International Communications Market Report 2008

The International Communications Market Report 2008, published by Ofcom, the independent regulator and competition authority for the UK communications industries, is now available.

From the report's forward:

This is Ofcom’s third report on developments in international communications markets. Putting the UK market into an international context is becoming increasingly important, as communications service provision globalises and as technological innovation breaks down traditional national market boundaries.

This report sets out the availability, take-up and use of communications services among seven main comparator countries (the UK, France, Germany, Italy, the US, Canada and Japan). Where data are available, we have included a further five European countries (Poland, Spain, the Netherlands, Sweden and the Republic of Ireland). We also consider separately the development of communications markets in the large emerging economies of Brazil, Russia, India and China.

This year, we have put yet more emphasis on the importance of convergence by setting out a number of converging market themes. These demonstrate that as content and services are distributed to consumers over a variety of digital networks, and to many different devices, consumer behaviour towards communications services is changing – for example, their concurrent use of different media such as the internet and television. We have also included more time-series data this year on how, across our larger comparator countries, consumer attitudes towards communications services are evolving.

We are publishing this report to help fulfil our commitment to continually research markets, to inform our policy thinking and to fulfil the commitment we made in our 2008/09 annual plan. It complements the other research that has been published by Ofcom in 2008, and forms part of the Communications Market trilogy – together with The UK Communications Market (published in August 2008) and The Communications Market: Nations and Regions (May 2008). [These reports can be found at the Research and Market Data section of the website.]

The reference period of this report is the five years to the end of 2007. Consequently, our analysis does not fully take account of changing economic conditions over the past twelve months.

Press coverage of Thanksgiving, 1905-2005

Journalism Studies (Volume 9, Issue 1, February 2008) features research on Thanksgiving as depicted in the news. The issue is available online from the Library homepage.

From Religiosity to Consumerism: Press coverage of Thanksgiving, 1905-2005, by Bonnie Brennen (Temple University).

Abstract

This research looks at the coverage of Thanksgiving during the past 100 years on 11 daily urban newspapers published in the United States in an effort to assess journalistic practices related to the coverage of routine news stories and to understand how through its coverage newspapers represent and interpret social, political, and economic change. The Thanksgiving holiday was chosen because it has been a traditional news story consistently covered each year in the press and an analysis of the coverage provides insights into the basic routines of journalism including news conventions, journalistic values, and norms over the past 100 years.

Race and Reality TV

If you're looking for more reading in preparation for the upcoming Scholars Symposium, Reality Television, Real Worlds: Global Perspectives on the Politics of Reality Television, December 5, 2008 here at the Annenberg School, the latest issue of Critical Studies in Media Communication (Volume 25, Number 4, October 2008) is devoted to Race and Reality TV, edited by Mark P. Orbe.

Articles include an opening piece by Orbe, Representations of Race in Reality TV: Watch and Discuss, followed by Black. White. and a Survivor of the Real World: Constructions of Race on Reality TV, by Katrina E. Bell-Jordan; Performing Race in Flavor of Love and The Bachelor, by Rachel E. Dubrofsky and Antoine Hardy; As Seen on TV: An Autoethnographic Reflection on Race and Reality Television, by Robin M. Boylorn. Catherine Squires and Mark C. Hopson supply critical responses to the issue with Race and Reality TV: Tryin' to Make It Real - But Real Compared to What? and "Now Watch Me Dance": Responding to Critical Observations, Constructions, and Performances of Race and Reality on Television, respectively.

The issue is available from the Library web page.

Day After Election Front Pages From Around the World

Two journalism sites, Poynter and Newseum, feature newspaper front pages of post election day coverage. Both include foreign press as well as national but the Newseum site has more papers.

Page One Today: Obama's Historic Victory
Selected images of newspaper front pages from November 5th and 6th, 2008. From the Poynter Institute.

Today's Front Pages: Wednesday, November 05, 2008
Hundreds of newspaper front pages from 66 countries reporting Obama's victory in the 2008 presidential election. Papers can be viewed alphabetical (newspaper name) or by geographic region. From the Newseum website.

See this blog's previous post on Today's Front Pages.

Posters and Election Propaganda Blog

Posters and Election Propaganda is a relatively new blog (since August 2008) dedicated to "the examination of communications in election campaigns, with a focus on posters." The blog's author is Steven A. Seidman, Ph.D., Associate Professor and Chair of the Department of Strategic Communication at Ithaca College. Seidman has just come out with a book on the subject: Posters, Propaganda, and Persuasion in Election Campaigns Around the World and Through History (Peter Lang, 2008).

Twittering Away Election Day

Here's a fun way to introduce yourself to the world of Twitter if you aren't a Twitterer yourself or know someone who is. What is Twitter? A combination of social networking and micro-blogging that enables you to post "tweets" of up to 140 characters or less, a sort of bloggers' Haiku (which, unlike Haiku, seems to be a waste of time!).

This site, Election 2008, filters thousands of tweets per minute and feeds you just those that have to do with the election so you get an instant public opinion meter passing before your eyes, as fast as you can read. You can also choose a more sorted view, for example, receive only those posts about Palin or Obama. For what it's worth.

November CommQuote

Michael Hirschorn, writing for The Atlantic, discusses a somewhat forgotten filmmaker, Peter Watkins, who "anticipated our modern media madness." He describes:

"...the uncanny way his films, most of them dating back to the '60s and '70s, presage the contemporary cultural and political [media] landscape--from Fox News to The Daily Show, from reality TV to the coverage of the Iraq War...Watkins specializes in historical and current-affairs re-creations, but his real subject has always been the media...Watkins' later films ratchet up the intensity of his media critique, dropping the contemporary press into wildly anachronistic environments. In his last film, the six-hour (!), French-language La Commune (Paris 1871), rival networks cover the events of that March as if they're fodder for your local news, complete with man-in-the-street interviews and expert commentary from bow-tied men a stutter step away from the ex-generals who fanned out across the airwaves in the month after the 2003 Iraq invasions, rationalizing the fiasco thousands of miles away."
--Michael Hirschorn, The Atlantic, "He Saw It Coming," November, 2008

La Commune (Paris 1871) and five other Watkins films are available for check-out from Van Pelt Library. See listing with descriptions in VCat.