Media Production Studies Research Articles

Scriptwriters’ Conceptions of Audience Attitudes Toward LGBTQ+ Characters

ABSTRACT Drawing on media production studies, this research observes the understudied figure of the scriptwriters of fictional series to identify their feelings about different audiences and the way they respond to LGBTQ+ characters and narratives. Specifically, it seeks to understand how they use these mental images of their audiences when they create LGBTQ+ content. Semi-structured interviews were conducted online with twenty scriptwriters of different genders and sexual identities. A thematic analysis of their responses shows that they mostly have stereotypical mental images of their audiences’ preferences regarding LGBTQ+ characters and contents, which these scriptwriters actively draw upon in their work. Moreover, those images are based on their personal life experiences. Young LGBTQ+ scriptwriters are the only ones who tend not to conceive audiences as conservative or traditionalist. It is also observed that female and gay scriptwriters employ narrative strategies to protect queer audiences, female writers are inclined toward emotionally supportive portrayals, and gay writers develop characters that defend LGBTQ+ rights. The conclusion is that the creation of LGBTQ+ characters for TV series requires diverse teams of writers and literacy on sexual and gender prejudices, even among queer scriptwriters.

Disinformation-for-Hire as Everyday Digital Labor: Introduction to the Special Issue

This introduction for the special issue “Disinformation-for-Hire as Everyday Digital Labor” carves out a specific area of inquiry within the ever-growing field of disinformation studies, with its sharp focus on the commercial transactions, organizational logics, and entrepreneurial practices that propel the production of disinformation. Inspired by traditions of political economy, media production studies, and everyday life approaches, this framework draws analytical focus to (1) the slow-burn horror of disinformation as everyday digital labor; (2) the diverse industries and workers engaged in disinformation production; and (3) regulatory areas beyond social media content policy and platform-centric accountability—especially relevant in the Global Majority context. Furthermore, this essay discusses how digital labor studies need to engage more directly with the ways disinformation thrives in the gray in-betweens of formal/informal and licit/illicit digital economies. The essays in our collection mobilize “disinformation-for-hire” as a valuable analytical frame that lays bare disinformation as a product of commercial and political complicities in the late capitalist arrangement of transnational digital industries.

The changing role of a video-on-demand service in the strategies of public service media: A production study of Danish TV 2 Play and its impact on the production culture of the schedulers, 2016–2022

Abstract This article highlights and discusses the main findings from three different media production studies (2016, 2019, and 2022) investigating the changing production culture of the schedulers in public service media. The inclusion of a broadcaster video-on-demand (BVoD) service in the broadcaster's portfolio affected the production culture. First, the article argues that profound changes happened to the organisational framing of the BVoD service's status and its impact on the production practices. Second, the article shows the BVoD service's impact on the content priorities among the schedulers at TV 2 in Denmark and third, how the public service branding of TV 2 became more explicit in the production culture. However, across these three points of impact and the shifts in the strategic focus at TV 2, the business model at TV 2 and its interplay with the public service obligations runs as an undercurrent.

A Method Off the Beaten Track

How can you improve your writing processes and your creative projects by examining your own working conditions? In this article, we address this question and the possibilities and challenges of the method called ‘practice-led research’, which is a method off the beaten track in media production studies. We examine assignments by students from the educational program of ‘Screenplay Development’ at the University of Southern Den-mark. Our purpose is to clarify how the students have used practice-led research to enhance their screenwriting, and whether this method has contributed to their talent development. The theoretical framework in the article is constituted by Donald Schön’s (2013) practice epistemology. As our analytical lens we use Robin Nelson’s (2013) modes of thinking, as well as talent development theories by Anders Ericsson (Ericsson & Pool, 2016) and Mihalyi Csikszentmihalyi (1996). Based on our findings, we suggest how to get started you’re your creative writing and improve your writing processes.

The transnational tales of an Indian creative producer: the case of Guneet Monga

ABSTRACT Studies of Indian cinema have traditionally placed more emphasis on directors, stars, aesthetics and issues of ideology than on the practices of creative producers. Although these are important concerns, the role of Indian producers deserves careful scholarly attention, especially in the context of transnational film projects, where producers are often involved from the pre-development stage through production and distribution. To address this problem, this article examines the production stories of an Indian creative producer, Guneet Monga (1983-), who is well-known for setting up Indian-European co-productions that deviate from contemporaneous spectacle-driven mainstream Bollywood productions. Through an in-depth personal interview with the producer herself and insights from film and media production studies, this article demonstrates how Monga’s micro-production stories reveal larger creative and collaborative practices that are transforming India’s independent film production culture and making it more transnational. This article shows that producers––the least researched figure in Indian film scholarship––gain several navigational tactics through transnational co-productions such as telling tales of tenacity, hustling and interpersonal networking, among others. These tactics, in turn, challenge the precarious conditions of working in the Bollywood-dominated film culture of India.

Examinations of the unprofitability of authentic Blackness: insights from Black media professionals

ABSTRACT Current research describes how the history of Black representation in the United States’ mainstream media – both on screen and behind the scenes – impacts Black media professionals and complicates the reproduction of authentic Blackness in the twenty-first century. Coupling Hall’s model of encoding and decoding with media production studies, we analyze 22 interviews with self-identified Black media professionals at a Black-owned full-service communications company that targets Black consumers for mainstream brands. Findings suggest that mediated representations of Black people, which are inescapable and influential, are also narrow because white audiences’ perceptions of authentic Blackness determine which depictions of Blackness are profitable. By contrast, Black media producers argue that profitable Blackness is not authentic because it does not include the diversity of the Black experience. We leverage participants’ understandings of Blackness and the role of media to provide practical insights into how media industries can incorporate notions of diversity and inclusion to create authentic mediated Blackness.

Social Media and the Olympics: A Chance for Improving Gender Equality.

The purpose of this paper is to explore whether social media content by the National Olympic Committees (NOC) during the 2020 Tokyo Olympic Games strengthens or weakens the International Olympic Committee's (IOC) gender equality ambitions. As the media play an important role in creating the impressions that people cherish during and after the Olympics, the IOC has since the 1990s increased its responsibility for fair media portrayal of athletes and competitions by revising its own media production. In the past decade, this most notably concerns social media. Not only has it become an inseparable part of global sports consumption, but it is also seen as a tool for changing the biased and stereotypical portrayal of female athletes in news media, even though male and female athletes have become nearly equal in numbers of participants. Studies of media production and equality-informed decisions are, however, rare in sport. Drawing upon a quantitative analysis of social media accounts of three National Olympic Committees (NOC) (Norway, Czech Republic and Switzerland) and qualitative in-depth interviews with key informants—NOCs' and European Olympic Committee's (EOC) social media personnel—this study therefore explored the decisions and processes that influenced gender portrayal during the 2020 Tokyo Olympics. Findings of the study showed that media personnel have a significant influence on gender portrayal in their respective communication channels. In contrast to news media, they were aware of the frames they apply, and they applied them in alignment with the Olympic values. Consequently, they set a fairer agenda for both male and female athletes and strengthened the gender equality mission of the IOC.

Time and timing–A methodological perspective on production analysis

In recent years, media production studies have grown into a thriving field of research, which has given rise to a discussion of the theoretical and methodological approaches it employs (Paterson et al, 2016; Frandsen, 2007; Bruun, 2010, 2016b). This article is a contribution to this development. The focal point is a discussion of how time and timing are important in media production research. The article points out that time is not just a matter of the amount of time that researchers have for their data collection. In production studies, the researcher constructs the object for analysis, and time is to be considered depending on the type of analytical object you are trying to create, on the temporality that is present in the production process behind specific genres and subject areas, and on the changes the media are undergoing. A particular aspect of time is timing, which has both a performative and a strategic dimension. The importance of time and timing will be illustrated with examples from our own and other researchers’ projects.

The Problem with Apu, Whiteness, and Racial Hierarchies in US Media Industries

The Problem with Apu, Whiteness, and Racial Hierarchies in US Media Industries Madhavi Mallapragada (bio) Hari Kondabolu's 2017 documentary, The Problem with Apu (Michael Melamedoff), revolves around the Indian American writer's mission to resolve what he conceptualizes as the derogatory representation of Apu Nahasapeemapetilon, the Indian immigrant character on the animated Fox television comedy series, The Simpsons (1989–). The problem is threefold. Apu is a racist stereotype of South Asian Americans; despite or perhaps because of that, Apu is a beloved and iconic character in mainstream American culture; consequently, Apu's legacy is oppressive as it continues to shape US media industries' expectations of South Asian American representations, people, and culture. As Kondabolu sees it, the only way to make peace with his decades-long struggle with the Apu stereotype is to interrogate the context of its production.1 This essay focuses on Kondabolu's production-related challenges—notably his (ultimately futile) efforts to get Hank Azaria, the white voice actor playing Apu, to be a part of the documentary—as well as the post-release responses from The Simpsons' team. Drawing from them, I argue for the urgency of centering the category of race in media production studies and, relatedly, for examining how racial hierarchies are operationalized and maintained in production cultures. Kondabolu's film takes aim at the politics of a highly influential mainstream, white American television show [End Page 148] and arrives at a time when the lack of racial diversity in mainstream media industries continues to be a problem, despite the recent trend of diverse casting. Over the last decade, US media industries have attempted to reframe their investments around race. Such efforts include racial diversity initiatives in the media workplace, casting decisions that consciously avoid the perpetuation of stereotypes, and targeting the key demographic groups of African Americans, Hispanic Americans, and Asian Americans.2 But most of all, the reframing of the industries' relation to matters pertaining to racism, erasure, underrepresentation, and misrepresentation is a strategic ideological move. Here, the rhetoric that the twenty-first-century media industries' ethos is one of inclusivity, offering correctives to existing inequities and giving historically marginalized voices a proverbial seat at the proverbial table, is employed widely and often. In turn, it generates and maintains a narrative that is focused on the industries' intentions (often for the future) and individual practices (looking at casting on one show, for example). Such rhetorical moves function to obfuscate the structural factors that maintain racial hierarchies and recuperate whiteness as an institutional norm.3 My brief study of The Problem with Apu exemplifies the challenges racial minorities, including South Asian Americans, face in their efforts to engage the industry on its diversity platform and to offer their critical perspectives on the industries' Anglocentric production culture. Kondabolu, who wrote and stars in the documentary, draws on the reception of Apu by interviewing his family members and South Asian American celebrities. He focuses mostly on actors, comics, and writers, but problematically foregrounds male perspectives. In characterizing Apu as a stereotype, Kondabolu essentially revisits a long-standing critique about the representation of Apu.4 Critics have long pointed to the considerable evidence that Apu is a stereotype. The character owns a convenience store Kwik-E-Mart; is a devout Hindu; has an arranged marriage and eight children; is a "good" immigrant who espouses the values of hard work, tolerance, and not disrupting the status quo; and utters phrases like "Thank you! Come again!" in an exaggerated "Indian" accent. Shilpa Davé's groundbreaking theoretical formulation of "brown voice" posits that the production and repetition of a distinctive "Indian" accent in US popular culture functions as a racializing trait.5 She notes that the performance of this accent, or brown voice, is entangled with the racist histories of ethnic vaudeville humor and brownface performances.6 She argues that brown voice, as exemplified by Apu's "Indian" accent, ultimately "reinforces a static position for South Asians regardless of their status or occupation in the United States."7 In the opening moments of The Problem with Apu, Kondabolu reasons that while it is necessary to talk to The Simpsons' writers and producers to understand their thinking behind creating...

Tid og timing: Et metodisk perspektiv på produktionsanalyse

In recent years, media production studies have grown into a thriving field of research, which has given rise to a discussion of the theoretical and methodological approaches it employs (Paterson et al., 2016; Frandsen, 2007; Bruun, 2010, 2016b). This article is
 a contribution to this development. The focal point is a discussion of how time and timing are important in media production research. The article points out that time is not just a matter of the amount of time that researchers have for their data collection.
 In production studies, the researcher constructs the object for analysis, and time is to be considered depending on the type of analytical object you are trying to create, on the temporality that is present in the production process behind specific genres and subject areas, and on the changes the media are undergoing. A particular aspect of time is timing, which has both a performative and a strategic dimension.
 The importance of time and timing will be illustrated with examples from our own and other researchers’ projects.

Investigar la comunicación con métodos biográficos. Propuestas de estudio

El artículo examina el uso de los métodos biográficos para el estudio de la comunicación mediática. Para ello se repasan las principales investigaciones realizadas con métodos biográficos en antropología y sociología, y se analiza el uso de estos métodos en los estudios sobre producción y sobre recepción mediática. El texto sostiene que nuevos enfoques de la investigación con métodos biográficos pueden ampliar los conocimientos sobre la comunicación mediática en las sociedades modernas. Por último, se sugieren tres líneas de investigación en las que los métodos biográficos pueden contribuir a hacer una investigación crítica: el estudio de trayectorias personales y medios; procesos de cambio social; y memoria colectiva.

Mod Pop Methods

This article reconstructs queer popular culture as a way of exploring media production studies as a trans history project. It argues that queer and trans insights into gender are indispensible to feminist media studies. The article looks at The Ugliest Girl in Town series (ABC, 1968–69), a satire amplifying a purported real-life fad in flat chests, short haircuts, and mod wigs, to restore texture to the everyday landscape of popular entertainment. Approaching camp as a genderqueer practice, the article presents the program as one of many indications of simultaneously queer and trans representation in the new media moment of the late 1960s. Behind-the-scenes visions of excavated archival research inform an analysis of the series as a feminist text over and against its trans misogyny, which evaluates and ranks women based on their looks, bodies, and appearance while excessively sexualizing and even more stringently appraising, policing, and punishing trans women, women perceived to be trans, and oppositional forms of femininity. The program captures both the means of gender regulation and detachment from it, the experience of gender embodiment, and the promise of presenting and being perceived as many genders. Ugly is an awful word in the way it is usually wielded, but it can be reclaimed. Examining this rarely cited and often misconstrued Screen Gems series helps to demonstrate a more equitable distribution of creative credit for queer trans content across the television industry and the subcultures it commodified in the 1960s.

O retorno ao “social”: estudos de teoria social e cultura da produção

Neste artigo, argumenta-se que os estudos de produção devem utilizar o estudo de caso fundamentado para examinar e reformular as teorias clássicas da produção à luz da fase atual do capitalismo tardio. Para comprovar o argumento, apresento uma pesquisa de campo com a equipe de escalação dos participantes de um reality show que falha na função de produção do “elenco” para o programa. Neste caso, o erro da equipe deve ilustrar como a alienação é vivida no processo de produção televisiva.

Toward a paradigm for media production research: Behind the scenes at general hospital

This essay points to the dearth of media production studies conducted under the cultural studies rubric and calk for cultural studies of media production that fulfill the models of cultural circulation theorized by Stuart Hall and Richard Johnson. It argues that such a perspective must include analyses of both economic and discursive power. It presents five factors shaping the production process of a U.S. broadcast television network soap opera as provisional categories for scholarly exploration, as well as offering an in‐depth look at the soap opera production process and its cultural implications.