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Violent television programs are highly preferred by children. They stimulate their emotions and increase curiosity about violence-related issues. This means that watching violent television programs has an impact upon their way of perceiving the world around them and acting in response to it. This study investigated the impacts of watching violent television programs on secondary school children in Tanzania. The specific objectives were: to examine children's accessibility to the TV, ascertain the types of violent TV programs and the time children spend watching them, determine the ways in which watching violent TV programs affects their academic performance, find out the impact of watching violent TV programs on their discipline, and examine the role of parents in addressing the impacts of watching violent TV programs upon their children. Results indicate that most secondary school children watch violent TV programs at home in the sitting rooms. They spend an average of three hours per day on weekdays, and seven-and-half hours on weekends, watching movies, music, drama, and informational programs that were identified as the most violent ones. Obviously, spending lots of time watching violent TV programs decreases children's academic performance and discipline. This book is important because it discusses the parents' role in discouraging and limiting children from watching violent TV programs, and choosing appropriate TV programs for them.

How culture uses games and how games use culture: an examination of Latin America's gaming practices and the representation of the region's cultures in games. Video games are becoming an ever more ubiquitous element of daily life, played by millions on devices that range from smart phones to desktop computers. An examination of this phenomenon reveals that video games are increasingly being converted into cultural currency. For video game designers, culture is a resource that can be incorporated into games; for players, local gaming practices and specific social contexts can affect their playing experiences. In Cultural Code, Phillip Penix-Tadsen shows how culture uses games and how games use culture, looking at examples related to Latin America. Both static code and subjective play have been shown to contribute to the meaning of games; Penix-Tadsen introduces culture as a third level of creating meaning. Penix-Tadsen focuses first on how culture uses games, looking at the diverse practices of play in Latin America, the ideological and intellectual uses of games, and the creative and economic possibilities opened up by video games in Latin America—the evolution of regional game design and development. Examining how games use culture, Penix-Tadsen discusses in-game cultural representations of Latin America in a range of popular titles (pointing out, for example, appearances of Rio de Janeiro's Christ the Redeemer statue in games from Call of Duty to the tourism-promoting Brasil Quest). He analyzes this through semiotics, the signifying systems of video games and the specific signifiers of Latin American culture; space, how culture is incorporated into different types of game environments; and simulation, the ways that cultural meaning is conveyed procedurally and algorithmically through gameplay mechanics. Source: Publisher

Over the last decade Spain and Mexico have both produced an extraordinary wealth of television drama. Drawing on both national practices of production and reception and international theories of textual analysis this book offers the first study of contemporary quality TV drama in two countries where television has displaced cinema as the creative medium that shapes the national narrative. As dramatized societies, Spain and Mexico are thus at once reflected and refracted by the new series on the small screen.

This article explores the attitudes of EVE Online players toward their Russian counterparts. Popular community opinion paints Russian players as aggressive, cliquish and hostile, and as cheats who exploit the game in order to make (real-world) money. The article also analyzes the ways in which Russian pilots challenge, subvert, and discuss these attitudes. Two key arguments are presented. First, that although perceptions of Russian EVE players are often negative, these discourses in EVE are complicated by the fact that aggression, organization, and tight player groups are prerequisites for success within the game. Second, the opinions and agency of Russian players are highlighted. By examining both Russian- and English-language discussions, we see that rather than being silent victims of discrimination, or economic migrants “ruining” the game for other players, Russian pilots inhabit a complex space in a community engaged in two-way dialogue about culture, ethnicity, and play practices in EVE.

The Paramilitary Hero on Turkish Television: A Case Study on Valley of the Wolves explores the representation and reception of nationalism and masculinity in Turkey through an examination of the popular television serial, Valley of the Wolves which has been aired on Turkish television since 2003. This detailed examination of the show demonstrates a particular discourse of nationalism, namely the Turkish Islam synthesis embedded in a gender-specific regime in which the paramilitary hero is placed at the centre. The study draws on thirty-seven in-depth interviews with viewers of the programme from different social backgrounds. These viewers read the serial from various perspectives in the light of their gendered experiences, suggesting that the relationship between text and audience is not necessarily predetermined by the former, but is rather constructed through an interdiscursive process. The book also examines the pleasures of the “contesting” readers of Valley of the Wolves, drawing on the audience interviews, and argues that critical approaches to a particular media text do not present a barrier to audience pleasures.

Seeking to address the general question, ‘Where is Digital Asia?’, this paper explores the various ways in which the digital and virtual realm interacts with the problematic and contested category of Asia. Beginning with a discussion of the relationship between Asia and Digital Asia, as both cartographic and ideological sites, it moves on to connect Digital Asia with the discourse of techno-Orientalism. Using the example of the videogame as an instance of a digital location that can be visited and explored, this article suggests that the gamic quality of interactivity adds a new, experiential dimension to the ideological structure of (techno-)Orientalism, hence positing the utility of a new form of ‘Gamic Orientalism’. Focussing on the ‘digital dōjō’ as the site of Gamic Orientalism and Digital Asia par excellence, this paper concludes with a discussion of the ways in which gamers represent their engagement with this site in a manner that echoes the way martial artists talk about the significance of their art as self-cultivation. Illustrated with texts from the bushidō canon and interviews with gamers, this playful and experimental piece posits the possibility of ‘virtual bushidō’ as the ultimate expression of Gamic Orientalism, suggesting that Digital Asia is finally located in an ideologically conditioned mode of engagement with the digital medium rather than in any cartographically defined space.

Similar to the other countries discussed in this volume, elite dominance over mass media has been a main characteristic of Filipino history. Foreign-educated Filipino intellectuals from wealthy families founded the early periodicals that demanded reform and/or independence from Spanish colonization in the late nineteenth century (Anderson 1983 ). Today, ‘old rich’ landowning families own and operate television networks, radio stations, and newspapers not only as part of prestigious and profi table media conglomerates, but also in connection with their interests in industries as varied as oil and agriculture to insurance, shipping, and mining.

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.

Allyson Nadia Field recovers the forgotten body of African American filmmaking from the 1910s which she calls uplift cinema. These films were part of the racial uplift project, which emphasized education, respectability, and self-sufficiency, and weren't only responses to racist representations of African Americans in other films.

Since their development in their current format in the early 1990s as a means to attract female viewers in their twenties, Japanese prime-time television dramas-known commonly as ‘ dorama ’ 1 —have featured working women. Even police procedurals, medical dramas, and serials based on ‘ shojo manga ’ (graphic novels for girls) depict women working outside the home. The dorama most watched by Japanese audiences older than age 25, and those that continue to attract global fans, present the daily lives of independent women working in Tokyo. The protagonists enact fantasies about female professionals while depicting real issues facing the larger generations they represent. Viewers may not want to be these characters, but they can see aspects of themselves in them.

Race, Gender, and Deviance in Xbox Live provides a much-needed theoretical framework for examining deviant behavior and deviant bodies within one of the largest virtual gaming communities—Xbox Live. Previous research on video games has focused mostly on violence and examining violent behavior resulting from consuming this medium. This limited scope has skewed criminologists' understanding of video games and video game culture. Xbox Live has proven to be more than just a gaming platform for users. It has evolved into a multimedia entertainment outlet for more than 20 million users. This book examines the nature of social interactions within Xbox Live, which are often riddled with deviant behavior, including but not limited to racism and sexism. The text situates video games within a hegemonic framework deploying whiteness and masculinity as the norm. The experiences of the marginalized bodies are situated within the framework of deviance as they fail to conform to the hegemonic norm and become victims of racism, sexism, and other types of harassment.

This landmark work of history and theory challenges every accepted notion about the nature of black women’s lives. Ain’t I A Woman examines the impact of sexism on black women during slavery, the historic devaluation of black womanhood, black male sexism, racism within the recent women’s movement, and black women’s involvement with feminism. hooks refutes the antifeminist claim that black women are not victims of sexist oppression nor in need of an autonomous women’s movement. She pushes feminist dialogue to new limits by claiming that all progressive struggles are significant only when they take place within a broadly defined feminist movement which takes as its starting point that race, class, and sex are immutable facts of human existence. bell hooks’ insight as a black woman and a feminist extends the scope of feminist theory and practice for us all, and marks the emergence of a revitalized feminism in the 1980s.

"In the critical essays collected in Black Looks, bell hooks interrogates old narratives and argues for alternative ways to look at blackness, black subjectivity, and whiteness. Her focus is on spectatorship--in particular, the way blackness and black people are experienced in literature, music, television, and especially film--and her aim is to create a radical intervention into the way we talk about race and representation. As she describes: 'The essays in Black Looks are meant to challenge and unsettle, to disrupt and subvert.' As students, scholars, activists, intellectuals, and any other readers who have engaged with the book since its original release in 1992 can attest, that's exactly what these pieces do"(Provided by publisher)

The construction of a problem, be it a crisis or a moral panic, is an attempt of policing and control, for the maintenance of hegemony and authority (Hall et al. 1978 ). A problem emerges as a problem only when it is out of its proper place, just like dirt becomes dirt only when it is not properly placed in the earth. The elimination of dirt is necessary in maintaining the cleanliness of the social order (Douglas 2002 ). In other words, it is the need for a particular social arrangement that constitutes the existence of a problem. Taiyu, the lingua franca of the Taiwanese, became a problem of dialect (called Minnanyu) to be eliminated when the KMT colonial regime moved to Taiwan, building it as a Chinese nation and instituting Mandarin as the national language. Television is central to the building of the Chinese nation. Taiyu serial dramas were broadcast soon after the fi rst network was established in 1962, but have been constructed as the most problematic and debased genre since the early 1970s when the second TV station, CTV (1969), and the third, CTS (1971), were established and used serial drama to compete for profi t. Accusations directed at the poverty of its quality and the vulgarity of the audiences have characterized mainstream criticisms and constructions of Taiyu serial dramas as problems from the 1970s to the present. This chapter investigates not only the how and what but also the why of this problem-construction, as an attempt to understand the power mechanisms at work in struggling for hegemonic control. It charts two historical moments – the 1970s and from the 1990s to the present – when language has played a signifi cant role in the articulations of serial dramas as problems and explores the changing political, economic and cultural forces that situate them as problems worthy of discussion. I argue that the history of this problem-making demonstrates the centrality of Chinese culture in political domination through cultural means, with ethnic/class politics playing a central role in the maintenance of a hierarchical social order. In the 1970s, Chinese culture was used to create ethnic/class divisions within Taiwan while simultaneously creating the illusion of a symbolic whole under the name of the Republic of China. However, since the 1990s, and intensifying after the 2000s, with the entanglement of democratization and neoliberalization in Taiwan and the rise of China, the ethnic/class tension is not just complicated by confl icted national identifi cations and Chinese culturepromoted by both the KMT Party’s Republic of China and the People’s Republic of China, but also for unifi cation purposes. While democratization, which involved the search for Taiwanese identity, led to the rise of Taiyu-based Hsiangtu drama, the neoliberal defi nition of culture as economic resource, which consecrates Chinese culture through capital investment, facilitates this unifi cation process while creating further ethnic/class/national identity divisions within Taiwan. The result is a disparaging of Taiyu-based culture in general and, in particular, Taiyu serial drama as a problem to be reformed.

Korea was the fifteenth country in the world to start television broadcasting when it first launched in Seoul in 1956. Since then, the structure, content and policies concerning Korean television have continuously transformed, due largely to changing contextual circumstances such as wide-ranging socio-political democratization and the rise of the neoliberal global economic system and digital technologies. Up until the 1980s, the oligopolistic structure of the two public broadcasting networks  – Korean Broadcasting System (KBS) and Munhwa Broadcasting Corporation (MBC)  – dominated the broadcasting market. However the landscape has dramatically changed since the early 1990s, with 11 newly launched commercial terrestrial broadcasting channels (including Seoul Broadcasting System (SBS) in December 1991) and 153 cable channels when the multichannel television era began (Jin 2005 : 1). A digital satellite television system called Skylife was launched in March 2002, and airs 176 channels at the time of writing. Such changes stem from the shift in the domestic political climate where liberalization and privatization were promoted in assertively practiced neoliberal reform movement in the early 1980s, as well as changes in the global cultural industry environments based largely on globalization and the development of digital technologies. This chapter explores democratization, transnationalization and digitalization, three active factors within Korean television broadcasting by analysing changes and shifts in popular music programmes.

In 1980, Hong Kong’s commercial Television Broadcast Limited (TVB) television drama The Bund ( 上海滩 ) was popularly received in the city as well as in South-East Asia and the broader Chinese diaspora. Set in the cosmopolitan treaty port of Shanghai in the 1920s, The Bund revolves around the violent ascent of a coolie (Ray Lui) and a disillusioned student activist (Chow Yun-Fat) to become prominent mobsters. Not only were two sequels made within that year, but this historical gangster drama has been repeatedly resurrected in television dramas and fi lms, including Chow’s redux, The Last Tycoon ( 大上海 ), three decades later in 2012. From karaoke lounges to social media sites, theme songs of The Bund remain popular more than three decades after the dramas were screened . With music composed by Joseph Koo, lyrics by Wong Jim and sung by Frances Yip, the main and supplementary theme songs refl ected the intimate role of the Hong Kong-based contemporary Cantonese popular music, or Canto-pop, in cultivating a more memorable and enduring televisual culture. With the smooth synchronization of Koo’s classical music with the undulating pitch of Yip, the song articulates the unpredictable tribulations of the changing fortunes in the treaty-port of Shanghai in the interwar years. To a certain extent, it is also a narrative that reminds viewers in Hong Kong and beyond of similar socio-political and historical predicaments.

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.

This essay performs a critical comparison of two documentary films about queer and trans people of color, Jennie Livingston's Paris is Burning (1991) and Wu Tsang's Wildness (2012) and examines how the two films negotiate of the politics of representing reality and “realness.” The comparison illuminates two entwined problematics: the ways in which the challenges faced by each film are emblematic of the larger historical context in which they were made, specifically notions of queer community and its subjects; and the ways in which the negotiation of these challenges occurs in relation to a broader field of ethical and formal questions relating to documentary itself.

En Afrique en général et au Cameroun en particulier, posséder une console de jeux vidéo n’est pas à la portée de tout le monde. Les jeunes puisque ce sont eux qui les affectionnent particulièrement, qui en possèdent une, font donc souvent appel à leurs pairs afin qu’ensemble, ils puissent s’amuser. L’espace où les jeunes jouent aux jeux vidéo devient de ce fait un espace où ces derniers s’affirment en tant que groupe à part entière. C’est un espace qui leur permet de se démarquer des adultes qui, le plus souvent dénigrent, voire méprisent cette activité ludique. Les jeunes y créent ainsi des « ethnométhodes » et développent une solidarité mécanique. Jouer aux jeux vidéo dans ce contexte n’est plus simplement une activité de loisir. L’espace de jeu devient un espace où se créent de nouvelles relations et où se raffermissent les anciennes. Mais également, un espace où se développent l ’esprit de compétition et corrélativement même des conflits. Celui avec qui on s’amuse aux jeux vidéo devient celui à qui on se confie, avec qui on partage ses joies et ses peines. La console de jeux n’ « appartient » plus à celui qui l ’a achetée, mais à tous ceux qui la jouent. Il n’est donc pas rare qu’elle s’exporte du domicile de son propriétaire pour le domicile d ’un autre adolescent. Il faut également préciser que le jeu vidéo reste en négroculture une activité essentiellement masculine ; l ’espace de jeu est donc le fief du garçon et les filles n’ont rien à y faire. Le jeu vidéo développe ainsi un certain machisme, une fierté d ’être homme plutôt que femme. Dans ce contexte, on peut noter une sorte de détribalisation. L’obédience ethnique de tout un chacun s’estompe pour laisser place à une société des jeunes tout court. Le jeu vidéo fait donc tomber les barrières raciales, tribales, ethniques. Et même si on peut y noter des effets pervers, ce qui est normal, puisque aucun système culturel n’est parfait, les jeux vidéo en contexte camerounais développent chez les adolescents le sentiment d ’appartenance à une même classe d ’âge.