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In January 1977, I, along with over ninety million other Americans, watched at least one episode of the television miniseries Roots: The Saga of an American Family. Over the eight days of the broadcast, the audience grew, and debates regarding its impact filled media outlets. In the weeks and months after the show aired, the impact was measurable as many families sought out genealogists to research family histories and college campuses saw increased interest in African American Studies. Vernon Jordan, executive director of the National Urban League, commented, “ Roots was the single most spectacular educational experience in race relations in

This book analyzes the relationship between media power and democratization in transitional societies based on a case study about TV Globo, Brazil's largest media group.

I was about 10 or 11 years old when I, together with my parents, religiously tuned in weekly to the situation comedy ¿Qué pasa U.S.A.? While I do not recall the specific year the show aired in Puerto Rico, I do remember that it was broadcast on WIPR-Channel 6, the island’s public television station. Watching one of my favorite sitcoms on what I then considered the boring channel was rather odd. However, I never thought it strange that the Peñas, ¿Qué pasa U.S.A.? ’s working-class three-generation Cuban/Cuban-American family, resided in Miami or that some of the characters communicated bilingually in English and Spanish. For me, ¿Qué pasa U.S.A.? was a show that resembled other locally produced situation comedies broadcast on commercial television, with the difference that the Peña family were Cuban immigrants who, instead of residing in Puerto Rico (like some of my childhood friends), lived in Miami (like many of my friends’ relatives). Probably as a result of the principal characters’ cultural references and their accents in Spanish, I decoded ¿Qué pasa U.S.A.? as a Cuban sitcom. Fast-forward to 2004. I was invited to write a 500-word encyclopedia entry on ¿Qué pasa U.S.A.? Without having any information on the show at hand, I immediately accepted. This was an opportunity to revisit a program I loved. After conducting the research I realized the uniqueness of ¿Qué pasa U.S.A.? Sponsored by the U.S. Office of Education Emergency School Assistance Act– Television Program (ESAA-TV), ¿Qué pasa U.S.A.? —considered the first bilingual situation comedy broadcast on U.S. television— addressed the culturalgenerational misunderstandings and the socio-cultural adjustments endured by the Peñas, a 1960 Cuban exile family.

This project has been engaging my thoughts for nearly a decade. I was forced to actually address it while sitting in our temporary home in Ile-Ife, Nigeria, watching world satellite TV with virtually no Blacks on it. In Nigeria, I became acquainted with Paris-based Fashion TV, U.S.-based Style Network, and the Australian production McLeod’s Daughters. Outside of M-Net’s Africa Magic, a network dedicated to showing Nollywood productions primarily, television was anything but Black. This whitening of the televisual frame, even in Black Africa, made me begin to consider the dearth of knowledge circulating about Black television programming, even when abundance

In this chapter, we argue that there are several layers of genre, proto-format commercialization of program elements, and current commercially licensed formats. Some genre traditions, like melodrama, tend to be large, over-arching categories that already have a long history before television (Martín-Barbero 1993). Specific genres of television production, like the U.S. soap opera or the Latin American telenovela can develop within that larger tradition. Even more specific genres, like the Brazilian socially engaged or historical telenovelas, versus the romantic Mexican Cinderella story telenovela (Hernandez 2001), develop or emerge over time within those genre traditions. Television formats are now often distinguished as a parallel category which looks at forms of television that are packaged for licensing, transfer across cultures, and localized adaptation or implementation by regional, national or local networks. Specific formats are often imported and adopted. They can feed into genre development, grafted on to older traditions.

In a recent debate over the problematic characterization of Bonnie Bennett, the only Black female recurring character on the CW network series The Vampire Diaries (CW 2009), my challenger insisted that with all of the qualifiers I insisted she have, “maybe this is another hidden reason there are no minorities on television: everything becomes an issue and you just can’t win.” Indeed, the main qualifier I suggested that the series allow the character to possess—an innate sense of cultural difference—is difficult to grasp and maintain. However, I do not accept that just because race is difficult, it is

This article discusses key findings from a survey of the professional patterns, scholarly productivity, and educational characteristics of Chilean Journalism and Mass Communication (JMC) educators, as well as documentary information about the schools where they work. The results reveal a weak academic culture that contrasts with a strong professional culture among the members of this community, but also the influence that both organizational and individual variables have on Chilean JMC educators' orientations. Specifically, the analyses indicated that the level of education, part-time/full-time commitment, and the type of university are the most influential factors in defining both the prevalence of a professional culture and the lack of research productivity. These findings support other international studies, indicating a global tendency across key variables that influence academic development in the field. Likewise, it shows how distant Chilean JCM educators are from the university-scholarly tradition.

Cheryl Dunye's 1996 film The Watermelon Woman earned a place in cinematic history as the first feature-length narrative film written and directed by an out black lesbian about black lesbians. This article examines how the film provides an important opportunity to mark the burgeoning genre of black queer documentary as a historiographical medium. The documentary film is a tool that highlights underexplored issues in black experience and provides a cultural site for imagining new possibilities for black lesbian subjectivity and creating innovative approaches to representing sexuality in black filmmaking.

From Nausicaa to Sailor Moon, understanding girl heroines of manga and anime within otaku culture.

Discussions of established women filmmakers whose careers have produced major bodies of work, as well as newer filmmakers and new media artists.

This chapter wants to argue two things: the first part suggests that reality television in Africa – specifically the series Big Brother Africa, which completed its third season in November 2008 – has had profound impacts for identity politics, gender politics, and the politics of class on the continent. In fact, these are the issues most commonly illuminated by reality television and I wrote about these in a previously published article. The second part of the chapter moves into less explored territory. In that previous article, I briefly discussed how specifically Big Brother Africa can illuminate the workings of globalization in Africa and, in particular, South Africa’s hegemonic role in that process. Here, I expand on my earlier argument by exploring that hegemony in the context of the growing Chinese presence in Africa. All economic and political indicators suggest that China’s growing investment in mining and infrastructure and its political clout relative to South Africa mean that it is destined to assume a place of prominence on the continent. But here I want to argue that if we want to understand how globalization plays out in Africa, we need to look beyond China’s military and economic expansion. For me, Big Brother Africa can help us make sense of these dynamic processes. South Africa has consistently remained the highest-ranking country in Africain terms of its “global competitiveness” as measured by the World Economic Forum. South Africa dominates regional markets in Southern Africa as well as remaining competitive in the rest of the continent against business rivals from United States and Europe. As it was under Apartheid, there is a close symbiosis between the continental aspirations and interests of the postapartheid state and that of South African business. The advent of democracy in 1994 has opened up African markets for South African business on an unprecedented scale. The South African state is very active on the African continent and keen to develop a leading role for itself. In fact, successive United States governments have viewed South Africa as a continental leader. For example, former President George W. Bush referred to former South African President Thabo Mbeki as his “point man in Africa.”4The South African government underwrites and actively promotes SouthAfrican business’s continental schemes through its “Proudly South African” campaign coordinated through an International Marketing Council situated in the Office of (the country’s) President since 2002, which links state nationalism with consumption. Separately a statutory Industrial Development Corporation (established in 1940) underwrites the business expansion of South African capital.

In recent years, Arab television has undergone a dramatic and profound transformation from terrestrial, government-owned, national channels to satellite, privately owned, transnational networks. The latter is the Arab television that matters today, economically, socially and politically. The resulting pan-Arab industry is vibrant, diverse, and fluid - very different, the authors of this major new study argue, from the prevailing view in the West, which focuses only on the al-Jazeera network. Based on a wealth of primary Arabic language sources, interviews with Arab television executives, and the authors' personal and professional experience with the industry, Arab Television Industries tells the story of that transformation, featuring compelling portraits of major players and institutions, and captures dominant trends in the industry. Readers learn how the transformation of Arab television came to be, the different kinds of channels, how programs are made and promoted, and how they are regulated. Throughout, the analysis focuses on the interaction of the television industry with Arab politics, business, societies and cultures.

Undercurrents engages the critical rubric of "queer" to examine Hong Kong's screen and media culture during the transitional and immediate postcolonial period. Helen Hok-Sze Leung draws on theoretical insights from a range of disciplines to reveal parallels between the crisis and uncertainty of the territory's postcolonial transition and the queer aspects of its cultural productions. Leung explores Hong Kong cultural productions -- cinema, fiction, popular music and subcultural projects -- and argues that while there is no overt consolidation of gay and lesbian identities in Hong Kong culture, undercurrents of diverse and complex expressions of gender and sexual variance are widely in evidence. Undercurrents uncovers a queer media culture that has been largely overloo... Source: Publisher

New Flows in Global TV provides a pioneering investigation into television distribution worldwide and the global trade in television program formats. Topics include explorations of how shows like Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? and Big Brother are reformatted for audiences in diverse markets such as Argentina, South Africa, the Middle East, and China; the international circulation of Dallas in the 1980s; and Australian and United Kingdom programming exports in the last decade. Moran argues that distribution is the crucial link in a chain that dictates the consumption and purchase of television content. Consequently, New Flows in Global TV will be a key text for scholars of global media, providing comprehensive insight into the cultural, social and economic exchanges underlying media programming.

Even video games by Asian creators tend to depict primarily white characters or reference Asian stereotypes such as kung fu fighters or yakuza thugs. Games depicting the Vietnam war are particularly troubling for Asian players expected to identify with white characters. As the game industry continues to expand, its representation of Asians and Asian Americans must change.

This chapter examines the relationship between culture, economics and policy within the creative industries (which for the purposes of this paper, are assumed to be equivalent to the cultural industries), and their manifestation in Asia. Addressing any one of these three issues is a challenge in itself, but addressing all three of them together raises the complexity even further. Early writers on the “creative economy” have noted how it works differently from the traditional economy (Florida 2002; Howkins 2001).1 Culture is vitally important to understanding how creative industries develop, but the role of culture in shaping national competitive advantage is not that clear. The same can be said for policy, and a discussion of the triad can be quite convoluted. Having said that, all three levels are still very relevant to the proper description of a creative industry — as I will show in this chapter.This paper attempts to address this triad of issues primarily with a production-and-innovation-oriented view of industrial organisation, bringing in creativity, culture and policy where possible. I shall do this primarily through the lens of one sector in particular — the video games industry — in which Asia has been investing heavily lately, and in which Japan has been an early leader. I will also provide a limited focus on the animation sector for comparative purposes. I will first provide a summary of how creative production in video games occurs in the US, followed by an examination of how Asian patterns compare. In particular, I am interested in whether individual and industrial level creativity differs in Asia. Within Asia, more detailed cases of the Chinese online games industry and the Philippine animation industry will be discussed, but relevant observations are also drawn from general knowledge and a literature review of Japan, Korea and Singapore, as well as interviews which corroborate those observations.

Through close readings of contemporary made-in-Singapore films (by Jack Neo, Eric Khoo, and Royston Tan) and television programs (Singapore Idol, sitcoms, and dramas), this book analyzes the prospects of resistance in an advanced capitalist-industrial society with "global city" aspirations.

This book explores the political, economic, and cultural forces, locally and globally that have shaped the evolution of Chinese primetime television dramas, and the way that these dramas in turn have actively engaged in the major intellectual and policy debates concerning the path, steps, and speed of China’s economic and political modernization during the post-Deng Xiaoping era. It intertwines the evolution of Chinese television drama particularly with the ascendance of the Chinese New Left that favors a recentralization of state authority and an alternative path towards China’s modernization and China’s current administration’s call for building a "harmonious society." Two types of serial drama are highlighted in this regard, the politically provocative dynasty drama and the culturally ambiguous domestic drama. The book also provides cross-cultural comparisons that parallel the textual and institutional strategies of transnational Chinese language TV dramas with dramas from the three leading centers of transnational television production, the US, Brazil and Mexico in Latin America, and the Korean-led East Asia region. The comparison reveals creative connections while it also explores how the emergence of a Chinese cultural-linguistic market, together with other cultural-linguistic markets, complicates the power dynamics of global cultural flows.

While television in today's world increasingly displays a global character, national television systems are still firmly rooted in a specific locality. But in what ways does this locality actually shape the content and performance of national television? What is the significance of local cultures and local languages in these processes of mediation? And how do the local, the national, and the global intersect in discourses of and discourse on television? Taking a critical discourse analysis perspective, Watching Si Doel investigates these and related questions in the context of contemporary Indonesia. Starting from the nationwide popularity of the local television serial Si Doel Anak Sekolahan ("Educated Doel"), it examines the various ways in which the national government, Indonesian television producers, and local audiences shape, interpret, and struggle over the meaning of the phrase 'national television'. In doing so, the book explores what Indonesian television at the turn of the century sounds and looks like--and, significantly, ought to sound and look like--according to those who create and control television and those who watch and interpret it. While providing insight into the production, nature, and reception of television discourse in general, this book particularly seeks to clarify the relationship between television, language, and power in late New Order and post-Soeharto Indonesia.