Prelims

Half Title Page

Cultures of Authenticity

Title Page

Cultures of Authenticity

Edited By

Marie Heřmanová

Czech Academy of Sciences, Czech Republic

Michael Skey

Loughborough University, UK

and

Thomas Thurnell-Read

Loughborough University, UK

United Kingdom – North America – Japan India – Malaysia – China

Copyright Page

Emerald Publishing Limited

Howard House, Wagon Lane, Bingley BD16 1WA, UK

First edition 2023

Editorial matter and selection © 2023 Marie Heřmanová, Michael Skey and Thomas Thurnell-Read.

Individual chapters © 2023 The authors.

Published under exclusive licence by Emerald Publishing Limited.

Chapter 8, “One Brand, Multiple Authenticities: The Case of the World’s First Pay-Per-Minute Cafe Franchise”, copyright © Alexandra Kviat. Published by Emerald Publishing Limited. This chapter is published under the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY 4.0) licence. Anyone may reproduce, distribute, translate and create derivative works of this chapter (for both commercial and non-commercial purposes), subject to full attribution to the original publication and authors. The full terms of this licence may be seen at http://creativecommons.org/licences/by/4.0/legalcode

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ISBN: 978-1-80117-937-9 (Print)

ISBN: 978-1-80117-936-2 (Online)

ISBN: 978-1-80117-938-6 (Epub)

Contents

List of Figures

About the Editors

Marie Heřmanová is a Postdoctoral Researcher at the Institute of Sociology, Czech Academy of Sciences and an Associate Researcher at the Faculty of Humanities, Charles University in Prague. She researches internet communities and online participatory cultures, influencers and gender inequalities. Her recent work explores influencers’ engagement in political communication and proliferation of conspiracies and disinformation. She is interested in the methodology of digital social research, combining digital ethnography perspective with communication studies approach. In 2021, she worked with Thomas Thurnell-Read and Michael Skey as a visiting scholar at the School of Social Sciences and Humanities at Loughborough University.

Michael Skey is a Senior Lecturer in Communication and Media at Loughborough University, UK. His research on the topics of nationalism and globalisation, media events and sport and communication has been published in leading international journals including New Media & Society, International Journal of Communication, British Journal of Sociology and Communication Theory.

Thomas Thurnell-Read is a Senior Lecturer in Sociology in the School of Social Sciences and Humanities at Loughborough University, UK. His research on drinking culture has been published in leading international journals and he is a regular contributor to national and international media debates relating to pub culture, alcohol and drunkenness. In one strand of his research, he has explored the emerging narratives and discourses used by craft brewers and distillers to frame their labour.

About the Contributors

Crystal Abidin is a Digital Anthropologist and Ethnographer of vernacular internet cultures. She researches influencer cultures, online visibility, and social media pop cultures especially in the Asia Pacific region. Her books include Internet Celebrity: Understanding Fame Online (2018), Microcelebrity Around the Globe: Approaches to Cultures of Internet Fame (co-editor Brown, 2018), Instagram: Visual Social Media Cultures (co-authors Leaver & Highfield, 2020), Mediated Interfaces: The Body on Social Media (co-editors Warfield & Cambre, 2020), and tumblr (co-authors tiidenberg & Hendry, 2021). She is Associate Professor, Principal Research Fellow, & ARC DECRA Fellow in Internet Studies, Programme Lead of Social Media Pop Cultures at the Centre for Culture and technology (CCAT) at Curtin University. Reach her at wishcrys.com.

Mads Møller Tommerup Andersen is an Assistant Professor at University of Copenhagen in Denmark. His research interests focus on the media industries and in particular streaming services, creative industries, creative processes, TV production, reality TV and branding. He finished his PhD dissertation in 2019, which was a production study of the digitalisation of the Danish public-service youth TV channel DR3. He has published in several international journals such as Media, Culture & Society, VIEW – Journal of European Television History and Culture, and Nordicom Review. He is also a member of the editorial team at MedieKultur – Journal of Media and Communication Research.

Marcel Broersma is a Full Professor and the Director of the Centre for Media and Journalism Studies at the University of Groningen. He is the Academic Director of the Dutch Research School for Media Studies (RMeS) and one of the coordinators of the national VSNU Digital Society research program. His research focusses on the interface between the digital transformation of journalism, social media, changing media use, and digital literacy and inclusion. He received numerous grants for his research and his work is published widely.

Hélène de Burgh-Woodman is Dean of the Graduate Research School at the University of Technology Sydney. Her areas of research include Consumer Communities, Consumer Agency and the Intersection between Markets and Consumer Meaning-Making. Hélène has worked in Australia and Europe in a range of academic leadership roles.

Johnathan Djabarouti is a Chartered Architect (ARB, RIBA), Accredited Conservation Professional (IHBC), and a Lecturer in Architecture (FHEA) at the Manchester School of Architecture, Manchester Metropolitan University, UK. His research interests lie at the intersections between the conservation of built heritage and critical heritage theory, with his AHRC funded PhD thesis focussing on the impact of intangible heritage on architectural and building conservation practices in the UK. His forthcoming monograph Critical Built Heritage Practice and Conservation: Evolving Perspectives is due for publication by Routledge in 2024.

Judith Fathallah is currently Outreach and Research Associate in the Lancaster University Management School, UK. Her interests are digital and new media, fan cultures, gender, online cultures, and media convergence. She is the author of Fanfiction and the Author: How Fanfic Changes Popular Cultural Texts (Amsterdam University Press, 2017) and Emo: How Fans Defined a Subculture (University of Iowa Press, 2020). Her next book, tentatively titled Killer Fandom: Fan Studies and the Serial Killer Celebrity, is scheduled for publication in 2023 by mediastudies.press.

Lucy Frowijn is an Editor for Dutch national talkshow Op1 and Researcher at the Centre for Media and Journalism Studies at the University of Groningen. She obtained a research master (cum laude) in Media and Culture in 2021. Her research interests focus on discourse and self-presentation in contemporary (online) media.

Valerie Gannon is a Lecturer in Advertising at the School of Marketing, Technological University Dublin. She earned her PhD from Michael Smurfit Graduate School of Business, University College Dublin. Her research has been published in the European Journal of Marketing, the Journal of Marketing Management and the Journal of Customer Behaviour. Her research focusses on social influencers, media literacy and advertising strategy.

Frank Harbers is a Senior Lecturer at the Centre for Media and Journalism at the University of Groningen. He obtained his PhD in 2014 for which he analysed the development of the form and style of reporting in Great Britain, the Netherlands and France between 1880 and 2005. Since then his research has branched out to media innovation, digital storytelling and the personalisation of media and journalism. He has published several edited volumes and book chapters, and many articles on these topics.

Christina Holtz-Bacha is a Professor Emerita of Communications at Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg, Germany. Before she went to Nuremberg, she taught at universities in Munich, Bochum, and Mainz. She was a Visiting Scholar at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis, a Research Fellow at the Shorenstein Center, Harvard University, a Guest Researcher at the Political Communication Center at the University of Oklahoma in Norman and at the University of Gothenburg and a Visiting Professor at Carleton University in Ottawa. She is currently a Member of the Executive Board of the European Communication Research and Education Association (ECREA). Her main research interests are in political communication, media systems, and European media policy. Among her most recent publications are Political Populism (2021, edited with Reinhard Heinisch and Oscar Mazzoleni); Perspectives on Populism and the Media (2020, edited with Benjamin Krämer); Routledge International Handbook on Electoral Debates (2020, edited with Julio Juárez Gámiz and Alan Schroeder).

Jingrui Hu is a Doctoral Researcher at Loughborough University. Her research focusses on analysing why Chinese consumers purchase jewellery from bygone fashions of foreign countries, how Chinese consumers perceive vintage jewellery, and how the manufacturers construct the value of the jewellery. Based on extensive qualitative research with consumers, traders and manufacturers, her research explores the emergence of vintage jewellery in China against a backdrop of social, economic and cultural changes. She holds an M.A. in Digital Media and Society from Loughborough University and has worked as a trader of vintage jewellery in China. In this book, the chapter she co-authored with Dr Thomas Thurnell-Read originated from her M.A. dissertation.

Xihuan Hu achieved her PhD at the School of Media, Communication and Sociology, University of Leicester. She is now a post-doctoral researcher jointly supported by Zhejiang University City College and Zhejiang University in China. Her research interests include (intangible) cultural heritage, Chinese heritage politics, culture in digital ages, authenticity, revolutionary and communist heritage, identity and discourse theories, critical discourse analysis and so on. Her current project explores Public Perception of Cultural Heritage in Digital Smart Cities in China: Taking Hangzhou as an Example. Her recent works has been published on The International Review of Sociology and China in Culture.

Iben Bredahl Jessen, PhD, is an Associate Professor of Media and Communication at the Department of Communication and Psychology, Aalborg University, Denmark. Her research addresses market communication and aesthetics in digital media. Recent publications include articles on media aesthetics in web communication, branding and advertising.

Miaoju Jian is a Professor of Communication at National Chung Cheng University, Chia-yi, Taiwan. Her research interests have covered topics from the culture and political economy of reality TV programs to indie-music scenes and DIY culture in Taiwan, China, Hong Kong and East Asia. Her recent English publications include ‘The legendary live venues and the changing music scenes in Taipei and Beijing: Underworld and D22’ (2016), in K. Iwabuchi, C. Berry, & E. Tsai (Eds.), Routledge Handbook for East Asian Pop Culture, “The Survival Struggle and Resistant Politics of a DIY Music Career in East Asia: Case Studies of China and Taiwan” (2018, Cultural Sociology) and the latest book chapter in ‘Made in Taiwan: Studies in Popular Music’ which she co-edited with Eva Tsai and Tung-hung Ho (Routledge, 2020).

Daniel Jurg is a PhD candidate in media and communication studies at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel. His PhD project aims to understand audience engagement with so-called ‘alternative influencers’ on YouTube using a digital methods approach. He is interested in the study of fan cultures and reception theory. He is connected to the Open Intelligence Lab and the imec-SMIT-VUB research group where he works with like-minded researchers in the News Innovation: Users & Strategies unit. As part of his research valorisation, he gives workshops and lectures via the Hannah Arendt Institute to increase societal understanding of disinformation, polarisation, and radicalisation in relation to digital culture.

Jilly Boyce Kay is a Lecturer in Media and Communication at the University of Leicester. She is the author of Gender Media and Voice: Communicative Injustice and Public Speech and has published widely in feminist media and cultural studies, with a particular focus on talk shows and reality television. She is the Editor of the Cultural Commons section in the European Journal of Cultural Studies.

Ivan Kisjes is a Programmer in the Media Studies Department at the University of Amsterdam. Within the Media Studies department, Ivan works with the digital humanities research program Creative Amsterdam (CREATE), which integrates research on historical cultural industries and research in the field of digital humanities. CREATE researchers collect and enrich digital data on the various cultural sectors of Amsterdam, from book publishing to theatre and cinema, link existing datasets, and develop novel search and analysis tools.

Alexandra Kviat is a Leverhulme Early Career Fellow at the School of Media, Communication and Sociology, University of Leicester. She is an interdisciplinary scholar working at the intersection of consumer and service research, cultural and media studies, urban sociology and human geography. She holds a PhD in Sociology from the University of Warwick. Prior to her current role, she was an Economic and Social Research Council Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Leicester, an Early Career Fellow at the Institute of Advanced Study, University of Warwick, and a Fulbright Visiting Fellow at the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign. Her current project ‘A Blast from the Past? The Resurgence of Board Games in the Post-Digital Age’, funded by the Leverhulme Trust, explores the scope, reasons and implications of the growing popularity of board gaming in the UK.

Dieuwertje Luitse is a PhD candidate on Data Bodies at the Amsterdam School of Cultural Analysis. Her project looks into the ethics and politics of data, AI systems and infrastructures in healthcare, and is part of the UvA’s Research Priority Area on AI and Health Decision-making in collaboration with the faculties of Humanities, Medicine, Law and Computer Science. She is a graduate of the Research Master in Media Studies (New Media & Digital Culture) at the UvA, and has a professional background in graphic design and media arts. Her research interests mainly focus on the study of platforms and the (historical) development of AI systems in relation to their socio-economic and political implications.

Sam Pack is a Professor of Cultural Anthropology at Kenyon College (USA). His research interests address the relationship between media and culture and specifically focus on an anthropological approach to the production and reception of television, film, photographs, and new media. Dr Pack has authored nearly 50 articles published in a wide variety of peer-reviewed journals and edited volumes. He has held visiting positions at universities around the world, including appointments at De La Salle University Manila and the University of Philippines Baguio.

Saskia Pouwels is a Designer, Educator, and Researcher at Human Experience & Media Design at Hogeschool Utrecht, NL. Her work explores and shapes practices at the intersection of data and immersive design, focussing on remote-sensing technologies and the social and political implications of digital-intellectual-property; critical studies of media infrastructures in relation to planetary-scale climate science (knowledge) networks. She calls for a fundamental shift in the way we conceive and design (digital) environments.

Kai Prins, MA, is a PhD student studying Rhetoric, Politics, and Culture in the Department of Communication Arts at the University of Wisconsin – Madison. Using feminist and queer theory as an orientation to rhetorical criticism, Kai studies performances of and resistance to normativity and neoliberalism on the drag stage, in online fitness and wellness spaces, and in consumer advertising and corporate branding. They are particularly interested in the way in which gendered, raced, and classed messages circulate and reproduce hegemonic power structures through marketing and advertising rhetoric. Kai also studies and uses “masculinity” as a mode of performance as the award-winning drag king known as Will X. Uly (pronounced “Will Actually”).

Andrea Prothero is a Professor of Business and Society, at the Business School in University College Dublin, Ireland. Prior to moving to UCD in 1999, she lectured at Universities in Wales and Scotland and she gained her PhD from the University of Cardiff. Her research broadly explores the area of Marketing in Society. The area of sustainability marketing has been a key focus of her work since the early 1990s and she has published widely in this area. She has also engaged in research focussing on austerity. Most recently, she has been engaged in research focussing on gender and marketing. In particular, she has co-edited two Special Issues in this area, in the Journal of Marcromarketing (2020) and the Journal of Marketing Management (2021).

Sian Rees is a specialist in public relations, marketing and branding and is currently the Head of the School of Culture & Communication at Swansea University. During her extensive industry career, she worked for a range of public relations consultancies and was the Managing Director of her own marketing and PR consultancy, working for clients such as Gillette, BT and Wembley Arena. She also worked as a Publishing Director for the Stuff and What Hi-Fi? Group of magazines for Haymarket Publishing. She is a Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy and writes academically on authenticity, public relations, sports communications and branding in the digital media age. She also specialises in employability in higher education.

Jillian M. Rickly is a Professor of Tourism at the University of Nottingham and the Series Editor for De Gruyter Studies in Tourism. She is a tourism geographer with research interests in authenticity/alienation, mobilities, accessibility, critical animal studies, and sustainability. Her work has been published in the Annals of Tourism Research, Journal of Sustainable Tourism, Tourist Studies, Cultural Geographies, and Mobilities, among others. She is co-author of Tourism, Performance, and Place: A Geographic Perspective (2015, Ashgate) and co-editor of numerous books on mobilities, authenticity, and animals in tourism studies.

Jessica Roberts is an Assistant Professor of Communication at the Universidade Católica Portuguesa. She is co-author of the 2021 book Attacks on the American Press and the 2018 book American Journalism and ‘Fake News’: Examining the Facts. Her research on citizen journalism and social media has been published in Journalism, Social Media + Society and the International Journal of Communication, among other publications. She earned her Ph.D. at the University of Maryland and her M.A. at the University of Southern California.

Keri Spooner has a Doctor of Philosophy in public administration from Monash University and a BComHons and MComHons from UNSW. She has lectured and researched in aspects of power and control within the broad disciplinary areas of employment relations, management and organisations. Keri is Dean at the Wentworth Institute of Higher Education and a Research Supervisor at the University of Notre Dame Australia.

James Stanyer is a Professor of Communication and Media Analysis at the School of Social Sciences and Humanities at Loughborough University, UK. He has authored and co-edited seven books and has published in a range of leading journals in the field of communication and media studies. He serves on the editorial boards of several journals and is currently helping to co-ordinate a research project on the threats to democratic political communication systems in Europe – Threatpie.eu.

Justin Sun is from San Jose, California. He graduated with a BA in English and Spanish from Kenyon College (USA). He has published reviews and short essays about literary translation. He currently works as a teacher in Chicago and has aspirations of becoming a full-time writer.

Marc Tuters is a Senior Lecturer at the University of Amsterdam’s Media Studies department where his current research examines radical visual subcultures and online conspiracy theories together with colleagues at the Open Intelligence Lab as well as the Digital Methods Initiative and as a co-Investigator on an AHRC-funded research grant entitled “Everything is Connected”.

Yan Han Wang is a PhD Student at Notre Dame University Australia and Lecturer at Wentworth Institute. After graduating from the University of Melbourne, Yanhan worked as News Editor before moving into the education industry. Yanhan has a degree in Psychology, Communication Study, Philosophy, and Global Media and Communication. In addition, Yanhan held various qualifications in education and digital media, such as database design, programming language, 3D animation, Video Production, etc.

Ssu-Han Yu is a PhD researcher at Department of Media and Communications, London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE). Before joining LSE, she worked as a Research Assistant with Dr Yu-chan Chiu at the National Taiwan University on health and risk communication projects funded by Ministry of Science and Technology, Taiwan. Their research has been published in Health, Risk & Society, and Chinese Journal of Communication Research. At LSE, she worked with Professor Sonia Livingstone and Dr Mariya Stoilova on the Global Kids Online project. They published their research findings in SAGE Research Methods Cases (Sociology), and MILID Yearbook 2018/19. Her PhD thesis examines how democracy and national identity are mediated in Taiwanese society at both inter- and intra-generational levels.