Category: Sociology of Media & Communication

Sociology of Culture / Sociology of Media & Communication

Video Games = Art?

by bmckernan In Hollywood Highbrow, Shyou Baumann examines the sociological factors that led to Hollywood’s historical transformation from being considered merely a form of mass entertainment to an artistic medium. Adopting a sociology of culture framework, Baumann identifies what he considers to be the three essential factors needed for any cultural medium to be considered an art, including: an opportunity space, institutionalized resources/activities, and intellectualization. Given the massive popularity of video games in contemporary America, it may be useful to...

Political & Economic Sociology / Social Movements / Social Change / Sociology of Culture / Sociology of Media & Communication

Authentic Reproduction

by ishein1 It was only a few weeks ago when I saw an Olive Garden Restaurant advertisement depicting its culinary school in Tuscany.  It utilized this image to support its claim that the restaurant provides an authentic Italian dining experience.  Wary of the veracity of this advertisement’s culinary school postulations, I researched the said school.  As it turns out, the Olive Garden did indeed open a culinary school in Tuscany.  This is an attempt by the Olive Garden to put...

Political & Economic Sociology / Science & Technology / Social Movements / Social Change / Sociology of Culture / Sociology of Media & Communication / Sociology of Organizations & Work

britannica is putting customers to work

by nathan jurgenson The very idea of Wikipedia -the open-source encyclopedia that anyone with an internet connection can edit- has sparked many discussions about knowledge construction, such as the politics behind truth, the social construction of knowledge, the tyranny of epistemic expertism or populism, and so on. In these discussions, the Encyclopedia Britannica is often posed as the antithesis to Wikipedia. So it came as big news earlier this year that the Encyclopedia Britannica, the model of old-school expertism, is...

Gender & Sexuality / Sociology of Culture / Sociology of Law, Crime and Deviance / Sociology of Media & Communication

Mediated Domestic Violence: Is the New Visibility Short Lived?

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Mr4kXW6mOU] by NickieWild The media in the United States, especially television, re-discovers the severity of violence against women when a highly visible image or story occurs. The latest incident, involving singers Chris Brown and Rihanna, has been extensively covered on local, national, and cable news, and talk shows like Oprah and Dr. Phil. However, as academic writers on the subject have noted, the media continually “rediscover” this problem in response to a specific incident that is either particularly horrific (such...

Race & Ethnicity Studies / Sociology of Culture / Sociology of Media & Communication

Racism in a Video Game?

By bmckernan During the spring of 2008, a heated debate emerged within the video game community over what some considered to be the presence of racist imagery in a trailer for the latest installment of the popular video game franchise Resident Evil. As a franchise, Resident Evil has generally been well received by the gaming community, with many of its games garnering both critical acclaim and commercial success. As a series, Resident Evil is known for combining a rich narrative...

Gender & Sexuality / Sociology of Culture / Sociology of Media & Communication

Gendering HIV/AIDS Discourse

nmccoy1 Pope Benedict’s recent visit to Africa (see BBC article below) included comments on the AIDS epidemic that has disproportionately affected Africans worldwide.  While staying true to Catholic doctrine and its teachings on abstinence, his insistence that condoms are both ineffective against the spread of HIV/AIDS and can in fact increase the rate of contamination further diminish the gendered aspects of this problem.  The fact that condoms are a cheap and accessible form of birth control has been overshadowed by...

Sociology of Media & Communication

Social Networks are the new E-Mail

A recent article published by the BBC has found that online community platforms such as Facebook, MySpace and Twitter are quickly becoming the preferred method of online communication via and at the expense of more traditional platforms such as stand alone e-mail programs.  Programs such as Facebook offer a more community based, integrated approach to digital communication. Recently, Alison Cavanagh has published an article detailing the rise and factioning of online communities, illuminating many of the positive and negative aspects...

Sociology of Culture / Sociology of Media & Communication

"Dirty Pretty Thing"

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wKx1aenJK08] What happens when the internet, a supposed open space for free speech and expression, is censored by government authorities? Early this year, the Chinese government initialized a policy focusing particularly on the “repair of internet integrity,” which basically means “anti-obscenity.” The policy aimed to break down and cast off all online websites and web pages containing contents against the Chinese government’s principle of “harmony and peace.” Under the policy, over 2000 websites and blogs are blocked and forced to...

Sociology of Culture / Sociology of Media & Communication

Mass Deception and the Watchmen

Over the weekend, The Watchmen grossed approximately 55 million dollars in its opening weekend in the United States.  More than sixty years ago, sociologists Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno argued that movies no longer need to pretend to be art and are in reality, just businesses made into an ideology in order to justify “the rubbish they deliberately produce.” The recent big budget gates in hard economic times suggests a fresh reading of this classic.  The Culture Industry: Enlightenment as...

Sociology of Culture / Sociology of Media & Communication

Watching wealth in an economic crisis

by bmckernan A while back, a previous blog post wondered how Hollywood and American television would react to the current economic crisis. Would these industries continue to focus on affluent and lavish lifestyles, or would they instead redirect their gaze to more humbling “middleclass” concerns in light of the dire economic straits many Americans now found themselves navigating. Well, according to a recent article in Time magazine, at least one American television network is not only staying the course, but...

Gender & Sexuality / Sociology of Culture / Sociology of Media & Communication

Guest Post: What Makes Barbie Bad?

  by Joel Best               Barbie, the teenage fashion doll, turns 50 this month.  The years have been kind to Barbie; she hasn’t gained weight or lost her figure.  Of course, her critics would say that’s the problem.             We’ve all heard the complaints by sociologists of gender and other intellectuals. Barbie, they say, is harmful–even dangerous–because she promotes traditional gender roles.  Her beauty teaches little girls that society will judge them primarily according to their looks, and not...

Sociology of Culture / Sociology of Media & Communication

Orientalism, Globalism, Hybridization

by linanne10 Tokyo may be one of the most extreme examples of a hybridized international city, in an age of rapid globalization. Cultural negotiation and reconciliation between Western notions of modernization and traditional Japanese civilization (or to some extent, Asian civilization) found their way in this kaleidoscopical urban space, whether in tension or in peace. The film, Tokyo! (opening on March, 6 in New York City), is a triptych by three foreign directors, Bong Joon-ho, Leos Carax and Michel Gondry,...

Political & Economic Sociology / Social Movements / Social Change / Sociology of Culture / Sociology of Media & Communication / Sociology of Organizations & Work

“Cerebral Celebrities” – Coming Down to Earth

 by ishein1 “It takes tremendous courage to think for yourself and examine yourself, this Socratic imperative requires courage.”  This quote is taken from the trailer of the second documentary from Astra Taylor and is spoken by Cornel West in the back of Taylor’s car.  Taylor’s first film, Zizek, was a documentary in which the ‘intellectual rock star’, Slavoj Zizek, is shadowed on his lecture circuit.  Taylor’s new film “Examined Life”, set to open in New York City, once again attempts...

Race & Ethnicity Studies / Social Movements / Social Change / Sociology of Culture / Sociology of Media & Communication

“I Missed the Joke”: Race, Rupert Murdoch, and the NAACP

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E4mBRYueMss] by NickieWild Last week, a very racially charged cartoon appeared in the New York Post, featuring a couple of police officers having killed a chimpanzee, with the caption, “They’ll have to find someone else to write the next stimulus bill.” The cartoon was supposedly a somewhat weak joke about an animal that attacked a woman, and was shot by police in Connecticut, linked tenuously with commentary of a sort about President Obama’s economic plan. Civil rights leaders weren’t laughing....

Political & Economic Sociology / Sociology of Culture / Sociology of Media & Communication

To Sell or Not to Sell

by bmckernan A battle is looming within the video game industry between video game developers and video game retail outlets. Over the last decade, the trading in of used video games for store credit has become an increasingly popular activity for a significant portion of the gaming world. For many gamers, trading in their old games for store credit is the only way they can afford to continue to pursue their video game hobby, while on the retail side the...

Social Movements / Social Change / Sociology of Media & Communication / Sociology of Organizations & Work

The Facebook Privacy Fiasco of 2009

by nathan jurgenson All over the news the past few days has been the outing of Facebook for changing its terms of service so that it could keep its user’s data for whatever it pleased for as long as it pleased. Even if the user deleted their account. Next came the vast uproar to this move followed by Facebook’s backtracking, arguing that the wording was harsher than what they would actually do in practice. Under continued pressure, however, Facebook backed...