The Media Studies Conference "Media for Us or for Them" in Vaasa, April 4-5 2014 Working Group: Depicting the Other : A Trans-equatorial Gaze" ABSTRACTS (in alphabetical order): Michiel Germishuys AFDA (Cape Town, South Africa) michaelivygreen@gmail.com Integrated Triadic Parallel Constraint Satisfaction Processes (ITPCSP) as evident in the styling design and creation of media identities in the pursuit of understanding local and global otherness. The styling designs of the media-fashioned character dress are qualitatively researched through systematic observation for semantic, syntactic and pragmatic hierarchical semiotic configurations of anxiety as evident in the management of the impression of local and global Self. Impressions are directed through the indication and signaling of encoded identities, which connote and denote persuasive nonverbal patterns of media communication. Hierarchal patterns that are projected and managed socially through amalgamated and consolidated heterogeneous neurotic, social and existential anxieties. When triggered, these anxieties are highly effective in affecting a process of innate and organic defense as a direct response to the perception of relevant visual and verbal stimuli, reactively resulting in the polar opposite formation of our public fashioned persona. Qualitative cognitive-socio-psychological research and understanding is offered into how persuasive parallel (verbal and nonverbal) communication offers further information about the styling of direct and indirect character construction, dress, chronemics, proxemics, kinetics and haptics. The media analyst are given insight into the formation of the (conscious, pre-conscious and subconscious) media identity through the identification, alignment, rectification and strengthening of insight into the formation of identity impression, causal attribution, cognitive (Self-narrative) consistency and goal-directed behavior of Self-concept within the constraints of social Selfperceived media identities. In understanding who I am locally, we are given insight as to where and what the global them character are moving towards and away from. 1
Heli Lehtelä, University of Lapland (Rovaniemi, Finland) Heli.lehtela@ulapland.fi The power of otherness in visual news representations Visual texts as cultural phenomena represent the surrounding world and reveal the power structures in a society. My PhD study plunges into the visual culture through focusing on visual news representations of an ethnic Sámi culture in the Finnish majority press in the year 2009. The study consentrates mainly to observe how the Sámi culture is represented visually through finnish journalists and media to the public and what kind of differences and structures are constructed visually. Yet, the Sámi also use media to their own purposes and express their identity actively in these news representations. To be able to handle large number of pictorial data it was analysed through an explicit quantitative method, content analysis. After the analysis the frequencies of representations are found. Based to the frequencies some representative or otherwise interesting cases were selected for deeper semiotic case analysis. Finally the results are drawn together for making generalizations using critical social theories. The analysis shows how the representations form a naturalized myth of Sámi culture, a portrayal which accentuates the oppressed position of the minority. On the other hand, for example the cross-border representations highlight the positive power of otherness. The events which the Sámi have organized transnationally receive a great deal of attention in the media and keep the culture alive. A wider perspective on Sámi culture does not seem to homogenize its forms, but rather helps local identities become visible. 2
Lars Lundsten Arcada Univ. of Applied Sciences (Helsinki, Finland) University of Helsinki (Helsinki, Finland) lars.lundsten@arcada.fi lars.lundsten@helsinki.fi Us and Them Young Film Makers Awareness of Their Own Cultural Bias This contribution is based on the author's experience from teaching culturally diverse groups of film school students for a number of years. The main challenge concerns how to make the individual students understand their own culturally determined bias when they strive to produce documentaries in a foreign environment or to a foreign audience. The empirical material of this study is based on interviews with film students. The paper starts with a conceptual exposition of how visual communication with an ambition to be in documentary mode reflects and imposes the culturally based meaning structures of its author. All communication, be it visual or verbal, carries an element of positioning the communicating parties to each other and towards the third party as depicted in the film. In terms of visual communication, this kind of third-party othering is frequently done in terms of visual stereotyping of "Africans" (black babies with swollen bellies), "Arabs" (trigger happy men wearing beards and robes) and other "foreign cultures". Furthermore, the paper reports on the analysis of a series of qualitative semi-structured, thematic interviews made with a number of international documentary film students in 2013. The analysis shows ways in which the students grapple with the challenge to differentiate between their own "self-evident" understanding of what they see and their value-laden construal of what they show to their audiences across cultures. Due to the increasing mediatization of our societies, problems exposed previously mainly in a specific educational context of emerging media practitioners' are becoming ever more poignant to education in general. Present-day media literacy embraces not only the capacity of a lay audience to appreciate professionally produced media products. Increasingly, the concept of media literacy is seen as embracing also the point of view of the producer, e.g. in the case of documentary visuals, makers of short video clips for social media or for mobile media. For these reasons, this contribution is aimed to be a general discussion about cultural stereotyping as a problem in media education. 3
Jan Nåls University of Helsinki (Finland) Arcada Univ. of Applied Sciences (Helsinki, Finland) jan.nals@helsinki.fi Feeling with the Other The construction of empathy in globally marketed South African documentary films This study centers on the role and function of empathy in visual narrative. How does visual storytellers such as documentary filmmakers use the construction of empathy as a tool to increase our understanding of the other that exists outside our own selves, families, communities and cultures. What kind of stories do we tell about each other, and how are these stories constructed? The world grows smaller and more connected, but also more divergent due to a multitude of information, voices and digital platforms. Thus the role of empathy grows larger and more important than ever. In theory, media input stimulates mirror neurons, which enable empathy. Practically, empathy is often created through storytelling, which is not only the most successful remote means of creating empathy, but has actually been an engine of cultural liberalization and social change. Combining narrative theory with cognitive theories of emotion and fiction, the paper has a special focus on contemporary documentary film. The history of film shows that documentary has always had a special role as a medium that represents the other. The study presents a theoretical discussion of empathy in visual narrative, and places it within the context of five documentary films from South Africa. The paper goes on to present a narrative analysis that identifies empathy triggers in the films. The films in question are targeted to a global audience, a fact that adds particular relevance to the material. From the point of view of the target audience, they are films of "the other". They are produced by South-African filmmakers, and were presented at the worlds leading documentary film festival, IDFA, in november 2013, as part of a showcase of South African documentary film. The five feature length films are: "Letters to Nelson Mandela", "An Inconsolable Memory", "I, Afrikaner", "Miners Shot Sown" and "The Devil's Lair". The paper examines the similarities and differences in the construction of empathy in the films, and suggests certain key empathy triggers as universal storytelling devices as a conclusion. Key words: empathy, narrative, documentary film, South Africa 4
Tiina Räisä University of Helsinki (Finland) Arcada Univ. of Applied Sciences (Helsinki, Finland) tiina.raisa@arcada.fi Media rituals as communicative strategies and language practices discourses on the imagined reader of Hufvudstadsbladet Media rituals can be regarded as either ritual reactions on unforeseen events typically described via the global reactions on the death of lady Diana or as projects that media companies have full control over. Here I focus on the latter type of media ritual, that appear to become more central for the traditonal media companies. To win the hearts of many entails serving enterntainment (pop singers) and moral values (fund raising) as a proper mix. Lucia as a mediated tradition, produced and distributed by Hufvudstadsbladet since 1950, is a text that appear to foster enthusiasm and moral values. The catholic saint Lucia, in the swedish minority interpretation, is said to communicate altrusim while choosing a young woman, a Lucia, and celebrating the light in a dark season. The project focuses not on the media antroplogical notions of media rituals as malign as such, but on how contemporary media ritual campaigns shape inequal positions between groups. Critical discourse analysis and language strategies are used to frame and analyze the language practises used by the journalists. The material consists of media texts on Lucia distributed every tenth year from 1952 to 2012. In a synchronic perspective the journalistic language is seen, for example, as coherent naming practices that are materialized within the different groups, meanwhile between groups the identity shaping practices vary significantly. In a diachronic perspective one can find media ritual structures affecting the way language practices are conducted. 5
Tanja Sakota-Kokot The University of the Witwatersrand (Johannesburg, South Africa) tanja.sakota-kokot@weits.ac.za Consuming Nationality and becoming a Citizen of the other 2014 is important for South Africa because it is celebrating 20 years of democracy. Against this background South Africa is in the spotlight of the global media stage for a number of other reasons, including facing an election, a weakening of the currency (which is also happening across all emerging markets) and the death of Nelson Mandela. These events have not only triggered much debate within the global media but more importantly their representation has merely perpetuated the homogenized perception of South Africa. This discussion draws on the notion that cinema has an ability to shape and reflect our perceptions and focuses on how the representation of Nelson Mandela in two mainstream films Invictus (Clint Eastwood, 2009) and Long Walk to Freedom (Justin Chadwick, 2013) has consumed a specific nation identity of what it means to be South African. The discussion will interrogate how the film medium perpetuates the concept of the Rainbow Nation that has imagined a community and identity through the image and legend of the man. The question remains how through consuming a particular nation identity, one has actually become a citizen of the other? Drawing on Higson s (1989) notion that the search for a stable and coherent National identity can only be successful at the expense of repressing internal differences, tensions and contradictions amongst its citizens. The argument centres on how otherness is created through consuming supposed participation and citizenship. The paper will examine how the films support a specific image that marginalizes the actual demographic and political dynamics whilst maintaining a very particular representation of South Africa that fits the global perspective. By referring to Invictus (2009) and Long Walk to Freedom i (2013) in the post-mandela era, this paper will interrogate how the film medium functions within the current social, political and historical climate that encourages a particular nation identity, but in actual fact merely sustains the process of othering on both a national and international level. i Please note that the analysis of Long Walk to Freedom will depend on its availability to initiate such a discussion 6