S. Elizabeth Bird

ARE WE ALL PRODUSERS NOW

This article offers a critical analysis of the relevance of convergence culture to the field of media audience study, opening up new ways to see audiences as active cultural producers. At the same time, I argue that the enthusiastic embrace of Web 2.0 practices as the new model of audience activity may hinder a full understanding not only of the importance of non-web-based audience practices, especially in non-Western countries, but also of the continuing power of media industries.

It makes sense to us: Cultural identity in local legends of place

In recent years, there has been a surge of interest in the role of narrative in constructing culture, deriving from scholarship in anthropology, geography, folklore, and communication studies. In this article, the author uses popular folk legends, collected in one state, to bring together some of this interdisciplinary scholarship on the central role of narrative in everyday life. In particular, the author focuses on how these shared narratives serve culturally to construct a sense of place and, with that, a sense of cultural identity that includes some people while excluding others.

Storytelling on the far side: Journalism and the weekly tabloid

The National Enquirer and other weekly “supermarket tabloids” have been branded a “disgrace to journalism” and seen as the epitome of “low‐taste” media. But are the tabloids really an entirely different species, fit only to be incinerated? This paper discusses how the tabloids report and write their stories, the relationship tabloid writing has to “straight” journalistic practice and how tabloid writers relate to such journalistic tenets as objectivity and credibility. Despite the fact that tabloids are commonly regarded as deviant “demons”, a case is made that tabloid journalism belongs on the same storytelling continuum as daily newspaper journalism.

Travels in nowhere land: Ethnography and the “impossible”; audience

This article addresses recent trends in ethnographic studies of media audiences. While much of this rethinking of ethnography has been necessary and useful, it also has the potential to paralyze research of this sort and to continue building an ever‐more‐abstract theoretical narcissism. The future of cultural audience studies lies not with more abstraction, but with attempts to improve ethnographic practice. In particular, it is argued that feminist practice, while contributing to the discussions that have rightly problematized the field, is leading the way to a more productive and practical ethnography.

CJ's revenge: Media, folklore, and the cultural construction of AIDS

On October 10, 1991, ABCs news magazine Prime Time live, retold a story that had been causing a sensation in Dallas since early September, when Ebony magazine published a letter from a writer signing herself CJ, Dallas, Texas. The writer claimed to be deliberately infecting up to four men a week with the AIDS virus. The letter led to a flood of calls to a local talk show host, and a major scare began in Dallas, fed by local, and then national news coverage. It was later exposed as a “hoax.” This paper examines in the CJ story as a product of oral folk tradition that had become transformed into “news.” News, like folklore, is a cultural construction, a narrative that telb a story about things of importance or interest, and reflecting and reinforcing cultural anxieties and concerns. Study of folkloric narrative construction adds an extra dimension to our understanding of news. The CJ incident was not really a hoax, in the sense of a deliberate misinformation campaign, or a case where the media were simply ...

Anthropological Methods Relevant for Journalists

It has been argued that social science and journalism are markedly different enterprises, essentially because they are based on different knowledge claims. At the core of these arguments we often find Robert Park’s distinction between abstract “knowledge about,” through which the social scientist fits facts into theoretical frameworks aimed at predictability, and intuitive “acquaintance with,” through which the journalist accumulates facts that then, somehow, speak for themselves.’ As Barbara Phillips writes: “That the journalist’s way of knowledge both personally, professionally, and organizationally is structured in one direction and the social scientists’ is structured in another is an important factor underlying their frequently mutual incomprehension and distrust about which is the more useful for learning about and interpreting everyday life.”’

Facing the distracted audience: journalism and cultural context

versity of California Press. Gadamer, H.-G. (1988) Truth and Method, 2nd rev. edn, J. Weinsheimer and D.G. Marshall, trans. New York: Continuum. Hay, J., L. Grossberg and E. Wartella (1996) The Audience and its Landscape. Boulder, CO: Westview Press. Huizinga, J. (1950) Homo Ludens: A Study of the Play Element in Culture. Boston, MA: Beacon Press. Peters, J.D. (1999) ‘Public Journalism and Democratic Theory: Four Challenges’, in T.L. Glasser (ed.) The Idea of Public Journalism, pp. 99–117. New York: Guilford Press. Stephenson, W. (1953) The Study of Behavior: Q-technique and Its Methodology. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Stephenson, W. (1964) ‘The Ludenic Theory of Newsreading’, Journalism Quarterly 41 (Summer): 367–74. Stephenson, W. (1967) The Play Theory of Mass Communication. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.

Derbyshire Well-Dressing: An Annual Folk Festival

The development and diffusion of well-dressing, an annual folk festival characteristic of north-central England, is investigated. Changes in the form and function of the festival are discussed, paying particular attention to recent revivals of the festival and relating these to changing social circumstances in Derbyshire. While the form of the festival has remained fairly consistent over the last 150 years, its functional significance has changed and varies among well-dressing villages.

Reclaiming Asaba: Old Media, New Media, and the Construction of Memory

On October 5, 1967, Nigerian federal troops entered Asaba, a town in south-east Nigeria on the west bank of the Niger. The war over the secession of the predominantly Igbo2 area known as Biafra had broken out in July; by August, the Biafran army had advanced across the Niger, through Asaba and about 120 km beyond. Federal troops mounted a counter-attack, pushing the Biafrans back across the Asaba Bridge, which they blew up behind them.

Book Reviews : Solving the Riddle of the Sphinx: Interpretive Anthropology and Anthropological History: Local Knowledge: Further Essays in Interpretive Anthropology, by Clifford Geertz. New York: Basic Books, Inc., 1983; 244 pp.,

How can we decode other cultures-cultures that are separated from us in time and space, cultures that are &dquo;common sense&dquo; for their members yet impenetrable to outsiders? Are there basic similarities that unite us all as human beings, or are the specifics of culture so different that comparison becomes futile and meaningless ? And are the methods used to interpret alien cultures also helpful in decoding our own?