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The use of iconic popular culture symbols is an increasingly common strategy applied by social protest organizers. The Guy Fawkes mask from the ‘V for Vendetta' comic book became a symbol of the Anonymous group, and later of the Occupy Wall Street movement. The Salvador Dalí mask, popularized in the ‘La casa de papel' Netflix series, was used in street protests in Spain and Italy. Motifs taken from the HBO adaptation of ‘The Handmaid's Tale' novel gained high visibility in thousands of women's protests against the introduction of the de facto abortion ban in Poland. Basing on images documenting the Polish protests published in social media, we demonstrate how popular culture symbols are transformed into cultural codes which bridge on-street and online protest actions. This connection has become crucial in the era of the COVID-19 pandemic. Using qualitative visual content analysis, we prepared a classification of the symbols employed. Our contribution to the theory of performative protests is to reveal the importance of analogies with the political series that Polish protesters have used by means of the general connotation: Poland is Gilead. [ FROM AUTHOR] Copyright of Media, Culture & Society is the property of Sage Publications, Ltd. and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full . (Copyright applies to all s.)
ABSTRACT
Popular cultures constitute the predominant attitudes, living styles, and aspirations practised consciously and unconsciously by the people in a society. They emanate from the admixture of indigenous practices and foreign media influences that permeate the people's ways of life. Sometimes, popular cultures can be regarded as youth cultures. In Nigeria in recent times, Big Brother Nigeria (BBN), a TV reality show franchise that started in 2006, has continued to draw criticisms and commendations from Nigerian citizens at home and abroad. Concerned citizens have drummed up various arguments and counter-arguments with regard to issues emanating from BBN show. Nevertheless, it continues to be produced such that it was even produced during the COVID-19 lockdown in the country. Therefore, this paper is interested in the arguments that people advanced for the cancellation or continuation of BBN shows in the Nigerian media landscape. It will investigate the socio-political implications considered by the Nigerian government through its regulatory bodies not to cancel the TV show. Its findings will be compared with the agenda-setting and social responsibility theories of the mass media. As an explorative study, it will rely on secondary data. It is hoped that the study will contribute to the literature on popular cultures and related fields. © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2023.
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Starting from Cable connections to various options in satellite TV brands, the transition paved the way gradually for free content on applications like YouTube, which further led to the demand for quality content on OTT platforms. Over-the- Top or OTT is the abbreviation for "over-the-top” which is a new age streaming of films and TV series over the web without the need for traditional cable, or satellite pay-TV providers;the consumers can stream across multiple gadgets according to our time convenience. Beginning in the late 90s, the early 2000s marked the era of Television streaming in India. The first OTT application launched in India was BigFix, which changed the course of content consumption in our country. The Television industry once driven by cable and satellite operators has transitioned into a consumer-driven domain. Unlike TV, which requires a cable connection or an antenna, OTT material is delivered directly over Online platforms and paid for directly by viewers. The implications are that the consumers may get OTT services including video, voice, messaging and audio services, at any time and from any location, which serves to be a significant advantage over traditional TV programming. In this paper, we focus on how this paradigm change took place and what impact it has created, especially since the pandemic. © 2023 IEEE.
ABSTRACT
Under the influence of the health emergency triggered by the COVID-19 pandemic, many brands changed their communication strategy and included more or less explicit references to the principles of solidarity and fraternity in their TV commercials to boost the confidence and hope of Italian families during the lockdown. The traditional attitudes of the advertising format, which focused on product characteristics, were relegated to the background in order to reinforce the "brand image" through words, signs, hashtags and music that spread empathetic messages to all those who needed to regain hope and trust in a time of extreme emotional fragility. The objective of this paper is to identify the emotions and brand awareness during the lockdown using text mining techniques by measuring customer sentiment expressed on the Twitter social network. Our proposal starts from an unstructured corpus of 20,982 tweets processed with text data mining techniques to identify patterns and trends in people's posts related to specific hashtags and TV ads produced during the COVID-19 pandemic. The innovations in the brand's advertising among consumers seem to have triggered some sense of appreciation and gratitude, as well as a strong sense of belonging that was not present before, as the TV ads were perceived as a disruptive element in consumers' tweets. Although this effect is clearly documented, in this paper we demonstrate its transitory nature, in the sense that the frequency of occurrence of terms associated with an emotional dimension peaks during the weeks of lockdown, and then gradually decreases.
ABSTRACT
COVID-19 pandemic lockdowns have had major negative effects on individuals' mental health and psychological well-being. Isolated at home, people may engage in recreational activities such as binge-watching (i.e., viewing multiple episodes of a TV series in 1 session) as a strategy to regulate emotional states. This is the first longitudinal study assessing changes in TV series viewing patterns during the first COVID-19 lockdown and examining whether binge-watching was associated with changes in positive and negative affect throughout this period. TV series viewing practices and motivations, binge-watching behaviors, psychopathological symptoms, and affective states were jointly assessed through a 6-week longitudinal online survey at 3 time points (i.e., T1, T2, and T3), in Belgium, France, and Switzerland. Results showed significant increases in individuals' watching habits (e.g., higher daily time spent viewing, expansion of coviewing practices). Results from the longitudinal analyses principally showed that male gender and social motives for TV series watching predicted a decrease in negative affect levels. A problematic binge-watching pattern characterized by loss of control was the single predictor of an increase in negative affect over time. These findings suggest that TV series watching patterns effectively increased during the first COVID-19 lockdown. Watching TV series for social motives emerged as a protective factor, whereas problematic binge-watching seemed to act as a maladaptive emotion regulation strategy throughout these unprecedented circumstances. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved) Impact Statement This is the first large-scale longitudinal study specifically designed to explore the impact of TV series viewing practices on individuals' affective states during the first COVID-19 lockdown. TV series consumption patterns significantly increased over this period. Problematic binge-watching characterized by loss of control seemed to act as a maladaptive strategy to regulate emotional states, whereas watching TV series for social motives emerged as a protective factor in the lockdown context. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved)
ABSTRACT
The recent COVID-19 health crisis has shone a spotlight on disinformation as the circulation of false information became more and more prominent. What the World Health Organization (WHO) has defined as an ‘infodemic' poses a great risk for democracies and for society in general. In this context, public television channels, with their regional scope, actively participate in the fight against misinformation. This research aims to identify and classify the different verification initiatives and technological tools, as well as the different strategies and codes used in fact-checking tasks by European broadcasters belonging to the CIRCOM network. The methodology undertakes an exploratory approach and employs a questionnaire that is applied to a sample of the members of the network. Managers and professionals with executive profiles were asked about the management, operation and strategies used in the verification process. In light of the results obtained, it can be concluded that the current verification processes are based on human efforts, rather than technological tools, amounting to a total dependence on content curation by the writing teams in the newsroom. Thus, it is evidenced that in most cases, there is neither a specific department for verification, nor sufficient resources, despite the fact that all those surveyed regard disinformation as a priority issue, a threat to democratic integrity and a responsibility of public service media.
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The COVID-19 pandemic changed the form and substance of the official campaign for the 2021 Portuguese presidential elections. It called for several adjustments to planned campaign actions, constraining candidates' mobility and popular mobilization. This context favored the fermentation of populist discourses and the radicalization of political debate. These circumstances led to an unprecedented electoral contest in the recent history of democracy in Portugal. One of the least explored topics in studies about populism is gender and the place of women in the globalized society. In this context, this paper examines the media coverage of the 2021 Portuguese presidential elections in television news services of the following channels: RTP1, SIC, TVI and CMTV. This analysis covered the period of the official campaign and focused on the two female candidates, Ana Gomes and Marisa Matias. © 2022 Associacao Portuguesa de Estudos sobre as Mulheres. All rights reserved.
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The number of TV movies aired on Spain television over the last decade has increased exponentially. These primarily North American and German productions not only take up a large part of lunchtime and the afternoon;they also portray women rooted in gender stereotypes that are clearly at odds with the female gender values of autonomy and equal rights. However, 2017 saw an increase in female directors making TV movies portraying women in a significant variety of roles. This trend, which continues during the COVID‑19 pandemic, has led to a partial shift in the construction of gender. Our research assesses the transformation of gender portrayal and the ideological construction behind TV movies, including their subject matter, lead characters, frequency of airings, and target audience. This study also examines women's roles in TV-movie production, including screenwriting and directing, and seeks to ascertain the leading TV-movie production companies that broadcast their output in Spain and address the business philosophy behind these producers. Finally, we review the Spanish channels that most frequently schedule TV Movies in large numbers, as well as their guidelines, target and vision.
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Information can have an important impact on health behavior and, according to the World Health Organization, an 'infodemic' has accompanied the current pandemic. Observing TV news viewership in Italy during the COVID-19 pandemic using actual consumption data, we investigate whether demand for national and local news depends on national or local epidemiological developments, as measured by the number of new positives or the number of current positives on any given day. Exploiting the fact that the impact of the pandemic displays a great deal of variation among the different regions, we find that at the regional level, demand for both national and local news responds to national epidemiological developments rather than to local ones. This has implications regarding the incentives for local politicians to take preventive action.
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The article investigates the occurrence of selective exposure in Brazil, in view of the frequency with which Brazilians said they sought information about the COVID-19 pandemic in the Jornal Nacional and Jornal da Record. It uses data from a content analysis of the coverage of these vehicles in 2020 and data from a national public opinion survey. The analyses showed that partisanship and religion were important predictors of the consumption of news of these vehicles. Evangelicals and supporters of the "Bolsonaro party” were the most assiduous viewers of Jornal da Record. Catholics, supporters of other subtitles and non-partisans consumed more the Jornal National. These results show that Brazilians consume news in line with their political convictions and that some groups may be receiving less information about COVID-19. © 2022,Opiniao Publica. All Rights Reserved.
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This chapter is anchored on the uses and gratification theory and starts off with a background review on television viewers' choices of media programs and the decision of audiences to select what they see or hear from available content. Key factors that influence viewers' selection and consumption of TV programs are considered. Experimentation into how Nigerians consumed TV programs before and during Nigeria's first phase of the COVID-19 lockdown measures is assessed. Using a semi-structured online questionnaire, data was obtained from 457 respondents, from 27 out of the 36 states of Nigeria and the Federal Capital Territory, between April 27, 2020, and May 21, 2020. The results showed that most respondents doubled their consumption of TV programs to combat boredom, get information on COVID-19, and get spiritual inspiration. They also indicated there is no significant relationship between gender and the amount of time spent viewing TV during the lockdown period. Possible reasons for this included (1) both male and female viewers were confined to their home and had equal time to spend viewing television, and (2) couples living together usually watch TV alongside each other. This second reason correlated with program choices, noting that movies, news, and religious programs were preferred over food networks, sports, and documentaries. Additional findings indicated a preference for local TV channels versus foreign ones and the need for the Federal government to improve the recurring problem of inconsistent power supply as many Nigerians reported this as a reason they did not watch TV. Moreover, traditional versus digital media consumption is considered as well as the Federal and state governments handling of COVID-19. © 2023, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG.
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As the source of one of the largest revenue streams for professional sport franchises, the viewership of sport broadcasts has plummeted in recent years (Bode, 2018). This declining trend has been further exacerbated by the global COVID-19 pandemic (Crupi, 2021). According to Deloitte's Fan Engagement survey, the average fan satisfaction across sports broadcast programs was only 39 percent (Deloitte, 2019).Research has been devoted to investigating the determinants of sport viewer satisfaction, including various audio and visual conditions of sport broadcasts. However, these works assume that media design effects are equally effective among all viewers and fail to account for potential heterogeneities in people's psychological connection to the mediated sport. To address this gap, the Psychological Continuum Model (PCM;Funk & James, 2001;2006) was introduced as the theoretical foundation for understanding the formation of viewer satisfaction with a focal sport (e.g., college football).The current dissertation examines whether and how the strength of psychological connection to college football overrides the effects of varying audiovisual presentations on viewer satisfaction with a televised college football game. A 2 (presence of commentary: With commentary vs. Without commentary) x 2 (presence of audience: High vs. Low) between-subjects online experiment was administered via Prolific (n = 338). The relationship between psychological connection and viewer satisfaction and the moderation effects of the two selected audiovisual conditions were tested using the ANCOVA. Results showed a significant positive association between psychological connection to college football and viewer satisfaction. However, the manipulated audiovisual conditions did not moderate the aforementioned relationship between psychological connection and viewer satisfaction. The presence of audience had a significant positive effect on viewer satisfaction. In contrast, the presence of commentary exerted no significant effect on viewer satisfaction regardless of people's PCM staging.The findings provide empirical evidence to support the seminal PCM framework that the strength of an individual's psychological connection to the focal sport object was a more deterministic factor that drives the sport media consumption experience than the audiovisual media presentation. For those interested in watching but have not yet formed a strong attitude towards the broadcasted sport object, the viewing experience can be optimized by maximizing the visual presence of a live audience. The null effect of commentary presence and sonic ambiance on viewer satisfaction reinforces the proposition that what is seen might be more influential than what is heard in sport media consumption (Cummins et al., 2019). (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved)
ABSTRACT
BACKGROUND: Auxiliary diagnosis and monitoring of lung diseases based on lung ultrasound (LUS) images is important clinical research. A-line is one of the most common indicators of LUS that can offer support for the assessment of lung diseases. A traditional A-line detection method mainly relies on experienced clinicians, which is inefficient and cannot meet the needs of these areas with backward medical level. Therefore, how to realize the automatic detection of A-line in LUS image is important. PURPOSE: In order to solve the disadvantages of traditional A-line detection methods, realize automatic and accurate detection, and provide theoretical support for clinical application, we proposed a novel A-line detection method for LUS images with different probe types in this paper. METHODS: First, the improved Faster R-CNN model with a selection strategy of localization box was designed to accurately locate the pleural line. Then, the LUS image below the pleural line was segmented for independent analysis excluding the influence of other similar structures. Next, image-processing methods based on total variation, matched filter, and gray difference were applied to achieve the automatic A-line detection. Finally, the "depth" index was designed to verify the accuracy by judging whether the automatic measurement results belong to corresponding manual results (±5%). In experiments, 3000 convex array LUS images were used for training and validating the improved pleural line localization model by five-fold cross validation. 850 convex array LUS images and 1080 linear array LUS images were used for testing the trained pleural line localization model and the proposed image-processing-based A-line detection method. The accuracy analysis, error statistics, and Harsdorff distance were employed to evaluate the experimental results. RESULTS: After 100 epochs, the mean loss value of training and validation set of improved Faster R-CNN model reached 0.6540 and 0.7882, with the validation accuracy of 98.70%. The trained pleural line localization model was applied in the testing set of convex and linear probes and reached the accuracy of 97.88% and 97.11%, respectively, which were 3.83% and 8.70% higher than the original Faster R-CNN model. The accuracy, sensitivity, and specificity of A-line detection reached 95.41%, 0.9244%, 0.9875%, and 94.63%, 0.9230%, and 0.9766% for convex and linear probes, respectively. Compared to the experienced clinicians' results, the mean value and p value of depth error were 1.5342 ± 1.2097 and 0.9021, respectively, and the Harsdorff distance was 5.7305 ± 1.8311. In addition, the accumulated accuracy of the two-stage experiment (pleural line localization and A-line detection) was calculated as the final accuracy of the whole A-line detection system. They were 93.39% and 91.90% for convex and linear probes, respectively, which were higher than these previous methods. CONCLUSIONS: The proposed method combining image processing and deep learning can automatically and accurately detect A-line in LUS images with different probe types, which has important application value for clinical diagnosis.
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The TV industry has long been under pressure to adapt its workflows to use advanced Internet technologies. It also must face competition from social media, video blogs, and livestreaming platforms, which are enabled by lightweight production tools and new distribution channels. The social-distancing regulations introduced due to the COVID-19 pandemic added to the list of challenging adaptations. One of the remaining bastions of legacy TV production is the live broadcast of sporting events and news. These production practices rely on tight collaboration in small spaces, such as control rooms and outside broadcast vans. This paper focuses on current socio-technical changes, especially those changes and adaptations in collaborative practices and workflows in TV production. Some changes necessary during the pandemic may be imposed, temporary adjustments to the ongoing situation, but some might induce permanent changes in key work practices in TV production. Further, these imposed changes are aligned with already ongoing changes in the industry, which are now being accelerated. We characterize the changes along two main dimensions: redistribution of work and automation. © 2021 The Author(s). Published with license by Taylor & Francis Group, LLC.
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Crises have always brought along transformations in gender identities, roles, and relations: while much has changed in Western culture regarding the role of women and notions of masculinity are also challenged, efforts to control female roles, bodies, and sexualities persist. For example, Susan Faludi's The Terror Dream has described the post-9/11 age as an era of reconstituted "traditional” manhood, redomesticated femininity and nuclear family "togetherness.” The question that lies at the basis of this paper is whether–and if so, how –science fiction cinema continues to respond to moments of crisis and vulnerability through the old myth of protective manhood and feminine weakness. By identifying two cases of insecurity–climate change and the coronavirus pandemic–we analyse a recent film (Bird Box, 2018) and two TV series on pandemic outbreaks from the US (Sweet Tooth, 2021) and Italy (Anna, 2021). All three works break new ground–though not devoid of limits–about family structures and parental care: while Bird Box proposes a reversal of gender roles, Anna elaborates on the notion of motherhood by presenting unconventional models of mothering;in Sweet Tooth, the ethics of care is extended to the relationship between humans, animals, and the endangered environment. © 2022 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.
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This paper proposes an analysis of the storytelling of the COVID pandemic in Wuhan in the first months of 2020 as depicted by two TV dramas: Heroes and With you. This analysis will be carried out by identifying the elements common to the two TV series in the description of their protagonists and the way in which they dialogue with real people and about real facts, also in relation to the presentations offered by television producers to the press, and those published in specialized or party magazines. The dramas are therefore considered as spaces of interpretation of the individual experience in a collective sense, and as discourses in which memory exerts a fundamental role in the definition of the social and cultural self, in order to understand whether the COVID pandemic is regarded in China as a cultural trauma. © 2022 Universita degli Studi di Milano. All rights reserved.
ABSTRACT
This paper proposes an analysis of the storytelling of the COVID pandemic in Wuhan in the first months of 2020 as depicted by two TV dramas: Heroes and With you. This analysis will be carried out by identifying the elements common to the two TV series in the description of their protagonists and the way in which they dialogue with real people and about real facts, also in relation to the presentations offered by television producers to the press, and those published in specialized or party magazines. The dramas are therefore considered as spaces of interpretation of the individual experience in a collective sense, and as discourses in which memory exerts a fundamental role in the definition of the social and cultural self, in order to understand whether the COVID pandemic is regarded in China as a cultural trauma. © 2022 Universita degli Studi di Milano. All rights reserved.
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This article studies the role of women in television advertisements during the first two years of the COVID-19 pandemic in Spain and Portugal. Through a mixed methodological design and semiotically inspired, we elaborated an analysis sheet that incorporates variables related to gender issues, female stereotypes and representativeness of women in advertising. We analyze a sample of television advertisements broadcast on television and during prime time in both countries. It was found that although women have emerged with a certain prominence, they are frequently portrayed as caregivers, mothers and housewives. In this sense, we reflect on the role of advertising as a determining vehicle to mitigate differences and, consequently, for a possible deconstruction of gender stereotypes. © 2022, Superior School of Advertising and Marketing. All rights reserved.
ABSTRACT
Over recent years, internet TV series have grown in popularity to become one of the audiovisual products with the highest audiences worldwide. The Covid crisis, with limitations on movement, has further increased their success during 2020-21. English is by far the most common language for such productions, which are typically offered to non-anglophone viewers in translated format, with either subtitles or dubbing. One of the main challenges in translation here concerns the use of idioms, since these do not always have a fixed equivalent in the target language. Taking as a starting point a corpus of drama series from Netflix and Amazon Prime, this study considers the metaphorical dimension of idioms in original TV series in English and the subtitling of these in German, Norwegian and Spanish. The aim is to analyze the strategies used in the translation process, and to look at the differences between the original dialogues and the translated subtitles. The data are described from a cognitive and contrastive perspective, according to the methodology developed by the author. The results of the analysis show a general trend towards the reduction of metaphorical expressions in the translated subtitles. Significant differences are found between the translations into the three target languages under examination. A surprising finding is that there are more similarities between the German and Spanish translations than between those into German and Norwegian, despite these latter two belonging to the same Germanic linguistic family.
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The present study aimed to observe and describe the phenomenon of Binge Watching among the adolescent population during the health emergency period caused by the SARSCoV-2 pandemic and to identify the socio-demographic variables which are most correlated to this behavior. The study involved 376 adolescents attending a secondary school in Brescia, to whom was administered the Binge Watching Engagement and Symptoms Questionnaire (BWESQ). The results showed that the majority of adolescents dedicate a portion of their free time to watching TV series: this behavior mainly involves females and young adolescents;it is a typically solitary hobby, pursued through the mobile phone during the evening hours, after dinner. In addition, a certain number of subjects who practice a problematic Binge Watching was found: although we do not believe that this phenomenon is attributable to the cluster of behavioral addictions, further studies are needed to investigate this practice, especially in relation to the lockdown periods linked to the Covid-19 pandemic. Such studies are particularly relevant to better understand the attitudes of adolescents towards digital media – especially TV series – and to promote effective education plans that limit abusive behaviors. Copyright © FrancoAngeli.