Vol 11, No 2 (2019)

Nostalgia in the Grocery Shop: A Typology of Brands from the Past (PDF)

Alexandra Bardan, Natalia Vasilendiuc

Abstract: This paper explores, within a historical and anthropological approach, a configuration of food brands from the past into the larger context of the local market, thirty years after the fall of Ceausescu’s regime, in 1989. After a brief presentation focusing on the emergence and the evolution of the new MarCom industry starting with the ‘90s, the theoretical framework of the study is considered, questioning the links between nostalgia and food, and further on between memory and material culture. The second part examines previous representations of past brands, looking also into a series of pertinent tools for an interdisciplinary approach combining field research, content analysis and visual ethnography. Our study further explores the way brands from the past may be considered, thus building a typology consisting of six categories: “Originals”, “Updated”, “Romanian Tastes”, “Archetypal Figures”, “Nostalgic” and “Collectibles”. Finally, brands from the “Originals” category are examined while also raising new questions about the social context of their consumption.

 Sentiment in TV Documentaries: An Interdisciplinary Approach  (PDF)

Sylvia Jaki, Tom De Smedt

Abstract. Documentaries play an important role in providing knowledge about historical and scientific topics to non-expert audiences. They continue to be widely popular despite the upcoming of manifold new forms of journalism in the digital age. The primary function of documentaries is to convey information. But to make sure that people find these formats attractive, they also need to be entertaining, for example on television. Critics often deem the ways in which TV documentaries try to entertain as detrimental to their academic quality (with the verdict: too opinionated and too emotionalizing). This paper is an interdisciplinary focused study, combining insight and approaches from media studies, media linguistics, and computational linguistics. It examines to what extent TV documentaries from the fields of history and science/technology contain judgements, opinions, or emotions. To do so, we have analyzed this subject, which has mostly been treated in qualitative studies, from a quantitative perspective by using sentiment analysis, an AI approach that originated in the field of consumer reviews. As sentiment analysis is still mostly text-focused, but documentaries are multimodal media products, we have also examined a side experiment to assess what role the verbal text plays in the perception of sentiment in documentaries.

  The Evolution of Citizen Participation in the Greek Online Newspapers (2014-2018): A Quantitative Analysis  (PDF)

Theodora Saridou, Andreas Veglis

Abstract. During the last two decades, the new media landscape has often been explored through the lens of audience participation in news production process. The diffusion of user-generated content both in news websites and on social media platforms has led media organizations to employ participatory formats that allow the audience to actively consume or co-produce content. As a result, journalists are often challenged by a vast amount of -vulnerable to problems- content that has to be handled in tandem with their other daily tasks. This paper focuses on the development of participatory journalism practices in Greek media. Specifically, in order to examine opportunities for users’ involvement in news organizations, a comparative quantitative study in all national daily political and financial online newspapers in Greece was conducted in 2014 and 2018. For this purpose, both the integration of participatory tools and the use of quality assurance methods in the relative websites were investigated. The findings indicate a rather reluctant attitude towards productive ways of engagement. Participation takes place through a limited number of tools and user-generated content is accepted only when filtered..