Neoliberalism was one of the most successful attempts to reshape individuals in human history. Its achievements rank alongside those productive and destructive sectarian practices that we call reli...

This essay traces the profound impact of the digital revolution upon fandom, looking particularly at debates within the fan and acafan communities. It argues that fans have always been at the forefront of media industry transformations, summarizes some of the common themes emerging in the debate, and considers the wider implications for the reconfigured relationships between producer and consumer in the digital economy.

This paper explores the controversy caused by Paedogeddon, a one-off special of the Channel 4 series Brass Eye broadcast on July 26, 2001. Although the program sought to satirize inconsistencies in the way the British media treats and sensationalizes child sex offenders and their crimes (Clark, 2001), it offended many viewers and caused considerable controversy. More than 900 complaints were made to the Independent Television Commission, almost 250 complaints to the Broadcasting Standards Commission, and 2,000 complaints to Channel 4, “officially” making Paedogeddon the most complained-about television program in British television history at that time. This paper examines the nature of the objections to Paedogeddon as played out on the pages of the British national press and contributes to debates about morally acceptable television. Three themes are identified in the press objections to the mock-documentary: aesthetic arguments; moral and ethical implications; and consequences of ministerial intervention. The nature of these press objections served to prevent an engagement with Paedogeddon's critique of the media. Further, the analysis illustrates how media discourses and scripts can fix and limit debates surrounding controversial television programming.

This article argues that the way that youth access and make sense of “offensive” media content is relevant to how they take action – or do not act – in political cultures. This argument is made in reference to a study of the “Beacon” program, a 12-week fire safety course run by the Merseyside Fire and Rescue Service in Liverpool, England. Beacon serves local young people involved in or at risk from antisocial behavior. It is also a media place, politicized by a local press that articulates the course with national moral panics about youth and “hoody” cultures. As such, Beacon affords the opportunity to explore how the offense that this panic causes to young people can become a cultural resource, as reception is tied to media rituals and the production of alternative media places through acts of ordinary media practice. Through a combination of media analysis, participant observation, interviewing and reception exercises, I argue that since Beacon already had been produced in media as a battleground where the general war against the youth disorder was being fought, Beacon students also had already been produced as political subjects in media representation. To refuse the relevance of this representation to their experience was, therefore, to acquiesce to hegemony. It is no coincidence that the young people who the Merseyside Fire and Rescue Service felt had benefited most from the course were also those most able to explain their situation in reference to negative media representations of youth. In one notable case, this reading of offensive content had been converted into a performance that achieved some success in changing the local press' agenda on Beacon. This indicates how reception, ritual and performance are interconnected concepts in the production of media place.

Informed by the work of sociology of gender scholar R.W. Connell (1995), this article examines the construction of and relationships among different types of masculinities in the Discovery Channel's “docusoap” American Chopper. The program, set in the shop of custom motorcycle fabricators Orange County Choppers (OCC) “stars” Paul Teutel, Sr., and his two adult sons, Paulie and Mikey, each of whom performs a distinct type of masculinity (hegemonic, subordinated/resistant, and complicit, respectively). Focusing primarily on the relationship between the hegemonic Paul Sr. and the subordinated/resistant Paulie, this article argues that the program's hybrid nature as a docusoap allows for a unique vantage point from which to view mediated constructions of masculinities.

In recent years, depictions of strong but feminine girl heroes have become common in children's television programming. These girl power icons reflect changing cultural ideas about girlhood. Nickelodeon's My Life as a Teenage Robot is a cartoon popular among preadolescents, which follows the exploits of Jenny, a powerful, female-gendered robot who must save the world while also surviving the trials of high school. This article examines My Life as a Teenage Robot's discourse on girl power and the construction of identity. It focuses on a key theme that contradicts other texts about girl heroes: that strength, agency, and normative femininity cannot be embodied in the same individual. This article interrogates the ways in which the show's messages are simultaneously progressive and regressive, and it calls for further research on girls' reception of media texts.

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size Notes The University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign during Jim's time, 1963–1976 and 1979–1992, was an excellent place to find engineers with an interest in communication technology to whom one could listen.