Media
The Department of Media offers programmes in television, radio, music production, media and film studies, advertising, photography and journalism at our campus sites in Chester and Warrington, serving more than 500 students at undergraduate, Master’s and PhD levels.
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Elvis: Other Stories to TellIn Rethinking Elvis, popular music scholars and historians look beyond Elvis' iconography to shine a light on the branding, historical and geographic reception, heritage, and fan phenomenon that sustain his legacy.
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The Future of Elvis StudiesElvis is someone who’s place in society and pop culture is inescapable, yet whose presence in the academic library and seminar room is virtually absent. In the decades-old, and now rather tired, staged battle between Elvis and the Beatles, on any quantifiable measure of scholarly interest, in academia the Fab Four would easily win. Despite Elvis’s iconism, and despite his evident and ongoing connection to a range of social issues, he constantly seems to miss the requirements for capturing scholarly attention. To some extent, Gilbert Rodman’s claim still holds true that intellectuals have traditionally been unwilling to see Presley as a figure of sufficient importance to undertake serious critical work on his life, his art, or his cultural impact. With their concerns for taste and text, film studies and popular music studies have tended to ignore Elvis. In contrast, disciplines that grapple with those same subjects as social issues have embraced the Elvis phenomenon because it is a useful case study when considering prejudice. In this section I will therefore explore three academic fields that have discussed Elvis Presley, or more precisely the issues that he represents: Southern studies, cultural studies, and legal studies. In addition to these, Elvis “scholar-fans” have produced a wealth of material, some of which is highly insightful and effectively blurs the lines between popular and academic publication. Finally, the chapter makes some suggestions about topics we might desire to see in future Elvis studies, based upon the concerns of fan studies and research on social identity. Though Elvis studies is more a trickle of scholarship than a sub-discipline, it has undergone an expansion in recent times and, like Elvis Presley himself, shows no sign of disappearing.
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Mark Duffett reflects on the issue of cultural appropriation - an interview with Jorge Carrega (in Portuguese)A discussion of the question of Elvis and cultural appropriation in interview format in Portguese.
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A Life Spent Chasing the Band? Female Fans' AutobiographiesThis chapter considers female fans’ book-length autobiographies, life stories written that recount years spent following stars, particularly from the worlds of 1960s, 1970s and 1980s rock and pop. Mass culture criticism, parasocial interaction, totemism, and participatory culture are widely understood as distinct paradigms through which academics can analyze media fandom. In parallel, I suggest they can also be seen as discursive resources that pop fans exploit in the development of autobiographic accounts. To explain this idea, I compare four case study books: My Ticket to Ride by Janice Mitchell (2021), Ah-Ha Moments by Larissa Bendell (2016), Bye, Bye Baby by Caroline Sullivan (2000), My Men, Mick and Me by Andee Baker (2020). My argument is that in such autobiographic accounts some female fans, particularly, play upon aspects of these familiar frames of thinking, not only to talk about their experiences of fandom, but also to frame their encounters inspirationally, and think about gender relations in ways that are potentially empowering.
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Gate People: Fan History Before Elvis Heritage at GracelandAcademic accounts sometimes suggest that Graceland tourism began when Elvis’s mansion was opened to the public five years after his passing. Disputing such assertions, this chapter provides a comparatively inductive, “hidden history” of early fan visits to the Graceland gates. Its methodological approach is deliberate. Academic discussions about fan tourism are, whether consciously or not, often shaped by existing ideas and paradigms. Unless researchers inductively investigate, and increase the resolution of their scholarly gaze, they will not be able to make the distinctions that move our understanding beyond the unproductive myths and generalizations that can inform academic research as easily as they can shape commercial writing. Using historical evidence, the chapter shows that there were several overlapping eras defined by different types and scales of fan activity. These include an early phase exemplified by the disabled fan Gary Pepper, the development of intelligent networks, ritual bus tours and birthday celebrations, and finally a “massification” period associated with larger crowds and negative press stereotyping. The chapter suggests that the famous Graceland music gates physically separated the star and his fans, but they were not “prison gates.” Instead, the Graceland gates functioned as a kind of semi-permeable membrane, allowing ordinary visitors limited entry into Elvis’s world. To conclude, the piece suggests that gate vigils have now become “imagined memories” in guidebook accounts whose real participants have been made comparatively anonymous so that contemporary consumers can imagine themselves occupying the fortunate positions of the actual “gate people.”
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Welsh Devolution and the Politics of the COVID-19 Pandemic: Evolving Social Media StrategiesThis chapter examines the expansion of a nascent political movement, tracing its use of social media, notably Twitter, to generate engagement and mobilise a wider network by exploiting the dynamic inherent in the platform. Yes Cymru was formally launched in 2016. Modelled on the Scottish ‘Yes’ campaign, to the extent of adopting near-identical iconography, it was given additional focus by the Brexit vote later that year, and another spike in engagement followed the December 2019 UK general election. The wider (UK) political context has shifted considerably, with the movement attempting to mobilise the increasingly prevalent view that the tectonic plates of British politics are shifting to such an extent that previously unthinkable concepts now seem feasible. By appropriating empirical research conducted utilising the social network analysis software ‘NodeXL’ and debating these findings in line with Denis Balsom’s (The National question again: Welsh political identity in the 1980s. Gomer, 1985) ostensibly outmoded ‘Three Wales Model’, this chapter examines the politics of the COVID-19 pandemic in Wales both quantitatively and qualitatively. Moreover, it explores how Yes Cymru attempted to garner support for Welsh independence amidst the pandemic, in contrast to groups such as Abolish the Welsh Assembly who sought to generate closer ties to Westminster through staking anti-devolution claims.
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Continental drift: Historical perspectives on the framing of ‘Europe’ in the British PressThis chapter argues that the framing of ‘Europe’ in the UK news media saw a gradual adoption of geographically ‘distancing’ language from the early 1950s (and exponentially onwards to the 2016 referendum), which fed into political debate and profoundly shaped public opinion. From the geographically correct, but dated sounding ‘continent’ to the near-universal use of ‘Europe’ to describe ‘anywhere but here’, this analysis of digitized databases suggests that the British press has shaped public attitudes in a considerably more fundamental way than the well-documented attempts by populist politicians. The role of newspapers in the formulation and distribution of ideas, in a broad sense, underpins this study. The use of the word ‘Europe’ transcends geographical reality to encompass alternative worldviews, descriptions of political positions and affinity. This chapter will unpick this linguistic evolution, examining the data derived from content analysis through the prism of place representation, ideology and emotional association.
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TransEurope Express: Europe… and the USA… to the MillenniumTitled Transatlantic Drift: The Ebb and Flow of Dance Music, this book tracks the evolving story of electronic dance music from WWII to the Millennium, as the beat bounced between Europe and North America. It will be published by Reaktion, in 2024. Music is not formed in isolation; humans are social animals, keen to draw on influences, to come together collectively, to share music, whether in their hometowns or travelling the world to share melody, and to feel the beat, communally. From Detroit to Wigan; from Dusseldorf to Chicago; from New York to Ibiza, the story of dance music has been a conversation between many people, in many, many different areas, communicating through the beat. This book will interrogate those ideas.
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Preface to Transatlantic Drift: The Ebb and Flow of Dance MusicTitled Transatlantic Drift: The Ebb and Flow of Dance Music, this book tracks the evolving story of electronic dance music from WWII to the Millennium, as the beat bounced between Europe and North America. It will be published by Reaktion, in 2024. Music is not formed in isolation; humans are social animals, keen to draw on influences, to come together collectively, to share music, whether in their hometowns or travelling the world to share melody, and to feel the beat, communally. From Detroit to Wigan; from Dusseldorf to Chicago; from New York to Ibiza, the story of dance music has been a conversation between many people, in many, many different areas, communicating through the beat. This book will interrogate those ideas.
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New York, Chicago and Detroit in late 80s (ish) USATitled Transatlantic Drift: The Ebb and Flow of Dance Music, this book tracks the evolving story of electronic dance music from WWII to the Millennium, as the beat bounced between Europe and North America. It will be published by Reaktion, in 2025. Music is not formed in isolation; humans are social animals, keen to draw on influences, to come together collectively, to share music, whether in their hometowns or travelling the world to share melody, and to feel the beat, communally. From Detroit to Wigan; from Dusseldorf to Chicago; from New York to Ibiza, the story of dance music has been a conversation between many people, in many, many different areas, communicating through the beat. This book will interrogate those ideas.
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An interrogation of concepts of journalistic professionalism within (HE level) journalism education in the context of ethics learning and teachingThe journalism field continues to undergo a significant transformation impacting on practitioners and their place within the public sphere. These changes are also apparent in the way journalists perceive themselves as well as their audiences (actual and potential) in particular. The impact of audience news consumption from online platforms has been especially significant during the last decade with characteristics traditionally associated with journalistic professionalism, such as gatekeeping and autonomy diminishing and their association with the field called into question. Professionalism however, has long been a contested notion in journalism. This research begins with an exploration of its various sociological definitions and their relevance to the field of practice. A hypothesis then emerges from a review of key learning and teaching resource material which suggested the paucity of clear meanings in the documentation reflected a broader understanding of professionalism in the journalism field and rendering the ascription of terms such as ‘professional’ and ‘professionalism’ to practice as problematic. This set the groundwork and rationale for the identification and interrogation of concepts of professionalism through interviews with journalism educators at HE level. The resulting isolation of characteristics of journalism practice in teaching and learning could be reflective of journalistic professionalism. The subsequent interview data was then analysed using a realistic evaluation approach which established a set of indicative themes considered to be key notions of journalistic professionalism. The findings confirmed the idea of journalistic professionalism was problematic because of the fluid contemporary environment of the journalism field. Perceived notions of professionalism however, were primarily driven by academization which, it was concluded, were intrinsic to an overarching definition of journalistic professionalism. Furthermore, when examined through the theoretical framework of social responsibility, three new themes were derived from the amalgamation of interview data with the ‘dimensions’ outlined by Singer (2003) and Larson (1977). These themes – the COAd theme (normative dimension, organizational theme and academic driver), NOE theme (the normative dimension, organizational and ethical themes) and EE theme (the evaluative dimension, existential theme), provided a set of clearly identifiable notions by which to differentiate between those in the field – ‘professionals’, adhering to normative journalistic practices, ethical behaviour and organizational obligation, and ‘non-professionals’, who identify as journalists but are not tied to any specific requirements, ethical or otherwise.
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Uptown and Downtown Manhattan in the latter 1970sTitled Transatlantic Drift: The Ebb and Flow of Dance Music, this book tracks the evolving story of electronic dance music from WWII to the Millennium, as the beat bounced between Europe and North America. It will be published by Reaktion, in 2024. Music is not formed in isolation; humans are social animals, keen to draw on influences, to come together collectively, to share music, whether in their hometowns or travelling the world to share melody, and to feel the beat, communally. From Detroit to Wigan; from Dusseldorf to Chicago; from New York to Ibiza, the story of dance music has been a conversation between many people, in many, many different areas, communicating through the beat. This book will interrogate those ideas.
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Glocalisation, Arab Values, and Traditions in Jeem TV ContentThis thesis explores the ways in which Jeem TV negotiates cultural content and values in its programming. It also studies the Hierarchy of Influences at the pan-Arabic children's channel based in Qatar by focusing on its internal policy, and it examines the effect of societal factors and the external media market. The research examines these issues through the prism of the glocalisation process and the Hierarchy of Influence model proposed by Shoemaker and Vos (2009). Fifty-six hours of Jeem TV‘s programmes broadcast across three different seasons were analysed both quantitatively and qualitatively. Interviews were also conducted with presenters, Arabic language experts, Arab sociologists, children‘s media experts, and individuals who worked with the channel. Jeem TV offered a version of Arab programming that encompassed both traditional values and adaptations. More specifically, the channel included other languages, such as English, non-Arab cultures, representation of genders, and new formats. Whereas the viewers‘ culture, as an external force, had an effect on Jeem TV‘s agenda, the external media market allowed some of the cultural values to be blended with other culture. Additionally, there is a correlation between the external media market and Jeem TV in the context of the economic and political dimensions. The thesis showed a complex interplay of processes on Jeem TV involving culture, religion, glocalisation process, globalisation, Jeem TV's policy, non-Arab cultures, and regional politics. Furthermore, the nature of the interrelation between these factors is dynamic. This suggested that established theories like gatekeeping theory and the glocalisation process which focus on a specific national context do not provide a full explanation for the processes that happened at Jeem TV.
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“I read the news today… oh boy” Taking the Pulse of UK Popular Music JournalismA letter, published in the New Musical Express, complained that that venerable bastion of UK music journalism had lost its way and was not as good as it used to be. That letter was sent in 1953, a year after the title came into circulation. Almost as soon as the white hot elements of popular music criticism began to solidify, and then codify, into the discipline we now understand it to be, people have sought to announce its demise… and every announcement has been premature. We are in another such moment of the reading of last rites, and this chapter therefore sets out to truly test the health of this patient, while arguing rumours of its death have, once again, been greatly exaggerated. This chapter will make its diagnosis by the examination of two major organs. Firstly, the NME itself. One of the symptoms of this apparent demise is this very title, and indeed this arises at Open Days for the Music Journalism programme at Chester: “Where are the jobs in music journalism,” concerned parents will cry, “even the NME has closed.” Except that it has not. The NME persists as an online proposition, serving consumers of music by utilising the medium they – predominantly young people – use. The internet. Further, it is, for the first time in many years, returning a profit in its current form and indeed is currently hiring. An analysis of this title, and other online music journalism will therefore form an important aspect to the chapter, encompassing the rise of music websites such as Stereogum in the US and Dork in the UK. While even a cursory overview of the so-called ‘Golden Age’ of Music Journalism in the 1970s will reveal all of three places where young music critics could be published – the NME, Melody Maker and Sounds – the limits of publishing now extend as far as the outer boundaries of the internet itself, from successful websites such as Pitchfork, (turning over $5million annually), to intriguing and innovative personal blogs from where new journalistic voices emerge. The chapter will also consider the energy to be found when music journalism is not merely written down, but spoken, with YouTube blogs such as Needle Drop now massively popular. If NME is exhibit A, then the closure of Q is exhibit B. Notwithstanding the context of this business decision made during the global pandemic, an argument can be made that, rather like the 1970s NME journalists joyously ‘barbecuing the dinosaurs’ of their perceived dad rock, so it might be argued that it is also that very time for some of these big beasts of monthly music criticism, with the same cycle of cover stars, the same music featured within. On the plus side of the ledger, however, the resulting space in the market has allowed for an interesting and significant reappearance of the music inkie... local magazines like Bido Lito and The Skinny, but also semi-regional magazines such as Crack, Loud and Quiet and, indeed, the re-emergence of Sounds itself, as New Sounds. Drawing on new primary interviews with some of the key personalities in this evolving story, and research into the commercial health of titles such as the NME, this chapter will serve as almost a 'State-of-the-Union' overview as to where we are with this industry and what the future might hold. Both The Guardian and New Statesman have run features about the more positive picture for music journalism than might commonly be read into the industry and it is therefore key that an academic title such as this should also offer scholarly insight into that story, and where we stand with music journalism, in the third decade of the new century. Ironically, with so much access to music, we indeed need critical assistance in cutting through the noise and getting to what is worth listening to. We must not allow those key decisions to be the preserve of algorithms; indeed, after all these years, such important decisions are best left to human judgement and taste and, after all the industry has been through, we might just find that events bring us all the way back around to where we started… and the fundamental role of the music journalist.
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Introduction: "What Happened to the Post-War Dream?" - The Story of Pink FloydThe Routledge Handbook of Pink Floyd is intended for scholars and researchers of popular music, as well as music industry professionals and fans of the band. It brings together international researchers to assess, evaluate and reformulate approaches to the critical study and interpretation of one of the world’s most important and successful bands. For the first time, this Handbook will ‘tear down the wall,’ examining the band’s collective artistic creations and the influence of social, technological, commercial and political environments over several decades on their work. Divided into five parts, the book provides a thoroughly contextualised overview of the musical works of Pink Floyd, including coverage of performance and sound; media, reception and fandom; genre; periods of Pink Floyd’s work; and aesthetics and subjectivity. Drawing on art, design, performance, culture and counterculture, emergent theoretical resources and analytical frames are evaluated and discussed from across the social sciences, humanities and creative arts. The Handbook is intended for scholars and researchers of popular music, as well as music industry professionals. It will appeal across a range of related subjects from music production to cultural studies and media/communication studies.
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Reflections on Cass Sunstein’s Beatlemania Article: Romantic Behaviouralism?In the first edition of this journal, Cass Sunstein offered a behaviouralist reading of the Beatles audience. He suggested the band became a worldwide sensation based on the spread of endorsements by Beatles people acting in line with behavioural norms, such as trust in others’ aesthetic judgements and a need to be liked. This article aims to critically analyse Sunstein’s work by looking at the data sources he used, assessing the applicability of his claims, and considering the ideological effects of what I call a romantic behaviouralist approach. Alongside Sunstein’s ideas, a neo-Durkheimian reading is suggested to account for interesting regularities of fan behaviour. My aim is not to discredit mechanisms of human behaviour discussed by Professor Sunstein, but to question the grounding assumptions behind a behavioural approach to popular culture history, and suggest that the application of some proposed behavioural mechanisms may be limited by other elements at play.
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'Us And Them': Pink Floyd and the British Music MediaThe Routledge Handbook of Pink Floyd is intended for scholars and researchers of popular music, as well as music industry professionals and fans of the band. It brings together international researchers to assess, evaluate and reformulate approaches to the critical study and interpretation of one of the world’s most important and successful bands. For the first time, this Handbook will ‘tear down the wall,’ examining the band’s collective artistic creations and the influence of social, technological, commercial and political environments over several decades on their work. Divided into five parts, the book provides a thoroughly contextualised overview of the musical works of Pink Floyd, including coverage of performance and sound; media, reception and fandom; genre; periods of Pink Floyd’s work; and aesthetics and subjectivity. Drawing on art, design, performance, culture and counterculture, emergent theoretical resources and analytical frames are evaluated and discussed from across the social sciences, humanities and creative arts. The Handbook is intended for scholars and researchers of popular music, as well as music industry professionals. It will appeal across a range of related subjects from music production to cultural studies and media/communication studies.