Academic literature on the topic 'Lesbianism on television. Television and politics. Television viewers'

Claims that Mad Men (2007–2015) is an obedient post-feminist text overlook the drama’s images of both women and the history of feminism and its potential to impact on contemporary understandings of gender politics. Mad Men can be seen as a psychological object, helping viewers to explore links between their own experience and that of characters on screen as the narrative unfolds. Making links between the social re-emergence of feminist awareness, the drama’s representations of second-wave feminism and a psychoanalytic understanding of mourning, I suggest that a return to psychoanalytic methodologies has the potential to enrich television scholarship.

This article investigates whether exposure to extreme television media informs citizens about politics. Using lab experiments with both student and non-student samples, I find that extreme media produce higher levels of political knowledge and that they also produce higher levels of negative affect among viewers compared with control groups. I also show that extreme media are at least as informative as traditional news. This research adds to the growing literature on media effects in a polarized media environment, showing that extreme television media can have a beneficial impact on at least one important area of U.S. politics: citizen competence. To account for external validity and popular conceptions on extreme media’s non-informative nature, I use cross-sectional data from the 2008 National Annenberg Election Survey finding that extreme television viewership correlates with greater political knowledge, while controlling for other known predictors.

Local news may be one vehicle through which television helps, inadvertently, both to preserve and to transform cultural values. Content analysis on the evening news on four Chicago television stations over a lengthy period suggests local television responds to viewing tastes of black audiences. However, data on these Chicago television news programs suggest racism still may be indirectly encouraged by normal crime and political coverage that depict blacks, in crime, as more physically threatening and, in politics, as more demanding than comparable white activists or leaders. Ironically, widespread employment of black television journalists suggests to viewers that racial discrimination is no longer a significant social problem. The mix of these two views of blacks encourages modern white racism—hostility, rejection and denial toward black aspirations—the study argues.

This paper discusses the intersection of humor and politics from a media perspective, particularly through the lens of television aesthetics. As a growing branch of television studies, television aesthetics tends to refer to stylistic analysis but also, more rarely, to an interest in philosophical aesthetics as applied to television (Butler, 2010; Cardwell, 2013). I will focus on the genre of political satire and identify the critically acclaimed television series Veep (HBO, 2012 – present) as a program which exemplifies the expression and underlying values of a contemporary strain of aesthetic sensibility – schadenfreude – that runs through its axes of coarse disempowering humor and the portrayal of politics. Specifically, the paper explores how Veep’s affective reception results from humorously overlapping two of the more problematic aspects that persist in the political landscape, namely, self-interest and ineptitude.This paper begins by reflecting on the universal prevalence of schadenfreude. The first section briefly traces key historical instantiations of political satire, understood as a genre that humorously derides the shortcomings and dissonances of a prevailing political milieu. The second section conceptualizes schadenfreude in satirical terms and underlies its philosophical foundations. The third section elaborates on the novelty of Veep by highlighting its gendered position as the first comedic fictional television program of a female president and outlines how its satirical modality depends on its coarse writing style and depiction of antiheroinism to make the problematic political milieu pleasurable to viewers whose normative experience of politics is frequently negative. The final section considers the ‘real world’ implications of Veep as a social commentary on unsavory political personas and perspectives. Article received: May 10, 2019; Article accepted: July 6, 2019; Published online: October 15, 2019; Original scholarly articleHow to cite this articel: Young, Michael P. "Such Schadenfreude – Unpacking The Medley of Caustic Humor and Politics in Veep." AM Journal of Art and Media Studies 20 (2019): 61-69. doi: 10.25038/am.v0i20.327

In Latin America, the now-venerable expression “the end of television” itself looks old, tired, and flawed: markets, cultures, politics, and policies alike find television more alive than ever, albeit in its usual state of technological, institutional, and textual flux. Advertising investment in TV continues to increase, governments still use television to promote generalized propaganda as well as their daily agendas, football on screen remains wildly popular, and fiction programs, most notably <em>telenovelas</em>, dominate prime time and draw large audiences aged between 25 and 60. While younger viewers watch television on a wider variety of screens and technologies, and do so at differing times, the discourse of TV remains an important referent in their audiovisual experiences. In addition, across age groups, divides persist between a minority with routine high-quality access to the digital world of technology and information and a majority without alternatives to the traditional audiovisual sphere, for whom cell phones, for instance, are at most devices for communicating with friends and family members. We cannot predict the future of TV in Latin America—but we can say with confidence that the claims for its demise are overstated. Television remains the principal cultural game in town.

This article explores the role of Australian 1970s and 1980s ‘quality’ historical television series and miniseries in engaging national audiences in discussions about their national history. These programmes – which had a corollary in the United States in the same period – were ‘blockbusters’. But the historical miniseries of this period were not designed just to make money for the television networks, rather they had ‘designs’ on their viewers. What this set of programmes have in common is a sense of their important contribution to debates about what, who and why of nations and citizens. The producers of these programmes, in a period of significant social change and the emergence of identity politics, sought to engage citizens with the complexities of national histories. This article focuses on one series, Luke’s Kingdom, and explores why and how it was possible for this television genre to reinvigorate and rethink ideas of national belonging.

ABSTRACT This essay explores the reception of Brokeback Mountain by film critics, gay viewers, female audiences, television shows, and the blogosphere. By tracing the path of controversies, jokes, and anxieties, this essay argues that hysteria came into play to mask homophobia while, in the gay community, debates etched the limits of contemporary identity politics.

Tarkastelemme uutisparodiaohjelma Frank Pappa Show’ta esimerkkinä 1990-luvun alun asiaviihteen ohjelmistosta, jota määrittävät uudenlainen faktan ja fiktion suhde sekä viihteellisen poliittisen julkisuuden syntyminen. Indieyhtiö Broadcasters Oy:n tuottama televisiosarja kommentoi ajantasaisesti lama-ajan murroksia, kuten piteneviä leipäjonoja ja kasvavaa työttömyyttä. Frank Pappa Show uudisti poliittisen viihteen kenttää nostamalla viimeisen asiallisuuden linnakkeen, uutiset, viihteen käytettäväksi ja totutti katsojat tulkitsemaan ironisia, satiirisia ja parodisia viestejä.Tämän kulttuurihistoriallisen tutkimuksen alkuperäislähteenä käytämme Frank Pappa Show’n jaksoja vuosilta 1991–1994 ja lisäksi ohjelmaan liittyvää lehdistökeskustelua. Näiden aineistojen avulla tarkastelemme kysymystä siitä, miten Frank Pappa Show’n televisuaalinen satiiri osallistui politiikasta käytävään julkiseen keskusteluun 1990-luvulla.Tarkastelemme keskustelun reunaehtoja, jotka kertovat ajan mediasta ja julkisesta keskustelukulttuurista. Frank Pappa Show toimii esimerkkinä uudesta television muotokielestä aikana, jolloin elokuvallinen ilmaisu ja musiikkivideoiden estetiikka levisivät televisioon. Nopeutunut televisiokerronta vaati katsojilta kykyä seurata muuttuvaa kerrontaa. Television arkipäiväistyminen johti spektaakkelimaistumiseen ja ohjelma kommentoi kriittisesti myös omaa mediaympäristöään.Avainsanat: mediahistoria, televisio, asiaviihde, satiiri, Frank PappaPolitical entertainment program Frank Pappa Show as a contemporary commentator on the 1990s recession in FinlandIn this article, we study the news parody program Frank Pappa Show as an example of how television programs of the 1990s that combine topicality and entertainment began to use reality-based audiovisual material as part of their programs. The relationship between fact and fiction changed and a new kind of political publicity emerged when the actions of politicians were mocked in a weekly carnivalistic television broadcast. The Frank Pappa Show commented on the upheavals of Finland's recession in the 1990s, such as rising unemployment. The Frank Pappa Show reshaped the field of political entertainment by raising the last fortress of objectivity, news, for entertainment use, and accustomed viewers to interpreting ironic, satirical, and parodic messages.As the original source for this cultural-historical research, we use episodes of the Frank Pappa Show from 1991 to 1994, as well as press discussions related to the program. Using these materials, we study how the program contributed to the public debate on politics in the 1990s.We study the boundaries of the debate, which tells about the media of the time and the culture of public debate. The Frank Pappa Show serves as an example of a new form of television at a time when cinematic expression and the aesthetics of music videos were spreading to television. Accelerated television narration required of its viewers the ability to follow changing narration. The mundane nature of television led to a taste for the spectacle, and the program also critically commented on its own media environment.Keywords: media history television, entertainment, satire, Frank Pappa

ABSTRACT‘Busing’, in which students were transported by school buses to achieve court-ordered or voluntary school desegregation, became one of the nation's most controversial civil rights issues in the decades after Brown vs. Board of Education (1954). Focusing on Florida Governor Claude Kirk and Pontiac housewife activist Irene McCabe, this essay examines how busing opponents turned the conventions of television news – its emphasis on newsworthy events and crisis; its selective use of historical context; and its nominal political neutrality – to their advantage, staging television friendly protests that positioned mothers and children as victims of activist judges and federal bureaucrats, and framed their support for segregated neighbourhoods and schools in the colour-blind rhetoric of homeowners’ rights. For politicians who aspired to the national stage, like Florida Governor Claude Kirk, busing offered a recognizable issue on which to take a stand. When Kirk protested court-ordered busing by suspending a local school board in Manatee County (Bradenton, Florida) and appointing himself school superintendent, he was not only appealing to Florida voters but also to television viewers in cities like Nashville, St Louis and Seattle, many of whom wrote to convey their support. When Vice-President Spiro Agnew complained that television network news ‘can elevate men from obscurity to national prominence within a week’, he was referring to Black Power author and activist Stokely Carmichael, but television news also propelled grassroots anti-busing activists like Irene McCabe to national prominence. McCabe, who staged a widely covered six-week march from Pontiac to Washington DC to protest busing, made frequent television appearances because networks deemed her newsworthy, not necessarily because newscasters agreed with her politics. Repeated television coverage turned relatively minor busing battles in Bradenton and Pontiac into national news and established Kirk and McCabe as icons of busing opposition in the early 1970s.

A fake news story can travel half way across the world as the truth puts on its socks. There are myriads of challenges facing journalists in spotting fake news hence its wide proliferation. Fake news has become a prominent subject of enquiry especially following its alleged influence of the 2016 general elections in US. Unfortunately, research on fake news has focused on social media, politics, elections, and economies. Few studies have focused on the challenges that TV journalists face in spotting fake news prompting this study. The specific research question was; what are the challenges facing television journalists in spotting fake news in Kenya? The study adapted a relativist-constructivist/interpretivist ontology and epistemology, qualitative approach and multiple case study methodology. Data was generated through in-depth interviews, direct observation and documents review. The study used purposive sampling to generate data from 16 journalists. Data was then analysed in themes and presented in narrative form. Key findings were that in spotting fake news, journalists faced challenges like; loss of viewers, lack of authoritative contacts, sources who gave fake news for personal, business, political, and economic benefits, ability of fake news to camouflage real news, speed of fake news, typologies of fake news, live reporting, inexperienced correspondents and interns, and social media. The study concludes that the challenges facing journalists in spotting fake news were majorly based on sources, technology, education, skills and training, and its typology. The study therefore recommends that editorial boards invest in experts to train journalists on styles, architecture, propagation and use of fake news, inoculation of journalists and audiences, raising fake news literacy levels, and use of technology based approaches like reverse search and fact checking sites.
 Key words: Fake news, journalists, spotting, challenges, television, Kenya