1,720,964 research outputs found
Cultivating Community Through Academic Blogging
No full textAlthough academic publishing may seem a solitary exercise, this need not take place in a vacuum. This essay provides an example of one author’s attempt to create an online community through a blog describing her ongoing book project. She describes how individuals resisted her attempts to foster interaction on the site; instead, they interacted individually with the author across various media in a “hub-and-spoke pattern,” rather than with each other
Sox and Stripes: Baseball’s Ironic American Dreams
No full textSports media depictions of the Yankees and Red Sox have produced ironic team personae that can best be understood through the lens of Fisher’s (1973) materialistic and moralistic American dreams. In this article, the author traces the interaction of Burke’s first three tropes—metaphor, metonymy, and synecdoche—in sports news coverage of the Yankees and Red Sox from 2000–2010 to explain the discursive construction of the teams’ ironic personae. Collectively, media emphasis on money metaphors, the Yankees’ lucrative 21st century stadium, and a militaristic owner align the team persona with a materialistic, aggressive economic competition model, whereas the Red Sox are represented by metaphors of frugality, a classic stadium, and familial ‘‘Idiots’’ to create a moralistic, cooperative image of the organization. The teams’ personae are ultimately created and sustained through the tropological cycle and the dialectical interaction of the rivals
The Ancient Roots of Humor Theory
Get PDFMany modern humor scholars have oversimplified their summaries of Plato, Aristotle, Cicero and Quintilian\u27s views on humor, focusing on the philosophers\u27 cautionary warnings about the rhetorical efficacy and ethics of humor Although the philosophers did write much on the offensive nature of jests, which can be considered illustrative of superiority theory, I describe elements of the incongruity and relief theories of humor motivation in their work. There is evidence to suggest that all four philosophers found humor to be a fitting and effective response to certain exigencies. It is more accurate to summarize their views thus: Humor has the potential to be a powerful tool of persuasion, but like any potent weapon (discursive or non-discursive) it should be used with caution
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A sketch comedy of errors: Chappelle's show, stereotypes, and viewers
Get PDFtextCelebrities such as Halle Berry, Dave Chappelle, Kathy Griffin, and Don Imus have recently evoked public ire for making what some people have seen as tasteless jokes. Their notorious humorous communication shares two notable qualities: the discourse was mass mediated and the “jokes” were all premised on stereotypes. This two-part dissertation addresses the complicated subject of understanding the meanings viewers co-create with humorous mediated communication that is premised on racial stereotypes. I focus on Chappelle’s Show as my primary text of analysis, but the findings here have applicability to the wider genre of humorous mediated communication that is premised on stereotypes. In the first part of the dissertation I survey humor theory and humor criticism, noting weaknesses in the ways that communication scholars have previously studied humorous mediated texts. I then suggest that humor scholarship can be improved through two principal methods: 1. humor scholars of various academic disciplines need to use a unified set of terms that refer to the humor stimulus, humor motivation, and the possible effects of the humor, and 2. critics of humorous mediated texts need to approach them as a unique genre, with a critical lens that accounts for the polysemy inherent in many humorous texts. In the next part of the dissertation, I model a multi-methodological approach to mining the mélange of meanings in Chappelle’s Show. My in-depth case study of racial stereotype-based humor in Chappelle’s Show incorporates textual analysis of a dozen sketches, qualitative analysis of viewer opinions about the show, and a quantitative analysis of viewing behaviors as well as the relationship between viewing the show and prejudice. This multi-methodological approach helps better mine the polysemic meanings of the text because it explores the spectrum of the communication model from stimulus to receiver. I conclude that Chappelle’s Show can both encourage and reduce prejudice. While inconclusive conclusions are an anomaly in media criticism, I advocate the pursuit of such conclusions in humor criticism. Stereotype-based mediated comedic texts demand an exploration of their multiple meanings, not a definitive statement about how they should be interpreted or how they affect an audience.Communication Studie
Three Satiric Television Decoding Positions
No full textThis essay explores viewer meaning-making with an ironic and satiric television text, analyzing focus group discourse from Chappelle’s Show viewers. Participants’ interpretations of Chappelle’s Show’s representation repeated historical mediated stereotypes of a ‘‘Black and White’’ world that includes violent Black characters and ‘‘dorky’’ White characters. Despite nearly uniform identification of the show’s stereotypes, focus group participants made varying meanings from the show using three primary decoding positions: refusing to acknowledge the show’s ideological implications, attending to the text’s ‘‘realistic’’ stated meanings, or actively deriving higher meanings from the humorous exaggerations. Explicating these decoding positions encourages viewers to be more conscious of their own interpretive practices and illuminates how critical television scholars can more thoroughly explore the interactions between viewers and satiric texts
Media Marathoning: Immersions in Morality
No full textMedia Marathoning: Immersions in Morality is a scholarly study of the intense relationship between reader and story world, analyzing the way audiences become absorbed in a fictive text and dedicate many hours to exploring its narrative contours. Rather than view these media experiences as mindless indulgences, media marathoning connotes a conjoined triumph of commitment and stamina. Compared to more traditional, slower-paced media engagement patterns, media marathoning affords readers greater depth of story world engagement, maximizing the emotional and cognitive rewards of the media experience. Through immersive marathoning experiences, audiences can seriously engage with mediated questions about human nature and society, refining our orientation toward morality through internal dialogue about the story and communication with other readers as we process the meaningful journey. As digital technologies facilitate easier, user-centered access to media texts, narratives increase in complexity, and more readers seek immersive story world experiences, marathoning looks to be the new normal of media engagement. Drawing from qualitative studies of book, film, and television marathoners, along with textual analysis of commonly marathoned stories, Media Marathoning presents a holistic look at marathoning\u27s cultural impact.https://scholarworks.merrimack.edu/books/1057/thumbnail.jp
Polysemic Scaffolding: Explicating Discursive Clashes in Chappelle’s Show
No full textThis article explicates the discursive foundations that bubble up multiple meanings in racial humor, describing three prominent discursive clashes at the heart of Chappelle’s Show’s polysemic comedy: Egregious stereotyping versus subtler mediated racism, inverted racial stereotypes versus traditional stereotypes, and serious versus nonserious discourse. Throughout the article, I make a case for ‘‘polysemic scaffolding,’’ a method that positions polysemy as a taken-for-granted interaction among text, author, and audience, and instead seeks to understand the discursive patterns that will eventually have their polysemic meanings activated. This article underscores the importance of not only undertaking polysemic criticism, but also of uncovering the discursive scaffolding upon which the polysemy is based
Podcasts and Productivity: A Qualitative Uses and Gratifications Study
No full textThrough analysis of five focus groups with people who “usually (more often than not) listened to at least one podcast episode a week” in the last two months, this uses and gratifications (U&G) study uncovers several prominent themes among podcast listener experiences. In an effort to integrate old and new media use typologies within U&G research, our results are presented in two parts: emerging typologies and expansions of existing typologies. The emerging section includes reasons for podcast displacement of other media, customizable experiences, and multitasking (which involves both temptation bundling and feeding the brain). The expansion builds on the existing typologies of companionship and interaction by analyzing avenues for parasocial relationship formation and identifying social opportunities as well as social frustrations surrounding podcasts. We ultimately conclude that podcasts offer an endless supply of engaging content that travels with listeners, allowing them to be “productive” in various physical and mind-expanding ways. The enjoyment is facilitated in part by forging connections with hosts and other listeners
“Teetering on a Tightrope”: Uncertainty and Information Management During the Cancer Pre-Diagnosis Phase
No full textFacing a potential cancer diagnosis can be rife with dichotomous and chaining uncertainty. This study draws from Uncertainty Management Theory and the Theory of Motivated Information Management to explore patient experiences in the pre-diagnosis phase: the time between when suspicious symptoms are observed and a positive or negative cancer diagnosis is received. Fifty-five interviews were conducted with people who underwent a cancer diagnosis process in the five years prior to the interview. Using thematic analysis, this study highlights the challenges of temporal and testing uncertainties, as well as information management strategies of avoidance, tailored experiential support, and agentic medical research
The Television Spoiler Nuisance Rationale
Get PDFThis essay explores tensions surrounding television spoilers through interviews with thirteen people who are paid to write or edit discourse about television. These professionals include television critics, editors, an entertainment reporter, a popular culture writer, and a television columnist. Analysis of interview transcripts revealed that varying attitudes toward television pleasure undergird the spoiler debate. After describing three divergent television pleasure attitudes, we present the second half of our analysis: interviewees’ statements about the timing of their publications, the content of their writing, and the packaging of their writing. Properly packaging articles so that readers need to “opt in” was the only area of consensus among interviewees. The essay describes proper packaging through a nuisance rationale framework, one that reduces spoiler exposure for those who wish to avoid it but keeps engaging commentary available for those who actively seek it. These findings shed light on how to negotiate communicative tensions stemming from evolving media engagement patterns
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