlooking insights that can be gained from other socio-geopolitical contexts. Drawing on a mix of ethnographic observations and interviews with transnational media producers in Singapore working at the margins of the mainland Chinese media industry, this paper teases out how intersecting cultural, economic and geopolitical power relations manifest in transnational creative labour working under the shadows of both the West and a rising China. Expanding on conceptions of emotional labour and precarity as serving neoliberal structures, I highlight how these producers’ experiences go beyond the economic connotations of precarity to capture what I call affective precarity – a felt sense of spatial-temporal dissonance confronting marginalized media workers. I also consider how such emotional labour can constitute a form of critique.

Cognitive load in immersive media settings: the role of spatial presence and cybersickness

Faced with the ongoing diversification and commercial success of highly immersive media technologies (e.g., VR headsets), both content producers and scientific scholars have become highly invested in understanding the psychological consequences of experiencing media in these new and lifelike ways. While many studies underscore positive effects of high media immersivity—such as increased enjoyment or persuasive success—others warn about the intense cognitive load that technologies such as VR might put on their users. In a laboratory experiment with N = 121 participants, we compare the cognitive load experienced while watching a 360° video on a laptop screen or via an immersive VR head-mounted display. Furthermore, we scrutinize two prominent explanations for the additional cognitive load in immersive media settings, i.e., the role of spatial presence and cybersickness. As expected, the VR condition results in higher cognitive load, spatial presence, and cybersickness than the 2D condition. However, by means of a parallel mediation model, we observe that only cybersickness emerges as a meaningful mediator of participants’ strained cognitive capacity; spatial presence, on the other hand, remains statistically irrelevant in this regard. We discuss our findings considering implications for media producers and future research.

First report of Taxus media branch blight caused by Neopestalotiopsis clavispora in China.

Taxus media Rehder is a high-value tree species and can be used for landscape afforestation and medicinal purposes considering its beautiful shape and secondary metabolite paclitaxel. In May 2019, branch blight of T. media was observed in plantations in Hangzhou, Zhejiang province, China. The lesions were brown, necrotic and sunken, and the branches were withering. Plants from five plantations were surveyed, and the disease incidence was 60%. Necrotic tissues from 5 plans from each plantation were cut into small pieces (5×5 mm), surface disinfected with 75% alcohol for 30 s and 2% sodium hypochlorite solution for 2-3 min, washed twice with sterile water, then dried on sterile filter paper. Branch pieces were aseptically transferred to potato dextrose agar (PDA) plates and incubated at 25℃ in the dark for 3 days. Five purified fungal cultures were obtained and the representative isolate (LA-01) that grew slightly more vigorously under the same condition was selected for morphological characterization and DNA sequence comparison. The colony was initially white and cottony, with circular growth, undulated edge, wavy surface and pale beige on the back. The conidia were long spindle-shaped, straight or slightly curved, 21-27 × 6-8 μm (n=50) in overall shape. They contained 5 cells with those at the apex and base hyaline. The second and third cells from the apex were darker (brown) than the fourth cell from the apex (pale brown). Two or three (most frequently observed) hyaline appendages were apparent at the apex, 16-31 μm in length. Morphological characteristics of the obtained isolate were consistent with those in the genus of Neopestalotiopsis (Solart et al. 2018). DNA of LA-01 was extracted from fresh mycelia using Minibest Universal Genomic DNA Extraction Kit (Takara, Toyoto, Japan) according to the manufacturer's instructions. The partial regions from the internal transcribed spacer (ITS), β-tubulin gene (TUB2), and translation elongation factor subunit 1-a gene (TEF1) were amplified and sequenced using universal primer pairs ITS5/ITS4, BT2A/BT2B, and EF1-526F/EF1-1567R (Maharachchikumbura et al. 2012), respectively. The resulting nucleotide sequences were individually subjected to BLAST searches in GenBank. The nucleotide sequences of ITS (MZ148633, 554 bp), TUB2 (MZ286974, 473 bp ), TEF1 (MZ286975, 1030 bp) of the isolate LA-01 showed 99.64% similarity to ITS sequence (MW512858.1), 99.35% similarity to TUB2 sequence (MH423961.1), 98.18% similarity to TEF1 sequence (KU096881.1). The multi-locus phylogenetic tree was constructed based on the combined ITS-TUB2-TEF1 sequences using MEGA 7 using the neighbor-joining method, indicating that LA-01 represents Neopestalotiopsis clavispora. Inoculation was done on branches of ten T. media plants in the field to verify the pathogenicity of LA-01. Two healthy branches of each plant were surface sterilized with 75% ethanol allowed to dry, and two small wounds on each branch were obtained by puncturing with a sterilized needle. One wound was inoculated with 5-mm-diameter PDA discs excised from 7-day-old cultures, and wrapped with parafilm; the other inoculated with sterile PDA plugs as control, and wrapped with parafilm. Disease symptoms developed on all N. clavispora-inoculated wounds 3 days after inoculation. The yellow brown lesions became apparent 20 days later, whereas the control wounds remained asymptomatic. The fungus N. clavispora was reisolated from the diseased lesions using the same methods above, fulfilling Koch's postulates. Previously, the species was reported to cause leaf spot disease on another Taxus tree species T. chinensis in China (Wang et al. 2019). This is the first report of T. media branch blight caused by N. clavispora worldwide. Special attention should be paid to the damage it may cause to T. media producers, and precautionary monitoring on T. media population will be a significant part of the conservation efforts in China.

Managing Media. Listening to Young Girls as Producers of Texts and Media in the Nineteenth Century and Today: Ida Thiele’s Letters and Naja Münster’s YouTube Channel

This article uses concepts from media studies and childhood studies to present a comparative analysis of the media products and practices of two young girls of a similar age, Naja Münster (b. 2009) and Ida Thiele (b. 1830). Naja Münster produces social media content on her YouTube channel, while Ida Thiele wrote letters to her father. The cases call for mixed methods, including content analysis and ethnographic methods. Analytical questions are: 1) What type of content do children prioritise, and what do they ignore? 2) From the girls’ perspectives, what are the purposes and affordances of their selected media? and 3) Do they accept and/or challenge the conventions and constraints of the media they use? We conclude by suggesting that presenting concepts and cases that traverse historical contexts and disciplines may make it possible to identify new aspects of children’s products, voices and relational agency.

Life cycle assessment of peat for growing media and evaluation of the suitability of using the Product Environmental Footprint methodology for peat

PurposePeat extraction rapidly removes carbon from the peatland carbon store and furthermore leads to substantial losses of carbon from the extraction site by stimulating decomposition and erosion. Aim of this study is to evaluate whether the Product Environmental Footprint (PEF) approach is suitable for assessing the environmental impacts of white and black peat used in growing media as well as to provide generic data collected from growing media producers and the scientific literature. It is not the aim of this study to compare different land use options for peatlands.MethodPEF is developed in order to make environmental product declaration claims more reliable, comparable and verifiable across the EU, and to increase consumer confidence in eco-labels and environmental impact information. For PEF-compliant studies all land use activities must be considered. For peat extraction either pristine peatland or previously drained peatland used for forestry or agriculture has to be transformed. Hence, the suitability of land use-related PEF indicators is also investigated.ResultsDiesel consumed for peat extraction, electricity used for peat processing and transport are the main contributors to acidification. Fuel production and consumption are the main contributors to human toxicity, with heavy metals to air and freshwater the contributing emissions. Ionising radiation, ozone depletion and resource depletion of minerals and metals are mainly caused by the electricity used. Climate change increased from 26 kg CO2eq per m3 processed white peat to 51 kg CO2eq per m3 processed black peat. The use of peat causes substantially higher GHG than the previous life cycle stages combined; white peat causes approximately 183 kg CO2eq per m3 and black peat 257 kg CO2eq per m3.ConclusionsEnvironmental impacts caused by peat are variable and depend on a number of spatial and temporal factors. Although most indicators used for PEF are suitable for assessing peat systems, that does not apply for the land use indicator and is at least questionable for the water use indicator, respectively, its weighting factor. Consequently, it is neither possible to identify the most relevant impact categories based on normalised and weighted results nor to calculate an overall single score for peat containing growing media. Since normalisation and weighting are mandatory steps for PEF conform impact assessment, the current PEF approach is not suitable to assess peat as intermediate product without adaptation of the land use indicator.

Experiences of creating digital content for teaching and learning through working in staff-student partnerships

Most staff-student partnerships are carried out between students who are studying on the course the academics are teaching; this study is different in showing how skilled students work in partnership with academic staff across the university to create digital content for teaching. The students work as digital media producers (DMPs) within the institution, delivering expertise in the creation of digital content working alongside the academics who develop the subject content. This qualitative study had a small, purposive, and selected sample. Academics and the DMPs undertook focus groups to gather insights into their experiences of transforming teaching and learning into a collaborative process. Thematic data analysis and coding were utilised to generate themes, with consideration to the research objectives while analysing the transcripts. Themes appeared, such as having a central support to encourage relationships and build upon skillsets, thereby supplying the students with an authentic experience and aiding their future employment prospects.

Agenda Setting and Framing Theory: The Review of Romano-Germanic Studies

This article reviews current research on agenda setting and framing theory published in leading foreign communication journals. The article focuses particularly on research on agenda-setting through social media. The authors have studied German, French, Spanish, and Portuguese academic discourses. The key method was a systematic keyword literature review conducted in the leading highly rated scientific journals on communication. The articles in the sample were systematized according to subject matter, methodology, and theoretical framework. It was found that for German-speaking researchers, framing is of interest on two levels: as a tool for agenda-setting by media producers, which scholars attempt to deconstruct, and as an indicator of audience segmentation. French-language media studies take an interdisciplinary approach to agenda-setting studies, focusing on the analysis of actions that draw attention to an issue, on the political and media mechanisms applied, as well as on the results of actions taken. The correlation of public, political, and media agendas has received considerable attention from Spanish researchers. The study revealed the growing influence of digital social media on the information agenda formation and the weakening of the role of institutionalized media in this process. Political framing and the role of mass media in framing of electoral campaigns is a popular topic in Portuguese-language academic discourse.

Media development and its references; The Iraqi Kurdistan Region between 1991-2021, as a sample

Abstract This study was written with the aim of better understanding the concept of “media development indicators”. In terms of methodology; Observation and Focus groups were used as the two primary data collection and thematic analysis research methods. Meanwhile, printed, broadcast, and digital media messages from the period 1991–2021 are included in the study sample. The importance of this paper is reflected in its title. This study concludes that the concept of media development in the Iraqi Kurdistan Region; has been less discussed and has not yet become an issue of interest to most Kurdish media producers and users. This situation has led to; the media and journalists must move from defending national identity to guerrilla warfare on the Internet and losing their professional identity on social networks and becoming a significant cause of media backwardness. Therefore, the indicators of media development during the three periods of 1991-2021 are not scientifically organized and interpreted and are not classified as the five UNESCO-recognized indicators of the researchers of this study; as much as they see and deal with the negative indicators of the development of the media, they do not see half of the positive indicators and do not hide that the “media Ba'athist” still has its legacy in media discourse, message, product, and management. Even with so many opportunities; there have been and still are political, economic, cultural, legal, and professional obstacles. In other words, freedom of expression, journalism, the right to know, and the professional and legal environment of Kurdish journalists and media have not developed in any way. According to the results of this study; the continuous fluctuation of positive and negative indicators of media development is due to the level and direction of understanding of the need for the media as a pillar of the democratic system and the transitional period in the Iraqi Kurdistan Region.

중년남성의 유튜브 사용 경험 탐색

Objectives The purposes of this study is to explore The purpose of this study is to explore what middle-aged men are experiencing while using YouTube. Methods A case study using in-depth interviews was conducted on six middle-aged men who had watched YouTube three to five times a week or had experience running YouTube Channel. In order to secure validity and reliability, triangular verification and member check were performed through research interview records. Results For middle-aged men, the meaning of the experience of using YouTube was ‘personalization’. Among the study participants are YouTube channel operators and non-channel operators. Specifically, it was derived from the psychological personalization of “space to enjoy rest when you want” and “self-protection without exposing yourself,” economic personalization of “free learning center” and “preparation for the future,” and “a tool for communication for social exchange” and “a window for promoting existence.” YouTube channel operators usually act as media producers, but the participants in this study were mainly using YouTube as a consumer of information as they did not consistently operate their channels. Conclusions Through the voices of middle-aged men, they expanded their understanding of YouTube use. Since it suggests that media literacy education, which helps determine whether media information is true, is also required for middle-aged men, who are analog generations, media literacy education for them needs to be continuously conducted in terms of lifelong education. This study is believed to be meaningful in that it is used as basic data for designing and operating media literacy education for middle-aged men.

Theorizing Transregional Cinemas

Theorizing Transregional Cinemas David Pettersen (bio) Niels Niessen. Miraculous Realism: The French-Walloon Cinéma du Nord. Albany: SUNY Press, 2020. 338 pages. $95 hardcover. $33.95 paperback. Niels Niessen's new book Miraculous Realism is a fascinating study of films from the French-speaking part of Belgium (the Wallonia region) and the industrial French north (the city of Lille and the Nord–Pas de Calais region). The book fills an important gap because there is not a significant number of scholarly monographs on Wallonian cinema in English, and regional films within scholarship on French cinema tend to be treated as elements of a national cinema or international auteurist, art house cinema. However, the interest of Niessen's study goes beyond just making a corpus of lesser-known films visible. The book also represents a significant methodological intervention into how to study regional cinemas, especially regions that extend across national borders. Niessen finds inadequate now well-established approaches to studying transnational cinemas, the cinemas of small nations (Mette Hjort), and approaches to large regional cinemas such as those of Europe, so he develops his own "small regions" approach to what he terms the Cinéma du Nord, or Cinema of the North. Miraculous Realism argues that the Cinéma du Nord is a transregional cinema in southern Belgium and northern France that exists as more than just a scholarly category thanks to shared [End Page 377] cultural, linguistic, historical, and industrial reasons. The shared French language is of course the most obvious link, but Niessen makes the compelling case for cultural and historical connections in that these two parts of Belgium and France are working-class rust belt regions that relied on heavy industry such as coal mining. However, they failed to diversity their economies and consequently have struggled in a postindustrial Europe from the 1970s on. Miraculous Realism makes the case for a regional aesthetic tradition in filmmakers such as Robert Bresson and Maurice Pialat and in a common emphasis on secular understandings of humanism and grace that results from the historical importance of Catholicism in the two areas. Niessen also examines how national and regional governments and local media producers have fostered regional media industries within each of the two countries and developed synergies across the national border. I found the book's overall argument for the usefulness of a Cinéma du Nord as a category to be convincing. The risk of such a regionally focused study is that the choice to emphasize lesser-known Belgian and French films could make it difficult to connect with general readers who do not work on those films or their regions. Neissen negotiates this risk directly by structuring the book around two very well-known films, Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne's Rosetta, made in Wallonia, and Bruno Dumont's L'Humanité, filmed in the French north. Both films were released in 1999, and both won awards at the Cannes Film Festival. All three filmmakers have gone on to become recognizable auteurs who have been well discussed by scholars. Miraculous Realism makes the strong case that scholars have much to gain by thinking of these films and filmmakers in terms of a regionally inflected Cinéma du Nord. The book's four chapters are methodologically diverse. Chapter 1 sets out to answer the question of what links Rosetta and L'Humanité through close analysis of both films that tease out how each is a covert passion story underneath a veneer of documentary realism. Neissen argues that both ultimately reflect on what kinds of consolation religion can offer in a secular, postindustrial age. Chapter 2 is split into two parts. The first part presents an economic history of northern France and southern Belgium in which Niessen argues that what links these two areas as a transregion is a shared Catholicism and a similar lack of response to deindustrialization. The second part of the chapter is about histories of cinematic representation of Wallonia, with strong roots in the documentary tradition and in northern France through films that combine local rootedness with audience appeal outside the area. [End Page 378] Chapter 3 focuses on a detailed analysis of the industrial structures of the...

Autonomy and Independence in Screen Production under State Subsidy: Tracing Kennedy Miller Mitchell’s Negotiated Dependencies with Australian Governments

Contemporary media industry and production studies takes a nuanced view of the relative independence and autonomy available to media producers. In this article, I apply this frame to the Australian independent screen production firm Kennedy Miller Mitchell. But rather than examining the firm through its commercial partnerships, I analyze its independence in respect of its historical relationship with Australian government agencies. I contend that it possesses negotiated dependencies with these government bodies, a term describing the nuances of a complex reciprocal relationship. While the firm’s activities have been shaped and constrained by government policy, I argue also that the firm has maintained agency through negotiations with the state. My analysis of Kennedy Miller Mitchell’s negotiated dependencies qualifies our understanding of this reputedly iconoclastic firm and treats the company as a significant case study of the limits of independence and autonomy in an industry underwritten by government intervention.

Implementation of Sustainable Supply Chain Management in Organic Rhizome Supply Partnership

The purpose of this paper is to identify and evaluate the implementation of Sustainable SCM in organic rhizome supply partnerships which includes 7 aspects. The program developed multi-stakeholder partnership governance within a supply chain management (SCM) framework for organic rhizome agroindustry. Stakeholders involved in partnerships are grouped into 3 according to the components in SCM, namely 1) downstream SC who provide input needs for organic rhizome cultivation (producers of compost, cocopit and other planting media), 2) internal SC who carry out the cultivation process starting from the Organic Rhizome Learning Center (until the age of 4 months) and households rhizome cultivation, and 3) upstream SC, namely households (post-harvest and processing). The evaluation results show that of the seven aspects of SSCM, only the logistics aspect is optimized and the transportation is sustainable, while the other 6 aspects are already running. The use of organic waste available for seedling and planting media meets the aspect of a sustainable source of raw materials, is able to reduce the risk of concentration in nature so as to reduce risks to occupational health and safety. Development of research and learning centers in each target village as a means of sharing in sustainable competency development. On the other hand, with tiered partnerships involving customers, suppliers, communities and community groups with government and university facilitation, the model built has a positive impact on local communities. Based on the three aspects of sustainable development, the development of a multi-stakeholder partnership model in this organic rhizome agroindustry can be a best practice for other commodities.

Crafting an audience: UX writing, user stylization, and the symbolic violence of little texts

To date, little attention has been paid to how producers of digital media complicate notions of participation and audience in digital media. Taking the work of user experience (UX) writers as a case study, I offer an analytic framework for approaching the conceptual challenges that come with this. The empirical focus of my analysis is an emblematic example of UX writers’ work: the ubiquitous microcopy (i.e. user interface texts) produced for cookie consent notices. Orienting to Jones’s (2020b) work on digital and algorithmic pragmatics, I demonstrate how these “little texts” act in ways which are both agentful and influential. More than a matter of implicit audience design (Bell, 1984), UX writers actively use the affordances of software interfaces for inventing, stylizing, and crafting an audience. It is through this strategic stylizing of users that UX writers produce what Bakhtin (1986) calls a superaddressee. By positioning users in particular ways – and in particular moments – these little, seemingly inconsequential texts of digital media can thus effectively exercise a form of symbolic violence.

Special Issue IFM2022 Conference Presentations

The 4th Interactive Film and Media Virtual Conference reunites academics (faculty, researchers, and Ph.D. students) and practitioners (filmmakers, artists, VR and game designers, and media producers) to explore the definitions, terms, and practices to frame the conditions of interaction and interactivity in three strands: epistemology, listening, and ecomedia. What are the interactive film and media epistemological contributions to contemporary art and media fields? How do/might interactive technologies, practices, experiences invite, or indeed, demand revised modes of listening? How might taking seriously the work of listening (as a form of attending to) open onto more generous ways of knowing, practicing, and being in an era of socio-ecological crisis? This special issue features all the video presentations of the IV Interactive Film & Media Virtual Conference from June 8 to 10, 2022.