91 research outputs found
Television entertainment in socialist Eastern Europe: between cold war politics and global developments
Television entertainment in socialist Eastern Europe: between cold war politics and global development
Understanding Socialist television: concepts, objects, methods
This article develops a number of conceptual and methodological proposals aimed at furthering
a firmer agenda for the field of socialist television studies. It opens by addressing the issue of relevance
of the field, identifying three critical contributions the study of socialist television can make to media,
communication and cultural studies. It then puts forward a number of proposals tied to three key issues:
strategies of overcoming the Cold War framework that dominates much of existing literature; the importance of
a multilayered analysis of socialist television that considers its cultural, political as well as economic aspects;
and the ways in which we can challenge the prevalence of methodological nationalism in the field
National media events: from displays of unity to enactments of division
Despite the conspicuous presence of nationhood and nationalism in existing studies of media events and rituals, explicit conceptualizations of the link between these media phenomena and nationhood remain scarce. Drawing on existing literature and research on the topic, this article proposes to shift attention away from ceremonial occasions primarily aimed at celebrating national unity, towards the more distressing events and mobilization marathons enacting partition and instituting divisions among nations, ethnicities, cultures, races or religions. It provides a series of propositions regarding the involvement of media events in the transformation of audiences into nations, and discusses two categories of media rituals that are linked closely to contemporary forms of national mobilization: rituals of partition and mobilization marathons. Given the disentanglement of nations and states and the multi-ethnic nature of modern states and media spaces, such media occasions ought to receive more sustained attention in the future
Negotiating European identity at the periphery: 'Slovenian nation', 'Bosnian refugees' and 'illegal migration'
Negotiating European identity at the periphery: 'Slovenian nation', 'Bosnian refugees' and 'illegal migration
The television revolution: television as a domestic object in socialist Eastern Europe
The television revolution: television as a domestic object in socialist Eastern Europ
Between segmentation and integration: media systems and ethno-cultural diversity in Central and Eastern Europe
Between segmentation and integration: media systems and ethno-cultural diversity in Central and Eastern Europ
Audience history as a history of ideas: towards a transnational history.
One of the possible ways of approaching audience history is by focusing on the history of ideas
about audiences. This article examines the benefits and shortcomings of such an approach and
develops a set of methodological propositions, drawing on the principles and methods of the
German tradition of Begriffsgeschichte (history of concepts). To demonstrate the usefulness of
these propositions, the article briefly examines the ideas about audiences in socialist Yugoslavia,
focusing on the surge of ideas about politically engaged audiences in the late 1960s. The concluding
part of the article situates this historical episode in the wider geographical context and outlines
possible avenues for a broader, transnational investigation of the history of ideas about audiences
Approaches to television and nationalism: cross-country comparison, longitudinal analysis, popular culture and audience research
Approaches to television and nationalism: cross-country comparison, longitudinal analysis, popular culture and audience researc
The persistence of the past: memory, generational cohorts and the 'Iron Curtain'
Despite considerable evidence of the link between generational cohorts and mnemonic persistence
in other social and historical contexts, existing research on memory in former state socialist
countries tends to focus primarily on evidence of mnemonic change. In contrast, this article
seeks to develop a more nuanced understanding of post-state-socialist memories, one capable of
accounting for both mnemonic change and persistence. Methodologically, the article combines the
analysis of personal memories across several generations with a reconstruction of the changing
contours of everyday life in different historical periods, based on archival and secondary sources.
To demonstrate the usefulness of such an approach, the article examines the memories of life at
the Yugoslav border with Italy, as recounted by the inhabitants of the Slovenian border town of
Nova Gorica in 2008
The European and the national in communication research
The article discusses some of the major omissions and simplifications created
by established approaches to European communication, in particular
the inclination to think of Europeanization primarily, and often exclusively,
in relation to things national. It points to the simplistic narrative that sees
transnational communication in Europe as a very recent phenomenon, and
demonstrates how this narrative glosses over various historical forms of
transnational communication in Europe. It then briefly addresses the intellectual
roots of this narrative, and argues that they also lead to neglecting
the existence of diverse, often competing contemporary forms of
Europeanization and transnationalization in public communication.
Finally, the article argues that more sustained attention should be paid to
subnational patterns of stratification of European communication, particularly
those arising along class divisions
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