Media and Communication

Artificial intelligence (AI) has over the years become a hot topic for debate in Sweden, as the technology presents exciting unique possibilities and challenges for the country and its citizens. Coverage of AI in Swedish news media presents imagined scenarios with both current and future AI that contribute to myths about how the technology is able to radically transform life, that spring out of a central digital sublime. Through a mixed-method study of 55 newspaper items about AI from Svenska Dagbladet from 2017 to 2018, the thesis studies what evident AI myths occur in coverage and how such discourses spring out digital sublime regarding AI. A total of four AI myths are found that revolve around existing and future intelligent computers, robots, machines and vehicles and different perceptions with them. Myths and associated hopes and concerns point to digital sublime regarding AI as a force of intelligent digitization that promises to empower a sublime citizen, economy, and welfare state. Emotional values with sublime AI reflect a Swedish techno-optimism as digital artefacts throughout history have helped Sweden become a prosperous country.

With the influence of developing technology, video games have become more and more important. The application of technology to video games and the fact that the characters and story structure in the game have become more interesting over time show the importance of the subject. Today, video games are no longer looking for an action movie. Especially the classical narrative structure used since Aristotle; katharsis and mimemis have become used in video games just like in cinema movies. In this context, the main subject of this study is to examine the atharsis elements in The Last of Us game. For this study, Aristotle, Nietzche and George Luckas' views on catharsis were taken as a basis, and the classic narrative structure was also used to understand the story in the game.

The author of this book, Hiwot Teffera, is among the vibrant politers of the then generation called "YaTiwulid'. This period extends from 1972-1992 1 , and many of them were young and involved in different political factions of the time. She and some of her friends are destined to share their experience, knowledge and reading; however, many could bear fruit because of Red and White Terrors of the time. She is a social anthropologist by profession and has worked as a caregiver for a long time. She is known by many by her first book "Tower in the Sky". The book is about the Ethiopian People"s Revolutionary Party (EPRP) and imparts the Ethiopian Revolution in a well-articulated manner. "Mine to Win" is the second book by the author. The book can be classified as creative nonfiction. The book consists 204 pages, and eleven chapters. It includes a glossary and reference sections. The aims of this book review are therefore to overview the unique quality of the work and discuss what the main themes she tries to convey. Besides, we were motivated to review the book to recommend the book to readers and enable them to research and investigate further. The setting of the story takes us back to a century and recounts church education in the midera of Aste Yohannis IV and the beginning of Emperor Minilik II"s. The main character, Tewanay, had spent a lot of time attending church education in Gojjam and Gondar, where many famous zema (rhyme), qene (Poetry) and tiriguame (interpretation/ commentary) schools are found. He is the incarnation of the theological debate held in the famed place, Wello, Boru-meda, where the two sects called the tewahido and qibat of Ethiopian religious liturgy contested on the divine nature of God during Aste Yohannis IV. Undoubtedly, the selection of the setting has made the story striking and breathtaking. The author of the book tries to build the stories in the life of the major character, Tewanay. He aspired to become a Qeneliq (poetry intellectual) and became successful in the end. He later became a chronicler of emperor Minilik II. The author is successful in conveying several themes by depicting a few characters. She mainly talks about the life of "Ye KoloTemari'-a student at a traditional Christian school. In addition, the traditional education system, the distinctive bodies of knowledge in Ethiopia, history, philosophy and the culture of its folks are embedded in the very story. We can understand that the writer is an admirable researcher that she has brought themes that are among the overlooked areas of investigation, and shows them from the broad and depth. The story depicts the divergence between living a life of a herder and a scholar in the church. The young Tewune in the story is passionate about following his uncle"s (Awoke ZeMotta) footsteps, yet thwarted by his parents" desire to keep their son near and married. Children in rural Ethiopia are destined to become part of their parent"s lives and relive it; usually, the life has a lot to do with agriculture. On the contrary, studying zema, qene and metsehaf bêt equals leaving one"s family behind and not providing for them. To be precise, one fails to meet parents" expectations. The arguments between the illiterate father and the learned uncle of Tewune reminds us of the many folks of the time who were God-fearing and believed in fate and the scholars in the church who struggled to overwhelm these unscientific 1 It may be the period existing prior to this time or to continue after this period.

With the increase in the use of computers in the home environment, digital games have become as popular as traditional games and have become a remarkable leisure activity. Digital games have been very successful in influencing and manipulating the masses. Digital games are surrounded by cultural codes that ensure the continuity of the patriarchal structure in terms of their content. In this respect, digital games have become one of the communication environments where gender stereotypes are reproduced.

Index Miscellanea

LUCA BENVENGA - ELISABETTA TRINCA
Health and Digitalization. Active Ageing, Technologies and New Contemporary Challenges

GABRIELE D’AUTILIA
Nascondere mostrando. L’invenzione della moderna propaganda visiva in Italia prima del fascismo

GLORIA DAGNINO
The Politicity of Netflix: Opportunities and Contradictions of Digital Distribution through the Case of Sulla Mia Pelle

VIRGIL DARELLI
L’unità di produzione: un’idea di servizio pubblico nell’Italia del rinnovamento televisivo (1969-1976)

LORENZO DENICOLAI
‘Learning by Watching’ with Televised School: How the Italian Broadcaster Rai Has Supported Students during the Covid-19 Pandemic

GEA DUCCI - ALESSANDRO LOVARI - FRANCESCA RIZZUTO
The Culture of Communication in the Public Sector Facing
the Challenge of Digital Media: An Explorative Research in Italy and France

GIULIA MUGGEO
“Scrivetemi come parlate”. Il divo televisivo Mario Riva e la rubrica di posta dei lettori sulle pagine de “Il Musichiere”

VALERIO SBRAVATTI
Self-Reflexive Suspense: The Music of Bernard Herrmann and Pino Donaggio in Brian De Palma’s Thrillers

This study investigated the effects of Dubbed serials on the cultural life pattern of youth in Addis Ababa through qualitative research that used focus group discussion and individual in-depth interview as tools for data collection. Out of 80 peaple who undertook a preliminarily screening of dubbed serials consumption level, the study purposely selected 24 individuals for focus group discussion and 6 individuals for in-depth interview aged between 15-25 years. The sample selection was carried out with
a deliberate intention of grouping those who have a habit of watching Kana television dubbed serials. The study recorded the respondent's cultural meaning making, reasons of preference, consumption patterns, level of viewing and sense making of massage. It crossed checked the above factors with cultural impact. The finding of the study was twofold. On one hand, local cultural values and personal interests has significant role to play in the interaction with other foreign culture. Complex response of respondents indicated that their local cultural awareness played a significant role in rejecting messages which regarded as western value. With regards culture awareness and frame of interpretation of the respondents, the general finding concluded that late youth have a better understanding of the
intention of dubbing than that of early youths. Of course, such finding challenged cultural study
theory that media controlled by powerful and dominant groups influence late youth. On the
other hand, almost both early (male and female) groups have no understating of dubbing products makes them more victims of media which controlled by powerful, dominant groups. Furthermore youth identification of self in characters and situation signifies
meaning making is processed under copying and casting of Dubbed serial setting. The study
also identified a few areas for future researchers and made recommendations towards
improvement.

Debates around authenticity within photographic discourse are persistent. Some have revolved around documentary photography, while other discussions focus on the ethical validity of digitally edited news photographs and indeed the photographic medium itself. This article proposes that discussions around ‘authenticity’ should be focused instead towards contextualising photography more appropriately within the creative practice of ‘making strange’. It acknowledges existing debates around photography and authenticity, before locating the discussion within creative practice. It then moves to a discussion, using Robert Capa’s ‘Falling Soldier’ (Capa, 1936) as a starting point, before drawing on examples from the author’s own creative and professional practice. In the process, the article argues that visual researchers embrace the challenges of making the familiar strange within photographic creative practices.

The author of this book, Hiwot Teffera, is among the vibrant politers of the then generation called "YaTiwulid'. This period extends from 1972-1992 1 , and many of them were young and involved in different political factions of the time. She and some of her friends are destined to share their experience, knowledge and reading; however, many could bear fruit because of Red and White Terrors of the time. She is a social anthropologist by profession and has worked as a caregiver for a long time. She is known by many by her first book "Tower in the Sky". The book is about the Ethiopian People"s Revolutionary Party (EPRP) and imparts the Ethiopian Revolution in a well-articulated manner. "Mine to Win" is the second book by the author. The book can be classified as creative nonfiction. The book consists 204 pages, and eleven chapters. It includes a glossary and reference sections. The aims of this book review are therefore to overview the unique quality o...

This paper investigates how British and American newspaper coverage of the 2011 Egyptian Revolution framed the protest movement that led to the resignation of Hosni Mubarak as the President of Egypt. Previous studies examining Western media coverage of domestic protests indicate that news media often covered movements and protesters with the expectation of violence occurring, or whose motivations, aspirations, and actions were trivialised and marginalised, while Western media coverage of the Middle East and North Africa often contextualised the region's nations, peoples, and politics in ways that promoted negative stereotypes. In analysing British and American newspaper coverage of the 2011 Egyptian Revolution, this paper demonstrates the opposite to be true through a content and framing analysis of relevant news stories (n=611). Results from British and American newspaper samples offer strong evidence for not only reassessing the dominance of the reportorial paradigms by which the news media covers political and social dissent, but also normative Western media portrayals of the nations and people within Middle East and North Africa.

This thesis seeks to explore the place and role of ideology in political communication under conditions of mediatization. Exploring the place of ideology, as I will argue, involves exploring the ways political meaning is produced through the mediatic practices of personalisation, conversationalisation and dramatisation, while exploring its role involves exploring the ways political power is exercised through these practices. Particularly, the thesis builds upon an analytics of mediatization according to which ideology lies in, the textually-discursively organised and ordered, performative capacity of mediatic practices to recall and rework institutional symbolisms from the past serving the institutional exercise of power in the present, or the recontextualizing dynamic of media performativity. To operationalise this analytical approach, the thesis employs a paradigmatic case study; the study of political advertisements produced by the two major political parties in Greece and the UK in the run-up to the January and May 2015, respectively, General Elections. The empirical analysis seeks to demonstrate that central to all the ideological mediatic practices is the fusion of the private with the public through different aesthetic regimes, such as the authenticity of charisma, the intimacy of ordinariness, and the ritualism of spectacle, each emerging invested with its own recontextualizing dynamic – the politics of mission, everyday life and belonging. Each, in other words, has its own capacity to emotive-cognitively and spatiotemporally rework institutionally symbolic meanings from the past enacting different forms of institutional agency (e.g. partisan or cross-partisan) and ordering (e.g. displacement, temporalisation or eternalisation) in the present. The overarching contribution of this analysis is to argue/establish that we cannot gain a full understanding of how political parties’ ideology is renegotiated nowadays without a critical interrogation of the recontextualizing dynamic of mediatic performances. Nor can we gain a full understanding of how parties and other political institutions ideologically deal with the pragmatic challenges of the present without a critical interrogation of the aestheticity and affectivity of (mediatized) political discourse.

This article examines how Žižek’s analysis of “subjective” violence can be used to explore the ways in which media coverage of a terrorist attack is contoured and shaped by less noticeable forms of “objective” (symbolic and systemic) violence. Drawing upon newspaper coverage of the 2017 London Bridge attack, it is noted how examples of “subjective” violence were grounded in the externalization of a clearly identifiable “other”, which symbolically framed the terrorists and the attack as tied to and representative of the UK Muslim community. Examples of “systematic” violence were most notable in the ideological edifice that underpinned this framing but also in the ways in which newspaper reports served to draw upon British values in the aftermath of the attack. This directed attention away from the contradictions within the UK, towards narratives that sought to “fix” these contradictions through eradicating the problem of “the other” and/or by violently protecting the British values “they” seek to undermine. As a consequence, newspaper coverage worked to uphold the illusion that “peace” could be achieved by eradicating terrorism through further forms of objective violence, including, internment without trial; the “ripping up” of human rights; and, closer surveillance of Muslim communities. Indeed, it was this unacknowledged violence that worked to maintain British values in the press’ coverage.

In my 15 years of working with the Capitola Career Center (first as a volunteer with PROFILE - Santa Cruz, later Santa Cruz County Human Services Division, followed by the California Employment Development Department, and Shoreline - Goodwill; this was one of my most rewarding assignments. The PACT Meetings were sort of an orientation to Community Services, and for awhile they were actually held at the Career Center which was only about a block from the Parole Office. At first my EDD colleagues were a little nervous about having 20 - 30 "ex-felons" come in to the Career Center, en masse, once a month; but they soon learned they were pretty much just like the rest of us but who had made a few mistakes along the way. It often reminded me how often my life could have turned out differently. I had pretty good success helping my parolees find that first job. The structure it provided was just as important, if not more so, than the meager wages it produced; not to mention the all important self esteem. Employment turned out to be one of the better predictors of "success on parole". I had the numbers, wrote up brief reports, and sent them off to folks who I thought might be the right people, but they never seemed to make an impression.

This was an official, sanctioned, publication for an internal, employee, newsletter from the Office of Media and Communications. It was about the only thing I was allowed to write during this period other than an ungodly number of monthly reports whose major function seemed to be to get a check on some list up in Sacramento - "submitted". We were constantly reminded that, even off duty, we were still representatives of EDD. We were always told to only refer all media inquiries to the Media and Communications folks in Sacramento who would deliver some sanitized statement devoid of any information value. After 30 years of publishing reports in archaeology and often dealing with the media myself, this was hard for me to do, especially during the Great Recession of 2009 - 2013 (officially 2007 - 2009). The latest "Jobs Report" or economic bombshell would drop  and local members of the fourth estate would rush to the Career Center for a comment or local perspective, only to be sent to the Sacramento Office who were often deluged, hard to reach, and busy crafting their latest, carefully worded, but vague statement.

"Off the Record", I didn't always strictly comply with this guideline. Maybe that's why they never let me become a manager.

Unfortunately with directives from Washington to reduce over-crowding in California Prisons, and budget and staffing cuts due to the Great Recession, this fairly successful and relatively inexpensive program was dropped. Oh well, I got a fairly decent pension and good health benefits when I retired from EDD in 2016. Maybe I even helped change a few lives for the better, along the way.

Erik Erikson’s theorization of the psychosocial developmental stages of humans, reveal the fragility of children with special attention to their biological and psychosocial characterization. The adolescent age is the period where the child is adventurous, curious and eager to explore, as he becomes fascinated with the media and begins to try out behaviours and lifestyles of his opinion leaders. The Nigerian child is more or less enthralled about foreign movies, shows and musical videos characterized by violence, thuggery, gangsterism, drug abuse, obscenity, and even promiscuity which are sometimes too much information for him to handle given his developing, immature and fragile psychology which makes it easy for these contents to influence his behaviour in every stage of his personality development as he is exposed to them. This Too Much Information (TMI) seems to be a product of media imperialism as local television contents in Nigeria, camouflaged in the concept of Americanisation...

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This paper analyses different film genres and their role as a media communications instrument for the tourist destination promotion strategy. The general objective of the paper is to point to the significance of film for the tourist destination recognisability as well as its perception in the public eye. The specific objectives of the paper are directed at the analysis of individual roles that different film genres have in the tourist destination promotion strategy. The research methods employed in the paper entail film identification and its role in media communications, the identification both of different film genres and their specific features, then, the observation of their application in the tourist destination promotion strategy, and eventually, the identification of their significance in the process of raising the public's awareness of the destination itself as well as the creation of positive perception of the destination with the targeted audience. In this regard, the paper focuses on the following: feature films, documentary films, tourist-related report, promotional tourist films, messages conveyed through films to the targeted audience as well as the strategies and methods employed in the film as a promotional tool. One of the key findings of the paper is to highlight the significance of each film genre in the process of tourist destination promotion, whereas their combination represents an important segment of media strategies in the field of tourism, and is a prerequisite for the desired positioning in the contemporary tourism market.

Son birkaç yıldır insanlar sadece Türkiye’de değil, dünyanın her yerinde Netflix hakkında konuşuyorlar. Akademisyenler, enteller, aydınlar ve üniversite öğrencileri televizyon hakkında pek konuşmazken Netflix hakkında konuşmaya can atıyorlar. İşin ilginç yanı Netflix popülaritesinin tartışmalı bir yönünün olması. Netflix milli ve manevi değerlerle dalga geçiyor diyenler de var, ona laf dokundurmayan da. Onu aileden uzak tutmak gerek diyen de var, bir kitap okur gibi izleyen de. İşin en ilginç yanı ise bunca tartışmaya rağmen kimsenin şimdiye kadar Netflix’in aleyhine yazmamış olması. Herkes Netflix hakkında konuşuyor ama kimse eleştirmiyor.