- Home
- A-Z Publications
- International Journal of Media & Cultural Politics
- Previous Issues
- Volume 5, Issue 3, 2009
International Journal of Media & Cultural Politics - Volume 5, Issue 3, 2009
Volume 5, Issue 3, 2009
-
-
Digital militainment by design: producing and playing SOCOM: U.S. Navy SEALs
More LessThis article examines the nexus of global digital capitalism and US militarism in two popular war games: SOCOM I: Navy SEALs (SOCOM I) and SOCOM II: U.S. Navy SEALs (SOCOM II). SOCOM supports digital capitalism's economic interests and the US military's promotional goals in four related contexts. In its production context, SOCOM is glocalized digital militainment that was synergistically co-produced by Sony Corporation (a media corporation, based in Tokyo, Japan), Zipper Interactive (a US game design firm based in Redmond, Washington) and US Naval Special Warfare (an elite branch of the US Navy). In its development context, SOCOM is a hyperreal war game that was digitally designed to simulate Network Centric Warfare (NCW) and cyborg-soldiering; it serves PS2 branding functions and US Navy SEALs promotion and recruitment functions. In its publishing/circulation context, SOCOM's marketing messages visually merge the home front and battle front and promote militarized play as hyper-masculine identity affirmation. In the context of play, SOCOM's design structures virtual cyborg-soldiering.
-
-
-
Writing the body: The hypertext of photography
More LessIn Canada and the United States the transformative value of a photograph was quickly recognized for nation building, and this new invention soon served a purpose in public memory. Its uses expanded from surveying lands to promoting population growth, tourism, artistic expression and to imagining virtual communities. Photography's narrative, however, offers readers a commentary on knowledge, identity and memory within an interactive space that is a dialogue between subject and photographer and a visual writing the body. A subject's presence and intentionality through this writing the body is a significant locus for knowledge and alterity - the construction of cultural otherness. Indigenous people viewing early photographs of family members may glimpse past a genre's rhetoric and actually experience their people in a lived historical moment. This essay examines the genre rhetoric of E.S. Curtis's photographs and Indigenous writing the body as a source of mnemonic knowledge. Photography addresses our senses and extends them while it gives form to a knowledge of being in a photographic hypertext that evokes public memory and references the personal, social and political.
-
-
-
Viral terrorism and terrifying viruses: the homological construction of the war on terror and the avian flu pandemic
By Nick MunteanIn the climate of panic following the September 11 attacks, previously little-discussed threats were publicized as potential instruments for terrorist attacks. Anxious discourses in the media surrounding anthrax, smallpox, dirty bombs and suitcase nukes blurred distinctions between viruses, bacteria and radiation, creating a generalized environment of fear which facilitated and legitimized controversial government initiatives. This essay argues that this environment of fear was advanced and maintained not only through explicit discursive invocations of terrorism, but also through seemingly unrelated issues, such as a possible bird flu pandemic. By rhetorically constructing bird flu as a threat that is ontologically homologous to that of terrorism, the nature of pandemic disease and the policies and programs designed to counter it have been fundamentally misconstructed, leaving us in some ways more vulnerable to pandemic disease than before. With the recent international swine flu pandemic revealing just how underprepared we are to deal with serious pandemic threats, it is clear that our social and political conceptual frameworks for conceiving of pandemic disease must be rethought. We must sunder the present reality of pandemic threats from the beclouding epistemological influence of the 9/11 attacks, and re-learn the differences between terrifying viruses and viral terrorism.
-
-
-
Gender and images of nature and sport in British and German news magazines: the global and the national in images of advertising
More LessThe article has an interdisciplinary approach, drawing on research from gender, media, sport and cultural studies. It considers the discourses of nature and sport in advertising which targets mainly men, in the editorial context of two examples of British and German news magazines, namely The Economist and Der Spiegel, from a critical cultural and gender studies perspective. It aims to outline the relational nature and hierarchical structure of gender reflected in constructs of popular culture; to assess whether promotional discourses of nature and sport are conceived to assert a uniform, global hegemonic masculinity, or whether nationally distinctive target-groups are addressed in specifically national ways. It analyzes the particular gender ideologies contained in commodity advertising that use metaphors of untamed nature and competitive sports to address audiences who are considered to be opinion leaders in Britain and/or Germany. The aspiration towards global competitiveness or neo-colonial domination visualized by wild, virgin landscapes and global sports will be questioned in relation to the concept of global or national identity.
-
-
-
Book Reviews
Authors: Simon Smith, Kathy Miriam, Asimina Michailidou, Lada Price, Heinz Steinert and Marcus BreenThe Myth of Digital Democracy, Matthew Hindman (2008) Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 181 pp., ISBN: 978-0-691-13868-8, Paperback, 16.50
Age of Oprah: Cultural Icon for the Neoliberal Era, Janice Peck (2008) Boulder, CO: Paradigm Publishers, 288 pp., ISBN: 9781594514685, Hardback, $90.00, ISBN: 9781594514692, Paperbac, $26.95, k
Internet-Mediated Participation Beyond the Nation State, Bart Cammaerts (2008) Manchester: Manchester University Press, 266 pp., ISBN: 978-0-7190-7648-0, Hardback, 60
The Baltic Media World, Richard Brug (ed.), (2005) Riga: Flra Printing House, 198 pp., ISBN: 9984-19-683-6, Paperback
Posters, Propaganda, and Persuasion in Election Campaigns Around the World and Through History, Steven A. Seidman, (2008) New York: Peter Lang Publishing Group, 327 pp., ISBN 9780820486178, Hardback, $109.95, ISBN 9780820486161, $33.95, Paperback
Internet and Society: Social Theory in the Internet Age, Christian Fuchs, (2008) London and New York: Routledge, 408 pp., ISBN 0415961327, Hardback, $95.00
-
Volumes & issues
-
Volume 19 (2023)
-
Volume 18 (2022)
-
Volume 17 (2021)
-
Volume 16 (2020)
-
Volume 15 (2019)
-
Volume 14 (2018)
-
Volume 13 (2017)
-
Volume 12 (2016)
-
Volume 11 (2015)
-
Volume 10 (2014)
-
Volume 9 (2013)
-
Volume 8 (2012)
-
Volume 7 (2011)
-
Volume 6 (2010 - 2011)
-
Volume 5 (2009)
-
Volume 4 (2008)
-
Volume 3 (2007)
-
Volume 2 (2006 - 2007)
-
Volume 1 (2005)