DENIZ NERIMAN DURU (ED.) AN ECOLABEL 3041 0903 Excellent MSc Dissertations 2018 Excellent MSc Dissertations 2018 ryck, Lund 2018 NORDIC SW This edited volume, Excellent MSc Dissertations 2018, is the third in the Excellent MSc Dissertations 2018 series that brings a selection of eight postgraduate dissertations, written by Media and Communication Studies, Lund University the students who undertook the MSc degree in Media and Communication Printed by Media-T at Lund University, in Sweden and graduated in June 2018. During the Masters Programme in Lund, students develop their curiosity for global DENIZ NERIMAN DURU (ED.) WITH CONTRIBUTIONS FROM issues that concern us all and are trained theoretically and methodologically LESTARINI SARASWATI HAPSORO, MAGNUS JOHANSSON, for two years to ask critical questions and explore the place, the role and ANTENEH TESFAYE LEMMA, KRISZTINA ORBÁN, HARIO PRIAMBODHO, the use of media in people’s lives. The thesis is the opportunity for the CHRISTINE SANDAL, STEPHEN RADING-STANFORD & AXEL VIKSTRÖM students to discover their passion for research, to be creative and original in their research design and to seek answers for the burning question that they are curious to find out. The studies in this volume draw our attention to the multi-faceted media Media and Communication Studies, Lund University use and production in people’s everyday life that impacts political, social, economic and cultural structures. The authors in this volume stand out by their critical approach to media production and audience engagement. The chapters talk to each other within two underlying threads. The first one exa- mines issues concerning politics, power and inequality through investigating both traditional and new media practices. The second thread delves into the place of media practices in social and cultural processes, exploring the nexus between identity, the self, the family as well as the wider society we live in. LUND UNIVERSITY Faculty of Social Sciences 161441 Department of Communication and Media 2018 Förtjänstfulla examensarbeten i MKV 2018:1 ISBN 978-91-981614-4-1 789198 9 Excellent MSc Dissertations 2018 1 2 Excellent MSc Dissertations 2018 Lund University Ed. Deniz Neriman Duru Authors: Lestarini Saraswati Hapsoro, Magnus Johansson, Anteneh Tesfaye Lemma, Krisztina Orbán, Hario Priambodho, Christine Sandal, Stephen Rading-Stanford & Axel Vikström 3 Cover photo by Can Duru Faculty of Social Sciences | Department of Communication and Media ISBN: 978-91-981614-4-1 MEDIA AND COMMUNICATION STUDIES • LUND UNIVERSITY Förtjänstfulla examensarbeten i MKV 2018:1 Printed in Sweden by Media-Tryck, Lund University Lund 2018 4 Table of Contents Introduction ..................................................................................................... 7 Deniz Neriman Duru Silence is Golden ............................................................................................ 15 Axel Vikström A glimpse into the ethiopian media ................................................................. 55 Anteneh Tesfaye Lemma Beyond the “lulz” ............................................................................................ 93 Lestarini Saraswati Hapsoro Reading the Diaspora .................................................................................... 131 Krisztina Orbán ‘The Mother of All Bad Movies’ ................................................................... 169 Hario Priambodho YouTube and the Adpocalypse ...................................................................... 203 Stephen Rading-Stanford You are what you eat online .......................................................................... 239 Christine Sandal The particular politics of the home ............................................................... 279 Magnus Johansson Author biographies ....................................................................................... 315 5 6 Introduction Deniz Neriman Duru This edited volume, Excellent MSc Dissertations 2018, is the third in the series that brings a selection of eight postgraduate dissertations, written by the students who undertook the MSc degree in Media and Communication at Lund University, in Sweden and graduated in June 2018. During the Masters Programme in Lund, students develop their curiosity for global issues that concern us all and are trained theoretically and methodologically for two years to ask critical questions and explore the place, the role and the use of media in people’s lives. The thesis is the opportunity for the students to discover their passion for research, to be creative and original in their research design and to seek answers for the burning question that they are curious to find out. This volume seeks to inspire future students and media scholars with the originality of research design, the use of multi-methods in qualitative media research as well as critical and analytical thinking in investigating contemporary issues that challenges the world we live in. The studies in this volume draw our attention to the multi-faceted media use and production in people’s everyday life that impacts political, social, economic and cultural structures. The authors in this volume stand out by their critical approach to media production and audience engagement. The chapters talk to each other within two underlying threads. The first one examines issues concerning politics, power and inequality through investigating both traditional and new media practices. The chapters range from asking for a critical media representation that challenges economic inequality, to exploring political engagement, civic agency and the role of mediated practices in the process of democratisation in non- western contexts. For instance, Axel Vikström and Anteneh Tesfaye Lemma explore production of news media in Sweden and in Ethiopia. Vikström criticises the fact that Swedish newspapers ‘grant’ silence and invisibility to the super-rich and by representing them as ‘philanthropists’, instead of criticising the increasing 7 gap between the rich and the poor. Lemma juxtaposes policy documents with media practices in his thesis, highlighting how the politically oppressive media environment in Ethiopia and executive intervention hinder democratisation; such barriers restrict the diversity of citizen voices despite developmental media policy. Hapsoro and Rading-Stanford explore how audiences challenge and practice power. Rading-Stanford explores the ways in which Youtube audiences use their clicks and commenting in order to challenge the content creators who compromise their finances over creativity. Hapsoro investigates digital humour and the role and the potential of political memes in youth’s civic engagement in Indonesia, where audiences actively negotiate their position as citizens. These four chapters, hence, remark both the importance of media producers and media environment in providing the space for democratic development and fighting for inequality as well as the pro-active role of the audiences in challenging power relations as citizens and media consumers. The second thread delves into the place of media practices in social and cultural processes, exploring the nexus between identity, the self, the family as well as the wider society we live in. Orbán scrutinizes how audiences construct their sense of self through reading novels, arguing for books as a mobile media that is a resource for identity work. Sandal investigates people who post vlogs on their daily eating habits on Youtube as part of a broader lifestyle trend that says something about societal values of food cultures. As another example, Priambodho inquires how audiences construct meaning and enjoy the experience of watching a ‘bad and rowdy’ movie, constructing a culture of watching cult film The Room which is completely different from film audience etiquette for cinema going. Finally, Johansson explores the tactics parents utilize for inclusion or exclusion of digital games in the construction of the moral project of the home. Thus, in these chapters, audiences consume, use, practice and engage with all sorts of media, whether they are books, films, social media or games to make a place for themselves in the society they live in, to relate to other people, as well as to give meaning to their lives. In chapter one, Axel Vikström draws our attention to media’s uncritical take on economic inequality. Despite research showing that higher inequality within a society corresponds with a higher rate of public health and social problems, there exist little resistance against the policies that allow the super-rich to pull away from the rest of the population. With the aim of enhancing our understanding of 8 the growing gap between rich and poor, chapter one investigates how a selection of billionaires was discursively represented in Sweden’s four largest newspapers during 2017. By using tools from critical discourse analysis, Vikström argues that the news media are more interested in gazing at the spectacle of the super-rich than critically examining them. The super-rich are represented as a secret community that rarely talks to the press, and while media silence and absence has usually been linked to powerlessness, this piece of work, instead, considers this “struggle for invisibility” as a powerful strategy for maintaining the inequality gap. The analysis further shows how the philanthropy of the super-rich is represented as acts of admirable charity, rather than expressions of absurd inequality. These