MedieKultur: Journal of media and communication research

Male jurors, male awards?

Montserrat Jurado-Martin — 2024-11-15

Film festivals are an added value to the film industry. The research of these events is growing, although it is limited in terms of jury committees, and less so in terms of gender bias. The initial assumption is that if juries are mainly made up of men, awards will be given mainly to men. In the context of Spain, this process is related to the fact that the most prominent jobs in the film process are still held by men (Arranz et al, 2007). This paper discusses the composition of the juries and the awards given at animation film festivals in Spain in 2022 as an approach to the study of juries from a gender perspective.

The first results show that awards are predominantly made up of men (65%), despite the fact that, the juries are made up mostly of women (60.42%). This shows an imbalance: although there is more female presence on the juries, the majority of the awards continue to be given to men.

Slippery discourses of intertwined crises

Ester Minga — 2024-11-15

The outbreak of a pandemic inevitably links with migration as containment measures usually involve the closure of borders. In the Portuguese context, mediated discourses of these intertwined crises were varied and multifaceted, reflecting the country’s postcolonial peculiarity as both a provider of emigrants and host country to distinct fluxes of migrants. Through a qualitative analysis of selected items published in Portuguese newspapers Expresso, Diário de Notícias, and Correio da Manhã, I will show how similar issues involving Portuguese emigrants and distinct groups of migrants have been differently framed in news items related to the Covid-19 pandemic. The aim is to discuss how this unstable coverage speaks to, and collides with, the deep social imaginary of Portuguese emigration and the widespread idea of a Lusophone space characterized by the harmonious conviviality of different people. I argue that the fragmented frames represent a symptom of crisis themselves, revealing unsettled discourses and alternating anxieties.

The space of immigrant discourse in the European press

Rafal Zaborowski — 2024-11-15

In this article we offer a new analysis of two never previously combined datasets on press coverage of the “refugee crisis” in Europe in 2015. Consisting of twenty-nine newspapers from eleven countries, the data provides an unprecedented sample of the European press in the time of crisis. Using forty-six characteristics of frames, agents, aids and protective measures mentioned in the articles, we demonstrate an innovative analytic approach, where multiple correspondence analysis is used to construct and explore main differences in an European statistical space of articles (N=1674) and a sevenfold statistical typology of stories concerning the crisis. The findings indicate that while national and regional differences in the coverage are salient in explaining the balance of humanitarian or securitisation attitudes, it is the intra-national differences that emerge as particularly significant, revealing rich complexity of texts and contexts. Analysing the structuration of stories as space of press coverage allows us to move beyond isolated variables and look at how individual articles are more divided in their fundamental narratives.

Podcasting mundane practices of solidarity and resistance in post-migrant Sweden

Jessica Gustafsson — 2024-11-15

Sweden is a post-migrant society where the suburbs of the largest cities in Sweden have become the symbol of failed integration in public debate and media. To broaden the representation, young people from the suburbs use podcasting to challenge and present their own perspectives. Based on content analysis and interviews with selected podcasters this article explores how they position themselves in relation to mainstream media and society by focusing on their distinct media practices. The study suggests that these podcasts can be perceived as sites of cultural production where the articulation of mundane practices of solidarity and resistances are central. It is illustrated in the content and the guests they invite; and reflected in how the podcasters articulate their aims and goals, as well as how they position themselves in relation to other actors and spheres.

Media engagement during Russia’s war against Ukraine

Triin Vihalemm — 2024-11-15

The contribution explores the contested relationship with media among young Russian-speaking Estonians from migrant family backgrounds since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Our analysis sheds light on how the war context, characterized by the securitization of Russian state-controlled media usage and ideological tensions within the Estonian Russian-speaking community, impacts the media-related perceptions and practices of young Russian-speaking Estonians. We also investigate media professionals’ views on building relationships with their audience. Our investigation reveals an existing gap in connectivity between Estonian local Russian-language media outlets and their young audience. This gap is rooted in the production logic of these media platforms, which has previously hindered effective engagement. The context of Russia’s war against Ukraine exacerbates this disconnect. Improving the currently poor professional practices of audience engagement, particularly production-oriented approaches, would enhance connectivity and the epistemic power of Estonian Russian-language media and motivate young Russian-speaking Estonians to use it as a vehicle for their social agency.

Crisis reflexivity: the fragile regime of citizenship in Greece’s compounded crises

Afroditi Koulaxi — 2024-11-15

The paper explores how the crisis imaginary shapes citizen identity in relation to the migrant noncitizen as well as the media’s role in enhancing or containing the crisis. The communicative process of crisis reflexivity offers a conceptual tool to understand the consequences of limited or absent encounters with noncitizen Others for the citizens’ construction of identity. Within the spatio-temporality of compounded crises in an Athenian neighbourhood, the study’s multi-method approach combines 30 in-depth interviews with Greek citizens with offline and online participant observation. The empirical findings reveal that embodied encounters shape the perception of citizens as victims in light of structural inequalities and the existential uncertainty tied to media disinformation and fear. However, for those with progressive views, predominantly mediated encounters can open up an avenue for a politics of justice and generate feelings of cosmopolitanism towards citizens-in-the-making.

Extremist narratives in the digital mainstream

Jullietta Stoencheva — 2024-11-15

This article employs a mixed-methods approach to explore the narrative articulation of crises in discussions around immigration and integration on Flashback Forum in Sweden. Using a combination of topic modelling and narrative analysis, it follows a two-step research design. First, topic modelling helps to identify key topics in the data and select a corpus for qualitative analysis. Second, drawing on Berger’s (2018) extremist crisis typology, we explore the crisis-narrative constructions around these topics, highlighting the extremist components within these. Our findings show that the prevalent topics in these discussions are not about immigration per se – rather, they address societal issues where perceived crises with immigration at their root are articulated in terms of how they disrupt everyday life in Sweden. Our analysis reveals how mundane concerns around immigration ventilated on Flashback mix with overtly extremist discourse and conspiracy beliefs, explicating Flashback as a site of everyday extremism.

Book review. Horsti, Karina. Survival and Witness at Europe’s Border: The Afterlives of a Disaster.

Philipp Seuferling — 2024-11-15

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Iben Have: Lydmedier: Teori og analyse. København: Samfundslitteratur. 2024

Anders Bonde — 2024-11-15

Introduction: Entanglements of media, migration, and crisis

Philipp Seuferling — 2024-11-15