Mark P. Orbe

The Spectacular Consumption of "True" African American Culture: "Whassup" with the Budweiser Guys?

–Spectacular consumption is a process through which the relations among cultural forms, the culture industry, and the lived experiences of persons are shaped by public consumption. This essay examines how the spectacular consumption of “Whassup?!” Budweiser advertising is constitutive of white American ambivalence toward “authentic” blackness. The essay argues that Budweisers hottest ad campaign benefits from a tension between the depiction of “universal” values and the simultaneous representation of distinctive culture. The illustration of blackness as sameness and blackness as otherness arises out of conflicted attitudes toward black culture. Thus, Budweisers strategic attempts to regulate and administer “authentic” blackness as a market value also reproduce this ambivalence. Furthermore, as an object of spectacular consumption, the meaning of “authentic” black life and culture is partly generative of mediated and mass marketed images.

Food, Culture, and Family: Exploring the Coordinated Management of Meaning Regarding Childhood Obesity

Increased rates of childhood obesity combined with more accessible information about the relationship between diet, physical activity and inactivity, and chronic diseases suggest the need for analyzing the complex process of receiving and transmitting messages related to child feeding practices. This study examined the perceptions of childhood obesity within 1 multiethnic community, the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands. In particular, through the use of focus groups, individuals indicated that sociocultural, familial, and official nutritional messages were most influential to their health care behaviors. The coordinated management of meaning (CMM) theory was used to gain insight into how individuals negotiate competing messages occurring at different levels of meaning. Given its focus on cultural influences (parallel to the concepts of archetypes), CMM proved especially relevant for understanding child feeding beliefs, values, attitudes, and practices in diverse ethnic populations. Implications for future health communication research that might draw from a CMM approach were identified, as well as pragmatic endeavors that focus on the development, implementation, and evaluation of culturally appropriate interventions in the prevention of childhood obesity.

Centralizing diverse racial/ethnic voices in scholarly research: the value of phenomenological inquiry☆

Abstract This article provides information about the usefulness of a phenomenological approach to intercultural relations research that seeks to gain insight into the lived experiences of cultural group members traditionally marginalized in research and theory. It is presented as an alternative to traditional social scientific research that has been criticized for creating ‘caricatures’ to represent certain racial and ethnic groups. The article includes a detailed description of the key assumptions and three step process of this humanistic methodological approach. Finally, a brief discussion is offered as to the primary challenge inherent in utilizing phenomenology in race/ethnicity research.

Theorizing multidimensional identity negotiation: Reflections on the lived experiences of first-generation college students

Drawing from recent research on first-generation college (FGC) students, this chapter advances an interdisciplinary theoretical framework for understanding how these students enact multiple aspects of their personal, cultural, and social identities. I use dialectical and cross-cultural adaptation theories as a foundation to extend examinations of how diverse FGC students negotiate the alien culture of the academy against that of home. In this regard, college is situated as a pivotal point of development, and successful negotiation of identity tensions is represented as a key factor in academic success.

Constructions of reality on MTV's “the real world”: An analysis of the restrictive coding of black masculinity

This article gives critical consciousness, via a semiotic analytical lens, to the representations of Black masculinity on MTVs THE REAL WORLD. My primary objective is to reveal the problematic nature of how African American male cast members are signified on the show, and how these images work to maintain the “typification “ of Black men as inherently angry, potentially violent, and sexually aggressive. Attention is also given to the uniqueness of the show and the ways that this programming format contributes to the hegemonic power of mediated images in reinforcing a general societal fear of Black men.

Representations of Race in Reality TV: Watch and Discuss

In recent years, the televisual experience has been overwhelmed by reality-based programming—making it the most popular form of entertainment (Schroeder, 2006). Given its mass appeal with the US an...

“Race Matters” in the Journal of Applied Communication Research

Social issues have been a general stimulus for communication scholarship since the inception of the field. Over time, much of this research has evolved into what is known as applied communication research. Within this article, the authors report a critical analysis of research about a particularly significant social issue: race. In particular, they analyze articles published in The Journal of Applied Communication (JACR; 1973–2005) with specific attention to those that studied race matters. The heart of the essay describes a Race Scholarship Typology that informed their analysis. They refer to articles published in JACR to illustrate genres of race scholarship within that typology. They conclude by offering 6 guidelines that will enhance how “race matters” are reflected in research published in JACR and other publication outlets in the field of communication.

Playing the Game: Recalling Dialectical Tensions for Black Men in Oppressive Organizational Structures

This article considers the following question: What are the specific dialectical tensions that Black men encounter in oppressive organizational structures? In order to address this question, the authors conducted a textual analysis of three texts that explain, with great depth and clarity, the dialectical tensions experienced by Black men in organizational structures. Based on the analysis, the authors suggest that classic and contemporary literary works inform a collective critical memory base of distinct communicative experiences for non-dominant group members.

Accepting the Challenge of Centralizing Without Essentializing: Black Feminist thought and African American Women’s Communicative Experiences”

Black feminist thought represents one of several feminist standpoint theories. Collins’ (1986) conceptual framework of Black feminist thought renders an insightful vantage point into the experiences of “ordinary” African American women, and the focus of this essay is to offer a collaborative analysis of the salience and utility of Black feminist thought in communication research. A recent case study that focused on African American women’s communicative experiences is used as a reference point for this analysis. Critical reflection on this case study and on Black feminist thought allows us to address some of the implications of engaging in critical-cultural scholarship. There are, for example, significant conceptual and methodological dilemmas associated with the use of this framework in communication research. However, a central argument of this essay is that Black feminist thought remains useful for offering meaningful commentary about African American women’s everyday communicative experiences.

Analyzing strategic responses to discriminatory acts: A co-cultural communicative investigation

Abstract This qualitative content analysis explores the multiple ways in which individuals respond to acts of discrimination based on race, sex, age, sexual orientation, and disability. This study examines 258 stories of discrimination using a co-cultural theoretical frame of analysis to empirically assess those interactive structures that perpetuate the communicative system of how co-cultural discriminatory acts become reproduced in everyday life. Specifically, the focus is on identifying the co-cultural communication orientations and practices that are enacted as responses to discrimination and to discern if these strategies vary based on co-cultural group membership. Following a description of thematic insights, directions for future research in terms of co-cultural theory, memorable messages, microaggressions, and responses to discrimination are discussed.