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Promotional Culture
Abstract
With the industrialisation of publishing in the late nineteenth century, “writing” wrote Innis “becomes a device for advertising advertising:”1 Most immediately, the great Canadian media historian was thinking of newspapers, circulation wars, and the role of Hearst-type journalism in promoting ads for industrialism’s new consumer goods. But he also had in mind the growth of the publishing industry’s own promotional needs, by virtue of which even serious and seemingly autonomous forms of writing became deeply tangled up in the advertising function as well. Hence the enhanced “importance of names” a marked tendency in all corners of the literary market towards topicality, faddism, and sensation.
... Advertising text, unlike many other texts, lacks the feature of being an autonomous text on its own so Cook (2001: 33) describes advertisement as a parasitic discourse. Advertising texts create the indicators, traditions and, values they contain by taking them from the common cultural farm of society (Wernick, 1991). Intertextuality in advertisements means referring to other types of advertisements or other communication types in a certain advertisement (Hackley, 2005). ...
... Çok sayıda asalak organizma konakçı için gerekli olmasa bile, faydalı olabildiğinden aslında bu ifade olumsuz değildir. ve değerleri toplumun ortak kültür havuzundan çekerek oluşturmaktadır (Wernick, 1991 Reklamların neredeyse tamamı başka reklamlardan veya başka türlerden sesler taşımakta ve bu yankılar neticesinde türetilen anlamlar metinlerarası olarak algılanmaktadır (Cook, 2001, s. 193). Reklamda metinlerarasılık, belli bir reklamda diğer tür reklamlara veya diğer iletişim türlerine atıfta bulunmayı ifade etmektedir (Hackley, 2005). ...
Reklamın doğası gereği “metinlerarası” olduğu yakla- şımından hareketle oluşturulan bu çalışma, yazın alanına ait bir yöntem ve yaklaşım olan metinlerarasılığın reklam alanındaki görünümüne dair teorik bir çerçeve çizmeyi amaçlamaktadır. Metinlerarası unsurların reklam metninde kullanımı, izleyicinin kısa dikkatinden en fazla payı almayı hedefleyen reklamcılar için işlevsel bir seçenektir. Nitekim bu durum mevcut metin- lerin anlamlarını kullanarak süreci kolaylaştırmayı sağlamanın ötesinde, tüketime dair hali hazırdaki kalıpları yeniden üret- mektedir. Ayrıca, reklamda metinlerarası unsurların bulunması anlamlandırma sürecinde izleyicinin bilişsel katılımını mecbur kılmaktadır. Dolayısıyla izleyiciler entelektüel bir görevi yerine getirerek bir bilmeceyi çözdüğü yanılsaması ile reklam metnin- de aktif bir rol üstlenmektedir. Bu durum hem reklamın rahatsız ediciliğinin, hem de bireylerin reklamdan kaçınma davranışının azalmasına katkı sağlamaktadır. Çalışma kapsamında reklamda metinlerarasılığa yönelik betimsel bir çerçeve oluşturulmuş ve uluslararası literatürde yer alan tanımlamalar, yerelde kullanılan uygulamalar ile örneklendirilmiştir. Bu durum, reklamda me- tinlerarasılığın küresel ölçekte kullanım pratiğine işaret etmek- tedir. Metinler, temelde benzer amaçlarla ancak hedef kitlenin sosyo-kültürel değişkenleri çerçevesinde kodlandığında, hedef- lenen sonuca ulaşmayı mümkün kılmaktadır.
... Advertising text, unlike many other texts, lacks the feature of being an autonomous text on its own so Cook (2001: 33) describes advertisement as a parasitic discourse. Advertising texts create the indicators, traditions and, values they contain by taking them from the common cultural farm of society (Wernick, 1991). Intertextuality in advertisements means referring to other types of advertisements or other communication types in a certain advertisement (Hackley, 2005). ...
... Çok sayıda asalak organizma konakçı için gerekli olmasa bile, faydalı olabildiğinden aslında bu ifade olumsuz değildir. ve değerleri toplumun ortak kültür havuzundan çekerek oluşturmaktadır (Wernick, 1991 Reklamların neredeyse tamamı başka reklamlardan veya başka türlerden sesler taşımakta ve bu yankılar neticesinde türetilen anlamlar metinlerarası olarak algılanmaktadır (Cook, 2001, s. 193). Reklamda metinlerarasılık, belli bir reklamda diğer tür reklamlara veya diğer iletişim türlerine atıfta bulunmayı ifade etmektedir (Hackley, 2005). ...
Reklamın doğası gereği “metinlerarası” olduğu yakla- şımından hareketle oluşturulan bu çalışma, yazın alanına ait bir yöntem ve yaklaşım olan metinlerarasılığın reklam alanındaki görünümüne dair teorik bir çerçeve çizmeyi amaçlamaktadır. Metinlerarası unsurların reklam metninde kullanımı, izleyicinin kısa dikkatinden en fazla payı almayı hedefleyen reklamcılar için işlevsel bir seçenektir. Nitekim bu durum mevcut metinlerin anlamlarını kullanarak süreci kolaylaştırmayı sağlamanın ötesinde, tüketime dair hali hazırdaki kalıpları yeniden üretmektedir. Ayrıca, reklamda metinlerarası unsurların bulunması anlamlandırma sürecinde izleyicinin bilişsel katılımını mecbur kılmaktadır. Dolayısıyla izleyiciler entelektüel bir görevi yerine getirerek bir bilmeceyi çözdüğü yanılsaması ile reklam metnin- de aktif bir rol üstlenmektedir. Bu durum hem reklamın rahatsız ediciliğinin, hem de bireylerin reklamdan kaçınma davranışının azalmasına katkı sağlamaktadır. Çalışma kapsamında reklamda metinlerarasılığa yönelik betimsel bir çerçeve oluşturulmuş ve uluslararası literatürde yer alan tanımlamalar, yerelde kullanılan uygulamalar ile örneklendirilmiştir. Bu durum, reklamda me- tinlerarasılığın küresel ölçekte kullanım pratiğine işaret etmek- tedir. Metinler, temelde benzer amaçlarla ancak hedef kitlenin sosyo-kültürel değişkenleri çerçevesinde kodlandığında, hedeflenen sonuca ulaşmayı mümkün kılmaktadır.
... Today, this implies that businesses are forced to adapt to a society that has become communication and information orientated (Hardt & Negri, 2000;Lazzarato, 1996;Lazzarato, 2014). Wernick (1991) called this promotional culture and argued that for goods and money to be exchanged, information had to be exchanged as well. In a promotional culture context, communication operates by means of dialogical persuasion, where its fundamental aim is to turn a potential customer into a buyer. ...
... This study illustrates how specific immaterial values are produced and promoted by commercial child and youth sport businesses to create child and youth sport as a desirable product to buy. Building on the extensive theoretical starting point of promotional culture and immaterial labour (Hardt & Negri, 2000;Lazzarato, 1996;Lazzarato, 2014;Marshall & Morreale, 2018;Wernick, 1991), these immaterial values produce and promote a product intended to attract potential child and youth sport consumers. In our analysis, we identify three different immaterial values produced on the various websites: competence, individually adjusted training and happiness. ...
The contexts in which young people participate in sport are diverse. In Scandinavia, as in many other countries, child and youth sport is mainly organised in non-profit, membership-based and voluntary driven sports clubs. In Sweden, this model is now challenged by commercial businesses providing child and youth sport services. The overall aim of this article is to provide empirically based knowledge about these ongoing and largely unexplored commercialisation processes. The focus of the article is to illuminate how commercial businesses produce immaterial values through the promotion of sport services. In this article, we have explored the cultural and social values produced and promoted by commercial businesses in youth sport. Drawing on the website communications of eight commercial businesses from four different commercial strands, we use the concept of immaterial labour to consider the values produced when child and youth sport is turned into a desirable product on the market. The values generated from the texts on the selected websites are the immaterial values of (i) competence, (ii) individually adjusted training and, (iii) happiness. These values are enunciated differently by the businesses in the different strands. We situate the findings in relation to western social and cultural values and discuss the potential consequences of these value productions for contemporary ideas about youth sport and the way it should be organised.
... The author states that promotional elements are everywhere, and can even be found in resumés and job application letters, descriptions of organizations and their activities, book covers and interviews with authors. Wernick (1991) was one of the first authors to talk about promotional culture and describes this concept as the relationship between culture and the economy of increased promotion in several aspects. The author also points out that this was not a conflict-free situation, but it also brought new opportunities. ...
In this article, we look into the pervasive influence of advertising as a discourse, by analysing diverse public communication campaigns addressing social issues. To do so, the article refers to academic studies dealing with road safety, charity, child vaccination, AIDS treatment, and domestic violence across various cultural contexts. With this analysis, we are moving beyond the conventional view of advertising tied to consumption. Despite being often criticized for its manipulative nature, advertising can have positive impacts, notably when it raises awareness of social problems. Therefore, in this article, we delve into the social consequences of advertising
discourse: for instance, insights into beauty product advertising highlight dual impacts on female self-image; on the other hand, campaigns promoting mental health can result in positive outcomes. This article is a contribution to a deeper understanding of advertising's role when it comes to shaping societal values and ideologies, by showcasing its potential to influence individual decisions for broader social benefits.
... Governments, corporations, and politicians all have stakes, either in selling products or in managing public perceptions. Understanding the art of promotion in this way will point to why promotion has been a sociocultural intervention in human society (See Wernick, 1991). ...
In the current democratic dispensation in Nigeria in particular, and Africa in general, the public reputation of politicians and people in authority has acquired a new higher premium on which the political context is fought. Citizens make use of available information and knowledge about the reputation of politicians to arrive at rational choices. In the context of the responsibility placed on journalism in a liberal democracy, the media is looked upon to guarantee citizenship by, among others, making politicians and people in authority accountable. The symbolism that Watergate bears and brings to modern journalism lies in monitoring power and authority in the service of the general interests of society. For those at the center of its practice, investigative journalism provides journalists with the right to detach from vested interests in society and the capacity to bark at power on behalf of the public. Using a historical research methodology, this paper explores the role of investigative journalism in making power accountable in the contemporary era of promotional politics. This paper concludes that the challenges confronting investigative journalism in Nigeria go beyond the hostile illiberal democratic environment within which journalists operate. Rather, journalists are confronted with structural, institutional and political challenges in making power accountable, as both the state and politicians employ various means, including the use of promotional intermediaries to launder their public image.
... Apesar disso, ainda se esperam comportamentos diferentes por parte das mulheres em determinadas situações. A mulher tem os seus comportamentos e pensamentos modelados por uma cultura promocional (Wernick, 1991), com uma representação feminina como figura passiva ou de objetificação sexual. No entanto, em contexto de violência doméstica, é-lhe exigido o empoderamento suficiente para abandonar maridos abusivos ou violentos (Bartky, 1990;Cortese, 2015). ...
A publicidade é um discurso que afeta o nosso comportamento e nos influencia a comprar produtos ou a pensar sobre as ideias propostas num anúncio. Desta forma, a publicidade pode promover certas causas e apoiar o combate de problemas sociais por meio da consciencialização por meio de campanhas de comunicação pública. A violência doméstica é um fenómeno social controverso e as instituições de combate ao problema sugerem mais campanhas de mobilização pública e incentivos à denúncia de terceiros. O presente artigo compreende a publicidade como uma prática cultural capaz de promover a informação e o debate acerca de um problema social como a violência doméstica. O objetivo central deste artigo foi o de analisar sete campanhas publicitárias institucionais produzidas em Portugal com recurso à análise de discurso, pela perspetiva de Cook (2001). Resumo A maior parte destas campanhas analisadas é direcionada para as vítimas, sendo apenas uma delas direcio-nada para a população em geral. Os objetivos específicos deste artigo são o de a) analisar as imagens e as informações que aparecem em sete campanhas educativas contra a violência doméstica escolhidas em pesquisa documental prévia e b) avaliar o modo como o debate do fenómeno da violência doméstica está a ser promovido por essas sete campanhas institucionais em Portugal. A partir desta análise, verifica-se que as estratégias mais presentes nestes anúncios são a metáfora e a intertextualidade. Com base nos dados recolhidos e analisados conclui-se que as campanhas publicitárias podem ser uma importante forma de combater o problema por meio da promoção do debate sobre o assunto.
... consumer demand. Arguably, from this perspective, supply does effect demand, as demand is manufactured through the promotion of marketed want, projected obsolescence, and appearance of satisfying an unmet need (Nelson, 1974;Vakratsas & Ambler, 1999;Wernick, 1991). All three of these phenomena are focused on gratification but do not necessarily include an understanding of the supply chain related to a product, and responsibility for exercising the power of demand any further than self-satiation. ...
Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter offer both unique and overlapping opportunities to connect with people. The use of images and visual content reduces language barriers, while ease of access to these media applications increases routine engagement. This chapter provides a brief historical overview of social media, specifically addressing how social media has been used for advertising and information dissemination. We then look at two specific social media campaigns that originated to promote understanding of needed action and social change: #PayUp and #HashtagRevolt, where both are related to the fashion industry. We provide outcomes of these campaigns, including campaign accomplishments, learnings, and implications. In concluding, we acknowledge limitations related to using social media for social change, highlight the ambiguities, and a rationale for ongoing regulatory oversight.
... To the extent that consumption is a catalyst for economic growth, as measured by the GDP the standard global indicator of economic status, marketing provides both temptation and information to foster consumer demand. Arguably, from this perspective, supply does affect demand, as demand is manufactured through the promotion of marketed want, projected obsolescence and appearance of satisfying an unmet need (Nelson, 1974;Vakratsas & Ambler, 1999;Wernick, 1991). All three of these phenomena are focused on gratification but do not necessarily include an understanding of the supply chain related to a product, and responsibility for exercising the power of demand any further than self-satiation and gratification. ...
... Universities have deployed a variety of institutional activities to carry out self-promotion. Open Days, for example, provide an opportunity for the universities to invite perspective students and their parents to visit their campuses to get to know more about various aspects of the universities through live experience and engagement (Wernick, 1991). Students' brochures and prospectuses are distributed to promulgate the universities, and newspaper advertisements are posted to attract high-profile faculty members to join the institutional enterprise (Fairclough, 1993;Xiong, 2012). ...
This study explored the marketisation process of top-tier Chinese universities by scrutinising their self-promotional strategies over the past two decades. Drawing on Martin and White’s (2005) Appraisal framework, we identified all attitudinal markers in the About Us texts posted by 35 top-tier Chinese universities on their official websites at two time-points: the turn of the century and the year of 2021. The 35 universities were drawn from China’s “Double First Class” Initiative that prioritises the development of a select group of elite universities in China. Close textual analyses focussing on the attitudinal markers with reference to their contexts were conducted to identify the themes evaluated in the About Us texts; Wilcoxon signed-rank tests were run to quantitatively compare the relative frequencies of the attitudinal markers between the two phases, which was then supplemented by diachronic qualitative comparisons on the fine-grained linguistic features surrounding the markers. The study identified seven major themes positively appraised by the universities at both time-points. It also revealed diachronic differences in the use of attitudinal markers, reflecting a mediated change of promotional strategies over the past 20 years or so in the Chinese higher education context. These findings point to the influence of market, government, and tradition on Chinese top-tier universities’ promoting strategies and the role of social cognition in shaping student choice. They also suggest the emergence of a higher education system with Chinese characteristics that features a reconciliation of market and government forces.
Advertising is one of the media that contributes to cultural diffusion. This paper analyzes whether television advertising can diffuse new cultural practices and reinforce existing ones for female consumers in Bangladesh. Grounded in the “cultivation theory” of George Gerbner and the “responsive chord theory” of Tony Schwartz, as well as the theories of consumer culture and femvertising, it analyzes prime-time television advertising of the three most-watched Bangladeshi television channels along with data collected from 60 in-depth interviews. The results reveal that Bangladeshi television advertisements often introduce new cultures for women consumers whereby they can challenge existing stereotypical gendered practices including riding bicycles and going out of home alone. In addition, advertisements also reinforce existing gendered cultural practices that inform patriarchal values (particularly in rural areas) in that women’s primary goal is to satisfy family members and stay at home. The study also finds that women living in urban areas tend to challenge the existing patriarchal obligations, while rural women follow these obligations. The paper enhances our understanding of the relationship between advertisements and gendered cultural practices.
As climate change has been recognized as our most pressing and urgent problem, fashion sustainability is moving toward new framings and discourses: various corporate actors are now successfully marketing themselves as part of the solution instead of being cast as part of the problem. The focal point of this chapter is the epistemic communities that are forming around powerful groups of professionals with corporate underpinnings. The influence of these communities on policy and industry developments are shaping the fashion sector’s response to climate change.
Drawing from the theoretical background of the epistemic communities’ framework in connection with literature on promotional cultures as a social and political force, this chapter argues that fashion sustainability research needs to pay more attention to the emergence, development, and character of the most powerful epistemic communities within the fashion sector. It is also critical that we further investigate how these networks enable and constrain the actions to promote a more sustainable and just fashion industry, the ways in which they represent the global structures of the fashion system, and the historical context from which they are emerging.
Market studies is a newly emerging field dedicated to understanding the origins, core concepts, theories and methods currently being used and developed to examine markets in the making. Providing a unique overview that introduces, positions and develops this highly fertile area of research, Market Studies is the first book to consolidate its themes, tools and methods in a single, comprehensive volume. Topics covered include: market organization and design; performativity in and around markets; valuation; market places and spaces; methods that may be utilized in studying markets; the field's relation to adjacent disciplines; the future of markets. Deploying a sensitivity for the socio-material constitution of markets, the authors put market practices at the centre of inquiry and offer insights into the future and potential impact of market studies research. The contemporary, practical and interdisciplinary approach is strengthened by multiple examples of original empirical research into markets.
Market studies is a newly emerging field dedicated to understanding the origins, core concepts, theories and methods currently being used and developed to examine markets in the making. Providing a unique overview that introduces, positions and develops this highly fertile area of research, Market Studies is the first book to consolidate its themes, tools and methods in a single, comprehensive volume. Topics covered include: market organization and design; performativity in and around markets; valuation; market places and spaces; methods that may be utilized in studying markets; the field's relation to adjacent disciplines; the future of markets. Deploying a sensitivity for the socio-material constitution of markets, the authors put market practices at the centre of inquiry and offer insights into the future and potential impact of market studies research. The contemporary, practical and interdisciplinary approach is strengthened by multiple examples of original empirical research into markets.
Music PR is an area of the music industry broadly tasked with gaining ‘earned media’ for artists and products (as opposed to the ‘paid media’ that results from advertising spend), through developing and leveraging connections with cultural intermediaries such as journalists and broadcasters. As such, they enact a kind of hidden power, at odds with popular conceptions of talent and reward in popular music that attribute popularity to luck, destiny, or possession of a mysterious ‘X factor’. The chapter will counter an artist-centred conception of the music commodity by presenting the ‘star’ artist as a collaborative, discursive construction, and PR professionals as key to that process.
In recent years, ‘critical PR studies’ has emerged as a valued media sub-discipline, highlighting the role of public relations in exacerbating and legitimating socio-cultural inequalities, as well as its contribution to an accelerating ‘promotional culture’ (Demetrious, Public Relations and Neoliberalism. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2022; Somerville et al., Public Relations, Society and the Generative Power of History. Abingdon: Routledge, 2019; Edwards and Hodges, Public Relations, Culture and Society. Abingdon: Routledge, 2011). However, music PR has received very little attention from scholars—despite comparable social issues being in play. This chapter traces a critical cultural history of music PR—from the Beatles’ famed ‘press officer’ Derek Taylor, via the trans-Atlantic excess of the late twentieth century, to the relatively buttoned-down ‘comms’ work of contemporary independent PR firms in the digital age. Music PR is broadly intended as behind-the-scenes work, and accordingly it surfaces only sporadically. This history draws on such glimpses in popular music press and trade press archives, as well as the small corpus of autobiographies from notable music PRs, to document the changing relations between PRs, labels, artist, and other intermediaries.
Previous studies showed that as a result of intense competition to succeed in academic pursuits such as publishing research papers and securing grants, promotional language known as hypes are pervasive in academic texts. This paper investigates hypes in a corpus of undergraduate thesis abstracts written by Indonesian English learners in a span of ten years, from 2011 to 2020. Taking a corpus-based approach, it examines the extent to which hypes are used in the thesis abstracts, including their linguistic manifestations, frequencies over the years, and the values they promote. We found hypes in all five moves of thesis abstracts, but they were most frequent in the introduction, in which they emphasized the importance and novelty of the research and stress the urgency of the research problems. In the span of the ten years, the frequencies of hypes generally increase, indicating the students’ awareness of the need to convince thesis supervisors, board of examiners, and their colleagues and the efforts to stand out in a competitive academic landscape. Important, investigate, and reveal were the most frequent hype words over the years and their instances suggest a growing emphasis on significance, a stronger commitment to evidence-based research, and desire to contribute new and concrete findings.
This article centres AI hype within promotional culture. It incorporates scholarship on hype, affect and emotion from media, communications and cultural studies, as well as from market studies, to pose the following questions: ‘What role does promotional culture play in AI hype cycles?’ ‘What are the main promotional forms of emotion evident in the 2020s AI hype cycle?’ And finally, ‘What are the ethical implications of promoting emotion in AI hype cycles?’ The article explores the growth of twenty-first century promotional culture, particularly in the global tech sector, before examining links between promotional culture, emotion, affect, media and capitalism. Drawing on interdisciplinary approaches, the article contends that AI hype has successfully persisted because now, more than ever, contemporary promotional culture strategically deploys emotions as part of affective capitalism, and the affective nature of a digital media infrastructure controlled by the tech sector. The ensuing analysis isolates different emotions circulated by AI hype, including doomsday hype, drawing on examples from the 2020s AI hype cycle. The article concludes by examining the ethics of promotional culture as part of the combined knowledge apparatus supporting value construction in AI.
Large-scale events are typically described as single, monolithic entities. In this paper, we argue that large-scale events actually comprise multiple sub-events or events-within-events and their online representations. We explore the theoretical implications of this shift in perspective for the study of audiences and event engagement through the lens of communication power theory. We also discuss the practical implications for event management. The paper uses the Expo 2020 Dubai as its case study to illustrate the richness of sub-events within large-scale events and to consider the role of digital communications. The discussion highlights the ways in which physical events' digital twins aim to solicit similar emotional responses by audiences as their physical counterparts. By adding complexity to our understanding of these sorts of events, we argue that large-scale events comprise multiple sub-events, taking place both face-to-face and online, that make large-scale events richer and more multifaceted than they are typically seen to be. Our research shows that event organisers will need to go beyond the creation of virtual event replicas if they want to take full advantage of the affordances of digital communication. The paper concludes by calling for more critical and interdisciplinary research on large-scale events and their online representations.
Sports activities are one of the tools of Agenda 2030 within the scope of SDGs (Sustainable Development Goals). Motorsports have also recognized its impact on the natural environment and developed strategies to address related issues. It is not apparent whether the F1 organization is a green sport to meet the SDGs, despite some evidence from studies so far. This study aims to analyze F1 processes in the context of sustainable development goals using the TBL (Triple Bottom Line) methodology. For this purpose, spectator behavior, plans, projects, and practices of F1, FIA, and racing teams were pooled. Mobility in the local government and private sector is also taken into account. Data were grouped according to SDGs (17 targets, 169 sub-targets, and 231 indicators). The analysis was carried out within the framework of the Triple Bottom Line (Economic, Social, and Environmental). The results show that motorsports have also recognized its impact on the natural environment and developed strategies to address related issues. F1 is trying to become a green sport, but not yet to a sufficient level.
Promotional videos produced by higher education institutions (HEIs) are an important medium for introducing new generations of students to HEIs and communicating their roles and purposes to the outside world. Despite the widespread use of such videos, research on their contents and implications is relatively sparse. This study addresses this gap by analysing videos from 12 Scandinavian HEIs. The study found that the videos aligned with the concept of the 'Promotional University 2.0', emphasizing an intention to 'aspire to more' and 'add to the real world', and portraying the university as an arena for play and joy. Three main categories of videos emerged: student-centred, market-centred, and organization-centred. The study also highlights the ideological implications of the representations, as they reflect the tension between traditional and commercialized views of the university. The results contribute to an understanding of how promotional videos shape the expectations of students and other stakeholders. This research is important as it helps us understand how HEIs communicate and represent themselves in the highly competitive marketplace of higher education. It also illustrates the incommensurability between higher education policies aiming to promote democratization and serve the public interest on the one hand, and the images of HEIs created by promotional multimodal content on the other.
The notion of “consumer society” emerged after World War II and was made famous by authors such as Marcuse, Galbraith, Packard, and Baudrillard (cf. Baudrillard 1998). It was used to suggest that the society in which we live is a late variant of capitalism characterized by the primacy of consumption over production. At that time, the label “consumer society” constituted an attack on so‐called “consumerism”: a continuous and unremitting search for new, fashionable, superfluous things, which were branded as causing personal discontent and public disengagement. Such a moralistic connotation masks both important differences and substantial continuities between our society and other social formations (Sassatelli 2007). Even in so‐called “tribal” societies people use objects as an important source of identity and a means of social relations, to distinguish themselves or mark alliances; even in these societies one can find forms of conspicuous consumption which mostly serve to reinforce social hierarchies (Douglas & Isherwood 1979). Still, our societies seem to be different in that material culture has grown enormously: it has become ever more differentiated and is increasingly produced and consumed via market‐mediated social relationships. In subsistence economies, work, consumption, and exchange were strongly integrated with one another: people used history‐thick objects of closer provenance in ways which were taken for granted and had straightforward significance. Production and consumption were not specialized and separated spheres of action, held together by an equally specialized sphere of exchange: the fundamental cultural dichotomy on which social order rested was that of sacred/profane rather than of production/consumption. In contemporary societies, because of the disentanglement of production and consumption, we find ourselves confronted with objects whose meaning is beyond our everyday life and yet we are mobilized as “consumers” to use these objects in meaningful ways.
The term “professionalization” refers to the way in which occupations become recognized as professions, usually explained by a range of factors related to the improvement of services offered and status enjoyed. The precise meaning of the term depends on the approach taken to defining the concept of “profession.” Three theoretical perspectives are in evidence in sociological literature: the functionalist approach, as articulated by Parsons (1954) and indebted to Durkheim, sees professions as key to maintaining social order; the critical approach, initiated in the 1970s (Freidson 1970, Johnson 1972), which views professions as centers of monopoly power and elitism; and the Foucauldian perspective, which defines the profession as characterized on the one hand by high status and power, and on the other hand by subjugation resulting from the exercise of self‐discipline . Professionalization, therefore, can be understood respectively as: a process of improvement of services, knowledge, and standards; a process of social closure and exploitation of a monopoly position; and finally, a “soft” technology of control of expert labor (→ Professionalization of Journalism).
The aim of this paper is to analyze a set of didactic materials developed to teach English as an Additional Language at a Brazilian public school in Rio de Janeiro. Such materials were designed to invite 7th grade students with diverse social, racial, and economic backgrounds to learn about the world and the English language from viewpoints that delineate a decolonial stance ( Mignolo, 2010 ; Kumaravadivelu, 2016 ; Jansen, 2017 ). Grounded on the notions of Critical Race Literacy ( Ferreira, 2014 ) and Critical Language Awareness ( Alim, 2005 ), this paper looks into didactic activities built upon emancipatory ( Freire, 1996 ) and transgressive ( Pennycook, 2006 ; hooks, 2013 ) approaches to Applied Linguistics and Language Education, understanding English Language classrooms as privileged arenas for the construction of ideas on race. The methodological approach is based on the premises of a Dialogical Discourse Analysis ( Brait, 2006/2018 ) to identify centripetal and centrifugal forces ( Bakhtin, 1981 ) in the didactic materials produced. Results have indicated that the discourse genres selected ( Bakhtin, 2003/1979 apud Tilio, 2017 ) and the set of activities developed are permeated by social voices ( Bakhtin, 1981 ) that promote decolonial dialogues in the English language classroom.
This study presents a critical discourse analysis of two ideological challengers to the nation‐state: (1) Islamic State, which declared a Caliphate in 2014, and (2) the Good Country, a virtual state founded in 2018. While rooted in dramatically different ideologies, both projects explicitly reject nationalism and rely on media and promotional discourses to build support for their post‐national utopias. The study addresses three research questions: (1) How does each project challenge nationalism and the nation‐state? (2) What alternative utopia does each articulate? (3) How does promotional discourse shape their respective challenges and utopias? The analysis finds significant differences in the challenges, but also important similarities in the utopias, namely, (1) a multi‐cultural, multi‐ethnic, multi‐racial vision of post‐national collectivities; (2) a devaluing of the importance of bounded territorial sovereignty; and (3) an emphasis on individualization and taking personal action to ‘opt into’ a post‐national state based on shared values.
This chapter examines the intricacies between celebrity, digital fanship, and fandom and the growing phenomenon of deepfakes. In a world that is deeply connected by an ever-changing media landscape and an obsession with fan culture, deepfakes are posing threats to what we know to be true and trusted. In the context of sports, celebrity, and fandom, deepfakes have a promising future. In this chapter, we explore deepfakes as the next frontier of fandom.KeywordsDeepfakesSports fanshipSports fandomDigital fandomSports celebrity
Consumption patterns in social groups are diversely affected by global and local processes. Using a mixed approach, this study analyses the consumption pattern of three classes of young in Tehran (capital of Iran) including the rich, middle and lower classes. The findings suggest that the self-indulgent lifestyle of rich kids of Tehran is a reproduction of global consumption patterns. The ingress of global patterns and culture into society was also mediated through the rich class, who are inclined to convergence in consumption in the global context. Rich kids act as the reference group for lifestyle among middle- and lower-class youth, who adopt eclectic lifestyles in the local context. Overall, the nature and extent to which rich kids are perceived as a reference group differ between the two classes, with the middle-class youth taking a more realistic, extensive and imitative perspective and the lower class incorporating a more mental, limited, false and damaging mindset.
The notion of “consumer society” emerged after World War II and was made famous by authors such as Arendt, Marcuse, Galbraith, Packard, and Baudrillard. It was used to suggest that the society in which we live is a late variant of capitalism characterized by the primacy of consumption over production. In contemporary societies, because of the separation of production and consumption, we find ourselves confronted with objects whose meaning is beyond our everyday life and yet we are mobilized as “consumers” to use these objects in meaningful ways. Furthermore, consumer acts and emotional life have become closely linked. Identity and consumption are strictly entwined, consumer practices involving social actors as both rational and emotional beings.
In this article, we explore the tensions and blurred boundaries between dominance and resistance in promotional contexts by critically examining the notion of ‘visibility’, a commonly used yet largely unproblematised concept within the field of promotion. More specifically, we argue that contemporary promotional industries sustain and perpetuate a postpanoptical ‘regime of visibility’ underpinned by three modalities: 1) visibility as recognition, which associates being watched with empowerment while downplaying it as surveillance; 2) visibility as transient, which stresses visibility as a scarce resource that requires continuous work; 3) and visibility as an end-goal, that is, as an end in itself rather than means to achieve something else. Acknowledging the existence of this regime opens up avenues for a productive analysis of the coexistence and mutual constitution of dominance and resistance within promotion in the digitalised communication environment, beyond debates about ‘authenticity’ or ‘woke washing’. We note that promotional industries structure visibility as a desirable and even inevitable requirement for both reinforcing and reconfiguring social arrangements. Consequently, they foster a mirage that celebrates the actions of individuals without actually producing meaningful change, while obscuring invisibility as an equally valid strategy of resistance.
This chapter, using semiotic analysis, examines critically the construction of gender identity. The chapter also analyses the role of ideology and advertising in the construction of gender identity. The chapter advocated the use of the value of media literacy education and critical literacy.KeywordsAdvertisingCritical literacyCritical thinkingCultural hegemonyFemininityGender identityIdeologySemiotic analysis
Cities play a pivotal but paradoxical role in the future of our planet. As world leaders and citizens grapple with the consequences of growth, pollution, climate change, and waste, urban sustainability has become a ubiquitous catchphrase and a beacon of hope. Yet, we know little about how the concept is implemented in daily life - particularly with regard to questions of social justice and equity. This volume provides a unique and vital contribution to ongoing conversations about urban sustainability by looking beyond the promises, propaganda, and policies associated with the concept in order to explore both its mythic meanings and the practical implications in a variety of everyday contexts. The authors present ethnographic studies from cities in eleven countries and six continents. Each chapter highlights the universalized assumptions underlying interpretations of sustainability while elucidating the diverse and contradictory ways in which people understand, incorporate, advocate for, and reject sustainability in the course of their daily lives.
Cities play a pivotal but paradoxical role in the future of our planet. As world leaders and citizens grapple with the consequences of growth, pollution, climate change, and waste, urban sustainability has become a ubiquitous catchphrase and a beacon of hope. Yet, we know little about how the concept is implemented in daily life - particularly with regard to questions of social justice and equity. This volume provides a unique and vital contribution to ongoing conversations about urban sustainability by looking beyond the promises, propaganda, and policies associated with the concept in order to explore both its mythic meanings and the practical implications in a variety of everyday contexts. The authors present ethnographic studies from cities in eleven countries and six continents. Each chapter highlights the universalized assumptions underlying interpretations of sustainability while elucidating the diverse and contradictory ways in which people understand, incorporate, advocate for, and reject sustainability in the course of their daily lives.
Background: Canadian civil society organizations engage in strategic news-sharing to shape engagement with climate change, generating audience subsidies for news outlets.
Analysis: This study analyzes the actors involved in such news sharing on Facebook and the engagement they generate for news genres, outlets, and authors. It maps the networks through which those favouring stronger climate action and those delaying such action subsidize different venues for climate journalism.
Conclusions and implications: Anti-climate action actor subsidies are concentrated and amplify a small number of ideologically conservative voices and media outlets. Pro-climate action actor subsidies are smaller, widely dispersed and overlap with engagement generated by large news organizations.
Fintech start-ups, such as Zest AI and LenddoEFL, promise enhanced levels of financial inclusion via the creation of “re-socialized” credit profiles derived from accessing clients’ online banking habits and social media accounts. As our social data becomes credit data, the performance of “appropriate” online selfhood can now, quite literally, become money. This article explores the reputational demands, disciplines, and contradictions of ostensibly alternative computational/platformed credit scoring. It argues that the world of “surveillance capitalism” involves the maintenance of a relentlessly promotional value chain. As we are summoned to assiduously self-promote online in pursuit of a creditable reputation and financial inclusion, the self-reflexive promotional logics of the platforms themselves work to remake the world in their own image, paradoxically undermining the productive economic assumptions upon which they are predicated.
This article examines Finnish politicians’ ambivalent attachments to social media – specifically Facebook and Twitter – in candidate-centred, personalised politics. The analysis draws on 20 semi-structured interviews with members of parliament (MPs) to investigate the tactics of adaptation and adjustment politicians develop in a work setting that precludes digital detox. To investigate the MPs’ contradictory feelings, the analysis builds on cultural and media theory to contextualise the porous border between the personal and the political that exists on social media. The analysis revolves around four interconnected themes: uneasiness of self-promotion, Facebook’s ordinariness, Twitter as a necessary evil, and tactics of patience MPs utilise when they encounter various forms of online harassment. The article suggests that in parliamentary research, social media should be considered an ambivalent social glue that holds things together rather than merely a platform for self-promotion.
This chapter approaches human communicators as influencers and traces a line from mid-twentieth century studies of ‘opinion leaders’ right up to present-day social media influencers. It begins by examining the early work of Elihu Katz and Paul Lazarsfeld, which suggested that opinion leaders act as intermediaries between media and their audiences (what became known as the two-step flow theory). It then explores the workings of celebrity influence and how celebrity itself has transformed over time. In particular, it describes how the emergence of reality television ushered in a new phase of celebrity marked by the increasing visibility of ‘ordinary’ people. Chapter 6 concludes by examining recent research on social media influencers and highlights a number of factors that putatively explain why such individuals are influential.
Media and politics are related within a complex and dynamic field of interlinked institutional preactices, public policies and particular interests of diversified social groups. This paper presents one segment of the results derived from the Research on attitudes and experiences of journalists in Croatia on the openness of state bodies towards journalists, conducted for the Branch of Investigative Journalists within the Croatian Journalists' Association. The target group were journalists that reports about the political domain, events and processes in their professional work. The presented results include modes of communication in journalists' practices and the assessments of attributes of communication. They are interpreted within the framework of the ideology of professional journalism and the social changes that have, in the last few decades, essentially changed journalistic work. According to the survey results it is visible that journalists relate to their profession in accordance with values intrinsic to the ideology of professional journalism, however these values co-exists with ideas and practices that are in contradiction to them. Commercialization of the media and digital technologies have, to a large extent, moved journalism away from "classical" professional principles, and they have also contributed to the transformation of journalist work that is now primarily oriented towards the mastering of technological skills within a convergent environment and within which there is a deeply rooted commodified logic of action, while intellectual work has become "redundant". Such an environment is surely not an incentive for the reflection of one's own profession, that is, apparently, more needed than ever.
In contemporary advertising worldwide, the practice known as “femvertising” has been recognized for some time as a highly effective strategy to leverage feminist values by appearing to challenge traditional female stereotypes. Following the success of the Dove “Real Beauty” campaign, launched in 2004, many advertisers in the West adopted messages of female empowerment in their product campaigns. In South Korea (hereafter Korea), advertisers were slow to grasp the potential of femvertising, but recently advertising strategies that appear to critique or overturn traditional female beauty standards, for example, around ageing and body image, have become popular. I argue that the limitations of the femvertising strategies prevent them from posing a truly radical challenge to traditional patriarchal values in Korea. By textually deconstructing one notable case of recent femvertising in Korea, the Sulwhasoo “Beauty Is Growing Up” (아름다움은 자란다) campaign, I will show that apparent messages of female empowerment can still have the effect of promoting traditional female beauty standards and heteronormative feminine values.
Inspired by feminist thought, this special issue aims to disturb conventional ways of thinking about public diplomacy and nation branding as “soft power” tools of the state. A feminist rethinking of the soft/hard power metaphor reveals its implicit masculinist logic and invites a critical exploration of the gendering of geopolitical contestations. This issue takes one step in addressing this gap and aims to inspire further inquiry into the gender dynamics of geopolitical influence. This introductory essay is organized in four parts. First, it reviews how gender is currently addressed in public diplomacy and nation branding research. Next, it points out several social and geopolitical trends that contextualize the need for a greater engagement with questions of gender. Third, the six articles included in the issue are introduced. Finally, the concluding section outlines directions for future research, organized around the themes of performativity, relationality, and ethics of care. The essay’s key argument is that a focus on gender dynamics in public diplomacy and nation branding must involve more than a challenge to structures of gender inequality and oppression; it must also include a rethinking of the foundational assumptions about human autonomy, rationality, and ethical action that underpin international relations.
This paper calls for renewed critical examination of the representational practices of commercial brands on social media, in particular their appropriation and adaptation of user-generated “amateur” or “vernacular” cultural styles. It proposes that this appropriation parallels processes of professionalization, influencer culture, and self-branding on social media. Focusing empirically on the official Instagram accounts of 12 leading fashion brands, we identify three distinctive patterns: (1) Regramming: sharing and crediting users’ photographs on the brands’ official feed; (2) Vernacular celebrity: posting the amateur-style photographs of a celebrity or model associated with the brand; (3) Brandfies: selfie-style images created by corporations where the brand appears to be a “self” performing its own representation. We argue that these appropriations position brands more fully as social beings, as tech-savvy cultural amateurs familiar with platform affordances, and as physically embodied selves. Self-branding is thus systematically complemented and brought to fulfilment by brand-“selfing.”
Przykład empiryczny z badań nad procesami komunikowania i przemianami w tym zakresie we współczesnych uniwersytetach stanowi ilustrację do rozważań autorki odnośnie wzajemnych relacji pomiędzy teorią socjologiczną i praktyką badawczą krytycznej analizy dyskursu, tu rozumianych jako wykorzystanie istniejącej teorii w badaniu empirycznym. Wnioski badawcze, sprowadzające się do unaocznienia ‒ przy użyciu wspomnianej odmiany analizy dyskursu ‒ tendencji do bifurkacji, czyli z jednej strony daleko posuniętej deregulacji, a z drugiej przeregulowania w obszarze dyskursu szkolnictwa wyższego, prowokują z kolei zwrotnie do refleksji teoretycznej nad współczesnym społeczeństwem. Owo rozwidlenie, o którym mowa, dotyczy także społeczeństwa zarówno w odniesieniu do jego całości pojętej jako komunikacyjny system, jak i jego podsystemów, takich jak ekonomia, polityka, edukacja.
Tourism has become one of the central phenomena of a post-modern society greatly owing to its liaison with language. Especially prominent is the link between tourism and English language which, being the global lingua franca, not only monopolises all negotiations/transactions that take place in a tourist destination, but also functions as a creator of a destination’s many realities, indeed as the very embodiment of processes in tourism. Over the past decade the multifunctionality of English in tourism has attracted considerable sociolinguistic research. This paper discusses the importance of merging sociolinguistics with the theory of tourism. The clear advantage of tourism scholars’ acceptance of sociolinguistics as an accredited field of study lies not only in developing new understandings of language/discourse in tourism but also in an increased transdisciplinarity of two perceivedly distant fields of study: sociolinguistics and tourism.
In what ways is climate change political? This book addresses this key - but oddly neglected - question. It argues that in order to answer it we need to understand politics in a three-fold way: as a site of authoritative, public decision-making; as a question of power; and as a conflictual phenomenon. Recurring themes center on de- and re-politicization, and a tension between attempts to simplify climate change to a single problem and its intrinsic complexity. These dynamics are driven by processes of capital accumulation and their associated subjectivities. The book explores these arguments through an analysis of a specific city - Ottawa - which acts as a microcosm of these broader processes. It provides detailed analyses of conflicts over urban planning, transport, and attempts by city government and other institutions to address climate change. The book will be valuable for students and researches looking at the politics of climate change.
Capitalism and Control of the Press
- See J Curran
- J Curran
British Broadcasting Corporation and Penguin), especially pp
- John Berger
- J Berger