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In 2022, US President Donald Trump and UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak faced public scrutiny over the background music used in official videos promoting their political agenda. Press articles and social media users claimed that the library (or 'stock') music heard in the videos consisted of so-called 'soundalikes', and questioned whether this choice was a public endorsement of problematic individuals or groups connected with the tracks in question: namely, conspiracy-theory movement QAnon, and convicted rock singer Gary Glitter. This article explores how library music is used strategically in these videos, highlighting the urgency of inquiring into its fundamental role in the construction and dissemination of political messages in media today, with moral and ethical implications that remain underresearched. Departing from these cases, the article also examines how library music, a once unseen musical practice, is now reaching the foreground of public attention, gaining unprecedented visibility due partly to its use in politically motivated videos. This allows us to rethink longstanding notions of library music as something that lacks a public existence, and to focus instead on what happens when it gains media coverage – prompting misunderstandings that reveal how unfamiliar the wider public is with the workings of this industry. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This mixed methods study investigates conceptions of gender both in and outside of the media among a sample of 11- and 12-year-olds. Data from a quantitative survey and qualitative writing responses were collected and analyzed from 54 sixth graders at a U.S public elementary school. Results show that the majority held inclusive views of gender, indicating a recognition of gender inequities in media and society and a desire to challenge traditional gender norms. However, perhaps due to gender-typed content, stronger perceptions of the similarity of the people appearing in YouTube videos, commercials, video games, music videos, and movies to the self were associated with more stereotypical views about gender roles and norms in a weak but statistically significant correlation. This may suggest that accepting media representations as accurately reflecting oneself can still be linked to endorsing more traditional roles and norms, even within a sample with generally quite open conceptions of gender. Impact summary: Prior State of Knowledge: Gender stereotypes are present in media used by adolescents, and most existing research finds a small association between media use and stereotypical beliefs about gender. Perceived realism and perceived similarity of characters to the self may help explain that association. Novel Contributions: In a sample of U.S. adolescents, there is mixed methods evidence of inclusive views of gender. Yet, perceptions of media characters in select media as similar to the self were weakly but significantly correlated with more stereotypical views of gender. Practical Implications: Self-reflection about identification processes can be encouraged by caregivers as well as media literacy educators. To work toward gender justice, content creators should avoid stereotypes in commercials, music videos, movies, video games, and YouTube content popular with early adolescents. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As cinema moved from exhibition theatres to cable television in the late-1980s pre-liberal License Raj1 economy, the competitive music label market in India pushed its executives to look beyond the established modes of music making and selling. This development also collided with the growing cultural demand for new and ‘fresh’ female voices, and innovative audio-visual modes inspired by the MTV consumerism model of the West. Additionally, music videos of international popstars such as Madonna, Michael Jackson, etc. started making waves in India through direct and indirect channels. As a result, the influence of western music video culture led the music industry officials to rope in ‘westernized in style, desi at heart’ female performers to represent the new wave of alternative non-film popular music – collectively popularised by music labels and the media as Hindi Pop or Indipop. Moreover, the cultural impact of American popstar Madonna’s stardom, performativity, and politics also played a critical role in the way the emerging Indipop ‘divas’ projected themselves, both in and outside the diegesis of their music videos, during the 90s MTV boom in India. Engaging with the textual and extratextual world of indipop music videos that belong to the ‘new women’ of the neoliberal-90s – Jasmine Bharucha, Alisha Chinai, Shweta Shetty, etc.—this paper attempts to track and locate the emergence of these ‘non-film’2 female voices in the traditional ‘song and dance’ aesthetic substructure of Bombay cinema. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article introduces the special issue of Mapping the Music and Video Streaming Landscape and its Disruptions in Southeast Asia by identifying three ways in which the special issue engages with the broader scholarship on streaming. In it, we discuss how our special issue converses with scholarly debates about the disruptive nature of streaming, how the unique qualities of streaming infrastructure in Southeast Asia resonates with scholarship on other global South contexts, and how both the commonalities and variations within Southeast Asia that our special issue makes apparent can be likened to what other scholars have observed of the disjunctive and overlapping nature of the European market. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With the rapid development of social networks, short videos have become a popular form of content, especially dance videos. In this context, research on automatically generating music for dance videos shows significant practical value. However, existing studies face challenges such as limited richness in music timbre and lack of synchronization with dance movements. In this paper, we propose Dance2Music-Diffusion, a novel framework for music generation from dance videos using latent diffusion models. Our approach includes a motion encoder module for extracting motion features and a music diffusion generation module for generating latent music representations. By integrating dance type monitoring and latent diffusion techniques, our framework outperforms existing methods in generating complex and rich dance music. We conducted objective and subjective evaluations of the results produced by various existing models on the AIST++ dataset. Our framework shows outstanding performance in terms of beat recall rate, consistency with GT beats, and coordination with dance movements. This work represents the state of the art in automatic music generation from dance videos, is easy to train, and has implications for enhancing entertainment experiences and inspiring innovative dance productions. Sample videos of our generated music and dance can be viewed at https://youtu.be/eCvLdLdkX-Y. The code is available at https://github.com/hellto/dance2music-diffusion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although product placements in music videos are ubiquitous and a common form of advertising cooperation between companies and artists, few studies have addressed the topic, especially the artists' perceptions. This experimental online study examines the effects of fit between artist and product in music videos. Results show that good artist-product-fit reduces persuasion knowledge and increases perceived credibility of the artist as well as viewers' willingness to share the video through electronic word of mouth (eWOM). These results highlight the need to understand viewers' perceptions of artists in promotional contexts to avoid dysfunctional promotional collaborations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The United States has been a space for global musical transnational encounters among African-descended peoples, with various artists collaborating. These collaborations have blossomed with the advent of Afrobeats—a loose term describing the contemporary transatlantic sound of popular African music. Although there are male and female Afrobeats performers on the African continent, this cultural exchange occurs more often between male artists and U.S. musicians. Because male artists are mostly invited for live performances, their visibility puts them in a position to perform with and collaborate with U.S. artists. As a result, male artists get nominations for global awards such as the Grammys and accumulate more wealth. For female artists, the result is less visibility and wealth. Using Tiwa Savage and Burna Boy—two Afrobeats giants—as case studies, this essay examines the factors that limit Tiwa, a female performer, from achieving the same wealth as her male counterpart, Burna Boy. Specifically, this study analyzes the sonic and semiotic representations in their popular music videos, Tiwa's "Koroba" and Burna Boy's "On the Low," to understand why Burna Boy might have the edge over Tiwa. Their music and career trajectories shed light on how capitalism and sociopolitical issues, including colorism, might contribute to the gender wealth disparities between male and female Afrobeats performers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Most existing intelligent editing tools for music and video rely on the cross-modal matching technology of the affective consistency or the similarity of feature representations. However, these methods are not fully applicable to complex audiovisual matching scenarios, resulting in low matching accuracy and suboptimal audience perceptual effects due to ambiguous matching rules and associated factors. To address these limitations, this paper focuses on both the similarity and integration of affective distribution for the artistic audiovisual works of movie and television video and music. Based on the rich emotional perception elements, we propose a hybrid matching model based on feature canonical correlation analysis (CCA) and fine-grained affective similarity. The model refines KCCA fusion features by analyzing both matched and unmatched music–video pairs. Subsequently, the model employs XGBoost to predict relevance and to compute similarity by considering fine-grained affective semantic distance as well as affective factor distance. Ultimately, the matching prediction values are obtained through weight allocation. Experimental results on a self-built dataset demonstrate that the proposed affective matching model balances feature parameters and affective semantic cognitions, yielding relatively high prediction accuracy and better subjective experience of audiovisual association. This paper is crucial for exploring the affective association mechanisms of audiovisual objects from a sensory perspective and improving related intelligent tools, thereby offering a novel technical approach to retrieval and matching in music–video editing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

"Girl crush" is a relatively new genre in South Korean pop music (hereafter "K-pop"). Unlike the stereotypes of female idols being cute and submissive, idols of the "girl crush" genre usually show provocative "girl power," challenging the patriarchy by incorporating feminist messages in their works. In March 2022, a girl group (G)I-DLE released a song entitled Tomboy, which went viral for its outrageous music video delivering a bold statement about women being independent, fearless, and abandoning toxic heterosexual relationships. This study conducts a social semiotic analysis of Tomboy with a postfeminist lens and comes up with three findings: first, the music video of Tomboy has shown a postfeminist sensibility by exhibiting an entanglement of feminism and antifeminism; second, Tomboy has tackled a queered theme by focusing on women's collective empowerment and sisterhood against patriarchy; third, "girl crush" has revealed the limitations of celebrity feminism, making the relationship between "girl crush's" success and feminism questionable. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, we examine songs that reuse decades-old Japanese media, in which the Japaneseness is both important and attenuated. While there is clear desire for and pleasure in the Japaneseness of source materials in vaporwave (electronic music featuring manipulated sounds and images from the 1980s and 1990s) and future funk (which commonly samples 1980s Japanese music and speeds it up), actual sources matter primarily as a signifier of Japaneseness. Conversely, game sounds (songs that sample or mimic 1990s and 2000s video game music) and chiptunes (songs made with 1980s and 1990s video game hardware) have a direct relationship with either specific video games or material hardware that highlights a direct tie to transnationally distributed culture. Overall, these ways of engaging with Japanese media have significant implications for theorizing cross-cultural exchange. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay explores the relationship between race and language in South Africa, specifically within Cape Town's Hip-Hop community. The author reflects on the significance of Kaaps, a dialect spoken in the Cape Flats, and its recognition as one of South Africa's official languages. They also discuss the complex dynamics between English, Afrikaans, and indigenous languages within the Hip-Hop scene. The essay emphasizes the importance of language in self-expression and identity, while acknowledging the diverse cultural expressions and multilingual nature of South Africa. [Extracted from the article]

Constantly shifting like a floating signifier, the interpretive life of "realness" has meant different things to global Hip-Hop adherents: staying true to oneself; reppin' one's hood; production styles such as boom bap; cadence, delivery, and flow; vivid storytelling; and underground resistance to forces of capitalist cooptation, among others. Yet to many others, realness means language – the artful capacity to rap, talk, and style oneself in ways that index one's cultural roots and identities. In this article, I consider the latter understanding of realness through the theoretical lens of decolonial meta-rap. In decolonial meta-rap, Nigerian emcees turn the reflexive apparatus of Hip-Hop back to itself, in the process raising questions about anglonormativity and colonial continuities in Nigeria. Focusing on the discourses of these emcees as well as their self-presentations in oral interviews and music videos, I argue that Nigerian emcees both popularize and continue the long decolonial struggle against cultural sites of colonial power in Africa. Di tin wey dem dey call realness for Hip-Hop dey mean different different tin to different different pipo wey dey follow Hip-Hop for everywhere. E fit mean say person no dey deceive imsef. Or e fit mean as rapper dey tell tori and how dem dey flow for dem music. E fit also mean di kain beat wey we dey hear for Hip-Hop music and how dem dey take make am. For oda pipo, realness dey mean say person dey proud to rap for im language and associate wit im culture. Dis my article dey observe dis last one. For dis article, I dey observe di way Naija rappers take dey use dem language and culture challenge colo-mentality for Nigeria. I tok say as dem dey rap, dem dey fight di kain brainwashing wey dey make person tink say oyinbo beta pass any language for Naija or Africa. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article addresses an underexplored intersection between subtitling and translanguaging with reference to the representation of diverse Chinese fangyan in hip-hop music videos. Drawing on recent progress in the intersection between translanguaging and Translation Studies, the article sketches the multilingualism of the Han ethnic majority and its precarious existence under the governmental policy and language planning of China. Second, it contextualises the rising audibility and visibility of local speeches and non-standard writing in cinematic, metrolingual, and digital cultures. This highlights the social and technological conditions that enable culture creators and language users to practice novel representations of linguistic diversity and variations in the subtitling medium. Furthermore, the case-study analyses illustrate how Chinese hip-hop musicians assemble linguistic, multimodal, and multisemiotic resources to effect translanguaging performance across different communicational repertoires. The conclusion outlines the practical and theoretical implications of translanguaging subtitles for alternative media representations of linguacultural diversities in China and beyond. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Following calls for transnational and decolonial perspectives in [feminist]CDA, this paper considers what it means to do a critical analysis of gendered discourses from a Global Southern perspective. It highlights how discourses from an African locale, with its complex local-global intra-action, provide another instance of the complexity of discursive and identitarian power in late modernity, arguing that this requires an intrasectional (not intersectional) feminist critical discourse analysis. Gendered discourses in a music video from hip-life, a localized hip-hop genre in Ghana, are examined to illustrate this argument. The analysis shows how the specific context examined recalibrates not just the social categories that often underlie feminist intersectional analysis but also gives us a complex view of power that interrogates CDA's emphasis on top-down approaches to power, a binary conceptualization that does not account for the manifestations of the power-powerlessness dialectic within the same subject. The result is significant for both analysis and activism because a comprehensive global program for social transformation that includes non-Western contexts and their re-visioning of our analytical lenses must attend to their rhizomic discursive-material entanglements if they are to be effective. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

AbstractWomen in Rap often occupy spaces in which they are marginalized or pitted against one another. Yet, recently, more popular women artists are working together, instead of attempting to commodify their rap beefs. With this historic shift in mind, it is critical to take a moment to investigate the collaborations that have occurred in the past, as they are rare. These collaborations allowed a space for women to work alongside other women, when it was not popular or often profitable to do so, and men, who dominated the hip hop music genre and often did not find value in collaborations. Therefore, this study intentionally seeks the elevation of women’s narratives and representations in hip hop culture and academic scholarship by focusing on collaborations and women’s voices within them. It works to add to women’s studies by investigating representations of women rappers in both their lyrics and music videos. The latter of which are ripe with visual message often ignored in scholarship that heavily focuses on lyrics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores how a contemporary music video can pass down memories and trauma in post-dictatorial Chile. Focusing on a video by the Chilean band Illapu, it uses theories of collective trauma and (post)memory to show how the video represents past traumas and challenges dominant narratives and current negationist discourses. The study finds that the video uses audio-visual and (inter)textual elements to make viewers reflect on the past, underlining its ability to counter attempts to deny or distort history. This contributes to understanding how music videos can serve as sites of “voiced postmemories” and act as powerful tools in the collective processing of traumatic events, promoting truth, justice, and reconciliation in post-dictatorial Chile. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article discusses the representation of the Hui ethnic minority, also known as Chinese Muslims, in Chinese mainstream cinema. It highlights the challenges faced by Hui filmmakers in terms of the subjugation of minority ethnicities and the erasure of their religious identity. The article also explores the emergence of a new genre called Hui microfilm, which aims to challenge these representations and assert Hui subjectivity. It discusses specific scenes from microfilms that depict the daily lives and struggles of Hui Muslims, emphasizing the importance of Islam in Hui identity. The decline of Hui microfilm production is attributed to factors such as the difficulty for independent filmmakers to make a profit and tightened regulation of online content. Despite these challenges, Hui filmmakers continue to work on projects that explore Hui culture and collaborate with filmmakers from other ethnic minorities. [Extracted from the article]

Like many other areas of life, dance utilizes the opportunities today's technology provides. Performances integrated with new technologies have initiated the digital age in dance. Interdisciplinary collaborations are established to use these technologies, and shows that transform the dancer's body, the space where the dance takes place, and the dance performance are designed during the staging processes. In this study, to evaluate the narrative possibilities created by the interaction of the dancer's live performance and the projected video image, the narrative of the "Hit the Road Jack" dance performance, which was determined by purposeful sampling method from the YouTube video sharing site was analyzed semiologically, and the findings were interpreted in terms of body, space, performance, and expression. It has been determined that a narrative is created by interacting with the digital image used simultaneously with the dance performance, creating the illusion that the human body is physically increased, and creating an atmosphere beyond the reality of time and space. As a result, it has been seen that interdisciplinary design processes, in which computer and reflection technologies are used in conjunction with each other, transform the function of creating meaning and conveying messages in dance performances. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With the development of Internet technology, music videos on the network are becoming increasingly rich. How to extract concert video clips for specific scenes or shots from massive video libraries or ultra-long video files is a relatively difficult issue. Traditional music video retrieval methods are mostly based on key text retrieval. However, they cannot meet the needs of users. At the same time, in response to the demand for specific videos in piano performance teaching, it is also difficult for these methods to filter out key music clips from numerous videos. Therefore, a music video retrieval technology is constructed based on video feature similarity calculation. Aiming at the shortcomings of video similarity calculation methods, a dynamic programming algorithm is used to improve it. The improved music video retrieval technology is applied to the classroom learning practice of piano performance teaching, verifying the actual effect of this technology. The experimental results show that the accuracy of the music video retrieval technology reaches 91.02%. After being applied to piano classroom teaching, the overall performance of students has been improved. This shows that the proposed music video retrieval technology can effectively achieve the retrieval of required videos and improve the effectiveness of piano classroom teaching. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Dance-driven music generation aims to generate musical pieces conditioned on dance videos. Previous works focus on monophonic or raw audio generation, while the multi-instrument scenario is under-explored. The challenges associated with dance-driven multi-instrument music (MIDI) generation are twofold: (i) lack of a publicly available multi-instrument MIDI and video paired dataset and (ii) the weak correlation between music and video. To tackle these challenges, we have built the first multi-instrument MIDI and dance paired dataset (D2MIDI). Based on this dataset, we introduce a multi-instrument MIDI generation framework (Dance2MIDI) conditioned on dance video. Firstly, to capture the relationship between dance and music, we employ a graph convolutional network to encode the dance motion. This allows us to extract features related to dance movement and dance style. Secondly, to generate a harmonious rhythm, we utilize a transformer model to decode the drum track sequence, leveraging a cross-attention mechanism. Thirdly, we model the task of generating the remaining tracks based on the drum track as a sequence understanding and completion task. A BERT-like model is employed to comprehend the context of the entire music piece through self-supervised learning. We evaluate the music generated by our framework trained on the D2MIDI dataset and demonstrate that our method achieves state-of-the-art performance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study investigates how different formats of brand placement disclosures influence brand recall and brand attitude in music videos. Four formats of disclosures presenting different visual characteristics (textual and pictorial vs textual only) and auditory features (brand melody vs silent) are tested. The research adopts a multimethod approach combining eye-tracking, electrodermal activity, and self-reports. Results show that disclosures including higher visual information content positively influence the awareness of embedded advertising in music videos and the attention paid to the disclosure. Brand melodies prove to be effective to increase attention to the disclosure only when paired with textual and pictorial disclosures. Further empirical evidence demonstrates the positive indirect effect of disclosures on brand recall and brand attitude. Brand placement disclosures are shown to function as primes that can enhance brand attitudes and recall. Implications for marketing communication managers and policymakers in terms of advertising fees, contractual requirements, disclosures' design, and policy recommendations are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This review essay discusses two books on the study of music and meaning in everyday life. The first book, "Electronic Dance Music: From Deviant Subculture to Culture Industry," explores the evolution of electronic dance music from an underground subculture to a mainstream industry. The second book, "Music in the Course of Life," examines the significance of music for individuals throughout their lives. Both books provide ethnographic insights into the social processes and cultural contexts surrounding music. The review highlights the different objectives, organization, and presentation styles of the two books, categorizing one as more analytic and the other as more evocative. It also discusses the strengths and weaknesses of each book's approach and provides examples of the comparative insights they offer. However, the review notes that the analysis in the first book may overlook certain concepts and lacks depth in exploring them. Additionally, the review suggests that the first book portrays the changes in the electronic dance music scene and culture as negative, emphasizing tensions between older subcultural participants and younger, more conventional audiences. The review also points out that the first book's focus on authenticity may overlook the experiences of diverse ethnic and sexual identities within the scene. The text discusses a book called "Music and the Life Course" by Joseph A. Kotarba, which explores the relationship between music and selfhood. The book takes an existential sociology approach and examines how music impacts people's lives at different stages, from childhood to old age. However, the reviewer notes that the book focuses primarily on [Extracted from the article]

The article discusses the issue of copyright infringement on social media platforms, with a focus on X (formerly Twitter). It mentions a recent civil complaint filed against X by music publishers for copyright infringement, claiming that X has infringed on the copyright of over 1,700 songs. The article suggests that X could benefit from licensing agreements with music publishers that include arbitration clauses, as arbitration has proven to be advantageous in intellectual property disputes. It provides background information on copyright infringement on social media and the history of X as a platform. [Extracted from the article]

There are increasing demands for Participatory Arts-Based (PAB) programs involved in health research to better evidence outcomes using robust quantitative evaluation methodologies taken from science, such as standardized questionnaires, to inform commissioning and scale-up decisions. However, for PAB researchers trying to do this, barriers arise from fundamental interdisciplinary differences in values and contexts. Researchers are required to navigate the tensions between the practice-based evidence produced by the arts and the evidence-based practice sought by psychologists. Consequently, there is a need for interdisciplinary arts-science collaborations to produce alternative methods of evaluation that are better aligned to PAB approaches, and which combine systematic rigor with a sensitivity to the values, contexts and strengths of this approach. The current article centers on the development of an alternative transdisciplinary analytic tool, the Participatory arts Play Framework (PP-Framework), undertaken as part of an arts-psychology collaboration for a UK AHRC-funded PAB research project: Playing A/Part: Investigating the identities and experiences of autistic girls. We present details of three stages in the development of the PP-Framework: 1. preliminary emergence of the framework from initial video analysis of observational data from participatory music and sound workshops run for 6 adolescent autistic girls (aged 11-16); 2. identification and application of modes of engagement; and 3. further testing of the framework as an evaluation tool for use in a real-world setting, involving professional musicians engaged in delivery of a creative music project at a center for homeless people. The PP-Framework maps types of participation in terms of performative behaviors and qualities of experience, understood as modes of play. It functions as a vehicle for analyzing participant engagement, providing a tool predicated on the processes of working in creative participatory contexts while also being sensitive to the esthetic qualities of what is produced and capable of capturing beneficial changes in engagement. It offers a conceptual approach for researchers to undertake observation of participatory arts practices, taking account of embodied engagement and interaction processes. It is informed by understandings of autistic performativity and masking in conjunction with an ecological understanding of sense making as being shaped by environments, social relations and sensing subjectivity. The framework has the potential to be a bi-directional tool, with application for both practitioners and participants. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The public perception of witches is problematic on many levels: people tend to blend witchcraft with Satanism and the entertainment industry illustrates a false picture of people of this faith, not to mention the historical persecution of witches. This paper presents and examines a specific online subculture, a religious/spiritual community existing on the TikTok video-sharing platform. In this article, I shortly introduce the pagan religion of witchcraft – its roots and modern practice –, summarize researchers’ 124 observations on the topic, and discuss my findings based on the literature and my brief research on the relevant content of the mentioned platform, drawing attention to the individualistic nature of witchcraft and the qualities and cohesive power of this community. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the emergence of film culture in Tripura, Northeast India, with a focus on Kokborok and Bengali-language films and music videos. These productions reflect the sociopolitical context of Tripura and serve as expressions of identity, resistance, and hybridity. The article discusses the challenges faced by filmmakers in Tripura, the role of technology in shaping the industry, and the cultural significance of these films. It also explores the historical and demographic context of Tripura and the cultural connections between Bengali-speaking communities across regions and nations. The article argues for the importance of studying films in minor Indian languages to address cultural exclusion and offer alternative perspectives on Indian cinema. [Extracted from the article]

Object-oriented micro-video background music recommendation is a complicated task where the matching degree between videos and background music is a major issue. However, music selections in user-generated content (UGC) are prone to selection bias caused by historical preferences of uploaders. Since historical preferences are not fully reliable and may reflect obsolete behaviors, over-reliance on them should be avoided as knowledge and interests dynamically evolve. In this article, we propose a Deconfounded Cross-Modal matching model to mitigate such bias. Specifically, uploaders' personal preferences of music genres are identified as confounders that spuriously correlate music embeddings and background music selections, causing the learned system to over-recommend music from majority groups. To resolve such confounders, backdoor adjustment is utilized to deconfound the spurious correlation between music embeddings and prediction scores. We further utilize Monte Carlo estimator with batch-level average as the approximations to avoid integrating the entire confounder space calculated by the adjustment. Furthermore, we design a teacher–student network to utilize the matching of music videos, which is professionally generated content (PGC) with specialized matching, to better recommend content-matching background music. The PGC data are modeled by a teacher network to guide the matching of uploader-selected UGC data of student network by Kullback–Leibler–based knowledge transfer. Extensive experiments on the TT-150k-genre dataset demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed method. The code is publicly available on https://github.com/jing-1/DecCM [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study aims to compare high school students' self-esteem and loneliness levels based on their use of Facebook and its applications. Quantitative research was utilized and 764 high school students participated in the current study. Data were collected through a Facebook Usage & Personal Information Form prepared by the researchers, the UCLA Loneliness scale, and the Coopersmith Self-Esteem inventory. Data were analyzed using descriptive statistics and non-parametric tests. The results of this study show that the selfesteem levels of students who spend less time on Facebook are higher than those of students who spend more time on Facebook. The level of loneliness among students with fewer friends on Facebook is higher than that of students with more friends on Facebook. The selfesteem level of students who added new people to their Facebook friend lists was found to be low, while the self-esteem level of students who did not add new people was found to be high There was no relationship between purpose of Facebook use with self-esteem and loneliness. The highest level of loneliness is observed in the group that rarely receives comments or likes on their status updates, photos, and music videos shared on Facebook. In general, it can be seen that students' levels of loneliness and self-esteem have changed about the use of Facebook and its applications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article demonstrates how new media technologies remediate traditional cinematic modes of stardom, specifically in and through small towns in India. Through two case studies, it explores registers of stardom that have emerged through the short video sharing app TikTok – both on the platform and in its filmic renditions. The first case looks at the cinematic construct of a TikTok star, which fuels the formal and narrative force of the 2019 film Bala (dir. Amar Kaushik). Bala illustrates how cinema can self-reflexively interweave traditional tropes with new media technologies. The second case features a 'real-life' TikTok star and political aspirant who brings into focus the political and electoral valence of TikTok stardom in the town of Adampur, Haryana. The cinematic is central to this narrative, where cinephilic nostalgia indicates a shared cultural intimacy between the political candidate and her followers and helps further her political ambitions. While the real TikTok star, Sonali Phogat, directly addresses her constituency, lip-syncing to old movie songs in 15-second videos, her reel counterparts pay homage to their cine-ancestors, 15 seconds at a time. In a setting where 'the star' has traditionally been understood through the prism of cinema, this article brings to light shifting registers invoked through the platformisation of the star and the cinematic in small town India. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Fresh Fly Fabulous: 50 Years of Hip Hop Style is an exhibition catalog that explores the intersection of hip hop and fashion. The catalog features essays and images that cover a wide range of topics, including the evolution of hip hop style, the role of women in hip hop fashion, genderqueer hip hop, and the influence of specific brands and designers. The catalog is a well-curated collection that provides scholarly commentary and showcases almost 200 stunning images, making it an essential reference for anyone interested in the history and impact of hip hop style. [Extracted from the article]