Is Collective Memory Making the Next Balkan War Imminent?

Sometimes cultures, religions, and ethnicities that shared the same space for centuries become fierce rivals, forcing their irreconcilable differences to develop to such an extent that they see war as the only option. The Balkans has had its share of conflicts, destruction, and atrocities leaving scars too deep to heal. The question is: have they seen the end of it, or will the frozen conflict lurking beneath the fragile peace unleash its deadly force again

Semantic-Aware Automatic Video Editing

One of the challenges of multimedia applications is to provide user-tailored access to information encoded in different media. Particularly, previous research has not yet fully explored how to automatically compose different video segments according to a communicative goal. We propose a rhetoric-based method to support the selection and automatic editing of user-requested content from video footage. The method is applied to the domain of video documentaries to create biased sequences about a user selected subject

DocuDrama

This paper presents an approach combining concepts of virtual storytelling with cooperative processes. We will describe why storytelling is relevant in cooperation support applications. We will outline how storytelling concepts provide a new quality for groupware applications. Different prototypes illustrate a combination of a groupware application with various storytelling components in a Theatre of Work

Representation, immigration, experience and memory: a study of representational dynamics of “the other” in post imperial Britain (1947-1990s) with special reference to African and African Caribbean immigrants

MA by Research Dissertation Submitted in accordance with requirements for the degree of MA Media StudiesThe study is an assessment of the proposition that the British media coverage of African and African Caribbean minority ethnic communities is permeated with 'othering'. It analysed the mode of accounting and explaining mobilised by some of the national press regarding racial unrest, focusing particularly on those major events that served to narrativise and recompose the image of immigrants as the 'other' in the context of articulating Britishness. These are Enoch Powell's Rivers of Blood speech in 1968 and the Brixton disturbance of 1981. A content/frame analysis of newspaper coverage of these events was carried out. Seymore-Ure's analysis of the media's response to Powell's speech in The Political Impact of Mass Media (1974) served as major point of reference. In addition, the study explored through in-dept interviews the relationship between lived experiences and popular media discourses in an attempt to gauge the extent to which interviewees' memories cohered or not with the media's account of events involving black people; and which news stories have had significant and formative impact on the experiences of other-ness

Generating Media Stories - Play It Again, Sam

New types of knowledge spaces, such as the Semantic Web, allow for yet uncharted forms of knowledge exploration and social relationships. Such interactive, open and multimodal environments sustain the activation of articulation expressions that form the basis of adaptive discourses. In this paper we are in particular interested what story generation requires, in such a context, from authors and how that reflects on the accessibility of the information to users. The examples are taken form the domain of documentary making

Avini\u27s city: Shahri Dar Aasemaan .

This thesis examines the documentary Shahri dar Aasemaan (i.e. A City in the Sky) by the late filmmaker Sayyed Morteza Avini\u27s in order to establish its key elements and argue for Avini as an auteur with a unique cinematic style that includes strong personal and ideological ties. Shahri dar Aasemaan, which was Avini\u27s last documentary, covers the initial forty-five-day battle leading to the Iraqi occupation of the Iranian city of Khorramshahr when the Iran-Iraq war broke out in October of 1980. In order to better comprehend Avini as an auteur and his work, this study begins with a brief introduction to Avini\u27s biography and the history of the Iran-Iraq war. The following chapter is a comparison to The War, a documentary in seven episodes by American director Ken Burns in 2007 about the Second World War. The purpose of this comparison is to discuss Shahri dar Aasemaan in the context of another film that has documented a war at length rather than in isolation, a type of analysis that has not yet been conducted either inside or outside of Iranian borders about Avini\u27s films. The focus of the thesis\u27 remaining chapters is on Shahri dar Aasemaan as both artistic and cultural artifact

Class, nationalism and news: The BBC’s reporting of Hugo Chavez and the Bolivarian revolution

This article analyses BBC News Online’s reporting of the Bolivarian revolution in Venezuela, using a sample from a broader selection of 304 articles published on BBC News Online between 1998 and 2008. Against the BBC’s stated commitment to professional values, we find that the BBC’s organizational culture is underpinned by a liberal nationalist worldview, which limits its interpretive capacities. The analysis notes that the liberal nationalism underpinning BBC News Online’s reporting limits the interpretive capacities of journalists. The ideologically dominant national history of Venezuela (the exceptionalism thesis) forms an interpretive framework, which synchs with the BBC’s general conceptualization of the forms and function of a nation state and thus prevents adequate understanding of the present. Consequently, the coverage of contemporary Venezuelan politics masks the underlying class conflict, instead identifying Chavez, who has emerged seemingly from nowhere, as the key agent of political crisis. The BBC’s reliance on a narrative of the disruption of national unity allows it to take sides in the conflict whilst apparently remaining neutral

Business on television: continuity, change and risk in the development of television’s ‘business entertainment format’

This article traces the evolution of what has become known as the business entertainment format on British television. Drawing on interviews with channel controllers, commissioners and producers from across the BBC, Channel 4 and the independent sector this research highlights a number of key individuals who have shaped the development of the business entertainment format and investigates some of the tensions that arise from combining entertainment values with more journalistic or educational approaches to factual television. While much work has looked at docusoaps and reality programming, this area of television output has remained largely unexamined by television scholars. The research argues that as the television industry has itself developed into a business, programme-makers have come to view themselves as [creative] entrepreneurs thus raising the issue of whether the development off-screen of a more commercial, competitive and entrepreneurial TV marketplace has impacted on the way the medium frames its onscreen engagement with business, entrepreneurship, risk and wealth creation

Documentary Rhetoric, Fact or Fiction? University Students React to the Film, Bowling for Columbine

In American schools, violence has evolved as one of our most riveting social problems. The FBI reported at least 28 cases of school shootings since 1982 (Diket & Mucha, 2002). Educators are concerned about the growing number of violent acts in schools across America and seek reasons and results. They insist that teachers pay attention to the pictures students create, discuss violence and related issues with them, and make time to talk about understanding a volatile world (Susi, 2001; Diket & Mucha, 2002). Freedman (1997) earlier advocated that teachers encourage students to examine the media. Ballengee-Morris and Stuhr (2001) advocate that teachers examine visual culture, notably the theme of violence, and its socio-cultural context. jagodginski (1997) points out baby-boomer nostalgia and baby-buster counter-nostalgia as the real problem. Parents avoid the issues of violence and obscene influences. They want to return to their safe childhood. Schools do the same, consider the theme too controversial and thereby ignore the growing problem. Teachers need studies that report the results of practical investigation with students that lead to further examination of this complex problem of violence