Production Ethos Research Articles

Abordagens teóricas e definições mínimas na pesquisa em Comunicação Pública: construindo o conceito de Comunicação Pública de Estado

Public communication is a rapidly developing scientific and professional field. However, the perception that it remains a concept under construction persists. To elucidate its definition, this study seeks to recognize and systematize the contributions of Brazilian research on public communication. The literature review found three aspects that delimit the area: the agents promoting communication, the content and production ethos, and the communication channels. Such aspects constitute minimum requirements for the concept of state public communication, which, in turn, includes a normative-democratic dimension that enables participation, transparency, accountability, defense of social rights, and governance; and an institutional dimension related to links and trust in institutions and democracy.

Investigating the switch from sanitary napkins to menstrual cups

The rise in environmental awareness and personal well-being has led to a shift in menstrual product preferences. This research, focusing on women from India, utilizes a mixed-methods approach underpinned by the Push-Pull-Mooring (PPM) framework to investigate the transition from sanitary napkins to menstrual cups. Data from 894 menstrual product users from India were analyzed utilizing PLS-SEM. The study found that health concerns and perceived costs were significant push factors, while minimalism and environmental considerations acted as pull factors. However, social stigma and perceived complexity served as mooring factors. This study extends its practicality to product manufacturers, marketers, and health educators, providing actionable strategies to promote menstrual cups with the aim of surmounting prevailing hindrances. The outcomes underscore the importance of this transition in supporting Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) — particularly SDG 3 (Good Health and Well-being), SDG 5 (Gender Equality), and SDG 12 (Responsible Consumption and Production) — thereby underlining its contribution to the environmental sustainability narrative and cleaner production ethos.

Chinese migrants, morality and film ethics in Italian cinema

During 2004–2011, Italian cinema intervened in the ongoing public debates about Chinese immigration to Italy with 15 notable films, which provided a window into the moral and ethical practices of the filmmakers and those of the fictional characters, or interviewees, in their films. This migratory phenomenon, in turn, offered filmmakers a variety of stimuli and perspectives from which to contemplate the moral stakes in screening Chinese migrants in Italy in films. Italian-Chinese films, insofar as they address the self–other relationship, lend themselves to an ethical analysis. I show that Italian documentary films genuinely feature the lives of Chinese migrants through restrained and socially conscious creative means. In contrast, relevant feature films often center on the plight of marginalized native Italian characters, adopting artistic license appropriate to their market-oriented production ethos.

Conjuring clean energy: exposing green assumptions in media and academia

Purpose– This research presents uncomfortable questions about the viability of alternative energy technologies, which arise during economic contraction and degrowth but are scarcely addressed within media and academia.Design/methodology/approach– The author identifies and graphically illustrates differences between media expectations for renewable energyproductionversus energyreductionstrategies. The author contrasts green energy expectations with material factors to develop unasked questions about potential: urban myths (e.g. solar cells are made from sand), assumptions (e.g. alternative energy is of comparable quality to fossil fuel energy and can offset its use), strategic ignorance (e.g. solar cost drops reflect Moore’s law), and trained incapacity (e.g. solar and wind energy is low- or zero-carbon).Findings– Compared to energyreductioncoverage, journalists cover energyproductionusing 1) more character-driven storytelling, 2) about twice the promising language, and 3) far more references to climate change and energy independence. These observations help loosely illustrate a pervasive energy production ethos, a reflexive network including behaviors, symbols, expectations, and material conditions.Social implications– Fascination with alternative energy may serve as a form of techno-denial to avoid facing the uncertain but inevitable end of growth in consumption and population on our finite planet.Originality/value– This paper offers journalists, policymakers, researchers, and students new, unasked, questions regarding the expectation that alternative energy technologies can replace fossil fuel. For instance, if wind and sunlight are free, why are wind and solar energies so expensive, requiring billions in subsidies? Where do solar cell and wind turbine costs ultimately arise, if not from fossil fuels (via labor, materials, etc.)?

News in the community?

This article examines the emergence of new, inter-local spaces of news production and consumption, drawing on extensive fieldwork and interviews with community reporters trained by a community reporter organisation based in the north of England. Practices of news production and content generation are focused on people's own communities and they are underpinned by an ethos of production, which is grounded in a critical consumption of news and collective processes of skill acquisition. Through an analysis of motivations and practices, we account for the values that sustain community reporter communities and discuss how such practices, while emerging from the place of local community, also extend across wider communities of interest. It is suggested that an evolving practice of skill sharing and mutual recognition could potentially stimulate the regrowth of democratic values.

International Perspectives on Psychosocial Working Conditions, Mental Health, and Stress of Dairy Farm Operators

ABSTRACT Dairy farm operators—farmers, workers, and family members—are faced with many demands and stressors in their daily work and these appear to be shared across countries and cultures. Dairy operators experience high psychosocial demands with respect to a hard work and production ethos, economic influences, and social and environmental responsibility. Furthermore, both traditional and industrial farms are highly dependent on external conditions, such as weather, fluctuating markets, and regulations from government authorities. Possible external stressors include disease outbreaks, taxes related to dairy production, and recent negative societal attitudes to farming in general. Dairy farm operators may have very few or no opportunities to influence and control these external conditions, demands, and expectations. High work demands and expectations coupled with low control and lack of social support can lead to a poor psychosocial work environment, with increased stress levels, ill mental health, depression, and, in the worst cases, suicide. Internationally, farmers with ill mental health have different health service options depending on their location. Regardless of location, it is initially the responsibility of the individual farmer and farm family to handle mental health and stress, which can be of short- or long-term duration. This paper reviews the literature on the topics of psychosocial working conditions, mental health, stress, depression, and suicide among dairy farm operators, farm workers, and farm family members in an international perspective.

Looks Like Meat, Smells Like Meat, Tastes Like Meat

The Battle Creek Sanitarium stood at the center of changes within the vegetarian movement in the late nineteenth century. The new vegetarianism was equated with an expanding ethos of production and consumerism that swept through American society. While earlier generations of vegetarians viewed such developments with skepticism, the new; modern vegetarian embraced competitive society and utilized dietary choice as a means towards individual success. The San created and marketed a variety of meat substitutes, in the process recapitulating vegetarian cuisine. Vegetarians became consumers of a growing health food industry that brought the Battle Creek System into homes throughout the United States. By analyzing the production and marketing of these so-called “meat substitutes, ”it is possible to understand the larger dietary and strategic changes occurring within the vegetarian movement during the Progressive Era.

Scientific marketing management and the emergence of the ethical marketing concept

Our objective in this paper is to recall the linkages between marketing and management thought. At the turn of the twentieth century, the two disciplines were connected via the work of Frederick Taylor and Percival White. As conventionally represented, Taylor was the father of scientific management and, by extension, the management sciences more generally. He is also frequently associated with a focus on production efficiency. However, a close reading of Taylor reveals his appreciation of the connection between production and consumption and thus the importance of the ultimate consumer. Taylor's ideas and the work, published in the Bulletin of the Taylor Society, which provided an outlet for the scholarship of early marketing thinkers, provide the linchpin between the production ethos of Taylor and the emergence of ‘scientific marketing’ exemplified in the work of Percival White. The latter demonstrated the ideological credibility of his scientific marketing system via its association with science and attributes such as objectivity. Importantly, in his work we find the first clear articulation of the marketing concept. Unlike present-day debates, which frequently treat it as a synonym for shareholder value, the early articulations of the marketing concept were underwritten by an explicit ethical orientation that placed limits on corporate behaviour, ideas that were again brought to prominence courtesy of the consumerist movement of the 1960s and 1970s.

Questioning the Web 2.0 Discourse: Social Roles, Production, Values, and the Case of the Human Rights Portal

This article interrogates the notion of Web 2.0, understanding it through three related conceptual lenses: (1) as a set of social relations, (2) as a mode of production, and (3) as a set of values. These conceptual framings help in understanding the discursive, technological, and social forces that are at play in Web 2.0 architectures. Based on research during a two-year period, the second part of this article applies these lenses to the case of the Human Rights Portal, a Web portal designed to leverage the participatory knowledge production ethos of Web 2.0 for human rights organizations. This section discusses the design process and the ways in which the discourse of Web 2.0 as parsed through the three lenses described informed this process.

The Common Touch: Art Direction at British National in the 1940s

This article is about film set design in a given place and time; at the British National Studios during the time of its mature studio system at Elstree (1942-47). In a sense, the focus of this piece is historically and geographically narrow, but it is intended to reveal some larger themes. The working lives of British National’s set designers can tell us much about the production ethos of a prolific but little-considered company. More broadly, I hope that this survey will tell us something about the constraints on creativity in a peculiarly fertile and complex period of British film production, and the effects on film production when financial imperatives conflict with artistic ambition. My purpose in this article is not to champion British National (henceforth ‘BN’). In general, the company made terrible films: as William K. Everson recalled, BN productions ‘were usually lengthy, empty – and unavoidable’ (Everson 1975: 593). However, BN was the leading film producer during the period. Overall, the company made 68 features – 43 more than all the Independent Producer companies combined (Cineguild, The Archers and the other elite companies who led Rank’s ‘prestige experiment’). Quantitatively speaking, therefore, BN was the stuff of British films and its diet of hurriedly-made second features offered a rare prize to its two contracted designers; continuous employment. The journeymen designers there – R. Holmes Paul and C.Wilfred Arnold – were glad of it.1 They knew that British art direction nuggets such as The Thief of Baghdad (1940, a.d. V. Korda) were scarce and probably unattainable. They also understood that cheap programme-fillers, such as the Old Mother Riley films, could bring them a steady living. Most art directors of the period demanded little more. In this light, I would suggest that if we want to get to grips with standard design practice in the period, we do well to trace the footsteps of prolific artisans such as Holmes Paul and Arnold.

Renewing Cultural Studies

Renewing Cultural Studies

What Is the Condition of American Research Universities?

Bruce Wilshire’s The Moral Collapse of the University: Professionalism, Purity, and Alienation challenges the internal constituencies of research universities to assess the moral condition of their institutions. His critique emanates from a university apocalyptic literature which has been most prolific during the three undergraduate curricular crises of this century. The proponents of this genre often create negative caricatures in their desire to right perceived injustices. Although Wilshire falls victim to the myopia of absolutism, he calls attention to ethical problems and issues. His thesis centers on restoring the intergenerational task of teaching to undergraduate studies within a professoriate wedded to a research production ethos. His moral argument centers on the redefinition of education against the inroads of professionalism, specialism, and careerism. His quintessential plea is to restore the moral integrity of the mentor-learner relationship. Only with such a restoration may the university revive from its moral collapse. While the author finds both Wilshire’s metaethical discussion and descriptive ethical demonstrations weak, he supports the idea of a new professional ethic for the professoriate.