I argue that an indirect and imaginative route through subversive humor offers a means to
raise consciousness about covert oppression and the mechanisms underlying it, reveal the errors
of those with power who complacently sustain systematic oppression, and even open those people
up to changing their minds. Subversive humor confronts serious…[Read more]

Some of Dave Chappelle’s uses of storytelling about seemingly mundane events, like his experiences with his “white friend Chip” and the police, are examples of what W.E.B. Du Bois calls “Positive Propaganda.” This is in contrast to “Demagoguery,” the sort of propaganda described by Jason Stanley that obstructs empathic recognition of others, and u…[Read more]

This paper discusses the effect of social media on the occurrence of ‘Arab Spring’. In the
Arab world no country could claim to be truly democratic and most were autocratic coupled
with desertification (68.4 per cent of the total land area), phenomenal rise in population and
scarcity of water. Moreover, about 60 per cent of the population is…[Read more]

This research work is an investigation into the reception of anti-smoking advertisements
that make use of “fear appeals”. The objective of the research is to bring audience
perceptions, interpretations and making sense processes of such advertising campaigns to
the limelight. Instead of measuring effects or effectiveness of anti-smoking mes…[Read more]

This survey focuses on how the people in Sabah perceived Malaysia’s governmental public
relations practice and their perception of the government based upon it. It includes how the
different types of mass media and its content that they expose themselves to have influence
their image of the nation administration as well as its policies and i…[Read more]

The traditional lines between journalism and public relations are now intertwined and public
relations practitioners have an influential role on the content consumers see every day in
newspapers and on news broadcasts. This survey looked at video news releases and their
implications about journalists’ ethics, integrity, independence and c…[Read more]

Twitter is a useful tool for predicting election outcomes, effectively complementing traditional opinion
polling. This study undertakes a volume, sentiment and engagement analysis for predicting the
popularity of Prime Ministerial candidates on Twitter as a run-up to the Indian Elections 2014. The
results from a survey of 2,37,639 pre-poll…[Read more]

Television is known to be a powerful provoker and circulator of meanings. The attempt in this article
is to read the discursive elements of female soap opera protagonists and find out if they are idealised
partly as religious devotees in their whole existence. Wars of production and re-enforcement of
meanings are often waged in media space.…[Read more]

The current study examines the effect of emotional contents in television advertising on the rural
women and how they understand and react towards these advertisements. The study further leads
us to the issues of cognitive behaviour of rural women after the advertisement has influenced their
emotional corridor. For this study 167 women are…[Read more]

The role of advertising as an effective vehicle of communication has long been acknowledged. It has
become the important ‘part of the cultural and economic fabric of a society and continues to be a
primary tool for marketing communication’ (Lane et. al., 2005). The current study examines the
portrayal of women in contemporary Indian mag…[Read more]

The relationship between viewer personality and reality show watching has been a point
of discussion among media researchers but has been rarely tested. The authors in the
present study explore: (i) Reality Show Watching Motives (RSWM) of viewers, (ii) further
investigates the impact of viewer personality on RSWM in a developing nation context.…[Read more]

The representations of religious tension between the polytheistic humans and the monotheistic Cylons in the Sci Fi (now Syfy) channel’s hit series Battlestar Galactica (2003–2009) is nowhere more evident than in the human “convert” to monotheism, Gaius Baltar, who struggles to proselytize his minority beliefs to other humans. Ancient Jewish…[Read more]

The representations of religious tension between the polytheistic humans and the monotheistic Cylons in the Sci Fi (now Syfy) channel’s hit series Battlestar Galactica (2003–2009) is nowhere more evident than in the human “convert” to monotheism, Gaius Baltar, who struggles to proselytize his minority beliefs to other humans. Ancient Jewish…[Read more]

Octavia E. Butler’s Parable of the Sower and Parable of the Talents provide readers with often radical re- visions and critiques of biblical texts. This article asks how the principal characters’ affective engagements with Scripture vary, and considers the extent to which fiction may “play” with the Bible, despite its authoritative distanc…[Read more]

Octavia E. Butler’s Parable of the Sower and Parable of the Talents provide readers with often radical re- visions and critiques of biblical texts. This article asks how the principal characters’ affective engagements with Scripture vary, and considers the extent to which fiction may “play” with the Bible, despite its authoritative distanc…[Read more]

Modern science fiction writers often draw upon the biblical flood story as inspiration for their own narratives. It is not uncommon to find humans fleeing on space arks to escape some cosmic disaster. In the process of adapting the biblical narrative to contemporary circumstances, these writers also frequently transform the unnamed female…[Read more]

Modern science fiction writers often draw upon the biblical flood story as inspiration for their own narratives. It is not uncommon to find humans fleeing on space arks to escape some cosmic disaster. In the process of adapting the biblical narrative to contemporary circumstances, these writers also frequently transform the unnamed female…[Read more]

In the virtual world elaborated in Marvel’s movies (the “Marvel Cinematic Universe” or MCU), “science” is creatively, strategically confused with “magic” and/or “religion.” Key supernatural/magical elements of the franchise’s comic-book source material are “retconned” (retroactively granted new narrative coherence and continuity) as advanced…[Read more]

In the virtual world elaborated in Marvel’s movies (the “Marvel Cinematic Universe” or MCU), “science” is creatively, strategically confused with “magic” and/or “religion.” Key supernatural/magical elements of the franchise’s comic-book source material are “retconned” (retroactively granted new narrative coherence and continuity) as advanced…[Read more]

This article considers several instances of biblical reception in the science-fiction role-playing game Horizon Zero Dawn (Guerrilla Games/Sony, 2017). The game’s characterisation of technology, science, and religion has led some commentators to understand Horizon Zero Dawn as presenting a firm rejection of religious narratives in favour of s…[Read more]