UCSD Dept. of Communication ICA Conference 2003 - Participants
FACULTYFor more information visit the ICA webpage
For San Diego accomodations and activities visit the Communication in Borderlands page
Boatema Boateng (Presenter)
African Communication Policy at the Border between Public and Private Broadcasting at the Dawn of the 21st Century
Saturday, 5/24/2003 at 3:45 p.m.
Lisa Cartwright (Respondent)
Visual Communication Division
“Film and Popular Science”
Monday, May 26, 2003, 11:15am-12:30pm
Paula U. Chakravartty - University of California (Chair)Giovanna Chesler (Plenary Chair)
Session: Keynote Plenary: Borderlands Documentary, Señorita Extraviata, and the Films of Lourdes Portillo
Sunday May 25, 515pmGary Fields (Respondent)
“Mapping the Place of Urban/Digital/Global Convergence: Urban Politics, Global Trafficking and the Virtual City”
Saturday, May 24th, 2:15p.m.Dan Hallin (Presenter and Member of the Host Committee and Board of Directors)
¿Mediocracia? Binational Perspectives On Mexico's Post-Authoritarian Media System (Discussant)
Saturday 24th, at 3:45
Borderlands in Specific International Locales (Discussant)
Sunday 25th, at 3:45.
Binational Cooperation Between US and Mexican Communication Scholars (Chair)
Sunday 25th, at 12:45.Valerie Hartouni (Presenter)
“Global Justice and the Problem of Human Rights”
“Crimes Against the Human Status: Reflections on Nuremberg, Eichmann, and the Banality of Evil”
Both the Nuremberg Tribunal and the trial of Adolf Eichmann some fifteen years later were concerned with providing a “performance for history” even while the particular nature and choreography of each performance differed. My question with respect to both proceedings concerns how the demands of justice were construed and enacted? How did the documentary film, Nazi Death Camps– assembled under the direction of General Eisenhower and critical to the case made in both courtrooms–work to shape the visual as well as legal landscape of what we today know as genocide or crimes against the human status? And how is this landscape fundamentally complicated or recast by Hannah Arendt’s claim that in the figure of Eichmann and of the 22 defendants at Nuremberg, she had come to see evil “in its total banality”?
Sunday, 5/25/2003 at 11:15 a.m.
Robert Horwitz (Presenter)
African Communication Policy at the Border between Public and Private Broadcasting at the Dawn of the 21st Century
Saturday, 5/24/2003 at 3:45 p.m.
Global Justice and the Problem of Human Rights
Sunday, 5/25/2003 at 11:15 a.m.
Media Concentration
Saturday, 5/24/2003 at 9:45 a.m.
Surveillance and Privacy (Chair)
Tuesday, 5/27/2003 at 8:15 a.m.Vicente L. Rafael (Presenter)
“Global Justice and the Problem of Human Rights”
“The Cell Phone and the Crowd: Messianic Politics in the Contemporary Philippines”
This paper explores the roles of the cell phone and the crowd as two related but distinct technics in conjuring up a kind of messianic politics in the Philippines during the civilian led coup that ousted Joseph “Erap” Estrada from the presidency in January 2001. It looks into the emergence of a middle class politics captivated by the power of telecommunication to call forth, as well as defer, the arrival of justice. It thus inquires into a specific national manifestation of the promise, so widely believed in the world today, of telecommunication to reconfigure social hierarchy, a possibility simultaneously longed for and dreaded by those most anxious to chart the course of this future history.
Sunday, May 25th,11:15 a.m. - 12:30 p.m.Michael Schudson, (Presenter)
"Journalism After 9-11"
Saturday, May 24, 9:45-11
"Civic and Political Participation"
May 27, 12:45-2Ellen Seiter, (Presenter)
Children and Youth in the Digital Age: Rethinking Research
Saturday, 5/24/2003 at 9:45 a.m.
Methods of reception research with children
Tuesday, 5/27/2003 at 12:45 p.m.Elana Zilberg, (Presenter)
Theme Sessions Paper Session: Borderlands in Specific International Locales
“La Viajera: Coming Face to Face with the Globalization of Communication Networks”
Sunday, May 25th, 3:45 p.m. - 5:00 p.m.UCSD Dept. of Communication - ICA Participants
Graduate Students, Alumni, LecturersRoberto Avant-Mier (Presenter)
Department of Communication, The University of Utah
The Whiteness of English: An auto/ethnographic exploration of Latina/o media discourse and the politics of language
Over the past decade, studies of Whiteness have come to question the ideological stronghold and hegemonic position of Whiteness in relation to various other identity groups and populations. The author argues that what has been missing from recent studies on Whiteness is a dimension that investigates the politics of language. Contemporary issues like the emergence of English-Only laws in various U.S. states, anti-immigration sentiment, and xenophobia have a great deal to contribute to the literature on Whiteness and the understanding of how Whiteness operates through a politics of language (i.e. English versus Español). By engaging Latina/o media discourse related to the politics of language in the context of an emergence of Latina/os in popular music, the author seeks to explore the issue of Whiteness with regard to questions of language, identity, and culture. More specifically, this paper sheds light on contemporary media issues related to the aforementioned emergence of Latina/os in popular music.Katherine Brown, (Alum)
“Analysis of Media Content: Examples from Around the World”, (Chair)
“New Views of Visual Culture”
Saturday, 5/24/2003 at 11:15 a.m.
"Theorising Vision at the Crossroads", (Presenter)
Saturday, May 24th, at 3:45 p.m.Kathleen Casey, (Panelist)
Film and Popular Science
“Films about sound and noise”
Monday May 26th, 11:15Cees J. Hamelink - U of Amsterdam (Respondent)
Steven Jackson (Presenter also Member of the Host committee)
"Technologies of Representation and the Construction of Knowledge: International and Comparative Perspectives".
My bit in it is "The World in a Pixel: Technology, Representation and the U.S.-Mexico Transboundary Mapping Initiative"
Monday, May 26th, 11:15-12:30Toi James (Presenter)
“ Top Four Papers in Language and Social Interaction”
“ Interethnic Friendships”
I'm just talking about how adolescent girls' use language and material artifacts to mediate and maintain their friendship.
Monday, May 26th, 5:15pm, San Diego Ballroom AMyung-Koo Kang - Seoul National U (Presenter)
Abstract Title: East Asian Modernities and Localized Media and Cultural StudiesChristine A. Lemesianou - (Presenter)
Abstract Title: Globalization and the Production of “Other” SpacesGustavo Adolfo León Duarte (Presenter)
Binacom/Universidad de Sonora, México.
Abstract Title: Prospective of the Development of the Theories of Communication in Latin AmericaRegina Marchi (Presenter)
“Identity and Popular Communication”
"US Day of the Dead as Political Communication"
Tuesday, May 27th at 9:45 a.m.Arthur-Martins Aginam (Panelist)
School Communication, Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, British Columbia, CanadaICA - Mass Communication Division
“Upstart to Major Player: The Role of Industry Alliances and Consumer Identities in Cable Network Viability”
The 1980s cable TV boom promised lower barriers to entry and greater variety in entertainment and information choices. But competition rapidly shaped a marketplace in which the viability would depend on affiliations with established industry players. New forms and formats would emerge, not as alternatives but as strategies for expansion by major industry players. This panel offers a comparative history of patterns of ownership and niching in cable television from 1985 to the present.
Cynthia Chris (Chair/Panelist)
The High Cost of Cable: Discovery’s Vertical Affiliations and Raised Barriers to Entry
Cheri Ketchum (Panelist)
Eating Without Anxiety: A Political-Economic Approach to Understanding the Food Network.
Catherine Saulino (Panelist)
Room to Breath? Feminism and the Oxygen Network
Anthony Freitas (Panelist)
Paradoxes in Gay and Lesbian Premium Programming (or Thinking about Pay-for-Gay Channels)
Sarah Banet-Weiser (Respondent)
Monday, May 26, 2003, 2:15-3:30pm - Chicago RoomVicki Mayer (Presenter)
American Studies, University of California at Davis
“The Spice Girls in Cowboy Hats: Making Tejano Teen Music”
This paper investigates the production of Tejano youth icons to revive an ailing music industry for Mexican Americans in a global economy. In a commercial marketplace for ethnic music and niche genres, the paper argues that music industry professionals have fetishized young Mexican-Americans as the keys to the music’s economic and cultural success. In doing so, young musicians and their music have had to manage the contradictions imposed by a capitalist market for Mexican-American culture. Using ethnographic techniques to talk with and observe Tejano music producers and musicians, the paper examines how young Mexican Americans strive to be both culturally authentic and commercially marketable, thus producing new sets of hierarchies in a Tejano cultural economy.Victor Menayang - Univesity of Indonesia (Panelist)
Fatma Mindikoglu, (Panelist)
Global Justice and the Problem of Human Rights
“Pragmatism and Human Rights: Another Uneasy Relationship?”
While there is an overwhelming agreement on the revolutionary progress of human rights, there is still a disappointing gap between the theory and practice and the movement may have reached the limits of its effectiveness without a broader base of support. There is now an urgency to reconsider pragmatism as an approach to human rights and to re-evaluate how this approach might notably help regimes better adjust to the realities on the ground but improve their responsive reflexes to human rights violations. However, if there is an urgent need to reconsider pragmatism in human rights, there is even a more urgent need to make peace with the concept itself - - given that it seems to signal an approach that lacks principles and is exclusively preoccupied with material efficiency. In fact, this current utilitarianism-like baggage of the concept is what sustains the most fierce and popular debate between idealists and pragmatists in human rights arena. But just as idealism is not all about a hard-nosed devotion to absolute principles, pragmatism is not simply about flexibility, practicality, lack of moral consistency, self-interests, unprincipled expediency, instant ideological u-turns either; it is a way of thinking and a method of social inquiry whose fundamental premises can be –very briefly- characterized as a commitment to bridging the gap between theory and practice on the ground, to dismantling all absolutes, foundational and metaphysical systems, to viewing the world as process and change and finally to being open to cross-cultural understanding and exchange. It is these premises of pragmatism that promise to empower the normative infrastructure of the human rights regime bring peaceful resolutions to human rights violations in very diverse cultures around the globe. So why is then pragmatism today so negatively regarded? The practices of 20th century politics under the rubric of “pragmatism” can be identified as the major reason: Especially, the American Realpolitik that disguised and naturalized its calculations in favor of vital national interests paved the way for a new category of pragmatism called “vulgar pragmatism”. I would like to argue in this paper that it is in fact “vulgar pragmatism” which constitutes a serious threat to the integrity of human rights regime –with its subtle and covert manifestations especially in the context of human rights of women. The paper explores the theoretical and practical boundaries of critical and vulgar pragmatism drawing on the philosophical essays of Michael Ignatieff on human rights and concludes with a set of questions that are derived from the implications of Ignatieff’s arguments on the case of female genital mutilation, the key question being “why is that human rights discourse has a tendency to break down when it comes to the violation of the female body?
Sunday, May 25th, 11:15am-12:30pmIsabel Molina Guzmán (Presenter)
Latina/o Studies Program Research Fellow, University of Illinois, Urbana Champaign
“Browning the News: U.S. Latina/o Readings of the Elián González Story”
From November 23, 1999 until Elián González's return to Cuba on June 29, 2000, the conflict between the U.S. Federal government, the Cuban government, and the Cuban-American exile community over the immigration status of Elián captured the popular imagination and media interest of the country in unprecedented fashion. This qualitative study explores how Latina/o audiences construct and communicate identity narratives of citizenship, gender, and ethnicity through their responses to mainstream and ethnic media coverage of the González controversy, a watershed media moment in popular representations about U.S. Latinas/os. The mainstream and ethnic coverage of the González controversy provides a textual moment of identity rupture and convergence for Latina/o audiences. That is, Latina/o audiences respond to these textual representations by either 1) embracing the plight of the Cuban American exile community through an idealized reading of Latina/o pan-ethnicity or 2) rejecting pan-ethnic constructions of Latinidad through the privileging of individualized subjectivities.Maribel C. Paredes - (Panelist) (Alum)
Mauro Porto (Alum)
América Rodriguez (alum) (Respondent)
Assistant Professor, Department of Radio-TV-Film, University of Texas at AustinViviana Rojas (Presenter)
Journalism Department, University of Texas Austin-University of Texas San Antonio
“Is that me on TV? Immigrant and non-immigrant Latinas talk back to Spanish-language television”
This paper draws from data obtained in 27 in-depth interviews with women of different class positions and residency status to argue that Latinas bring a critical approach to their viewing of the Spanish-language networks Univision and Telemundo. The women of this study critique the reproduction of race and class differences among Latinos and also draw attention to the sexualization of Latinas on television. They recognize and welcome the expansion of Hispanic television networks but explain that they want “constructive and more serious programs” and “programs for children.” Above all, they want Univision and Telemundo to “stop stereotyping and sexualizing women.” The informants offer insights on how Latina sexuality has been used as a commodity for both Anglo and Hispanic markets. These informants exemplify a classic “active audience.” However, this study adds to the literature on active audiences by challenging the common marketing practice of categorizing immigrant Latinos as being "too polite and complacent" to critique Hispanic media.Nic Sammond (Alum)
¿Nuestra Voz? Audience reflections on the development and expansion of Latino-oriented media
Annalisa Sannino, (Visiting Scholar) (Panelist)
"Conversational Chaos: A Study of an Extreme Case of Speech Discontinuities in E.U. Meetings."
Soek-Fang Sim (Former lecturer)
Panel: Political Communication Issues: An Asian Perspective
Paper title: "The media’s construction of consensus and the softening of authoritarianism in Singapore"
Abstract: The logic of one-party rule is this: one-party governments can only legitimately claim to represent a consensual nation, since a fragmented nation would require multi-party representation. Analyzing the Singapore media’s coverage of the Singapore 21 project, I argue that it is through the construction of a “silent majority” (that echoes values of the dominant party) and the dismissal of dissent as the voice of the “vocal minority” that allows the media to sustain the myth of national consensus on an everyday basis. This consensus is also reflected in citizens’ interviews, they expend considerable energy arguing with (the social expectations of) the silent majority and justifying their deviation, thereby affirming the relevance and centrality of public morality in personal lives. Through conflating state values with public morality, state coercion is rendered indirect, organic and legitimate. Through transforming state coercion as pressures to conform to Society’s gaze, authoritarianism is also softened.
Monday, May 26th, 8:15am
David Sholle - (Presenter)
Philosophy of Communication Division Paper Session: Towards Alternative Modernities
"The Subject of Adorno"
Tuesday, May 27th, from 11:15 a.m. - 12:30 p.m.
Angharad Valdivia (Chair)
Research Associate Professor of Communications
Associate Professor of Media Studies, Women’s Studies and Latina/o Studies
University of Illinois at Urbana-ChampaignYael Warshel (Presenter)
Session: International and Development Communication Paper Session:
Asserting and Resisting Mediated Identities (Jointly Sponsored with Admin)
“Israeli-Jewish Children Use Palestinian Israeli Sesame Street to Escape (Top student paper in International Communication)
The notion that borders separate Israelis and Palestinians is well known.
Efforts to reconstruct these borders, dissolve or even eliminate them through peace building efforts have proven difficult. One such effort, Palestinian Israeli Sesame Street, has found those borders to be too deep to transcend. Recently, the series, which began its first season in 1998 has decided to chart a new course. Its' second season will treat those borders as something that cannot be penetrated, rather than as it treated them during its' first season, as something constructed. Adults have deemed the series to be too far removed from reality and hence not something to which children in the region should be exposed. My interviews with Israeli-Jewish children during the months of November and December of 2001, however, tell a different story. Children, in contrast to their adult decision makers, want the show to continue in its original format. They use the show as a means for taking time-out from the conflict raging around them.
Sunday, May 25th, 8:15 a.m. - 9:30 a.m., Torrey Room 2Woo-hyun Won (Visiting scholar)
Ferruh Yilmaz (Presenter)
Session: "Research From the BINACOM"
The title of my paper: "Ideology at Work in (the Production of) the News: Ethnographic Observations on the Production of a News Story in San Diego Union Tribune
This paper analyzes how everyday production routines and journalistic conventions as well as ideological assumptions about minorities and about the newspaper’s readership all play a role in the production of an ordinary story about Latino labor leader. The concept of “newsworthiness” is a major rhetorical source in these negotiations between the reporter and the editor, and the news sources. Newsworthiness is flexibly defined and redefined through complex negotiations in order to fit the story into one of the basic journalistic forms (human-interest, conflict or deviance story). In this case, a potential conflict story is turned into a human-interest story to get a positive story about Latino population into the newspaper. The analysis is based on my ethnographic observations on the San Diego Union Tribune during a routine news production day, where I followed a reporter while he was producing an ordinary news article on his beat, Latino Affairs.
Sunday, May 24th, Manchester 2 RoomKatynka Zazueta Martínez, (Panelist)
Philosophy of Communication division of the ICA.
¿Nuestra Voz? Audience reflections on the development and expansion of Latino-oriented media
My paper is based an audience study I conducted with young girls at National City Middle School. The young girls in this study shed light on how fans have used the recent success of the Latina singers, Jennifer Lopez and Selena, to create a vision of the world and Latino identity that goes beyond their own experiences.
Theorists as diverse as Daniel Miller, Joseph Turow, Furat Firat and Nikhilesh Dholakia have studied the movement within U.S. media industries from the production of media for the masses to a focus on audience segmentation based on race, ethnicity, age, and lifestyle. The papers in this panel enter this discussion by engaging in an analysis of the recent commodification of Latino identity. A unifying theme of the panel is the identification of the social, political, economic, and cultural struggles over power and meaning that are present in the process of audience segmentation.
Saturday, June 24. 11:15-12:30 in the Leucadia Room.Yuezhi Zhao - Simon Fraser University (Chair)
Philosophy of Communication Division Panel Session: Toward a Transcultural Critical Political Economy of Communication: Rethinking Power, Access, and Resistance
Panel Description: Drawing from conceptual and concrete evidence, each of the papers in this panel addresses the contradictions and hybridizations of culture and power in the fractured processes of globalization by identifying new modes of power, contestation, and resistance and exploring historically situated modes of analysis that neither romanticize local institutions, cultures, identities nor disregard the ways in which global networks of power create unequal social conditions.
Monday, May 26th, from 11:15 a.m. - 12:30 p.m.