Ph.D. Convention March 25, 2005

Noon: Lunch in the Brownell Board Room (E254 AJB)

Paper presentations: (click title to see Abstract)

12:30 p.m. Marina Vujnovic. "The political economy of Croatian television: Exploring the impact of Latin American telenovelas" (advised by Dr. Sujatha Sosale). Respondents: Dr. Liz Pearce, Amani Ismail

1:15 p.m. Li Xiao. "What’s wrong with growing up differently? A study of Chinese online media representations of the controversial youth writer Han Han and his books" (advised by Dr. Meenakshi Gigi Durham). Respondents: Dr. Jane Singer, Yu Shi

2 p.m. Jie Liu. "A new test of spiral of silence' theory." (advised by Dr. Leo Eko) Respondents: Dr. Julie Andsager, Mervat Youssef

2:45 p.m. BREAK

3 p.m. Vitalis, Torwel. "Framing political conflict in a multi-ethnic democracy: A critical analysis of the news of the 2001 Nigerian Tiv-Jukun conflict" (advised by Dr. Dan Berkowitz). Respondents: Dr. Carolyn Dyer, Dr. Gayane Torosyan

3:45 p.m. Anup Kumar. "Bollywood movies and the diaspora: The flip side of globalization, hybridity, and the construction of identities" (advised by Dr. Meenakshi Gigi Durham) Respondents: Dr. Ann Haugland, Dr. Frank Durham

4:30 Wrap-up

PhD CONVENTION ABSTRACTS

Marina Vujnovic

The political economy of Croatian television: Exploring the impact of Latin American telenovelas

Latin-American telenovelas have had phenomenal success in the post-communist countries in Eastern Europe. New nation-states of the post-communist world face many challenges. One of these challenges is very apparent struggle for theirown media identity. There has been an effort to localize the genre of telenovelas in some of these countries. The Croatian case emerges as a specific example because of the recent trend in domestic production of telenovelas.  Looking at the political – economic aspect of this imported genre as being translated into the domestically produced telenovela Villa Maria could help us understand some of the logic of the global media flow, and expand on the ongoing debate of cultural imperialism and contra-flow arguments.

Soap operas mark a new era in television programming in the former communist counties. In Croatia, a former Yugoslavian republic, telenovelas have penetrated into the lives of people. More than half of the Eastern European channels have telenovelas in their program schedule. Given the commercial development of the broadcasting scene and the subsequent rise of US- and Latin American-produced fiction, this paper asks, what is the impact of these introductions on current Croatian productions?How much is domestically produced fiction even possible in given situation? This paper will explore the splashes created by the Croatian telenovelas in the global arena from the political-economic perspective. [download paper pdf]

Li Xiao

What’s wrong with growing up differently? A qualitative study of Chinese online media discourses of the controversial youth writer Han Han and his books

By studying the online media discourse of Han Han, arguably the most popular youth writer in China, and his books, this study tries to find out how the media culture reacts when dominant social values and norms are challenged by a subordinate and rebellious youth culture. The study used a qualitative textual analysis method in reading and ideologically interpreting online media texts. The focus of analysis was on the dominant and resistant ideologies of youth and its relationship to Chinese culture conveyed in media discourses. The findings highlight the dominant and resistant ideologies at work in the discourses about the novelist’s themes and lifestyle, adding to our understanding of culture clashes in contemporary China. [download paper pdf]

Jie Liu

A New Test of “Spiral of Silence” Theory

The past “Spiral of Silence” studies investigated people’s willingness to speak only on micro level, missing three independent variables—culture, governmental form, and personality. Their measurement of dependent variable had the theoretical flaw that only considers the respondent’s reaction when in the minority but missed her or his reaction when in the majority. Furthermore, the past “Spiral of Silence” studies did not distinguish the conformity pressures in a unanimous opinion environment from those in a non-unanimous one, nor solve the “cross-national comparability” problem on the topic issue selection. This study designs a new measurement considering the respondent’s reactions both when in the minority and when in the majority, distinguishes unanimous and non-unanimous environments, introducing an “an unspecified controversial issue” to solve the “cross-national comparability” problem, and integrates culture, governmental form, and personality into the research model by using a cross-society and multi-level comparison method. [download paper pdf]

Vitalis Torwel

Framing Political Conflict in a Multi-ethnic Democracy: A Critical Analysis of the News of the 2001 Nigerian Tiv-Jukun Conflict

Historically, the Nigerian press has been a site of contest for many conflicts in Nigeria, “constantly reflecting the tensions inherent in the plural nature of the Nigerian society” (Adebanwi, 2002, pp. 201-202). Given Nigeria’s quest for a stable democracy, this study critically investigates if in the construction of the Tiv-Jukun conflict the Nigerian press provided a public platform for the democratic struggles and conversations of Nigeria’s multi-cultural civil society to find their expression, or if the Nigerian press acted as an ideological apparatus of the powerful. Nigeria is a complex country with ethnic and class hierarchies; thus an examination of the interaction of power in the news construction of political issues and events involving various segments of Nigeria’s civil society is an important variable.  Drawing on news framing as an ideological construction of reality, the study critically examines how the Tiv-Jukun conflict was reported in the Nigerian newspapers. The study specifically investigates how the news media constructed the conflict in terms of its nature and causality. And given the pluralist and non-egalitarian nature of the Nigerian society, the study also examines what ideologies were supported by the framing of the news of the conflict and if these frames reinforced or challenged the ideologies that support unjust social structures responsible for the Tiv-Jukun conflict. The study finally discusses the socio-political implications of the coverage for Nigeria’s multi-ethnic democracy. [download paper pdf]

Anup Kumar

Bollywood and the diaspora:
The flip side of globalization and hybrid identity construction.

Historically Bollywood* movies have had audiences in countries outside India, but in the last two decades, as a consequence of globalization, revolutions in ICT and a significant increase in the population of the Indian diaspora, filmmakers in Bollywood have been making films keeping the diasporic audiences in mind. The paper argues that Bollywood is just symptomatic of a larger phenomenon of media organizations from India, China, and the Arab countries reaching out to émigré audiences in the west, constructing ‘deterritorialized imagined communities’ and ‘hybrid identities’, in the postnational context of globalization that is free of the geography of nation-states. The paper undertakes a structuralist-semiotic textual analysis of a Bollywood movie to demonstrate the construction of ‘hybrid identities’ and the struggle for signification between the local culture and ideology as dominant and hegemonic and the global as resistant. The paper suggests that in a way this has flipped the binary dialectic of global/local to local/global. [download paper pdf]

*India has the world’s largest film industry. On average more than 800 movies are made each year in all the major Indian languages. The Bombay film Industry, home to Hindi movies,  has been given the moniker Bollywood, by the film press in India and around the globe.