Conference Presentations by Dr. Andrew Fox
Memorializing practices that follow major tragic events usually provide a transformational experi... more Memorializing practices that follow major tragic events usually provide a transformational experience for the survivors and for the society as a whole. In the wake of events such as the 7/7 London bombings when 52 people were killed and over 700 people were injured there has been a widespread grief not only for the deceased but also for a sense of national security and identity (Linenthal, 2001; Siegl & Foot, 2004). Since 2005 every year acts of public grief have provided opportunities to celebrate the lives of those who died, to mourn their passing, and through that inscribe memories of the deceased in the public consciousness (Foot & Warnick, 2006: 72). Ten years have passed since the 7/7 London bombings. It is perhaps time to ask ourselves: has the media done enough to keep this tragic event alive in the public memory? How do young people remember the 7/7 London bombings? and What is their understanding of what happened in London on July 7th, 2005?
Based on Foot & Warnick’s (2006) analysis of web-based memorializing, this study aims to analyze emerging social practices mediated by computer through which spaces of commemoration of the 7/7 London terrorist attacks are produced. According to Gloviczki (2015), in the process of memorialization the aspects that must be selected usually consist of three categories: form, content, and context, out of which the form of memorialization is perhaps the most important aspect because this determines the material of which the memorial will consist. The present study provides a comprehensive content analysis of three websites that commemorate the 7/7 London bombings this year (the BBC News website, The Guardian and The Daily Mail) juxtaposed with Twitter feeds and a questionnaire that aims to find out how young people (aged 18-21) remember the event. As memory is “a retroactive reconstruction of the past” (Kasabova, 2008: 332), we aim to find out how these websites contribute to the memory construction and preservation of social memory of young people and through what means.
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This article analyses a forgotten British television drama, Vexed. Vexed was first shown on BBC2,... more This article analyses a forgotten British television drama, Vexed. Vexed was first shown on BBC2, in 2010, and is a good example of how commissioners were willing to take a risk in producing edgy comedy drama. However, schedulers were unwilling to place the show in a prime time slot on BBC1, despite its high production values, preferring instead to see if an audience was to be found through the lesser watched BBC2.
Vexed can be compared to the American comedy drama Moonlighting insofar as it employed irreverent comedy as well as crime along with a male and female lead who demonstrated personal and sexual incompatibility.
We intend to demonstrate that Vexed represents how current UK broadcasters are unwilling to let new styles and formats of television drama develop an audience and evolve character traits. For example, Moonlighting had a run of five seasons between 1985 and 1989, producing 67 episodes. Vexed on the other hand has, to date, had two seasons, but only a total of nine episodes. There was also a two year gap between seasons one and two. Season two was shown at the same time as the 2012 London Olympics. At the time of writing this proposal there are no plans for a third season. We intend to show that Vexed is a smart, witty forgotten television drama which did not even achieve cult status. Our analysis will show why this occurred, and how in a different time the show would have been given more chance to succeed.
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Articles by Dr. Andrew Fox
Global Perspective on Media Events in Contemporary Society
Social media has, over the past decade, become a significant method of communication. People can ... more Social media has, over the past decade, become a significant method of communication. People can now interact with each other more easily and more frequently than in the past thanks to websites like Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. This chapter concerns itself with examining how social media has enabled the public and the news broadcasters to work more closely together. Explored are three key elements. Firstly, there is a review of literature which discusses issues of convergence and the changing nature of news production. Secondly, three major news stories from 2015 act as case studies to discuss how the public contributed to the “eventisation” of the stories through the use of social media platforms. These analytical elements of the chapter feed into the broader context, which is how a media event is now defined given the changing nature of the public's role in news production. The chapter concludes by offering an explanation as to how a media event can now be potentially driven by the public's interaction with the news organisations through social media. Therefore the overarching conclusion that is reached is that the media event as defined in the traditional sense (a live broadcast) has been superseded by 24 hour rolling news channels constant live coverage of news events and that the broadcasters are increasingly reliant on a public contribution. We now have a middle tier between a traditional news story and a media event, the enhanced news story. The final conclusion of the chapter is that it is possible that an enhanced news story can easily become a media event but we need to be cautious not to be seen to be “over eventising” some stories for the sake of filling schedules.
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Media Events: A Critical Contemporary Approach
This chapter uses Katz’s (1980) and Dayan and Katz’s (1992) broad definitions of the media event.... more This chapter uses Katz’s (1980) and Dayan and Katz’s (1992) broad definitions of the media event. Addressed will be how a combination of the broadcasters’ coverage and the results of the games surpassed all expectations of what happens when the unexpected catches the imagination of an already expectant public. Superficially Saturday the 24th January 2015 fitted Katz’s (1980) broad definition of the media event. For Katz (1980) there are three primary definers of a media event. The first is that the event is broadcast live, the second is the organisation of the event is not primarily directed by the media and finally, the ‘event has a hero as individual, two individuals or a team’ (Katz, 1980: p.2). The event was the 4th round of the English FA Cup, which began in 1871 and is regarded as the oldest domestic cup competition in the world (www.thefa.com). With the competition being organised by the Football Association and offered to broadcasters, the potential for the mass audience to engage with the 16 games being played was large. Indeed, the current rights holders to broadcast the FA Cup, BT Vision and the BBC, added to the sense of occasion by heavily advertising their coverage in the days and weeks leading up to the event. It was therefore highly probable that even the non-follower of football would have been aware of the games that were being played and would have been tempted to at least notice the results. As it transpired the Saturday of the 2015 FA Cup 4th round provided a set of victories for lower league teams, which were, at best, hard to imagine when the draw had been made a month earlier. These victories included what is widely argued as being the biggest shock in FA Cup history.
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International Journal of Digital Television, Mar 12, 2016
This article will examine how a public service broadcaster, specifically the BBC, delivers news c... more This article will examine how a public service broadcaster, specifically the BBC, delivers news content to its audience across multiple media platforms. Rather than looking at how the audience responds to media texts, this article will take the opposite standpoint by addressing the following question: How does the BBC build its audience on a platform-by-platform basis? To answer this key question we compared news outputs on the three platforms offered by the BBC: web, television and radio. A sample was compiled based on the top stories that appeared at a specific time of day over a month in early 2015. The results suggest that there is no significant difference in establishing news agendas through a digitally converged media landscape. In fact the three platforms analysed do not take media convergence into account when delivering news content.
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Books by Dr. Andrew Fox
Media events have been described as broadcasts that involve an engaged audience viewing the same ... more Media events have been described as broadcasts that involve an engaged audience viewing the same event simultaneously; though this definition is still relevant, the way media outlets interact with and react to their audiences has greatly changed. This is in part due to the emergence of social media platforms which allow a participatory audience, something that genre-specific television channels now rely on. Because these genre-specific, 24-hour channels seek to hook viewers with hyperbolic presentation and the illusion of large media events, the original definition must be adapted.
Global Perspectives on Media Events in Contemporary Society seeks to re-define the role of the media in relaying information about current events within a modern context. Determining what constitutes as and the proper presentation of a media event is of great importance given the ubiquity of media consumption. This book approaches the topic from historical, ceremonial, and globally cultural perspectives while addressing news, sports, and other significant current events. It is a vital resource for students and teachers of communication, media, and journalism, professionals in the media industry, policy makers, and sociologists.
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Conference Presentations by Dr. Andrew Fox
Based on Foot & Warnick’s (2006) analysis of web-based memorializing, this study aims to analyze emerging social practices mediated by computer through which spaces of commemoration of the 7/7 London terrorist attacks are produced. According to Gloviczki (2015), in the process of memorialization the aspects that must be selected usually consist of three categories: form, content, and context, out of which the form of memorialization is perhaps the most important aspect because this determines the material of which the memorial will consist. The present study provides a comprehensive content analysis of three websites that commemorate the 7/7 London bombings this year (the BBC News website, The Guardian and The Daily Mail) juxtaposed with Twitter feeds and a questionnaire that aims to find out how young people (aged 18-21) remember the event. As memory is “a retroactive reconstruction of the past” (Kasabova, 2008: 332), we aim to find out how these websites contribute to the memory construction and preservation of social memory of young people and through what means.
Vexed can be compared to the American comedy drama Moonlighting insofar as it employed irreverent comedy as well as crime along with a male and female lead who demonstrated personal and sexual incompatibility.
We intend to demonstrate that Vexed represents how current UK broadcasters are unwilling to let new styles and formats of television drama develop an audience and evolve character traits. For example, Moonlighting had a run of five seasons between 1985 and 1989, producing 67 episodes. Vexed on the other hand has, to date, had two seasons, but only a total of nine episodes. There was also a two year gap between seasons one and two. Season two was shown at the same time as the 2012 London Olympics. At the time of writing this proposal there are no plans for a third season. We intend to show that Vexed is a smart, witty forgotten television drama which did not even achieve cult status. Our analysis will show why this occurred, and how in a different time the show would have been given more chance to succeed.
Articles by Dr. Andrew Fox
Books by Dr. Andrew Fox
Global Perspectives on Media Events in Contemporary Society seeks to re-define the role of the media in relaying information about current events within a modern context. Determining what constitutes as and the proper presentation of a media event is of great importance given the ubiquity of media consumption. This book approaches the topic from historical, ceremonial, and globally cultural perspectives while addressing news, sports, and other significant current events. It is a vital resource for students and teachers of communication, media, and journalism, professionals in the media industry, policy makers, and sociologists.
Based on Foot & Warnick’s (2006) analysis of web-based memorializing, this study aims to analyze emerging social practices mediated by computer through which spaces of commemoration of the 7/7 London terrorist attacks are produced. According to Gloviczki (2015), in the process of memorialization the aspects that must be selected usually consist of three categories: form, content, and context, out of which the form of memorialization is perhaps the most important aspect because this determines the material of which the memorial will consist. The present study provides a comprehensive content analysis of three websites that commemorate the 7/7 London bombings this year (the BBC News website, The Guardian and The Daily Mail) juxtaposed with Twitter feeds and a questionnaire that aims to find out how young people (aged 18-21) remember the event. As memory is “a retroactive reconstruction of the past” (Kasabova, 2008: 332), we aim to find out how these websites contribute to the memory construction and preservation of social memory of young people and through what means.
Vexed can be compared to the American comedy drama Moonlighting insofar as it employed irreverent comedy as well as crime along with a male and female lead who demonstrated personal and sexual incompatibility.
We intend to demonstrate that Vexed represents how current UK broadcasters are unwilling to let new styles and formats of television drama develop an audience and evolve character traits. For example, Moonlighting had a run of five seasons between 1985 and 1989, producing 67 episodes. Vexed on the other hand has, to date, had two seasons, but only a total of nine episodes. There was also a two year gap between seasons one and two. Season two was shown at the same time as the 2012 London Olympics. At the time of writing this proposal there are no plans for a third season. We intend to show that Vexed is a smart, witty forgotten television drama which did not even achieve cult status. Our analysis will show why this occurred, and how in a different time the show would have been given more chance to succeed.
Global Perspectives on Media Events in Contemporary Society seeks to re-define the role of the media in relaying information about current events within a modern context. Determining what constitutes as and the proper presentation of a media event is of great importance given the ubiquity of media consumption. This book approaches the topic from historical, ceremonial, and globally cultural perspectives while addressing news, sports, and other significant current events. It is a vital resource for students and teachers of communication, media, and journalism, professionals in the media industry, policy makers, and sociologists.