Democratic Communiqué

A Note from the Editor

Jeffrey Layne Blevins — 2020-03-25

Many of you will be reading this issue of Democratic Communiqué for the first time while following stay-at-home orders and adjusting to remote working arrangements as the coronavirus pandemic sweeps across the globe. Although, the articles in this issue (Vol. 29, No. 1, Spring 2020) were written prior to the coronavirus outbreak, the issues they address –including fake news, telecommunication infrastructure, the gig economy and popular politics – have featured prominently in how our work lives, social relationships and political discourses are shaped during viral outbreaks.

Sport Sex Scandals: A Comparison Between Penn State and USA Gymnastics

Linda Fuller — 2020-03-25

Beginning with a broad perspective on sport sex scandals, this critical commentary compares two of the worst: the 2012 Penn State child sex abuse scandal by a football coach and the 2019 revelations about sexual assault on more than 368 female gymnasts by their national team doctor and how, in both cases, cover-ups and failure to take action were prevalent.

A Coffee Mug at the Newseum in Washington, D.C.

Jeffrey Layne Blevins — 2020-03-25

The photo credit for the 2020 Volume 29 cover of the Democratic Communiqué is given to Jeffrey Layne Blevins, Associate Professor & Head, Department of Journalism at the University of Cincinnati.

Critical Theory and Authoritarian Populism

Derek Hrynyshyn — 2020-04-03

The electoral success of challenges to principles of liberal tolerance in recent years surely calls out for a thorough rethinking of how our democracies work. This collection of essays is a welcome reminder that political theory can be an important part of that rethinking. Jeremiah Morelock has assembled a set of discussions here that makes a valuable contribution to our efforts to understand where the political world is headed. Its 10 essays, some written by well known scholars such as Douglas Kellner, Stephen Eric Bronner, and Christian Fuchs combine insights from the work of the Frankfurt School with explanations of concrete political developments in the contemporary era, and provide an important foundation for further explanatory work.

HBO’s Treme and the Stories of the Storm: From New Orleans as Disaster Myth to Groundbreaking Television

Jim Wittebols — 2020-03-25

As a fan of the show, I was eager to read this book as it comes from UDC member Robin Andersen of Fordham University. Treme was conceived and produced by David Simon and Eric Overmyer, as a follow up to their critically received The Wire. The intention of the story in Treme was to look at a working-class neighborhood in the aftermath of the 2006 hurricane and the subsequent flooding of New Orleans. The show premiered in 2010 and lasted 36 episodes over 4 seasons.

What is Fake News? A Foundational Question for Developing Effective Critical News Literacy Education

Nolan Higdon — 2020-03-25

Since the 2016 U.S. Presidential election, policy makers, scholars, and critics have increasingly warned about the dangers associated with fake news. In response, they have proposed numerous solutions to fake news, media literacy being one frequently mentioned. However, there is currently no agreed upon definition of fake news or its origins and practices. Scholars cannot develop effective pedagogy to address fake news without a deep
understanding and firm definition of fake news. As a result, this study employs a critical-historical lens of a media ecosystem framework to define fake news. The data for this study came from three areas; an extensive review of scholarship in the Communication, History, Media Studies, and Media Education disciplines; newspaper and congressional archives; and news stories. My methodology identified the producers of fake news; the purpose behind the production of false or misleading content; the themes found in fake news content; and the consequences associated with the consumption of false and misleading information. The
findings of this study serve as a foundational basis for the development of a critical news literacy program.

Over the Top: Retransmission Fees and New Commodities in the U.S. Television Industry

Aaron Heresco — 2020-03-25

This essay provides a brief institutional and structural account of the history and context of retransmission fees and the revenues they generate in the television industry. We argue that commodity formations within the television industry are broader, and more nuanced, than the sale of audiences (power, data, ratings, etc.) to advertisers. Despite widespread technological and economic shifts, the notion of the commodity audience still possesses a great deal of explanatory power in relation to contemporary media industries. The audience commodity has been, and will continue to be, a powerful force in the decision making and revenue streams of television, but new technologies such as streaming, IPTV, and direct subscription models have expanded the economic avenues available to capital within the television markets. Retransmission fees have figured prominently in shaping and constraining the contemporary television industry, granting programmers greater control over distribution and providing a profitable path forward for capital looking at new monetization strategies of television content.

Translatability, Translational Labor and Capitalist Subsumption: The Communicative Venues of Capitalism

Marco Briziarelli — 2020-03-25

This essay advances a critique of current capitalism based on the operationalization of Gramsci’s take on translation and translatability and Marx’s notion of subsumption, and argues that translatability reveals subsumptive processes in communicative terms because it describes how the principle of exchange value productively interacts with language and signification, thus shedding light on how communication captures and is captured by contemporary capitalism. The significance of translational labor becomes especially manifest in the context the so-called gig economy, in which translational labor is needed to fill the gaps between the casualization and exploitation tendencies of the gig labor process and the powerful rhetoric of entrepreneurship and flexibility experienced by gig workers.

Activism’s Sweet Embrace: Political Advertisements, Audiences and Interpretive Strategies

Joshua D. Atkinson — 2020-03-25

In this project, we conducted focus groups with college students at a mid-sized university in order to examine their interpretations of different political advertisements. Our interest emerged from heightened political tensions in the United States that have led to increases in political advertisements targeting people in general, but young people and students in particular. After viewing nine different ads, students were asked a series of questions to generate discussion. Overall, these discussions provided insight concerning the interpretive strategies that were used to make sense of the ads. We found that most of the students would only interpret the campaign ads as “political,” while the others—including ads produced by activists—were interpreted as “issue ads” or “topic ads.” What is more, most of the students (but particularly those who identified as conservative) found the candidate ads to be untrustworthy, or viewed them as negative. Many of these students explained their interpretations of the candidate ads as a response to the growing negativity and partisanship that they saw in contemporary elections. Such findings hold important implications for strategic approaches to audiences—for both traditional politicians, as well as activist organizations.

Platform Labour Discourse: How Hyr Targets the “Bucket List Generation”

Julian Posada — 2020-03-25

This paper provides an analysis of the discursive contradictions and narratives of labour within Hyr, a location-based freelance platform app that caters to the retail, hospitality, and restaurant sectors in Toronto and New York. The app provides companies with access to individuals with a variety of skills in these sectors and provides workers with access to contract jobs. The paper provides an analysis of Hyr’s promotional marketing, that targets urban “millennials,” and discusses how the platform exerts algorithmic and information control over its workers through their legal documentation and conditions of work within the platform. Situated within the “gig
economy,” the paper also reviews current local policy proposals to alleviate the situation of gig workers in the Canadian context.

Extreme Moderation? Critical Political Economy as the Blindspot of Dutch Journalism Studies

Tabe Bergman — 2020-03-25

By way of content analyses and a Critical Discourse Analysis, this article characterizes the scholarship on Dutch journalism in the 21st century, finding that critical political economy is a blindspot. This article then argues for the salience of critical political economy by way of an indepth examination of the existing scholarship’s own findings, especially on sourcing and “media logic.” Finally, this article identifies causes of the neglect of critical political economy in the study of Dutch journalism. It concludes with discussing the consequences.