The Prison System and the Media: How “Orange Is The New Black” Engages with the Prison as a Normalizing Agent

The purpose of this project is to ascertain the ways in which Orange is the New Black uses its platform to either complicate or reify narratives about the prison system, prisoners and their relationship to the state. This research uses the works of Giorgio Agamben, Colin Dayan, Michelle Alexander and Lisa Guenther to situate the ways the state uses the prison and social narratives about the prison to extend its control on certain populations beyond prison walls through police presence, parole, the war on drugs and prison fees. From that basis, this work argues that while Orange does challenge some narratives about race and sexuality, because of its reliance on “bad choices” as a humanizing trope and its reliance on certain racialized stereotypes for entertainment, the show ultimately does more to reify existing narratives that support state interests.

The Perspectives of Gay, Bisexual, and Queer Adolescent Males with Parent-Child Sex Communication

Problem: Gay, bisexual, and queer (GBQ) adolescent males are disproportionately affected by negative sexual health outcomes compared to their heterosexual counterparts. Their sex education needs are not sufficiently addressed in the home and the larger ecological systems. The omission of their sex education needs at a time when they are forming a sexual identity during adolescence compels GBQ males to seek information in unsupervised settings. Evidence-based interventions aimed at ensuring positive sexual health outcomes through sex communication cannot be carried out with these youth as research on how parents and GBQ males discuss sex in the home has been largely uninvestigated.

Methods: This naturalistic qualitative study focused on the interpretive reports of 15- to 20-year-old GBQ males’ discussions about sex-related topics with their parents. From a purposive sample of 30 male adolescents who self-identified as GBQ, participants who could recall at least one conversation about sex with their parents were recruited for one-time interviews and card sorts. This strategy revealed, using Bronfenbrenners’ Bioecological Theory, their perceptions about sex communication in the context of their reciprocal relationship and the ecological systems that GBQ males and their parents navigate.

Results: Parents received poor ratings as sex educators, were generally viewed as not confident in their communication approach, and lacked knowledge about issues pertinent to GBQ sons. Nevertheless, participants viewed parents as their preferred source of sex information and recognized multiple functions of sex communication. The value placed by GBQ youth on sex communication underscores their desire to ensure an uninterrupted parent-child relationship in spite of their GBQ sexual orientation. For GBQ children, inclusive sex communication is a proxy for parental acceptance.

Results show that the timing, prompts, teaching aids, and setting of sex communication for this population are similar to what has been reported with heterosexual samples. However, most GBQ sons rarely had inclusive guidance about sex and sexuality that matched their attraction, behavior, and identities. Furthermore, the assumption of heterosexuality resulted in the early awareness of being different from their peers which led them to covertly search for sex information. The combination of assumed heterosexuality and their early reliance on themselves for applicable information is a missed parental opportunity to positively impact the health of GBQ sons. More importantly, due to the powerful reach of new media, there is a critical period of maximum receptiveness that has been identified which makes inclusive sex communication paramount in the pre-sexual stage for this population. Our findings also indicate that there are plenty of opportunities for systemic improvements to meet this population’s sexual education needs.

Financial media, globalisation, and China’s economic integration: comparing narrative construction of the Economist and Caijing

In June 2015, legal frameworks of the Asian Infrastructural Investment Bank were signed by its 57 founding members. Proposed and initiated by China, this multilateral development bank is considered to be an Asian counterpart to break the monopoly of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. In October 2015, China’s Central Bank announced a benchmark interest rate cut to combat the economic slowdown. The easing policy coincides with the European Central Bank’s announcement of doubts over US Fed’s commitment to raise interest rates. Global stock markets responded positively to China’s move, with the exception of the indexes from Wall Street (Bland, 2015; Elliott, 2015). In the meantime, China’s ‘One Belt, One Road’ (or New Silk Road Economic Belt) became atopic of discourse in relation to its growing global economy, as China pledged $40 billion to trade and infrastructure projects (Bermingham, 2015). The foreign policy aims to reinforce the economic belt from western China through Central Asia towards Europe, as well as to construct maritime trading routes from coastal China through the South China Sea (Summers, 2015). In 2012, The Economist launched a new China section, to reveal the complexity of the‘meteoric rise’ of China. John Micklethwait, who was then the chief editor of the magazine, said that China’s emergence as a global power justified giving it a section of its own(Roush, 2012). In July 2015, Hu Shuli, the former chief editor of Caijing, announced the launch of a think tank and financial data service division called Caixin Insight Group, which encompasses the new Caixin China Purchasing Managers Index (PMI). Incooperation with with Markit Group, a principal global provider of PMI, the index soon became a widely cited economic indicator. One anecdote from November’s Caixin shows how much has changed: in a high-profile dialogue between Hu Shuli and Kevin Rudd, Hu insisted on asking questions in English; interestingly, the former Prime Minister of Australia insisted on replying in Chinese. These recent developments point to one thing: the economic ascent of China and its increasing influence on the power play between economics and politics in world markets. China has begun to take a more active role in rule making and enforcement under neoliberal frameworks. However, due to the country’s size and the scale of its economy in comparison to other countries, China’s version of globalisation has unique characteristics. The ‘Capitalist-socialist’ paradox is vital to China’s market-oriented transformation. In order to comprehend how such unique features are articulated and understood, there are several questions worth investigating in the realms of media and communication studies,such as how China’s neoliberal restructuring is portrayed and perceived by different types of interested parties, and how these portrayals are de-contextualised and re-contextualised in global or Anglo-American narratives. Therefore, based on a combination of the themes of globalisation, financial media and China’s economic integration, this thesis attempts to explore how financial media construct the narratives of China’s economic globalisation through the deployment of comparative and multi-disciplinary approaches. Two outstanding elite financial magazines, Britain’s The Economist, which has a global readership and influence, and Caijing, China’s leading financial magazine, are chosen as case studies to exemplify differing media discourses, representing, respectively, Anglo-American and Chinese socio-economic and political backgrounds, as well as their own journalistic cultures. This thesis tries to answer the questions of how and why China’s neoliberal restructuring is constructed from a globally-oriented perspective. The construction primarily involves people who are influential in business and policymaking. Hence, the analysis falls into the paradigm of elite-elite communication, which is an important but relatively less developed perspective in studying China and its globalisation. The comparing of characteristics of narrative construction are the result of the textual analysis of articles published over a ten-year period (mid-1998 to mid-2008). The corpus of samples come from the two media outlets’ coverage of three selected events:China becoming a member of the World Trade Organization, its outward direct investment, and the listing of stocks of Chinese companies in overseas exchanges, which are mutually exclusive in sample collection and collectively exhaustive in the inclusion of articles regarding China’s economic globalisation. The findings help to understand that, despite language, socio-economic and political differences, elite financial media with globally-oriented readerships share similar methods of and approaches to agenda setting, the evaluation of news prominence, the selection of frame, and the advocacy of deeply rooted neoliberal ideas. The comparison of their distinctive features reflects the different phases of building up the sense of identity in their readers as global elites, as well as the different economic interests that are aligned with the corresponding readerships. However, textual analysis is only relevant in terms of exploring how the narratives are constructed and the elements they include; textual analysis alone prevents us from seeing the obstacles and the constrains of the journalistic practices of construction. Therefore, this thesis provides a brief discussion of interviews with practitioners from the two media, in order to understand how similar or different narratives are manifested and perceived, how the concept of neoliberalism deviates from and is justified in the Chinese context, and how and for what purpose deviations arise from Western to Chinese contexts. The thesis also contributes to defining financial media in the domain of elite communication. The relevant and closely interlocking concepts of globalisation, elitism and neoliberalism are discussed, and are used as a theoretical bedrock in the analysis of texts and contexts. It is important to address the agenda-setting and ideological role of elite financial media, because of its narrative formula of infusing business facts with opinions,which is important in constructing the global elite identity as well as influencing neoliberal policy-making. On the other hand, ‘journalistic professionalism’ has been redefined, in that the elite identity is shared by the content producer, reader and the actors in the news stories emerging from the much-compressed news cycle. The professionalism of elite financial media requires a dual definition, that of being professional in the understanding of business facts and statistics, and that of being professional in the making sense of stories by deploying economic logic.

Questioning the merits and demerits of electronic communication in Social Work

This paper examines the social dynamics of electronic exchanges in the human services, particularly in social work. It focuses on the observable effects that email and texting have on the linguistic, relational and clinical rather than managerial aspects of the profession. It highlights how electronic communication is affecting professionals in their practice and learners as they become acculturated to social work. What are the gains and losses of the broad use of electronic devices in daily lay and professional, verbal and non-verbal communication? Will our current situation be seriously detrimental to the demeanor of future practitioners, their use of language, and their ability to establish close personal relationships? The paper analyzes social work linguistic and behavioral changes in light of the growth of electronic communication and offers a summary of merits and demerits viewed through a prism emerging from Baron’s (2000) analysis of human communication.

The impact of political and economic crisis on the polarization of the Spanish media

In this paper the characteristics of the cyclical political polarization of the Spanish media system are defined. From this study, a prospective analysis raises doubts about this scenario remains unchanged because of the political and economic crisis. It seeks to define the role played by political and media actors in polarization focusing on the two legislatures where the tension reached higher levels (1993-1996 and 2004-2008) and compares it with the developments faced by them in the current economical and political context of crisis. To achieve these aims, it has been performed an analysis of media content (since 1993) and looked through primary sociological sources and the scientific literature about polarization. This is an exploratory, critical and descriptive case analysis.

Contemporary publics: shifting boundaries in new media, technology and culture

If the twentieth century has been dominated by discussions of the public, public life, and the public sphere, Contemporary Publics argues that, in the twenty-first century, we must complicate the singularity of that paradigm and start thinking of our world in terms of multiple, overlapping, and competing publics. In three distinct streams—art, media and technology, and the intimate life—this volume offers up the intellectual and political significance of thinking through the plurality of our publics. “Countering Neoliberal Publics: Screen and Space,” explores how different artistic practices articulate the challenges and desires of multiple publics. “Making and Shaping Publics: Discourse and Technology” showcases how media shape publics, and how new and emerging publics use these technologies to construct identities. “Commodifying Public Intimacies” examines what happens to the notion of the private when intimacies structure publics, move into public spaces, and develop value that can be exchanged and circulated.

Tensions, transisitions and triumphs : examining the transitional experience of fashion students between school and university

Joining any new community involves transition and adaptation. Just as we learn to adapt to different cultures when we choose to live abroad, so students learn the language and culture of an academic community in order to succeed within that environment. At the same time however, students bring with them individual learning styles and expectations, influenced by their prior experiences of learning and of life more generally. Some have excelled at school; others have come to fashion seeking something in which to excel for the first time. Commencing a degree in fashion design brings students into contact with peers and lecturers who share their passion, providing them with a community of practice which can be both supportive and at the same time intimidating.----- In Queensland where university level study in fashion is such a new phenomenon, few applicants have any depth of training in design when they apply to study fashion. Unlike disciplines such as Dance or Visual Art, where lecturers can expect a good level of skill upon entry to a degree program, we have to look for the potential evidenced in an applicant’s portfolio, much of which is untutored work that they have generated themselves in preparation for application. This means that many first year fashion students at QUT whilst very passionate about the idea of fashion design are often very naïve about the practice of fashion design, with limited knowledge of the history or cultural context of fashion and few of the technical skills needed to translate their ideas into three dimensional products.----- For teachers engaging with first year students in the design studios, it is critical to be cognizant of this mix of different experiences, expectations and emotions in order to design curricula and assessment that stretch and engage students without unduly increasing their sense of frustration and anxiety. This paper examines a first year project designed to provide an introduction to design process and to learning within a creative discipline. The lessons learnt provide a valuable and transferable resource for lecturers in a variety of art and design disciplines.

Uses of YouTube : digital literacy and the growth of knowledge

I invented YouTube. Well, not YouTube exactly, but something close – something called YIRN; and not by myself exactly, but with a team. In 2003-5 I led a research project designed to link geographically dispersed young people, to allow them to post their own photos, videos and music, and to comment on the same from various points of view – peer to peer, author to public, or impresario to audience. We wanted to find a way to take the individual creative productivity that is associated with the Internet and combine it with the easy accessibility and openness to other people’s imagination that is associated with broadcasting; especially, in the context of young people, listening to the radio. So we called it the Youth Internet Radio Network, or YIRN.

Less popular but more democratic? Corrie, Clarkson and the dancing Cru

The central cultural experience of modernity has been change, both the ‘creative destruction’ of existing structures, and the growth, often exponential, of new knowledge. During the twentieth century, the central cultural platform for the collective experience of modernising societies changed too, from page and stage to the screen – from publishing, the press and radio to cinema, television and latterly computer screens. Despite the successive dominance of new media, none has lasted long at the top. The pattern for each was to give way to a successor platform in popularity, but to continue as part of an increasingly crowded media menu. Modern media are supplemented not supplanted by their successors.

Digital scholarship and pedagogy, the next step : cultural science.

There are two aspects to the problem of digital scholarship and pedagogy. One is to do with scholarship; the other with pedagogy. In scholarship, the association of knowledge with its printed form remains dominant. In pedagogy, the desire to abandon print for ‘new’ media is urgent, at least in some parts of the academy. Film and media studies are thus at the intersection of opposing forces – pulling the field ‘back’ to print and ‘forward’ to digital media. These tensions may be especially painful in a field whose own object of study is another form of communication, neither print nor digital but broadcast. Although print has been overtaken in the popular marketplace by audio-visual forms, this was never achieved in the domain of scholarship. Even when it is digitally distributed, the output of research is still a ‘paper.’ But meanwhile, in the realm of teaching, production- and practice-based pedagogy has become firmly established. Nevertheless a disjunction remains, between high-end scholarship in research universities and vocational training in teaching institutions; but neither is well equipped to deal with the digital challenge.

Attitudes towards American brands and brand America

A study of 556 students at colleges and universities in Australia, Hong Kong and Singapore explored the relationship between attitude towards the United States and brand attitudes and preferences. Singaporean student attitudes towards both the US Government and US people were higher than were those of the Australian and Hong Kong students. Coke, Nike and McDonald's were among both the most-liked and disliked US brands among the international students, a finding suggesting that brands may possess both a 'lovemark' status, as described in the literature, and its opposite — 'loathemark' status — within the same demographic group. US brand preference scores did not offer support for the belief that international consumers 'vote with their pocketbooks' by refusing to purchase US brands if they have a negative attitude towards the United States. Among Hong Kong and Singaporean students, favourable attitudes towards the purchase of US brands was found to be positively related to favourability towards the US Government.

‘Beijing bling’: creative details and consumer choices in contemporary China : an interview with Hung Huang

This edited interview with Hung Huang, CEO of China Interactive Media Group (CIMG), was conducted by Lucy Montgomery in Beijing on 12 August 2005. It was done as part of the ARC Discovery research project, Internationalising Creative Industries: China, the WTO and the Knowledge Economy, led by John Hartley. That project is investigating the development of creative industries in China by focusing on a number of creative services including fashion magazines. Huang’s group publishes five fashion magazines in China, including i-Look, Youth International (Qingnian Yizu), which is the Chinese edition of Seventeen (originally founded by TV-Guide mogul Walter Annenberg), and the Beijing and Shanghai versions of London’s Time Out. It also produces TV programs under the same media brands. The company is based in the stylish Bauhaus-designed former factory 798-Space in the district of Dashanzi, Beijing (see www.798space.com). Huang went to school in Greenwich Village and graduated from Vassar College in New York. She is the daughter of Zhang Hanzhi, who was Mao Zedong’s personal English teacher, and stepdaughter of Qiao Guanhua, Foreign Minister of China during the 1970s at the time of the Nixon visit. Her book My Abnormal Life sold 200,000 copies in China.