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This chapter historicises and contextualises the evolution, production, and development of key Mexican screen melodramas over fifty-two years to understand and mediate Mexico’s ambivalence around socioeconomic background, ranother. Perhaps if Televisa had allowed its various ace and religion, gender and worth, family and duty. The chapter demonstrates the importance of localised scholarly inquiry into Mexican audiovisual media that considers not only narrative discourses, content and textual analyses, but also industrial records and practices, marketing campaigns and press releases, archival research and interviews, multimedia synergy, and comparative analysis. For some time, research on Mexican melodrama has had a strong social focus, with several writings about audience engagement, but it is imperative to have more close readings of the texts themselves to understand their cultural context and industrial histories. This research exposes societal changes within Mexico by utilising one of its most omnipresent forms of popular culture and provides a deeper understanding of Mexico’s primary media productions through the use of genre and remake theory. The representations of young women yield a multitude of tensions and ambiguities placed upon Mexican women, which reveal volumes about wider sociocultural expectations.

"The Routledge International Handbook of Perpetrator Studies provides the first comprehensive overview of this emerging interdisciplinary field in the humanities and social sciences. Featuring contributions by scholars from a wide variety of fields and disciplines, the Handbook charts the growth and development, foundations, key debates, core concerns, and frontiers of Perpetrator Studies. Focusing on genocide, terrorism, and other forms of political mass violence, this Handbook addresses questions of guilt and responsibility, definition, terminology, typology, motivations, group dynamics, memory, trauma, representation, and pedagogy. Offering a thematic and conceptual approach that facilitates a comparative analysis across historical, geographic, and disciplinary lines, the Handbook allows different disciplinary perspectives to confront one another. In so doing, this foundational volume presents contemporary perspectives on longstanding debates whilst also providing new contributions to the field. Written with an interdisciplinary readership in mind, the chapters provide an overview of existing work on a specific topic or issue, delineate current developments within the respective discipline or field, and make suggestions for further research. As such, the book will appeal to scholars across a range of disciplines, including history, sociology, anthropology, criminology, law, philosophy, memory studies, psychology, political science, literary studies, film studies, cultural studies, art history, and education"-- Provided by publisher.

This book explores Vietnamese popular television in the post-Reform era, that is, from 1986, focussing on the relationship between television and national imagination. It locates Vietnamese television in the experiences of everyday life and the prevailing network of power relations resulting from marketization and globalization, and, as such, moves beyond the clichéd assumption of Vietnamese media as a mere propagandist instrument of the party state. With examples from a wide range of television genres, the book demonstrates how Vietnamese television enables novel conditions of cultural oppression as well as political engagement in the name of the nation. In sharp contrast to the previous image of Vietnam as a war-torn land, post-Reform television conjures into being a new sense of national belonging based on an implicit rejection of the socialist past, hopes for peace and prosperity, and anxieties about a globalized future. This book highlights the richness of Vietnam’s current culture and identity, characterized, the book argues, by ‘fraternity without uniformity’.

From #Gamergate to the daily experiences of marginalization among gamers, gaming is entangled with mainstream cultures of systematic exploitation and oppression. Whether visible in the persistent color line that shapes the production, dissemination, and legitimization of dominant stereotypes within the industry itself, or in the dehumanizing representations often found within game spaces, many video games perpetuate injustice and mirror the inequities and violence that permeate society as a whole. Drawing from the latest research and from popular games such as World of warcraft and Tomb raider, Woke gaming examines resistance to spaces of violence, discrimination, and microaggressions in gaming culture. The contributors of these essays identify strategies to detox gaming culture and orient players toward progressive ends, illustrating the power and potential of video games to become catalysts for social justice

Feminism in Play focuses on women as they are depicted in video games, as participants in games culture, and as contributors to the games industry. This volume showcases women's resistance to the norms of games culture, as well as women's play and creative practices both in and around the games industry. Contributors analyze the interconnections between games and the broader societal and structural issues impeding the successful inclusion of women in games and games culture. In offering this framework, this volume provides a platform to the silenced and marginalized, offering counter-narratives to the post-racial and post-gendered fantasies that so often obscure the violent context of production and consumption of games culture.

There are clear challenges posed by rural and remote education in Australia. These challenges are caused both by physical and material factors, but more importantly epistemological divisions that have created a separation between Indigenous and non-Indigenous worlds. Video games have the potential to bridge this epistemological gap by explicating the differences between different knowledge systems and engaging students in exploring these differences. Crucially, these projects need to be co-constructed to ensure that not only the representations of Indigenous people surpass some dubious traditions, but that different epistemologies are adequately framed. There is an urgent need for research-informed game-based learning projects to begin to address the ‘epistemology gap’ and the challenges faced by all Australians.

Muslim members of the video game industry discuss the current state of Muslim representation within video games. This includes current problems with the way Muslims are represented and potential solutions. Our panelists come from all sides of the industry. From AAA, to indie, the panelists all have a unique voice and angle they would like to bring to the discussion. All panelists have grown up Muslim in western countries and have had to deal with certain adversities and challenges. It's through that experience that the panelists want to bring a lively discussion, backed with personal accounts and sources, that is not only engaging, but educational.

This article explores the ways game adaptations engage with existing popular culture constructions of race within the framework of commercial franchises. Its focus is on games which are part of the so-called “Frodo Franchise” based on Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit films. It considers the role played by licensing agreements, the conventions, and ludic elements of different game genres, the need for new characters and narratives to keep audiences engaged with an existing world, and the opportunity games offer for interactive exploration of a digital world, to illuminate both the challenges to and the opportunities for disrupting conventional representations of race and difference.

Incisive analyses of mass media - including such forms as talk shows, MTV, the Internet, soap operas, television sitcoms, dramatic series, pornography, and advertising-enable this provocative third edition of Gender, Race and Class in Media to engage students in critical mass media scholarship. Issues of power related to gender, race, and class are integrated into a wide range of articles examining the economic and cultural implications of mass media as institutions, including the political economy of media production, textual analysis, and media consumption. Throughout, Gender, Race and Class in Media examines the mass media as economic and cultural institutions that shape our social identities, especially in regard to gender, race, and class.

On 19 September 2006, the fi rst indication many people in Thailand received that the country was undergoing another military coup d’ é tat, the eighteenth such putsch since 1932, was when the nation’s six free-to-air television networks suddenly suspended regular programming and, channel by channel, started to broadcast a generic mix of royal news and light entertainment (Connors and Hewison 2008). Final confi rmation came again via television later that evening in the form of an offi cial announcement, broadcast at regular intervals across all stations from a central feed, in which the armed commanders in chief behind the coup – the awkwardly titled ‘Administrative Reform Group under the Democratic System with the King as the Head of State’ – explained apologetically that they had temporarily taken control of the nation’s airwaves, as indeed of the nation, exhorting viewers to remain calm and reassuring them that normalcy would soon be restored, at which point broadcasting reverted to the same steady flow of innocuous entertainment programming. For all its exceptional gravity, the 2006 coup’s strategic blend of direct state interventionist control of broadcasting combined with a more indirect use of escapist entertainment as populist pacifi er is arguably a structural characteristic of Thai television history writ large.

This chapter presents a critical analysis of media and change in postcolonial Malaysia, a South-East Asian nation of 29  million multicultural people, with a focus on the role of television in the nation’s transformation following independence from British rule in 1957. Despite having inherited the basic democratic institutions of the British political tradition, Malaysia continues to debate the transition from soft authoritarianism to democracy (Means 1996 :  103). Since 1957, Malaysia has been led by a single political party, the Barisan Nasional (BN). While the BN is a coalition of three major ethnic-based political groups, the United Malays National Organisation (UMNO), Malaysian Chinese Association (MCA) and the Malaysian Indian Congress (MIC), it is, in effect, a symbol of Malay-Muslim supremacy (Ketuanan Melayu). UMNO, the dominant group within the party, has, since its formation, aspired to uphold Malay culture as national culture and Islam as the offi cial religion for the country. From the fi rst general elections in 1959 until the 2008 general elections, the BN held two-thirds of the 222 seats in the Dewan Rakyat (House of Representatives). Malaysian media scholar Karthigesu ( 1987 , 1994 ) contends this was largely due to the role of public television, which was launched and promoted by government itself, broadcasting in its colonial service model. In fact, the arrival of state television in 1963 coincided with the formation of the Federation of Malaysia (Moten and Mokhtar 2013 ). In this chapter I argue that television has been pivotal in shaping and transforming the political and cultural landscape of Malaysia as the medium evolved from a strictly national to a loosely global and then fluidly trans-local orientation. While television fi rst enabled the BN to hold its two-thirds majority and build the nation premised on Malay supremacy policies, it subsequently played a part in weakening the BN’s grip over the multiethnic electorate as the UMNO Ketuanan Melayu ideology, layered deep beneath the powdered face of television, surfaced in the digital media era.

Game Studies is a rapidly growing area of contemporary scholarship, yet volumes in the area have tended to focus on more general issues. With Playing with the Past, game studies is taken to the next level by offering a specific and detailed analysis of one area of digital game play -- the representation of history. The collection focuses on the ways in which gamers engage with, play with, recreate, subvert, reverse and direct the historical past, and what effect this has on the ways in which we go about constructing the present or imagining a future. What can World War Two strategy games teach us about the reality of this complex and multifaceted period? Do the possibilities of playing with the past change the way we understand history? If we embody a colonialist's perspective to conquer 'primitive' tribes in Colonization, does this privilege a distinct way of viewing history as benevolent intervention over imperialist expansion? The fusion of these two fields allows the editors to pose new questions about the ways in which gamers interact with their game worlds. Drawing these threads together, the collection concludes by asking whether digital games - which represent history or historical change - alter the way we, today, understand history itself.

Three seasons of NZ Idol , the New Zealand adaptation of the global Idols format, were aired on public broadcaster TVNZ’s channel TV2 in 2004, 2005 and 2006. The final episode of the first season was the most-watched television programme in New Zealand in 2004, with 1.4 million people, a third of the New Zealand population, tuning in (South Pacific Pictures, 2004). In terms of ratings NZ Idol has been one of the most successful locally made television programmes of the last decade. At first glance, NZ Idol has also been very successful in representing ethnic and cultural diversity. In the auditions phase of the show young New Zealanders of 16 years plus from a range of backgrounds are featured, and in the subsequent phases the audience gets to know a selection of them intimately. The winners of all three seasons (Ben Lummis in season 1, Rosita Vai in season 2, and Matt Sounoa in season 3) have Pacific Island roots, and as a result three young “brown” people were crowned “New Zealand Idols.” This is remarkable, since according to a previous study by Misha Kavka (2004: 231) non-white people have largely been absent from New Zealand reality TV programmes. A closer look suggests, however, that featuring contestants from different cultural backgrounds in NZ Idol generally serves a particular nation building agenda that New Zealand is heavily involved in as a postcolonial society, in which ethnic minorities are subjected to representations that favour the interests of dominant cultural groups. The aim of this nation building agenda is to establish a new and distinct sense of national identity which will set New Zealand apart from Britain, the former colonial power, and other English-speaking nations.

The past decade has seen an explosion of lifestyle makeover television shows with audiences being urged to “renovate” everything from their homes, bodies, and children to their pets, a process that has seen the emergence of an army of lifestyle gurus on television advising us on what not to eat and what not to wear. While critical academic attention has largely focused on blockbuster reality television formats like Big Brother and Survivor, more recently a growing body of scholarship has started to focus on the “lifestyle turn” on television and the rise of the makeover format. To date much of the work on makeover television has focused on its role in the US and UK. However, in the past couple of years the lifestyle makeover show has become an increasingly global phenomenon with audiences around the world embracing everything from home renovation to plastic surgery makeover shows. This essay is concerned with examining the implications of the global dissemination of such modes of programming, associated as they are with ideologies of neoliberal individualism, self-surveillance and self-promotion, and with a strongly consumption-oriented aesthetic. It emerges out of a pilot study I have been conducting with Dr Fran Martin at the University of Melbourne as a preliminary step in a larger transnational comparative study of lifestyle programming in Asia in which we seek to examine the role of lifestyle television in both shaping and reflecting broader shifts in social and cultural identity accompanying the rise of consumer-based modes of modernity.

The place of the media in an effective liberal democracy is generally seen assacrosanct. The media play an important role in the collection and dissemination of information and provide an avenue for keeping politiciansaccountable to their constituents.Mindful of the impact themedia can have onthe fortunes of a political party, and the careers of individuals within it, mostpoliticians in liberal democracies tend to tread carefully in terms of how theymanage their relationship with the media. Politicians hire public relations andmedia advisors, and seek media training in order to learn how to ‘use’ themedia to further their political aims. In the main, the approach of India’spolitical parties to media relations has become remarkably similar. However, an exception appears when we examine the relationship of theBahujan Samaj Party (BSP), and its leader Mayawati, with the media in bothits mainstream forms – print and television. Despite early attempts to engagewith the media, by the late 1990s the BSP was running election campaignswith a media strategy of almost complete disengagement. This has not led topoor electoral results for the party. In fact, the party has been in power in thenorth Indian state of Uttar Pradesh (UP) on a number of occasions: in 1995,1997 and 2002, either in coalition or as a minority government. Upon winning minority government in the 2002 election, a journalist declared that ‘Inan age of television and information technology, Mayawati is a politician whodefies all conventional standards and norms . . . [and] despises giving interviews . . . ’(Bhushan, 2002: 18). In May 2007 the BSP won the UP state election outright to take power as the first majority government that UP hasseen for 15 years. Again this election was won while largely ignoring main-stream newspapers and television, with Mayawati even taunting journalistsafter the win, ‘I know you were upset I did not meet you during the campaign but I noticed that you had already run ahead with your conclusions, so Ithought why disturb you?’ (Gopinath, 2007).

This volume is divided into three parts: 'Adaptation and Local Production in East Asia', 'Formats, Clones, and Generic Variations' and 'New Television'.

Questions about the meanings of racialized representations must be included as part of developing an ethical game design practice. This paper examines the various ways in which race and racial contexts are represented in a selected range of commercially available e-games, namely war, sports and action-adventure games. The analysis focuses on the use of racial slurs and the contingencies of historical re-representation in war games; the limited representation of black masculinity in sports games and the romanticization of ‘ghetto play’ in urban street games; and the pathologization and fetishization of race in ‘crime sim’ action-adventure games such as True Crime: Streets of LA. This paper argues for, firstly, a continuous critical engagement with these dominant representations in all their evolving forms; secondly, the necessary inclusion of reflexive precepts in e-games development contexts; and thirdly, the importance of advocating for more diverse and equitable racialized representations in commercial e-games.

The previous chapter introduced in broad brushstrokes the issues at stake in this study, beginning with a critique of globalization and moving on to sketch in finer detail national television systems, the role of local content, and the economic importance of formats. The chapter concluded with a brief overview of the vagaries of copyright law as it applies to formats. Here, we initiate a discussion of Asian television systems beginning with a much different perspective on the ramifications of cultural borrowing. In this context we note that the format business straddles the divide between creative endeavour and innovation on the one hand, and slavish imitation on the other. This polarization manifests in widespread misunderstanding of the goals of format producers and distributors, and the role that formats play in the shaping of television schedules. We need therefore to flesh out the in-between issues. These are primarily concerned with the relationship between the format and its localization, television consumption within ‘cultural continents’, and changes in media systems. Taking this further we note the relationship between production and reception within Asia, the growth of television industries in the region and the relationship between formatting and new media distribution platforms that use interactive technologies allowing viewers to feedback responses. This exercise enables us to identify an alternative list of conceptual tools to those championed by political economy scholars.

"Addressing both the scope and the significance of television program format transferthe practice of using the basic idea of a program to produce a new version of that programthis book details this rapidly growing area of the international television distribution system. Also addressed is the remaking of a program by the television industry of another nation, highlighting issues of meaning and cultural identity of national audiences."

This text provides readers with useful summaries and evaluations of key arguments relating to the development of television as an industry across the globe and its potential cultural impact. There is a continual insistence in the book on the need to connect issues of industry with those of culture.