From "woman in jeopardy” to COVID-19 lockdown: the gender gap in TV movies aired on Spanish generalist television (2005-2020)

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.

Squid Game outside the wall: fandom nationalism in China and negotiation with state power (Special Forum: The politics of representation in Squid Game and the promise and peril of its transnational reception)

In the post-COVID era, the prevalence of "fandom nationalism" on Chinese social media has led to the development of two distinct attitudes toward Squid Game among Chinese netizens. Some nationalist netizens are dedicated to accusing Squid Game of plagiarism or dismissing it as a "cultural invasion." Another group of fans, due to the ever-tightening Chinese Internet governance, use fandom nationalism as a disguise to protect themselves against cyberbullying by declaring an anti-Korean political stance before posting positive comments about Squid Game. Therefore, two such divergent attitudes eventually led to a negotiation between fan culture and state power, where on the one hand fandom nationalistic practices were accepted by the mainstream for party-state propaganda, but on the other, in order to prevent being censored, fan culture had to be subordinated to the state's governance.

The destination marketing and media profile – travel motives nexus amid tourism crisis: the mediating effect of the nation brand

PurposeThe ongoing COVID-19 pandemic highlights the importance of destination marketing and media profiling to re-engage international tourists. However, potential crisis-induced nation brand (NB) deficits must be addressed to re-ignite tourism demand. The study examines the possible intervening effect of the contemporary NB in the international destination marketing and media-travel motives nexus.Design/methodology/approachA deductive quantitative study was undertaken with an online Amazon Mechanical Turk sample of n = 454 respondents. Hypotheses were tested using PROCESS Macro, Model 4.FindingsThe results show that the NB [people and negative events] had a practically significant partial mediating effect in the destination marketing - nature-cultural oriented travel motivation nexus.Practical implicationsNew insights are provided via a practical model which facilitates the measurement of potential nuances in the influence of destination marketing and media profiling on leisure tourists' travel motives amid crises. The intervening effect implies that a better understanding of the NB as an indirect antecedent to travel motivation may result in more effective crisis communications and tourism recovery-oriented marketing.Originality/valueThe study is amongst the first to extend marketing and behavioural theory to explore the interplay between the marketing and media profile, a nation's brand and tourists' travel behaviour amid a crisis. The study addresses a discernible dearth of knowledge related to the influence of the NB on tourist behaviour from an emerging market perspective.

The filming industry in Spain and its influence on screen tourism

Spain experiments an excellent period regarding the production of large motion-picture works. not only films but also television series. Nevertheless, the consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic present difficulties to recover the level of activity experimented before March 2020. All in all, besides the evolution of the health situation, the industry is showing proof enough of its ability to recover and adapt to the new circumstances.

A Hybrid Recommender System for Improving Rating Prediction of Movie Recommendation

Because of COVID-19 pandemic, online movies are now extremely popular. While the movie theaters have not serviced and people are staying quarantine, movies are the best choice for relaxing and treating stress. In present, recommender systems are widely integrated into many platforms of movie applications. A hybrid recommender system is one promising technique to improve the system performance, especially for cold-start, data sparsity, and scalability. This paper proposed a hybrid of matrix factorization, biased matrix factorization, and factor wise matrix factorization to solve all mentioned drawback problems. Simulation shows that the proposed hybrid algorithm can decrease approximately 11.91% and 10.70% for RMSE and MAE, respectively, when compared with the traditional methods. In addition, the proposed algorithm is capable of scalability. While the number of datasets is tremendously increased by 10 times, it is still effectively executed. © 2022 IEEE.

EDU Movies: using fiction movies for student-centered learning

Establishing a context for the application of knowledge, developing their sense of belonging, and using materials that play a social role in their lives engage undergraduates and makes them core of their own learning. However, this is complicated to achieve in courses without laboratories or under restrictions due to COVID-19 pandemic. Current work reports the implementation and impact of EDU Movies, a student-centered learning asynchronous activity to generate learning scenarios using fiction movies. It was carried out in the Ecological Processes for Human Development online course with 57 undergraduates (29 females and 28 males) enrolled in different programs. EDU Movies addressed the topics of environment, sustainable development and ethics and citizenship. To measure the impact, the participants perceptions were gathered using a survey and their answers were analyzed using statistics and text analysis. The evidence shows that over 69% of the students perceived that the movies were a great aid for learning the topics, particularly for female undergraduates. © 2022 IEEE.

OTT (Netflix) Film Recommender System Using Data Mining

With the current COVID-19 situation on hand, the load of entertainment has completely fallen onto the OTT platforms for over a year now, and as a significant rise in viewership has been seen in the recent years and especially the past year, it is particularly important that these systems are used in best way. Along this increase a big issue becoming among the viewers is the quality and content of the films, documentary films, etc., which depends highly on some factors like choice of actors, genre, availability in different languages and most importantly reviews. So, to solve this issue, a decision was made to try new approach and put some new life into an old and trusted system, incidentally which has been one of the earliest implementations in the field of machine learning and is fondly known or called by the name of the recommender system or the recommendation system. This paper emphasizes on providing with an over-the-top media-service provider (OTT) film recommendation system which aims to deliver a personalized choice of the films as per the new trends among the viewers, the ratings, the reviews and sometimes as per the previous experiences of the user. The so-called recommender systems have been in use for more than a decade now, but the interesting thing with these machine learning-based systems is that there is always scope for some new features or improvements to be added or channelled in and further on when you think that it is perfect and requires no changes or additions to it, but in fact everything in machine learning can be designed and implemented or given a new direction as per your own perspective. The thought to simply redefine this system mainly grew because of a big issue that is the wastage of time in selecting appropriate films as per the choice, non-engaging films and in a bid to make people watch more quality and knowledgeable content. This paper reviews a host of previous work done in this field along with chalking out issues which can be improved along the way. This paper further talks about the methodology for conceiving the system and as well as sheds light on the implementation of the system using Python language and open-source tools. The paper further moves onto dictate about the applications of the system for OTT services and also take a bit of sneak peek into the applications beyond the OTT services. © 2022, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd.

Lockdowned cinema

A series of reports in the media recently noted the shock expressed by multiplex exhibitors at producers releasing films on OTT (over the top) platforms. In this period of the national lockdown due to COVID-19, when film production activities have stopped, and film exhibition in cinema houses has come to a halt, a number of such issues have become relevant. This article discusses three aspects of the social consumption of cinema in the lockdown. First, it discusses the consumption of the film star as a commodity. Second, it considers the fallout of the lockdown for the shift in viewing towards OTT platforms. Third, it explores the challenges of the lockdown faced by cine workers, who contribute labour for its creation but are not seen on the screen.

A quantitative analysis of the reactions of viewers with hearing impairment to the intralingual subtitling of Egyptian movies.

This study investigates how the viewers with hearing impairment reacted to the Modern Standard Arabic (MSA) subtitles added to some Vernacular Arabic movies during the COVID-19 stay-at-home period. A sample group of 106 deaf participants was asked to watch the MSA subtitled version of the Egyptian vernacular movie, Boushkash, and fill in an 18-item questionnaire of five constructs, namely, (1) movie watching habits, (2) technical aspects, (3) linguistic and paralinguistic information, (4) attitude, and (5) future actions and recommendations. The analysis showed that the intralingual subtitling of vernacular Arabic comedy movies was received positively by the participants. The technical specifications of the subtitles were satisfactory and adequate. The paralinguistic information was helpful as it offers a better understanding of the movie and creates a sense of reality in the movie's scenes. This indicates that intralingual subtitling is a step in the right direction that makes audiovisual materials accessible to people with hearing impairment and enhances their feeling of social inclusion. The study concludes that more governmental care in the Arab countries should be directed towards this minority group by urging national TV channels to add intralingual translation to their various programs.

Psychotherapists' preferences for television and movies during the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic.

This study investigated psychotherapists' media use since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. A total of 186 psychotherapists completed a 15-item self-report survey on the movies and TV shows they had watched, and the reasons for their choices, since the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic. Results indicated therapists primarily watched material they described as comedic, distracting, thought-provoking, and psychologically engaging. In addition, they reported choosing media that appealed to their spouses and/or children. It is theorized that therapists' media selections are reinforcing their regulatory flexibility, allowing them to grapple with the harsh reality of the pandemic while simultaneously providing themselves emotional safety and relief in the form of distancing and distraction.