Search results

This text offers a theoretical engagement with the ways in which private and public interests - and how those interests have been understood - have framed the changing rationale for broadcasting regulation, using the first century of UK broadcasting as a starting point. Unlike most books on broadcasting, this text adopts an explicitly Foucauldian and genealogical perspective in its account of media history and power, and unpicks how the meanings of terms such as 'public service' and 'public interest', as well as 'competition' and 'choice', have evolved over time. In considering the appropriation by broadcasting scholars of concepts such as neoliberalism, citizenship and the public sphere to a critical account of broadcasting history, the book assesses their appropriateness and efficacy by engaging with interdisciplinary debates on each concept. This work will be of particular significance to academics and students with an interest in media theory, history, policy and regulation, as well as those disposed to understanding as well as critiquing the neoliberalization of public media.

This article introduces the special issue '« Islamogauchisme » ? Moral Panics, Culture Wars and the Threat to Academic Freedom'. It begins by outlining the polemic in 2020, whereby the government accused universities of being overrun by so-called 'Islamogauchistes', placing this moral panic within the wider French context of ideological redefinitions of laïcité and debates on the compatibility of Islam with the universalism of a secular republic, as well as of neoliberal reforms and authoritarian crackdowns on public protest. The article then explores the history and fallacy of the concept and associated government claims, arguing that the term is best understood as an empty signifier, an umbrella term under which almost anything vaguely Muslim or left-wing could be covered, before moving on to critique the function of this kind of discourse, arguing that as well as continuing the Islamophobic scapegoating of minorities, it serves to 'other' the left-wing opposition and normalise the far-right while the neoliberal centre itself becomes increasingly illiberal and authoritarian. Finally, the text will place this very French polemic in the wider global context, considering it in terms of the wider culture wars that we are witnessing around the world while also focusing on what is specific to the French case – namely, a particularly republican form of racism that supplements the neoilliberalisation of the state. The introduction concludes with a summary of the contributions to the issue from Philippe Marlière, Reza Zia-Ebrahimi, Michel Wieviorka, Caroline Ibos & Eric Fassin, Houria Bouteldja & Anna Younes, Farid Hafez, and Aurélien Mondon & Simon Dawes.

This article introduces the special issue on 'Islamophobia, Racialisation and the "Muslim Problem" in France'. Islamophobia is here understood as (anti-Muslim) racism, with structural and historical dimensions beyond those of individual acts of discrimination or prejudice, and whereby those perceived to be Muslim are systematically racialised as if they are 'a race' and as a 'problem' to be debated (primarily by the White non-Muslim majority). The issue brings together researchers from France and beyond, in French and in English, and from several disciplines, to demonstrate the diversity of international academic research on the topic as well as the relative consensus among specialist scholars on how to theorise and critique such phenomena.

International audience ; Simon Dawes's introduction to the inaugural issue of Media Theory.

International audience ; Simon Dawes's introduction to the inaugural issue of Media Theory.

International audience ; Simon Dawes's introduction to the inaugural issue of Media Theory.

This brief rapid response article considers the French media framing of the Charlie Hebdo attack in terms of 'Republican values' such as free speech, and critiques the post-political and moralistic reduction of debate to 'right and wrong' arguments, as well as the fetishisation of the right to offend and the depoliticisation of the right to be offended.

Literature on broadcasting regulation in the UK often presents a narrative of decline, from an ethos of public service and citizenship to a neoliberal faith in market logic and the sovereign consumer that undermines the public sphere. Much of this discussion is weakened, however, by a lack of engagement with citizenship and consumption, and the reduction to unitary oppositions of what are actually protean distinctions. This weakness in the literature is particularly problematic when it comes to analysing contemporary changes unreflexively as 'neoliberal', because neoliberalism cannot be reduced to the passing of power from the state to the market, or to a simple process of privatisation or individualisation. Rather, neoliberalism involves the changing governmental relation between state and market, and between citizens and consumers. Consequently, engagement with theoretical debates on citizenship, consumption and neoliberalism will be recommended to provide a more sophisticated reading of broadcasting and the public sphere.

This essay reviews Helen Nissenbaum's Privacy in Context (2010), focusing in particular on her dismissal of the public/private dichotomy. Taking issue with the problem she constructs of 'privacy in public', her unitary reading of the dichotomy and 'socializing' of the value of privacy, or what she calls 'contextual integrity', and her treatment of technology in the abstract, the essay then goes on to argue that the framework she proposes is incapable of addressing the contemporary incursion of market logic into every other aspect of social and political life in the digital economy, and therefore of protecting privacy at all. The essay concludes with an insistence on the need to approach contextual privacy problems from a political economic perspective and with a political conception of privacy, and for that to be founded upon a protean appreciation of the public/private dichotomy.