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For this study, we conducted 24 in-depth interviews with LGBTQ+ Spotify users to understand the relations between LGBTQ+ identities, music, and music streaming. Participants displayed a wide range of meaningful music practices and views on music and identity. At the same time, the interviews showcased how the impalpable and ever-changing nature of music, new media, and identities make it difficult and often undesirable to actively dissect or define the relations between music and LGBTQ+ identities, but affectively, personally, and socially they are as meaningful and prominent as ever before. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study set out to understand how student audiences make sense of fictional representations of journalism in television series. To do so, we conducted five focus groups with American students. First, participants expressed a need for more diversity in representations of journalism in terms of narratives and characters as they see fiction as a complementary source of information on the profession. They relied on non-fictional reference media, normative journalistic discourses, and if applicable, experiences with working in (school) newsrooms to make sense of these representations. Second, they discussed how public opinion on journalism is influenced by fiction and consequently fear that one-sided and stereotypical representations of journalism contribute to increasing the already low levels of mistrust in U.S. news media. This fear was also found to be gendered as the participants expressed concerns about the stereotypical representation of female and minority journalists as "bitchy" and "promiscuous." This manuscript puts forward journalism fiction as a metajournalistic discourse in which non-fictional and fictional journalism blur in confounding ways. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article critically examines user-curated, public playlists on Spotify tagged with homonegative terminology. We consider these playlists discursive texts that reflect and co-construct discourses about the relations between music, music streaming, gender, and sexual identity. Applying theories from masculinity and queer studies and conducting a critical textual analysis of 21 playlists, this article unpacks how these playlists relate to homophobia, heteromasculinity, and queer reappropriation. The analysis shows that the discursive connections between certain musics and homonegativity are not as straightforward as they might seem at first sight. The tagging practices suggest a network of ambiguities that cannot be interpreted as unilaterally and integrally homophobic, while overly optimistic claims also cannot account for this meticulous discursive identity work. A variety of logics underlies these playlists, including queer reappropriation, heteromasculine homonegativity, and more ambiguous negotiations. The findings support earlier queer and masculinity studies' claims that homophobic practices are as much a matter of gender as sexuality. Rather than instances of active hatred toward certain sexual identities, the playlists and their discursive tags are attempts to negotiate identities amidst music's multidimensional gendered connotations. Circulating in the digital space that is Spotify, the playlists articulate a complex variety of heteromasculine and/or queer identities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Female and minority journalists in fiction movies and series are underrepresented and often framed as emotional, unstable, inexperienced, and unprofessional. These representations reiterate and preserve existing inequalities in Western newsrooms in which female and minority journalists face many obstacles ranging from the glass ceiling to a gender pay gap. However, these representations also have the potential to subvert and challenge existing structures and imagine more inclusive newsrooms. Therefore, this study proposes a qualitative textual analysis of the representation of female journalists in the American fiction series' The Morning Show (AppleTV+, 2019) and The Bold Type (Freeform, 2017). Using a feminist media studies and intersectional perspective, it unpacks how the gendered power dynamics in newsrooms are represented in the series' narratives. We find that The Bold Type represents an idealistic version of an inclusive work environment aimed at creating equal opportunities among journalists while at the same time embedding this in broader patriarchal structures that restrict this representation. The Morning Show claims a more critical approach by representing a pessimistic and dysfunctional newsroom and including an explicit critique of the power relations that disadvantage female minority journalists. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

SKAM (NRK, 2015–2017), a popular Norwegian teen drama series, was praised for its season revolving around a nonheterosexual cis-male teenager coming to terms with his sexual desires and identity. Broadcasting companies from predominantly Western European countries bought the format and created local versions. The essay explores how SKAM and three Western European remakes represent same-sex desire and sexual identity formation. We found that the remakes were rather faithful to the politics of representation of the Norwegian source text. Emphasizing authenticity and everyday realism, they situate the teenagers in a Western context that may feature less blatant heterosexism and homophobia but where heteronormativity still co-constructs the process of sexual identity formation and general attitudes towards same-sex desire and LGBTQ culture. We postulate that SKAM and its remakes encourage LGBTQ and heterosexual teens to deconstruct their homonegative prejudices and become aware of the pervasiveness of heteronormativity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite a significant increase in gay representation in contemporary television fiction, many media scholars argue that the representation of gay men and women is governed by heteronormativity. They postulate that even rounded and heterogeneous representations of gay men and women are characters that desire to participate in institutions, practices, norms, and values that consolidate the heterosexual matrix. Yet, within a cultural studies tradition, television is considered an ambiguous medium that is able to both consent to and contest normative assumptions about sexuality. Taking into account this ambivalence, the study is interested in how popular teen television portrays gay teenagers and to what extent it negotiates heteronormativity in its representation of gay youth. As the objective is an in-depth investigation of representational strategies, the study examines one teen series that is authoritative in its representation of gay teens, namely the American musical series "Glee." By means of a qualitative textual analysis, the article demonstrates that "Glee" represents gay youth as suffering victims or as teens aspiring to heteronormative values. On the other hand, "Glee" also provides counter-narratives in which gay teens are represented as happy, self-confident, and able to position themselves beyond the boundaries of the heterosexual matrix. (Contains 4 notes.)

Recently, ethnic humor (targeting ethnoreligious identities) is increasingly questioned in European and Western countries, sparking controversy on online and traditional media platforms. Absent from the mediated and academic debate are the opinions from targeted subjects of the joke. This qualitative audience study aims to add to critical humor scholarship by providing insight into how targeted groups make sense of disputes of offense. We interviewed 35 participants (ages 15–24) with a minoritized ethnic identity (mostly a Moroccan or Turkish diasporic background) and religious identity (all identified as Muslim) on how they negotiate offensive (ethnic) humor. Moreover, we asked participants to reflect on the politics of offense (i.e. the power relations underlying the process of publicly claiming offense) and the role media play in the discussion of offended feelings in relation to (ethnic) humor. A thematic analysis of three focus groups indicates how participants' negotiations were always influenced by contextual factors and tied to their identities, both on a sociopolitical and personal level. Further, participants were highly conscious about their minoritized position in debates on offensive ethnic humor and how this relates to societal power inequalities. As such, they recognized how the politics of offense regarding ethnic humor highlight boundaries between social groups. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the gendered dimension of De Tijdloze Honderd (the Timeless Hundred), an annual Belgian radio music poll organized by public broadcasting radio station Studio Brussel. Female artists have been consistently underrepresented in the poll of all-time favorite songs. Drawing on a quantitative and qualitative analysis of ten editions of the program throughout its history, this study set out to assess gender disparity in the Timeless Hundred and explore how the three most "timeless" male acts negotiate hegemonic masculinity. I argue that the Timeless Hundred inadvertently reiterates the belief that "timeless" popular music is chiefly the product of men who rock, despite the presence of masculinities that undermine a hegemonic masculine rock ideal. Particularly the gendering of rock music, processes of canonization, and the creation of a collective memory have co-constructed music polls that lack fair gender representation. I conclude by emphasizing the importance of public initiatives that expose these structural dynamics and help to reimagine popular music's history as truly inclusive and representative. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper introduces a framework of five consecutive but potentially intersecting tropes of representation of intellectual disabilities. The framework was developed in a post-qualitative manner by a researcher collective of people labeled with and without intellectual disabilities. As many existing disability media analyses have been reproached for being un-nuanced, elitist and reductionist, our approach and framework offer a more layered, ambivalent and complex interpretation of media representations of intellectual disabilities. More specifically, we unpack representations that (1) patronize people with disabilities, (2) consolidate, (3) deconstruct and (4) reconstruct the hegemonic order on dis/ability and (5) impose an ableist normalcy. Although the framework was developed by means of a collective textual analysis of a specific case, i.e. Tytgat Chocolat, a Flemish television series on people with intellectual disabilities, we argue that it also serves as a valuable starting point for further analysis of media texts on (intellectual) disabilities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article troubles the intuitive link between emancipatory portrayals of sexual and gender diversity and 'quality television' by focusing on three Flemish 'prestige' dramas: Met Man en Macht (VIER, 2013), Bevergem (Canvas, 2015) and Den Elfde Van Den Elfde (één, 2016). Contrary to the United States, Flemish quality television portrays fewer LGBTQ+ characters and narratives than less 'prestigious' content. Approached from a Bourdieusian perspective, the cases discussed show that when LGBTQ+ characters are featured in prestigious domestic fiction content, they function as distinctive queers. This article argues that, whereas LGBTQ+ characters in US quality television affirm the socio-cultural disposition of the target audience, Flemish prestige television fiction delegitimizes that of the group from which the imagined audience distinguishes itself. Distinctive queers circulate in a larger cultural repertoire associated with Flemish prestige television fiction, recasting markers of ordinary Flemishness found in domestic content. This repertoire is organized around the motif of the parish, and discursively separates Flanders into two distinct temporal configurations: one decidedly pre-modern and inferior, the other expressively modern and superior. A synecdoche for 'common Flanders', the parish constructs the majority of Flemings as culturally coarse, backwards and innately unable to be legitimately modern. As the analysis shows, distinctive queers accentuate the social deficit of mundane communities, and textually perform the distinction of fashionable, socially liberal urban-minded Flemings. In consonance with the hyperbolic representations that recast 'ordinary Flemish cultural life' as grotesque and ridiculous, distinctive queers frame LGBTQ+ inclusivity as the prerogative of conspicuously absent urban, socio-culturally progressive Flemings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]