Television Studies Research Articles

An analysis of the audio-visual style used in the portrayal of journalism: being and ought to be in The Wire and The Newsroom

The portrayal of journalism in fictional series of the 21st century cannot be fully understood without considering two productions, which are The Wire (HBO, 2002-2008) and The Newsroom (HBO, 2012-2014). However, academic approaches to the two series have focused on aspects related to theme, narrative, and reception, which generally receive more attention in the field of television studies than other equally relevant viewpoints. This paper aims to fill the existing gap with regard to formal approaches by proposing a textual and comparative analysis of the stylistic keys of both series in their approach to journalistic activity. One of the main findings is that although both series are very realistic, The Wire focusses on a formal system built upon the strategies of staging, planning, editing and sound space, with a tendency to descriptively display the facts, while The Newsroom uses an expressiveness that idealises the way the profession is carried out with a sentimental emphasis.

Finding a home for the video essay: Videographic criticism and the study of Chinese television drama

Although some conflate the digital humanities with data-driven quantitative research, other conceptualizations of the digital humanities emphasize post-print methods of scholarship with unprecedented reach outside of the academy. Video essays are an example of this vision for the digital humanities: they are critiques of film advanced through film itself with crossover appeal to popular audiences. This paper places the author’s personal experience creating a video essay on Chinese television in the context of the state of the field of Chinese television studies and current debates over the function of videographic criticism. Current scholarship on Chinese television often neglects the visuality of the televisual text and the individual experience of television viewing. Because video essays are themselves an audiovisual text, they foreground the visual, and their position between popular and scholarly forms of communication creates room for including subjective responses. The critical reflexivity of ‘scholarly video essays’ on Chinese television would serve as a useful complement to the vernacular audiovisual ­commentary already prevalent on the Chinese internet. By reconceptualizing the work and proper position of the scholar, videographic criticism can productively challenge the ‘regime of separation’ between researcher and object of study upon which East Asian studies is built.

Understanding Film Fan Tourism: An Inventory of 15 Years of Research

The first studies of film and television as inducers of tourism appeared in the 1990s. From the outset, research in this area has identified a diverse range of tourist profiles, highlighting the fact that audiovisual media fans constitute an important segment of the tourism market because fan consumers dedicate considerable amounts of time, money, and energy to pursuing their specific interest. As a result, academic researchers have developed a substantial body of knowledge in this field over a relatively short period. The objective of this article is to offer a critical review of studies that have enhanced our understanding of film fan tourists to identify critical gaps in knowledge and, consequently, propose new ways to fully integrate the fan perspective into studies of audiovisual fiction-induced tourism. To this end, all the articles dealing with this specific tourist profile indexed in Web of Science, Scopus, and Google Scholar (49) have been identified and analysed based on their year of publication, geographical location, type of audiovisual production studied, methodology adopted and composition of the sample, major research themes and main theoretical and/or practical contributions. This review of the literature on film fan tourists finds that our understanding of the specific characteristics of the profile and behaviour of this type of tourist is still limited. This is due to some extent on the lack of consensus on the definition of the concept of “fans”, which has led to the erroneous classification of tourists whose travel motivation has nothing to do with a film and/or television production—and who may not even be fans of that production—as film fan tourists. The recommendations of this review thus focus mainly on reaching a consensus on the definition of the concept and establishing a single set of selection criteria for future research

Book Review: Television studies in Queer times

Book Review: Television studies in Queer times

“Inter-Inner-Personal Archives: Pandemic-Induced Introspection and Television Studies (A Dialogue)”

The way we do television studies changes with ongoing innovation; digital media and successive phases of subscription pay TV have complicated our work for the better. Additional contextual complexity in TV delivery, and the related notion of TV as a medium in perpetual identity crisis, contribute to experiences especially vivid in terms of pandemic pressures. This essay shares our collaboration from the Summer of 2020 through January 2021. We synthesize email correspondence and our many Zoom meetings discussing pandemic-inflected topics including sitcom redistribution and sports, weaving these conversations into an “inner-personal archive” combining individual history and notes on experience with in-depth television criticism. The essay explores how we as television scholars refer to the archive, and how we relate to archives that are becoming subsumed into the digital. It uses a conversational format to deconstruct, decolonize, and demonstrate the process of narrating the archive, capturing our struggle to grasp recent changes in television viewing while overwhelmed with loss, betrayal, and pain.

Introduction to the Special Issue: Pandemic TV, Then and Now

This essay serves as the introduction to TVNM’s special issue on “Pandemic TV,” an analysis of the ways in which the COVID-19 pandemic affected principally anglophone television and television-watching in 2020 to 2021 (including television’s response to corresponding events such as the summer 2020 Black Lives Matter uprisings and the fall 2020 U.S. presidential election). The introduction situates various periodizations of the pandemic, framing the dissonant temporalities of the pandemic against television’s traditional approaches to informing, representing, and containing ongoing crises. The essay also introduces the ten articles contained within the special issue, which covers representations of the pandemic, the logics of television present within the videoconferencing applications that came to define communication during the pandemic, and the changing labor of television studies scholars and teachers.

Italian Studies: Television Studies

Italian Studies: Television Studies

Building Suspense: A Critical Examination of Foreshadowing Devices in TV Series Opening Credits

This paper explores the intricate use of foreshadowing devices within the opening credits of television series, unraveling the artful integration of visual, musical, and textual elements. Through detailed case studies of iconic shows such as Game of Thrones, Stranger Things, and Westworld, we dissect the deliberate choices made by creators to engage audiences from the very beginning. The analysis uncovers the narrative nuances embedded in symbols, musical scores, and textual clues, highlighting their role in setting the stage for complex and immersive storylines. Ethical considerations, methodological challenges, and the limitations of the study are also addressed. By contributing insights to television studies and narrative theory, this paper emphasizes the significance of opening credits as a canvas for storytelling in the evolving landscape of contemporary television.

Being and timeouts: live sports in the psyche

Despite televised sports being a non-fiction event, the gap that separates a sporting event’s live unfolding from its televisual transmission ensures that it has all the aesthetic dynamism of a dramatic series. This essay argues that the sense of liveness that undergirds a televised sports broadcast operates on the side of the viewing subject rather in the object itself. It is the psyche that makes sport live—not the broadcast. This essay looks to Freudian and Lacanian concepts and ideas from television studies to concretize its theoretical intervention.

Enterprise culture, neoliberalization, and cable television at the last-mile: A case-study of local cable operators in Mumbai

This paper centers last-mile distribution networks of cable television as a prism to analyze the political-economic, socio-spatial, and subjective transformations brought about by neoliberal reforms in India. I provide an on-ground perspective of enterprise culture and entrepreneurial citizenship based on an ethnography of Mumbai-based last-mile distributors of cable television also called cablewallahs. In the wake of their disempowerment in the television distribution value-chain, cablewallahs represent themselves as entrepreneurs at the core of India’s digital economy. I combine insights from enterprise culture scholarship, television studies and anthropologies of masculinity, to shed light on this enactment in the paper. I demonstrate that cablewallahs configure their citizenship as ‘entrepreneurial’ by aspiring to middle-class valorised notions of respectability and civic duty and sustaining their last-mile networks through intimate knowledge of clientele, networks of male conviviality and vernacular solidarities. I argue that in Mumbai, entrepreneurial citizenship emerges as a useful gendered subjective disposition for navigating socio-economic marginalization and subjective-material changes in neighbourhood identity brought about by neoliberalization.

Exploring the appeal of villainous characters in film-induced tourism: perceived charismatic leadership and justice sensitivity

Film-induced tourism is considered a valuable marketing tool, especially crucial for the recovery of post-pandemic tourism. The rapid growth of digital streaming platforms has enabled film and television works to reach global audiences and impact viewers on a broader scale. Scholars and tourism operators increasingly recognise film characters’ pivotal role in global film-induced tourism. While film-induced tourism is generally believed to impact the image of tourist destinations positively, existing research has predominantly focused on the decent characters portrayed in films. However, the allure of captivating audiences is not confined solely to decent characters. According to narrative studies in film and television, villainous characters with extraordinary skills often have a stronger appeal to viewers than decent ones. Therefore, the objective of this study is to explore a rarely discussed topic: how villainous characters enhance the attractiveness of tourist destinations. This interdisciplinary research principally integrates character arc theory and reception aesthetics from film studies, emotion contagion theory from marketing research, and place attachment theory from tourism studies. Accordingly, this study examines the perceived charismatic leadership of villainous characters and its impact on film tourists’ emotion contagion, place attachment and visit intention. The study distributed questionnaires to 532 audiences who watched the Chinese police and crime drama titled, The Knockdown (狂飙), and who acquainted themselves with the villainous character Gao Qiqiang (高启强). Structured equation modelling showed that villainous characters with charismatic leadership can significantly impact the intention of film tourists. Specifically, perceived charismatic leadership directly influenced emotions of pleasure, arousal and admiration. Place attachment existed as a whole or partial mediator of the three emotions and visit intention. Moreover, the audience’s justice sensitivity negatively moderated the positive relationship between perceived charismatic leadership and emotions. Finally, the study provides insights and suggestions for film tourism marketers and screenwriters.

Turnt, Trippy, and Tipsy: Video Games, Drugs, and Allo-Ludic Play

This article offers a flexible method for analyzing drug representations in video games as they map onto lived social realities outside the game with a particular focus on US cultures. While drugs have received ample attention in popular culture studies—especially in film and television studies—game studies has been slow to produce systematic analyses of these important cultural artefacts expressed through the video game medium. Drawing upon Donna Haraway’s cyborg politics and Steven Conway’s ludic framework (with the addition of allo-ludic play), this essay offers game studies scholars a flexible—perhaps even a “turnt”—taxonomy for analyzing the imbrication of virtual drugs inside the game and oppressive, discriminatory, and inequitable conditions of life in America outside the game. Through a brief analysis of stimulants, depressants, and psychedelics in Triple-A and indie games, the essay argues for the importance of studying drugs in video games to understand the complex, intersecting histories of the rise of the video game medium alongside the changeful histories of US drug policies, laws, and enforcement.

Analysis of Film and Television + Professional Cluster Resource Integration Model and Industry Development Dynamics

Abstract This paper proposes a resource integration model for film and television + professional clusters and builds a corresponding digital platform to realize the effective integration of film and television professional resources. Using XML technology of different modalities of film and television professional resources, the association of film and television professional resources is defined, and a multi-objective integration scheduling algorithm is incorporated to optimize the integration speed to ensure the operational efficiency of the integration model. The integrated film and television professional resources are stored in the digitization platform, the wavelet transform technology is used to decompose the image signals, and the classifiers trained by the learning algorithm and the information entropy are used to complete the classification of film and television professional resources. After applying the design model and platform of this paper in the practical course teaching Film and Television Production for the 2022 undergraduate students majoring in Film and Television Studies at University X, the quality of film and television works created by the students improved by 2.12 and 1.64 in the dimensions of artistry and innovativeness compared with the pre-practice dimension, which showed a significant difference (P<0.05). H Pictures, on the other hand, predicts that in 2024, the cash income security, structural rationality, profitability sustainability, and growth sustainability metrics will improve to 0.6432, 0.9558, 0.00005, 0.4868, and 0.3767.

Media persistence: Theories, approaches, categorization

Despite the fact that new media are continually seen as “natural born killers” of old media, old media rarely die and very often persist. In what is alternately called the “age of the Internet,” the “digital revolution,” the “metaverse,” the era of “artificial intelligence,” old media such as books, cinema, radio, television, analogue photography, and several others are still in use. Moreover, there is a kind of re-emergence of “the analogue” in various forms and for different incentives, including nostalgia. This Thematic Section is the outcome of an intellectual journey that the five editors undertook first separately and then combined. The occasion for bringing together prior interests and combining theoretical and empirical understandings of the reasons why and the different modes how media persist over time was facilitated by the European Communication Research and Education Association (ECREA) virtual post-conference (co-)organized jointly by three ECREA sections in September 2021: the Communication History section together with the sections of Radio and Sound, as well as Television Studies. It is no coincidence that these three sections are concerned with old media, which seem to decline but apparently also do persist, as those are the sections dealing with the mediated relationship of the old and the new, the past and the present such as the viewing and screening practices of television, transformation of sonic environment from radio toward podcast, and in general old media remediating into new ones.

Review Essay: Feminist Television Studies of Complex and Disruptive Women

Review Essay: Feminist Television Studies of Complex and Disruptive Women

Promoting sustainable development issues through a creativity-centered e-learning course

Purpose: One of the talents necessary for surviving in the modern economy is creativity which may be developed when students learn about global concerns through education for sustainable development which is recognised as having transformational power. The aim of this research is to propose an electronic course structure promoting sustainable development issues and developing students’ creativity and to test its effectiveness. 
 Design/Methodology/Approach: During the formative pedagogical experiment (2021-2022) in the experimental group of 28 first-year television studies students, we modelled a creative seminar structure and used it to develop an electronic English language course in the Moodle Learning Management System. The control group included 27 1st year students of the same major who followed the curriculum-planned course. The results of the pre- and post-experimental questionnaire surveys were analyzed with the Mann Whitney U and ANOVA tests.
 Findings: According to the results of the post-experimental diagnostics, the students of the experimental group demonstrated a more positive attitude towards the e-learning environment as one conducive to the development of their creativity than the students of the control group.
 Conclusion: The positive shift in the experimental group students’ attitude can indicate the effectiveness of the suggested electronic course structure. Thus, it is possible to conclude that using creativity as an organizing principle in an e-learning environment allows educators to introduce the most vital worldwide challenges to students as stimuli for creative tasks and in return, receive their creative solutions.

“You Know There’s No ‘It’ Right? ‘It’ Was Just Us”

“You Know There’s No ‘It’ Right? ‘It’ Was Just Us”

The Noise of the News: Spectral Analysis of Early Swedish Television News 1958 - 1978.

Looking back on the very first year of television in Sweden, the head of programming Henrik Hahr celebrated having brought the world into “the living room of the viewer”. From the emergence of Swedish public service television in 1956 and onwards, the medium would be lauded as a window to the world. Yet, what noises came through this window? Shifting focus away from the visual content of television, this article explores and emphasizes the sonic dimensions of early Swedish news broadcasting. In the middle of the 20th century, the look, and the sound of the news were taking shape across television stations around the world. In Sweden, public service broadcasting was partly influenced by the backdrop of the cold war, and demands were formulated on a style of television that would be distinctive from the American and Soviet alternatives. This was a matter of images and audio in equal proportions. Deciding what kind of sound was added to the previously mute newsreels was at the heart of televised journalism. With a media monopoly running two competing news shows, the Swedish case offers insight into the establishment and differentiation of public service television aesthetics in the post-war era. Prior research has investigated the institutions, infrastructures, and ideas which shaped early Swedish television, but the very signals remain unexplored. This article introduces new methods for studying aural aesthetics in audiovisual media. By conducting various types of spectral visualization on recorded television news from 1958 until 1978, this analysis traces the sonic profile of the Swedish public service. The aim is to provide historical knowledge of how the news sounded and which aural experiences were promoted within the realm of the welfare state media monopoly. However, by drawing attention to the prospect of audio signal processing as a method for cultural-historical research, the purpose is also to make a methodological contribution to television studies at large.

Dossier: Screen Advertising. Introduction

The purpose of this dossier is to ask, “What is screen advertising and what relevance, if any, does it have for film and television studies?” Both are large and complex questions, but the second is perhaps the bolder and, therefore, a question that will remain unanswered. It invokes a larger conversation about the nature of film studies in the academy since it emerged within the paradigm of literary studies in Britain and the USA in the 1970s. To answer these questions, the dossier presents interviews with three influential figures from screen advertising production, two reports about advertising archives and an article about the industry in Britain since 1955.

STRATEGI PROGRAMMING INEWS DALAM MEMPERTAHANKAN PROGRAM SIARAN BERITA MENJELANG ASO 2022

This research concentrates on the realm of television studies as an institution, to find out how the strategy of the iNews Siang news program is in maintaining news broadcast programs ahead of ASO 2022. The type of research used is descriptive qualitative research. The object of this research study is the iNEWS Afternoon program ahead of the Migration policy of Analog TV broadcasts to Digital TV broadcasts or Analog Switch Off (ASO). The problems in this study are dissected by analyzing how the strategy of the iNews Siang news program is in maintaining the news broadcast program ahead of ASO 2022, data collection techniques are applied to support information by conducting observations, interviews, and documents. The purpose of this research is to find out the strategy for the INEWS Siang news program in maintaining the news broadcast program ahead of ASO 2022, through the pre-production, production and postproduction stages observed as one unit in a series of program strategies. Participatory observation methods, interviews and literature on the news department, Morrisan's program strategy theory were built as a framework for the approach. The results obtained are iNews TV station programming strategy, especially in the iNews Afternoon Towards ASO 2022 program in broadcasting television broadcast programs to digital so that they can reach all audiences throughout Indonesia. Therefore, there are programs broadcast by the iNews Siang program in preparation for or ahead of ASO 2022. ASO stands for Analog Switch Off. The policy of discontinuing Analog TV broadcasts to be subsequently transferred to digital TV broadcasts is known as Analog Switch Off (ASO).
 Keywords: ASO, iNEWSTV, digital broadcast, programming strategy, television journalist