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FROM THE EDITOR

In my time at Lexington Books over the last few years, I have seen our offerings in the field of communication grow and diversify to include compelling titles on film, television, and media studies. In early 2020, our editorial team decided that, in order to continue adding to these valuable fields of scholarship and give them the best possible home at Lexington Books, we would be establishing film, television, and media studies separately from the communication offerings. Having worked with our communication scholars closely since 2018, I am so glad to continue working with many of them on interdisciplinary titles, and I look forward to focusing on the growth of our media, film, and television titles. Over the course of this year, I have been pursuing new projects in game studies, film and philosophy, formative figures in film and television, trends and consequences of social media, and representation of marginalized communities in media. With a continued presence (virtual or otherwise) at conferences such as SCMS, NCA, and AEJMC, I look forward to meeting with more scholars conducting innovative and timely research in these areas and others. The chapters included here highlight the wide diversity of our titles in our quickly- growing collection of film, television, and media studies books. From an edited volume that sheds light on the representation of minority women in Western media to a monograph that breaks down the intricacies and trends of binge watching television shows, our innovative film, television, and media studies publications inspire readers to think deeply, engage with new ideas and theories, and critically think about how different forms of media affect our society on both a small and large scale every day. Moving into 2021, it is a priority of mine to give authors a platform to discuss diverse subjects and give voice to underrepresented topics, perspectives, and communities by inviting them to publish with us. We publish monographs, edited collections, and revised dissertations by both emerging and established scholars, including interdisciplinary, and specialized areas of focus. Lexington Books offers an expedited decision-making process, peer review, and a streamlined production process to ensure that your research is published in a timely manner. We publish high-quality books with full-color covers in a variety of styles and market our new titles aggressively around the globe. Our titles are regularly reviewed in scholarly journals and have received significant awards and honors for academic scholarship. Our editors are committed to working closely and in collaboration with our authors in order to make your book the best it can be. To submit a proposal for a book project, please review our submission guidelines and email a full prospectus to Jessie Tepper at [email protected]. Or, if you would prefer to discuss your project first, just send me an email and I’d be happy to set up a call by phone or Zoom at a time that works for you! I look forward to hearing from you.

Sincerely,

JESSIE TEPPER Associate Acquisitions Editor Film, Television, and Media Studies LEXINGTON BOOKS

contents

4 - 19 Maha Bashri, “Inclusion, Exclusion, and Belonging: Media Representations of American Muslim Women (The Case of The New York Times 2007–2017)” in Minority Women and Western Media: Challenging Representations and Articulating New Voices Edited by Maha Bashri and Sameera Ahmed

20 - 41 Ronda Mariani, “Evaluation of Brand-Sponsored Influencers and Tactics Across Industries” in Research Perspectives on Social Media Influencers and Brand Communication Edited by Brandi Watkins

42 - 60 Ishani Mukherjee and Maggie Griffith Williams, A“ Borrowed Identity: Religious and Ethnic Relationships in an Israeli High School” in Migration, Mobility, and Sojourning in Cross-cultural Films: Interculturing Cinema

61 - 79 Jennifer Daryl Slack and Stefka Hristova, “Why We Need the Concept of Algorithmic Culture” in Algorithmic Culture: How Big Data and Artificial Intelligence Are Transforming Everyday Life Edited by Stefka Hristova, Soonkwan Hong, and Jennifer Daryl Slack

80 - 90 Arienne Ferchaud, “Audience Motivations for Binge Watching Behavior” in Binge and Bingeability: The Antecedents and Consequences of Binge Watching Behavior

The pagination of the original chapters has been preserved to enable accurate citations of these chapters. These chapters are provided for personal use only and may not be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means without permission of the publisher. All rights reserved. Maha Bashri, “Inclusion, Exclusion, and Belonging: Media Representations of American Muslim Women (The Case of The New York Times 2007–2017)” in Minority Women and Western Media: Challenging Representations and Articulating New Voices. Edited by Maha Bashri and Sameera Ahmed (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2020), 1–16. Series: Media, Culture, and the Arts. All rights reserved.

Chapter 1

Inclusion, Exclusion, and Belonging Media Representations of American Muslim Women (The Case of The New York Times 2007–2017) Maha Bashri

INTRODUCTION

While there are many conflicting realities in the world, the media has the power to advance one reality over another. Moreover, the media plays a significant role in fostering inclusion and understanding within a nation (van Dijk 2000). While it does not necessarily determine citizens’ thoughts and opinions, it does play a significant role in defining who does (or does not) belong to a nation (Henry 1997). The visual and textual representations of nationhood in media shape the perception of belonging. Minorities and women are two groups that tend to be underrepresented and or misrepresented, or altogether neglected in Western media coverage. American Muslim women come from different backgrounds and varied life experiences. Yet, for the most part, news frames in American media have failed to humanize their life experiences (Haddad et al. 2006). Media in the United States may not intentionally seek to create a reductive Orientalist representation of American Muslim women, yet the prevalent news frames have failed to transcend this paradigm (Wilkins 1997; Bullock and Jafri 2000). The past decade (2007–2017) has seen the largest growth in the Muslim population living in the United States. The number of Muslims has risen from 2.35 million in 2007 to 3.45 million in 2017 (Pew Research Center Report 2017). This is largely attributed to immigration and high fertility rates. This study aims to explore if Muslim women’s identities and narratives are excluded or included in the construction of “real” American women. The

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media not only set the agenda for “public discussion but more importantly they strongly suggest how readers should think and talk about ethnic affairs” (van Dijk 1991, 245). The New York Times was chosen for this study because it is a newspaper of record that has a trickle-down effect on regional and local US media. Its broad circulation as well as the demographic makeup of its readership indicate its ability to influence a segment of the American population that is likely to be politically engaged. Furthermore, The New York Times tends to be progressive in its coverage of immigrants, minorities, and women. The study examines news frames found in the coverage of Muslim women in the United States as well as the presence of shifts (or static) in them as numbers of Muslim women in the United States grew in the last decade. It is assumed that an increase in the numbers of Muslim women will lead The New York Times to portray different narratives and life experiences, transcending the limited Orientalist paradigm.

AMERICA- A MELTING POT?

The past decade (2007–2017) has seen the largest growth in the Muslim population living in America. The number of Muslims has risen from 2.35 million in 2007 to 3.45 million in 2017 (Pew Research Center Report 2017). This is largely attributed to immigration and high fertility rates. The Muslim community in the United States is a heterogenous group that is very diverse in many respects. This diversity is clearly depicted in countries of origin for those not born in the United States as well as racial and ethnic diversity. The Pew Center estimates that 58 percent of American Muslims were born in another country. Second-generation Muslim Americans, those born in the United States but have at least one parent who is an immigrant, account for 18 percent of Muslim Americans. A quarter (24 percent) of American Muslims come from US families that have been in the United States for three generations or longer (Pew Center 2017). However, despite all this diversity, American media, while not all monolithic, fall into a trap of simplistic coverage that is non-nunanced in its approach. Modood’s research into British Muslims (2003, 2005) suggests that the category Muslim is as internally diverse as other group categories such as British or Christian. Yet media representations of British Muslims are monolithic and negative for the most part (Modood et al. 1997, 2005; Fekete 2002; Cottle 2006). American media has not been any different. Although the media does not appear to actively aim to vilify real life Muslims, there is a lack of any major representations of Muslims doing good things or simply being ordinary members of American society. The major representations of Muslims casts

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them predominantly as sinister, scary, and threatening sorts of Muslims, representing only the narrowest margin of Muslim experience (Jackson 2010; Alam and Husband 2013; Karim 2014). This homogenization of Muslims in mainstream media depicts a limited and narrow understanding of Muslim identity. Consequently, this results in stereotypical portrayals of what and who Muslims are, how they act and behave. In many respects, the media representation of minority groups is a double- edged sword. First, it marginalizes minority voices; thus, they are virtually ignored or invisible (Saeed 1999). Second, representation of minority groups is often construed in negative discourses (Hartmann and Husband 1974). This is problematic because audiences who have little interaction with minority groups base their understanding of them on these media representations (Hall 1978). The media becomes the definer and sole provider of information regarding minority groups (Saeed 1999; van Dijk 1991).

MEDIA, IDENTITY, AND INCLUSION

Identity in the nation state is constructed as a result of the interplay of complex relations between four main types of interconnected forms of power (Jameson 1995). The most relevant one to the following study is that of the media, a symbolic form of power that has the ability to construct reality, (re)produce it, and cement it (Olausson 2010). Thus, in processes of identity formation, the news media plays a crucial role considering its ability to sym- bolically (re)produce certain ideas of the world and our place in it (Moffe 1995; Olausson 2010). Identity itself is multifaceted, be it self-identity and/or collective/social identity. Collective/social identity, the focus of this chapter, contains affiliations, group memberships, and connections to collectives of all types (Abrams et al. 2004). The collective mode of identity is fundamentally about identification: the formation of a common ‘We’ (Mouffe 1995), and it is in this collective sense that identity is employed in this study. Media messages perpetuate images and representations of different identity groups within the fabric of a nation. The representations typically “reflect and reify stereotypes of minority and marginalized groups that vary in quality (e.g., accuracy and valence) and the quantity of coverage (e.g., number and breadth)” (Leavitt et al. 2015, 40). For some social identity groups, such as middle-class whites, the media tends to have positive representations and extensive media coverage. This is unlike media representations of minority or marginalized groups (e.g., African Americans, Native Americans, Muslims, and women) who tend to be invisible, negatively portrayed, or both (Leavitt et al. 2015).

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Media reflects a constructed reality that determines how events, phenomena, and processes are conveyed to audiences (Berglez and Olausson 2011). It brings a cohesiveness and understanding to the collective mode of identity within the fabric of the nation-state. The identification process is contingent on the creation of a sense of inclusion and belonging to a collective. This is reinforced through positive representations. The lack and/or negativity in media representations of certain social identity groups excludes them from the collective identity of a nation. Erikson (2005) argues that the creation of identity (collective) evolves through the construction of an us versus them dialectic, those on the inside and those excluded from it. Media representations of different social identity groups are of particular importance in countries such as the United States with large numbers of minorities. Typically, people build impressions and construct perceptions regarding others not within their social identity groups based on media representations rather than direct experiences (Mastro 2015). Patterns of media representations convey messages to audiences regarding racial/ethnic dynamics and norms as well as the value attached to different groups in society (Harwood and Roy 2005), “the extent to which diverse groups are presented and/or thoughtfully integrated into the general media landscape should not be ignored” (Mastro 2015, 378). This is of particular importance because media serves as a social agent that has the ability to shape, construct, and give meaning to these representations in society (Olausson 2010). Political power, on the other hand, uses these symbolic media productions to give itself legitimacy, take a stand on an issue, or get support for issues of interest to it. This dynamic and interplay between political power and media representations is relevant in matters pertaining to national identity. For example, in studies examining the concept of European identity, researchers assert that the European Union’s legitimacy is contingent on the creation and sustenance of a European identity or community by the media (Anderson 1983; Olausson 2010). On the other hand, media portrayals have been known to create barriers to inclusion of diverse groups in society. Mainstream media in the United States has predominantly catered to and represented a white majority while (for the most part) under or misrepresenting racial and ethnic minorities, and women (Mastro and Tukachinsky 2011; Tukachinsky 2015). Studies have consistently indicated the mainstream media’s inadequacy in representations of minority and marginalized groups in American society (Gerbner and Signorielli 1979; Paek and Shah 2003; Munoz 2005). The continued stigma- tization of minority groups further alienates them from the mainstream creating a narrative where they are othered and excluded from a collective social identity of the “we.” Media, as a social agent with the ability to construct and promote certain realities over others, has the power to embed a shared collective experience for the many diverse groups in a nation.

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GENDERED MEDIATION

News frames in media stories construct meaning about politics, social issues, geographical locations, people, and so on (Gamson et al. 1992). The construction of meaning does not occur as a result of one news story but is the amalgam of many news stories over an extended period of time. These news stories create an overall discourse or what Gamson and Modigliani call “interpretative packages” (1989, 2). Therefore, over time certain frames emerge as the dominant ones in the coverage of certain issues, places, or types of people. Media frames are of great importance because they organize the world both for the journalist and those consuming the news (Gitlin 1980). This organization occurs as a result of three interrelated processes: cultural resonance, sponsor activity, and journalistic practice (Gamson and Modigliani 1989). Cultural resonance is contingent on how relevant or salient an issue is to an audience. Symbols and cultural narrations strengthen the resonance of a package and increase its appeal (Snow and Benford 1988). Sponsor activity relates to how organizations or individuals being covered will try to exert influence or shape the stories journalists write about them. Sponsors of packages are agents attempt to promote some agenda. Journal- istic practices refer to the norms and daily routines journalists utilize when covering a story. This includes many aspects, such as story placement, which sources are quoted, verbs and metaphors when reporting a story, and so on. While all three processes are important, the focus of this study is how cultural resonance and journalistic practice affect coverage of American Muslim women. Scholars have found the concepts of frame theory useful when analyzing gender portrayals in the news. Studies first examined the amounts of coverage and whether it was positive or negative (Gerbner 1978; Tuchman 1978; Blackwood 1983; Luebke 1989). While the media does cover women, media frames focus on stereotypical depictions of females and feminine characteristics (Kahn and Goldenberg 1991; Robinson and Saint-Jean 1995; Carroll and Schrieber 1997). Attention has shifted to more nuanced approaches, and scholarship now examines representations and frame construction when examining coverage of women in the media (Gidengil and Everritt 1993). Concepts such as “gendered mediation”, “gendering,” and/or “gendered discourse” focus on “the gendered nature of representational politics as well as the gendered nature of media coverage” (Sreberny-Mohammadi and Ross 1996, 103). Gendered mediation as Gidengil and Everritt (2003) argue that conventional “news frames treat the male as normative” (210); therefore, they are far from being gender-neutral. Gendered-mediated framing affords more significance

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to male issues or individuals in media coverage than they do females and feminine issues. The masculine narrative relegates women and their stories to a lesser status (Rakow and Kranich 1991; Srebeny-Mohammadi and Ross 1996).

THE ORIENTALIST PARADIGM AND MUSLIM WOMEN

Media frames are important in construction of reality and representations because:

1. They reflect the larger public discourse and in turn the cultural resonance of news package; 2. They can influence public opinion. Media frames create salience for issues and their perception in society (Gamson and Modigliani 1989; Entman 1993). Framing also has the ability to shape perceptions of the target issue/ persons (Kahnemann and Tversky 1984).

The media holds a powerful position in conveying, explaining, and articulating specific discourses that help represent (and misrepresent) minority groups (Cottle 2000, 2006). Western media misrepresentations “of minorities have successfully distanced themselves from crude notions of biological inferiority and instead forged links between race, nationhood, patriotism and nationalism” (Saeed 2007, 444). Western countries are now defined as a unified cultural community, a national culture ethnically pure and homogeneous in its whiteness (Gilroy 1992; Hall 1992). When covering Muslim American women, the media represents them, first and foremost, as a minority or “alien women” than as females whose coverage is gendered. Coverage of Muslim women (historically) has not transcended several set themes. Western media has consistently attributed three main personas to Muslim women: The first is the harem belly dancer character, the mysterious and sexualized women of the Orient; the second is the oppressed Muslim woman oftentimes wearing the hijab; and the third is the militant Muslim woman often in the hijab and carrying a gun (Bullock 2002). Muslim women in the West are particularly vulnerable to this kind of ideological packaging because it alienates them while continuously position- ing them as the “other.” Even when Orientalist stereotypes are not pervasive in the coverage of Muslim women (already living in the West), Muslims and Muslim women are usually covered in the foreign affairs section; consequently, they are portrayed as being alien not belonging (Gowlett 1995). They are both “othered” and gendered in media coverage.

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American Muslim women come from different backgrounds and varied life experiences. Yet, for the most part, news frames in American media failed to humanize their life experiences (Haddad et al. 2006). The media packaging is guided by the existing cultural narrations of what Muslim women are or should be, “the stories, myths, and folk tales that are part and parcel of one’s cultural heritage” (Gamson and Modigliani 1989, 5). Media in the United States may not intentionally seek to create a reductive Orientalist representation of American Muslim women, yet the prevalent news frames have failed to transcend this paradigm (Wilkins 1997; Bullock and Jafri 2000; Bashri 2019). Representations of American Muslim women is problematic in two ways; first the media marginalizes them and their stories because they are members of a minority; second, they are females and news construction has historically been gendered. Western media tends to depict females as “passive rather than active news makers in their own right” (Wilkins 1997, 121) despite them being the main actors. Furthermore, media packages American Muslim women in ways to make them “culturally resonate” or, in this case, understandable to Western audiences. The themes tend to fall within the domain of Orientalist representations. They cannot be packaged in the media unless they fit that particular construction of reality.

METHOD

The following study examines coverage of American Muslim women in The New York Times from January 1, 2007, to December 31, 2017 (n=121). The main actors in the article had to be Muslim American women in order to be included in the sample. The news stories selected had to be related to a topic other than religion or terrorism. The World section was omitted from the study as the articles of interest were those about American women who happened to be Muslim. Articles were selected through systematic random sam- pling procedures at given intervals. The New York Times was chosen because it is a newspaper of record that has a trickle-down effect on regional and local US media. Furthermore, The New York Times tends to be progressive in its coverage of immigrants, minorities, and women. The study examines news frames found in the coverage of Muslim women in the United States as well as the presence of shifts (or static) in them as numbers of Muslim women in the United States grew in the last decade. It is assumed that an increase in the numbers of Muslim women will lead The New York Times to portray different narratives and life experiences, transcending the limited Orientalist lens they have been traditionally covered through. Stories were coded for the section they appeared in; the news story type; whether the female actors in the story were depicted in a passive news frame

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or active news frame; news story placement. Both textual representations and images were coded for. “News photographs do more than reflect events by structuring and focusing images that perpetuate an ideological discourse” (Wilkins 1997, 63). The two research questions the study seeks to explore are:

RQ1: Will the portrayal of American Muslim women in The New York Times transcend the three Orientalist personas historically used by the media? RQ2: Did the increased numbers of American Muslim women lead to a variation in news frames depicted in The New York Times?

FINDINGS

For the most part, the Orientalist paradigm was very much used in hard-core news stories in the US and Politics sections. All the articles in the Politics section of The New York Times resorted to usage of one of the three Orientalist personas common to coverage of Muslim women. The US section did not fare any better, approximately 66 percent of all stories used an Orientalist persona. In the soft news stories in the Food and Arts sections, there was more variation in the themes covered and less reliance on the Orientalist paradigm (see table 1.1). In the hard news sections, for the most part American Muslim women were depicted as passive personas (66 percent in the US section and 70 percent of the time in the Politics section). For example, in the April 2007 article “Echoes of Terror Case Haunt California Pakistanis,” featured in the National News/US section, Pakistani American women’s lives are depicted as stifling and isolated in Lodi, a small town of 62,000 east of San Francisco. While this might hold true for this particular group, the consensus by many Americans is that life in small town America can be isolated. Furthermore, the word “terror” in the title of the article is usually a trope for Muslims. Another article in the National News/US section, “Control and Fear: What Mass Kill- ings and Domestic Violence Have in Common” (June 15, 2016), discusses

Table 1.1 Frequency of Articles by Section and Orientalist Personas

News Story Section Frequency Orientalist Personas US 45 30 Politics 10 10 Arts (Arts, Books, Style) 30 7 Food 36 6 n=121. Source: Author.

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how mass killers are abusive toward their female partners. The article draws on many examples of mass killers in the United States, yet the only picture used in the article is of Sitora Yusuify, an abused Muslim woman who is the ex-wife of the Muslim mass murderer Omar Mateen. While it can be argued that Mateen’s case was the most recent when the article was published, the question that begs an answer is, why make a minority group that is already not fully accepted in American society the face of domestic abuse prevalent in society as a whole? Again, the soft news sections are where American Muslim women are represented as active actors in the news stories (90 percent of the time in the Art section and 88 percent in the Food section). For example, an August 2012 article, titled “Building a Turkish Empire, One Friend at a Time,” conveys the story of a Turkish immigrant in the United States and how she is teaching Americans about Turkish cuisine. Hilal Cansizoglu the protagonist in the article, says that sharing Turkish cuisine with Americans helps her acclima- tize to her new life in the United States “and makes her feel attached to people here.” The picture in the article depicts her in her hijab cooking alongside other American women. Another article from June 2016, titled “During Ramadan Dates are a Staple,” discusses the significance of dates when breaking the fast for Ameri- can Muslims. Yvonne Maffei, a well-known nutrition blogger, whose blog my Halal Kitchen is popular with many readers, is quoted in the article and her picture, with the hijab, is at its forefront. Again, this is an example of humanizing American Muslim women and their lived experiences, making them appear as ordinary people with varied lifestyles and professions and who can be named Yvonne. American Muslim women can be poets and can be referred to solely as Americans rather than identified by their religion as was the case in “Poets’ Visions of America From the Inside and Out” (August 29, 2011). This article reviews the works of contemporary American female poets, and Dilruba Ahmed is simply referred to as an American poet, without evoking her religion. It is the Food and Arts sections that seem to normalize Muslim women and give a realistic glimpse into their lives and their identities (see table 1.2).

Table 1.2 Active Vs. Passive Actors

News Story Section Active Actor Passive Actor US 10 35 Politics 3 7 Arts (Arts, Books, Style) 27 3 Food 32 4 n=121. Source: Author.

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Visual representations play a critical part in constructing realities. As discussed earlier, the veil/hijab is an integral part of the Orientalist coverage of Muslim women. When photos were used in stories, for the most part a veiled Muslim woman was depicted. The forty-five news stories in the US section had fifteen photos, ten of which had a picture of a veiled Muslim woman. All seven pictures in the Politics section had veiled women. Even in the Arts and Food sections that had themes transcending the Orientalist framework, half the photos used had veiled Muslim women (see table 1.3).

Table 1.3 Usage of Photos in the News Stories

News Story Section Frequency Photo Veil in the Photo US 45 15 10 Politics 10 7 7 Arts (Arts, Books, Style) 30 10 5 Food 36 12 6 n=121. Source: Author.

The Food and Art sections had the most positive stories and varied themes about American Muslim women. Most of the stories about American Muslim women were relegated to the soft news sections. Nonetheless, in ten years only 121 stories actually addressed or depicted American Muslim women in The New York Times, one of the leading newspapers in the country.

DISCUSSION

The findings point to a persistence in the coverage that continues to resort to the Orientalist paradigm. Moreover, in all the stories featured in ten years, Ameri- can Muslim women were main actors in only 121 news articles; on average, that is about twelve stories per year. The ideological packaging of frames has failed to transcend the Orientalist paradigm alienating rather than including American Muslim women. The coverage fails to embrace them first as Ameri- can women with many varied life narratives who happen to be Muslim. As Modood (2005) notes in the case of British Muslims, the category Brit- ish Muslim is as diverse as British Christian, yet it is highly unlikely that the latter group will be packaged by the media as such. The sample in this study points to a similar media packaging. American Muslim women, for the most part, are identified first and foremost by their religion than simply American women, further indicating their exclusion rather than inclusion. The study expected that an increase in the number of Muslim women in the US population would garner more media coverage but that did not happen.

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Perhaps the fact that The New York Times operates within a gendered media system might have played a role in the underrepresentation of American Muslim women in news stories. In hard-core news stories, the three personas traditionally used to depict Muslim women are the most prevalent. News packaging has not deviated from traditional depictions of Muslim women, themes that for the most part have a cultural resonance with audiences in the West. This is further seen even in the photos accompanying stories. When stories happened to have a photo, it always had to be of American Muslim women wearing the hijab. While a large number of Muslim women do wear the hijab, many others also do not wear it. There were several stories in the sample about American Muslim personalities who do not wear the hijab, yet their photos were not included in the articles. While it is not within the scope of this study to conclude why this occurred in The New York Times stories, it can be said that historically previous media practice has resorted to package Muslim women as hijab wearing. The veil has become a symbol that journalists can easily utilize to depict Muslim women. While the veil is one of the many attributes of some Muslim women, it is not necessarily that for others. Journalists and their insistence on utilizing the veil as an integral part of the “Muslim woman package” succeed only in presenting this group as foreign and alien within their American society. They are not part of the “we” circle; rather, they are foreigners and outsiders (Bullock and Jafri 2000). For the most part, Muslim women were active actors in news stories published in the Arts, Books, Style, and Food sections, that is, the soft news sections of The New York Times. The stories in the US and Politics sections depicted Muslim women as passive actors. The patterns in the coverage point to a heavy reliance on an Orientalist framework as well as gendered mediation where women are not necessarily deemed to be active players in serious matters related to politics and policy. The New York Times has not transcended the Orientalist paradigm in its coverage of American Muslim women. This narrow depiction serves to exclude them as foreign rather than indigenous to America. American Muslim women are caught in the midst of two difficult positions. First, they are members of a minority that is seen as alien and foreign by many Americans. Second, gendered mediation is part and parcel of how women generally are depicted in Western media. While the themes used to depict American Muslim women have remained static and not necessarily transcended the Orientalist paradigm, findings of this study show that coverage can and did depict American Muslim women in a favorable light. The argument to be made here is that for Muslim women to be regarded as “real” Americans there needs to be a more nuanced coverage of them by the media. The media, as this chapter argued earlier, plays a critical role

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in defining who belongs and who doesn’t belong to a nation. It constructs realities and defines members of minorities, in turn including or excluding them from the fabric of a nation. American Muslim women are in a rather precarious position due to the historical representations of the Orient and the gendered nature of media. “It is the media that can construct a sense of who ‘we’ are in relation to who ‘we’ are not, whether as ‘us’ and ‘them’, ‘insider’ and ‘outsider’ . . . ‘the west’ and the ‘rest’” (Cottle 2000, 2).

THE MEDIA, IDENTITY, AND NEW DISCOURSES

The homogenized media prototypes of Muslim American women inhibit them from being included and accepted as part of American society. In order for Muslim American women to be accepted by non-Muslim Americans as just Americans who happen to be Muslim, the media must transcend Orientalist themes in its coverage. Media discourses have historically rendered Islam and Muslims, particularly Muslim women, as different and inferior (Alam and Husband 2013). They implicitly or explicitly other Muslims through stereotypical representations. As findings in this chapter demonstrate, by just using homogenized pictures of hijabi women in most of its stories about American Muslim women, The New York Times communicates the idea that all Mus- lim women are hijabis. They all look the same and are different than other American women. While it may be true that many American Muslim women are hijabis, this is neither a true nor a fair representation. There are many others who don’t wear the hijab, yet their pictures were not included, perhaps because this may disrupt a set narrative that the media chooses not to alter. The New York Times failed to acknowledge the vast diversity and nuances found in communities of American Muslim women. These women most likely have more shared attributes with non-Muslim American women than they do with Muslim women who are not Americans. Citizenship and belonging are constructs in which the media plays a critical role, including some while excluding many. The concept of belonging and identity are ones that manifest through symbols that are created and recreated over time through media themes. The media is seen as a “driver for national cohesion and identity in Western societies because they construct and define communities” (Karim 2014, 111). The definition of what it means to be an American is one that the media perpetuates and constructs. The static themes and portrayals have to transcend the expected set narrative for new discourses to emerge. Therefore, a more diversified and inclusive coverage of Muslim American women will in turn lead to a better understanding and (hopefully) acceptance of them simply as Americans who happen to be Muslims by their non Muslim compatriots.

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BIBLIOGRAPHY

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Gerbner, George, and Nancy Signorielli. Women and Minorities in Television Drama, 1969–1978. Report, The Annenberg School of Communications University of Pennsylvania, 1979. Gidengil, Elisabeth, and Joanna Everitt. “Metaphors and Misrepresentation: Gen- dered Mediation in News Coverage of the 1993 Canadian Leaders’ Debates.” Harvard International Journal of Press/Politics 4, no. 1 (1999): 48–65. ———. “Talking Tough: Gender and Reported Speech in Campaign News Cover- age.” Political Communication 20, no. 3 (2003): 209–32. Gilroy, P. “The End of Antiracism.” In ‘Race’, Culture and Difference, edited by James Donald and Ali Rattansi, 49–61. London: Open University, 1992. Gilroy, Paul, and Stuart Hall. “The Question of Cultural Identity.” Modernity and Its Futures. Cambridge, UK: Polity Press, 1992. Haddad, Yvonne Yazbeck, Jane I. Smith, and Kathleen M. Moore. Muslim Women in America: The Challenge of Islamic Identity Today. Oxford University Press, 2006. Hall, Stuart, Chas Critcher, Tony Jefferson, John Clarke, and Brian Roberts. Policing the Crisis: Mugging, the State and Law and Order. Macmillan International Higher Education, 2013. Hall, Stuart, David Held, and Anthony G. McGrew. “Modernity and Its Futures.” (1992). Harwood, Jake, and Abhik Roy. “Social Identity Theory and Mass Communication Research.” In Intergroup Communication Multiple Perspectives, edited by Jake Harwood and Howard Giles, 189–211. New York: Peter Lang, 2005. Henry, Frances. “Racist Discourse and the Media.” Ontario Council of Agencies Serving Immigrants (OCASI) Newsletter 4 (1997). Hogg, Michael A., Dominic Abrams, Sabine Otten, and Steve Hinkle. “The Social Identity Perspective: Intergroup Relations, Self-Conception, and Small Groups.” Small Group Research 35, no. 3 (2004): 246–76. Jackson, Liz. “Images of Islam in Us Media and Their Educational Implications.” (2010). Jameson, Fredric. “On Cultural Studies.” In The Identity in Question, edited by John Rajchman, 251–67. New York: Routledge, 1995. Kahn, Kim Fridkin, and Edie N. Goldenberg. “Women Candidates in the News: An Examination of Gender Differences in Us Senate Campaign Coverage.” Public Opinion Quarterly 55, no. 2 (1991): 180–99. Kamalipour, Yahya R. The US Media and the Middle East: Image and Perception. Greenwood Publishing Group, 1997. Karim, Karim. “Islamic, Islamist, Moderate, Extremist: Imagining the Muslim Self and the Muslim Other.” In Re-imagining the Other: Culture, Media, and Western- Muslim Intersections, 153–74. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014. Leavitt, Peter A., Rebecca Covarrubias, Yvonne A. Perez, and Stephanie A. Fryberg. ““Frozen in Time”: The Impact of Native American Media Representations On Identity and Self-Understanding.” Journal of Social Issues 71, no. 1 (2015): 39–53. Luebke, Barbara F. “Out of Focus: Images of Women and Men in Newspaper Photo- graphs.” Sex Roles 20, nos. 3–4 (1989): 121–33.

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Mastro, Dana. “Racial/Ethnic Stereotyping and the Media.” In The Sage Handbook of Mass Media Effects, edited by Robin Nabi and Mary Beth Oliver, 377–91. Thou- sand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, 2009. Mastro, Dana E., and Bradley S. Greenberg. “The Portrayal of Racial Minorities On Prime Time Television.” Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media 44, no. 4 (2000): 690–703. Mastro, Dana, and Riva Tukachinsky. “The Influence of Exemplar Versus Prototype- Based Media Primes On Racial/Ethnic Evaluations.” Journal of Communication 61, no. 5 (2011): 916–37. Modood, Tariq. Multicultural Politics: Racism, Ethnicity, and Muslims in Britain. Vol. 22. University of Minnesota Press, 2005. Modood, Tariq, Richard Berthoud, Jane Lakey, James Nazroo, Patten Smith, Satnam Virdee, and Sharon Beishon. Ethnic Minorities in Britain: Diversity and Disadvan- tage. Policy Studies Institute, 1997. Mouffe, Chantal. “Democratic Politics and The Question of Identity.” In Identity In Question, edited by John Rajchman, 33–46. New York: Routledge, 1995. Muñoz, José Esteban. “Queer Minstrels for the Straight Eye: Race as Surplus in Gay TV.” GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies 11, no. 1 (2005): 101–102. Olausson, Ulrika. “Towards a European identity? The News Media and the Case of Climate Change.” European Journal of Communication 25, no. 2 (2010): 138–52. Paek, Hye Jin, and Hemant Shah. “Racial Ideology, Model Minorities, and the “Not- So-Silent Partner:” Stereotyping of Asian Americans in US Magazine Advertis- ing.” Howard Journal of Communication 14, no. 4 (2003): 225–43. Rakow, Lana F., and Kimberlie Kranich. “Woman as Sign in Television News.” Journal of Communication 41, no. 1 (1991): 8–23. Robinson, Gertrude, and Armande Saint-Jean. “The Portrayal of Women Politi- cians in the Media: Political Implications.” Gender and Politics in Contemporary Canada 176 (1995): 90. Saeed, Amir. “The Media Andnew Racisms’.” Media Education Journal (1999): 19–21. ———. “Media, Racism and Islamophobia: The Representation of Islam and Mus- lims in the Media.” Sociology Compass 1, no. 2 (2007): 443–62. Snow, David A., and Robert D. Benford. “Ideology, Frame Resonance, and Par- ticipant Mobilization.” International Social Movement Research 1, no. 1 (1988): 197–217. ———. “Ideology, Frame Resonance and Participant Mobilization.” In Structure to Action: Comparing Social Movement across Cultures, Bert Klandermans, Hans- peter Kriesi Und Sidney Tarrow (Hg.), 197–218. London: Jai Press, 1988. Sreberny-Mohammadi, Annabelle, and Karen Ross. “Women MPs and the Media: Representing the Body Politic.” Parliamentary Affairs 49, no. 1 (1996): 103–16. Tukachinsky, Riva. “Where We Have Been and Where We Can Go from Here: Look- ing to the Future in Research On Media, Race, and Ethnicity.” Journal of Social Issues 71, no. 1 (2015): 186–99. Tuchman, Gaye. “The Production of News.” In A Handbook of Media and Commu- nication Research, 90–102: Routledge, 2013.

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Tversky, Amos, and Daniel Kahneman. “Framing of Decisions.” Journal of Business 59, no. 4 pt 2 (1986). Van Dijk, Teun A. “New (S) Racism: A Discourse Analytical Approach.” Ethnic Minorities and the Media 37 (2000): 33–49. ———. Racism and the Press. Routledge, 2015. Wilkins, Karin G. “Middle Eastern Women in Western Eyes: A Study of Us Press Photographs of Middle Eastern Women.” The US media and the Middle East: Image and perception (1995): 50–61.

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Bashri and Ahmed_9781498599856.indb 16 15-06-2020 10:31:39 Ronda Mariani, “Evaluation of Brand-Sponsored Influencers and Tactics Across Industries” in Research Perspectives on Social Media Influencers and Brand Communication.Edited by Brandi Watkins (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2020), 65–86. All rights reserved.

Chapter 4

Evaluation of Brand-Sponsored Influencers and Tactics Across Industries Ronda Mariani

We have all been there, surfing our favorite social media platform, video channel, or news outlet, and behold, something catches our attention. Usually, an individual uniquely positioned to create further curiosity for us. The next thing we know, we are watching some beautiful young girl explaining the dreadful process of applying false eyelashes, in order to look our best for that special night out. We now realize this is something that they do regularly, and we subscribe to their channel. We then go on to purchase and try the same products these individuals demonstrated. Innocently enough, we now know, or maybe not, that we have been influenced and completed the intended cycle of influencer to purchase. Social media is an excellent avenue for influencers to create dialog and relationships with consumers. Social media platforms have a wide variety of users, yet create microenvironments which in return produce communities that can be led by influencers. Communities are mostly an audience with a common interest (Montgomery, 2019). These individuals come together to share, communicate, and learn. These communities’ environments are built on trust and commitment. Furthermore, there is a great deal of human engagement, which is what most social media users seek when using these networks. The growth of social media has enabled the evolution of what was once considered brand sponsors or spokespersons to the current day “social media influencer.” Social media influencers (SMIs) use their unique ability to communicate to an audience their viewpoint (Stubb & Colliander, 2019). In return for this unique voice, brands compensate SMIs for being their brand advocates. However, many times, the birth of an influencer is no more than a passionate viewpoint for a particular subject, product, service, or brand. This generated

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content provides an agreeable and trusted appeal to followers creating positive perceptions of ideologies and brands, which SMIs support. A study conducted by Nielsen (2013) found that consumers who followed and viewed SMIs’ content saw these individuals as more trustworthy. Therefore, these influencer–consumer relationships create an avenue for brands to connect with consumers through an environment that is founded on existing confidence. Research has revealed that consumers are more likely to purchase a product that is advertised or endorsed by a familiar face, such as a celebrity, friend, or family member within a social network (Zeljko et al., 2018).

TRUST AND BANNER BLINDNESS

Evaluating trust can be difficult and time-consuming. The meaning of trust can be interpreted differently from one individual to the next; therefore, understanding the impact of trust in regards to purchasing behavior can be complicated. With that said, brands have learned over time and acknowl- edged how vital consumer trust is. A great deal of money and research has been spent uncovering factors that increase consumer trust and how this may be a gateway to purchasing. With more consumers undertaking their purchasing online, trust is a critical component, which needs to be established between the brand and the consumer. One might ask, “How do consumers establish online trust leading to stronger purchasing?” Today, consumers no longer follow a linear process when deciding their purchase intent. There are many avenues a consumer can take to validate their purchasing decisions including online reviews, social media communities, and SMIs. This form of electronic word of mouth has changed the way consumers interact with each other and the buying process (Olabarri-Fernández et al., 2015). Complicating purchase intent further is the clutter of advertising that consumers are exposed to daily. Clutter is not a new problem, but it is a problem that consistently impacts brands and their return on investment when it comes to advertising dollars. For decades, scholars have researched and presented many findings promoting the lack of impact that online advertising has on consumers (Cho, 2003; Ha, 2004; Resnick et al., 2014; Zouharová et al., 2016). Terms such as banner blindness, in which consumers tend to “ignore and avoid display advertisements” (Cho, 2003, p. 203) has been a concern at the center of all advertising placement and effectiveness. Measures taken to combat the lack of online advertising effectiveness have been demonstrated through the implementation of multiple online advertising tactics such as catchy banner design and formulated banner placement. Research has supported some of these methods as being optimistic. For example, Chtourou and Abida (2010) found positive effects when utilizing

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banner animation and rich media characteristics in online environments. Sigel et al. (2008) found that display advertising styles, including size and location of display advertising, had an impact on click-through rates. Moreover, the utilization of programmatic advertising and geofencing has become popular because of its ability to target consumers directly and more accurately. Although there are many tactics and tools available, advertisers and marketers still seem to fall short of meeting expectations. These shortcomings have led advertisers to seek more appealing avenues when connecting with consumers. One such avenue is the employment of influencers.

BRAND ADVOCATES AND THE CUSTOMER JOURNEY

Brand advocates are consumers who genuinely believe in the product or the service they support (Social Media Glossary, 2019). These individuals advocate for the brands they are passionate about and will defend the integrity and reputation of these products or services. We can see this debate readily among cell phone users, iPhone and Android. As a professor, many times, I will use these two powerful cell phone giants as examples in my classes. It seems very easy to bait users and create everlasting and passionate conversations as to why one uses an iPhone over an Android phone, and vice versa. Consumers have a personal connection to their phones. Their life would be incomplete if something were to happen to their cell phone device. In many ways, these same students that participate in classroom debates about their cell phone brand loyalty are in their own right a brand advocate. Take this cell phone loyalty a step further and start talking about it on a YouTube channel. Grow and obtain one hundred thousand followers, and you are now a social media sensation, or what one may call an “influencer.” Brand advocates communicate with people using a variety of activities (Aquino, 2013). As consumers endorse our products and services, we also know that word-of-mouth marketing is the Holy Grail for marketers (Aquino, 2013). The ability to share information today comes easily with the available social media platforms. Consumer decision-making has also changed when it comes to the process of purchasing. The ability to access online reviews, recommendations, social posts, which are shared or liked, and video, has changed the way consumers go about their decision-making and purchase intention. Consumers now have the ability to weave through the many elements of technology before making a final purchasing decision, whether to buy or not to buy. Since technology contributes to the disruption of marketing and advertising, consumers at all stages of the customer’s journey can leave behind a digital trail of information, which in return, can become a wealth of knowledge for others.

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In order to understand the digital trail and its impact on consumer purchasing today, one must understand how we got here. Traditionally, when brands approached consumers, marketing and advertising strategies were very straightforward. The practice of implementing sales funnel strategies such as the AIDA Sales Funnel, which was developed by St. Elmo Lewis in 1898, was a common practice. The acronym AIDA stands for awareness, interests, desire, and action. Lewis was a well-known successful sales professional and utilized these four levels of consumer cognitive behavior. He felt each stage was a cognitive phase that illustrated a path to consumer buying. In order for a brand to achieve a sale, in this case, represented by “action,” Lewis felt most consumers would need to proceed through each of the other cognitive stages first, creating what we understand today as a sales funnel approach to consumer buying(see figure 4.1). Lewis explained that specific marketing strategies could be developed and strategic advertising served to these consumers through each stage of the funnel in hopes of coercing a sale. The AIDA Sales Funnel approach is still used today, but may not always be the best approach. Essentially, the AIDA Sales Funnel enables brands to attract a high number of possible customers at the

Figure 4.1 AIDA Sales Funnel. Source: Created by St. Elmo Lewis in 1898.

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awareness stage but at the same time, does not take into account the many choices and forms of media, which impact consumers. Moreover, the cognitive behaviors of consumers as they move through each stage of the funnel can become disrupted when approaching a purchasing decision. As a result, the well-known traditional sales funnel has transitioned into a new circular process, referred to as the customer’s journey, while also adding further cognitive stages impacting consumer purchase intent. To illustrate the customer’s journey further, it can be seen that the process is still similar to the traditional sales funnel. However, because of technology, the consumer’s cognitive process has become more complicated in regards to purchase intention and decision-making. When referring to the AIDA Sales Funnel, there are four stages in the cognitive process. On the other hand, when evaluating today’s customer’s journey, five stages appear and each stage grows with complexity. By contrast, many elements remain the same, but it is the digital aspects of the brand to consumer communication that changes the dynamics of consumer cognition when approaching purchasing today. The diagram below illustrates the five stages and demonstrates at each stage where consumer cognition may lie. The diagram also presents where the consumer may be in each stage of the process concerning the brand, moving from stranger to brand advocate. Brand advocates can be compelling for brands, influencing other consumers (see figure 4.2). In the past, digital marketing was considered only a component of the overall marketing mix. Today, this has changed. Digital marketing may be the number one tool connecting brands to consumers. The traditional method of acquiring customers used a funnel approach, or what I like to call the “tunnel” approach. Digital communication channels have changed marketing and the methods brands use to create sales conversions. Moreover, attempts to utilize

Figure 4.2 Customer’s Journey. Demonstrating How Consumers Move through the Cognitive Process of the Customer’s Journey. Source: Created by author.

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the traditional marketing funnel may no longer be relevant. Undoubtedly, it is essential to understand the impact of technology on consumer decision- making and how this has created a customer journey that may no longer be perceived as a linear process. Consumers may move in and out of the buying process before actually making a purchase. Let us take a look at an example. When consumers are in need of a computer, most will engage in an element of research before making a decision and purchase. When approaching this journey, the consumer, who is in need of a new computer, enters the awareness stage. Here the consumer has a problem or a need—in the case of our consumer, they are in need of a new laptop. At the awareness stage, consumers may be strangers to the brands that offer laptops to purchase. Here the consumer will engage in research. Research may consist of consumer reviews, ratings, and brand comparisons. Therefore, a brand needs to have the appropriate messages and advertising available to connect with the consumer in this stage and build brand trust. As the consumer begins to research and acknowledge the variety of brands that offer laptops, then interest and evaluation begins to develop. Here consumers may learn about the differentiating attributes between laptop brands. This could be price, how fast the processor is, and the weight of the laptop. Whatever the differentiating factors, the more attributes that solve the consumer’s problem will lead the consumer to the evaluation of a brand. Once our consumer feels they have adequately evaluated what is available, this will lead to a decision, which usually follows with an action. This action is known as a conversion or sale. Our consumer has made a decision to purchase a laptop that they felt met their expectations. The postevaluation stage is very important. This is when the consumer thinks about their purchase, the process, and engages with the product. If the experience was positive, this is also the stage in which the brand begins to build a strong relationship that should lead to consumer and brand bonding. This is the beginning of the customer relationship management stage. The bonding stage is the last stage of the journey. This is where our consumer is happy with their choice and the relationship they have established with the brand. The consumer will let their friends know how great their experience was and how the brand met all expectations. This is brand advocacy. Our consumer is an advocate of the brand, or we may also call this person a brand influencer. Keeping in mind once again, the customer’s journey is not a linear process such as the traditional sales funnel. It is important to understand that this journey can start at any stage, although it is very unlikely that action would be taken without some previous decision-making, such as evaluation. But consumers can enter and exit the circle at different points in their journey. For example, a consumer can enter the interest and evaluation stage by placing

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the laptop in their online shopping cart, but at the same time, take a minute to read another review, which may lead them to abandoning the shopping cart and no purchase. A week may pass, and the consumer may receive a coupon for the same laptop and go straight to action and complete a purchase. A good strategy is to keep the consumers within the circle and have them become a continuous advocate of the brand revolving in and out of each stage of the customer journey (see figure 4.3). Another essential element is the digital trail that consumers now leave behind for others to see. This digital trail, or what marketers refer to as “earned media” provides more than name recognition for a brand; it provides consumer trust. Earned media is a part of what marketers call the digital marketing trifecta, which consists of paid, owned, and earned media strategies. The trifecta provides brands the opportunity to implement its communication channels throughout the customer’s journey. Paid media consists of marketing and advertising in which the brand has paid. Examples can be programmatic advertising, television commercials, paid per click, paid influencers, and social media advertisements. Owned media consists of marketing and advertising that a brand owns. Examples can be the brand’s website, mobile app, and social media pages. Earned media consists of marketing and advertising that the brand does not solicit. Examples can be social mentions, shares, likes, reposts, and online reviews. This is what is also known as a digital trail created by consumers, advocates, and influencers (see figure 4.4).

Figure 4.3 New Customer Journey. The New Customer Journey Moving from a Funnel to a Circular Process. Source: Created by author.

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Figure 4.4 Digital Marketing Trifecta. Source: Recreated by author from Titan Growth figure.

Earned media is considered one of the most “trusted and influential sources of information” among consumers (Stebbins, 2015, para. 3). Nielsen (2013) found that 84 percent of consumers surveyed saw earned media as the most trusted form of advertising. MDG Advertising (2014) found that 70 percent of consumers wanted to learn more about products employing content rather than traditional advertising approaches. ODM Group found that “74% of consumers rely on social networks to help with their purchasing decisions, and HubSpot reported 71% of consumers are more likely to make a purchase based on social media referrals” (Garvin, 2019, para. 2). With statistics like these, one can make a safe assumption that earned media is a game-changer and marketers will need to rethink their marketing strategies to include such prominent and influential media sources. Moreover, marketers will need to seek out brand advocates who can build the bridges needed to connect brands with consumers through a variety of earned mediums that can demonstrate success. The customer’s journey, as we have read, is a very complicated process. Consumers not only have more product choices but also have multiple means available to collect pertinent information to assist with their purchase intent and decision-making. Brand advocates, also known as influencers, play a critical role in communicating to consumers the benefits of a brand. Brands

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are now considering influencers as a serious component of their marketing strategies. Influencers can create relationships, built on established trust, between the brand and the consumer furthering the success of brand loyalty.

THE BEAUTY INDUSTRY AND INFLUENCERS

The beauty industry has changed quite a bit over the past decade or so, moving from the faces of supermodels adorning television commercials and mag- azines to now, unknown faces with large social media followings promoting products. In the past, this industry was dominated by only a few popular brands, such as Cover Girl, Maybelline, and L’Oreal. These same brands also paid millions of dollars to try and capture their audiences. Now, brands are seeking more innovative channels, such as Instagram and YouTube, with less familiar faces to lead the way for their cosmetic and beauty lines. For example, Estée Lauder is planning to spend 75 percent of its advertising budget on digital marketing, particularly SMIs (Pearl, 2019). The brand is even looking to hire a global director of global influencer marketing and customer engagement to work with influencers of all sizes, both mainstream and well known (Weiss, 2019). Cosmetic and beauty brands are beginning to realize that famous people and large amounts of money do not necessarily mean brands will sell makeup. Consumers know what they like and want when they see it, and they do not need a celebrity or supermodel to reaffirm this. The cosmetic industry offers not only familiar faces, such as celebrities we all know, but also partners with SMIs who are new and do not hold celebrity status. When evaluating SMIs, brands look at the number of followers these individuals have as well as their methods of interaction and engagement with audiences. Brands also recognize how vital “trust is between influencers and their audiences; knowing this is paramount and can impact their bottom lines” (Sharma & Albus, 2018, p. DE13).

Becca Cosmetics An example of this is the partnership between Becca Cosmetics and Jaclyn Hill. Becca Cosmetics is a line of cosmetics that caters to all women, both young and old, and its focus is on a variety of shades that offer a natural glow and radiance when applied. Jaclyn Hill is an Internet celebrity and SMI who gained her following through her YouTube channel, featuring cosmetics. Becca Cosmetics saw the popularity of Jaclyn Hill as a cosmetic influencer and decided to collaborate with Hill to develop the Jaclyn Hill Champagne Collection, which consisted of a face palette inspired by cocktails of color, highlights, and radiance (Sharma & Albus, 2018, p. DE14). There were

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41,000 units of this palette created through this partnership, and these units sold out in two hours, while also receiving one billion social media impressions (Sharma & Albus, 2018, p. DE14).

Coty’s Rimmel London Coty’s Rimmel London is another beauty company that partners with celebrities and beauty influencers. The brand sees itself as unique and not like a typical beauty line. It challenges the users of its products to be daring when experimenting with its cosmetics, to engage in street beauty, meaning to have a desire for authenticity, and challenges consumers to be an edgier self. Coty’s Rimmel London wants to reflect these characteristics: daring, street beauty, and edgier self, when it communicates with its audience. Chandra Coleman, vice president of U.S. marketing for Sally Hansen, indicated that Coty’s Rimmel London understood that their consumers are not the only females. Coleman went on to say the brand wanted to encourage all people to have the confidence to experiment and embrace edgy makeup looks (DSN, 2017). The brand continually reaches out to up-and-coming and unique SMIs who speak to Coty’s Rimmel London consumer base. These SMIs create content featuring Coty’s Rimmel London products to share with their followers. The idea for Coty’s Rimmel London is to use SMIs to create a diverse community that celebrates differences. Henry Giddins Jr., Coty’s Rimmel London head of insights for global color cosmetics, stated: “He has seen a massive shift in trust among its consumers with the brand” (Rao, 2018, para. 3). Giddins went on to say, “Peer-to-peer recommendations bring a level of objectivity to consumers, and we cannot replicate that with celebrities and paid influencers completely. We view this strategy as having more value now” (Rao, 2018, para. 3). This reiterates the importance of trust between a brand and its audience, which can be facilitated by SMIs. Coty’s Rimmel London’s approach to working with SMIs is organic. The brand does not rely on a paid approach when, incorporating SMIs in their advertising campaigns, but instead the brand uses an organic approach to its strategy. Organic marketing is a method in which customers and influencers are obtained naturally and slowly over time (Thiefels, 2018). Instead of paying SMIs for Coty’s Rimmel London, influencers are provided with products in exchange for endorsements. It takes time for these product exchanges to take place, and many times the SMIs who represent Coty’s Rimmel London are individuals that received no compensation at all. It is the passion that the SMI has for the product that begins these relationships and soon grows over time between the company and influencer. For example, Coty’s Rimmel London worked with the platform Influenster and sought out everyday women to promote its summer Wonder Ombre

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Holographic eyeliner launch. Influenster created two thousand VoxBoxes containing the eyeliner and sent the boxes to women between the ages of eighteen and thirty residing in two U.S. cities, Dallas and San Francisco, which were known as vast markets for the brand (Rao, 2018). Women who received the product began to blog as well as post on Instagram and YouTube about their experiences with the product. One blogger, “Mary” who describes herself as just another friendly, beauty-crazed blogger and self-confessed perfumista (Mary, 2018), also noted a disclaimer on her blogging site, stating that she was provided with the free VoxBox of Wonder Ombre Holographic eyeliner, and what the viewer was about to read was purely her opinion on the product. She went on to provide a testimonial for the product, explained its ease of use, and ended with high recommendations for her audience to try the new eyeliner. This type of collaborations has paid off for the Coty’s Rimmel London brand. Giddins Jr. reported that the Influenster campaign drove sales for Coty’s Rimmel London eyeliners 69 percent higher than usual, thus demonstrating a grander halo effect among consumers and users (Rao, 2018, para. 3). As both of these examples illustrate, influencers can be a potent instrument in the digital marketing toolbox. Both Coty’s Rimmel London and Becca Cosmetics turned to regular people who would demonstrate their products online in a way that traditional advertising methods could not achieve. For these brands, employing SMIs created a more personal connection between the brand and the consumer. Instead of brands using the push approach, such as programmatic advertising, which advertisers and marketers would typically employ, these brands connected with their audiences using the pull approach. Specifically, having SMIs with large followings create YouTube and Instagram content about their beauty products. This method generated more buzz for the brand, and therefore, the consumer sought out the product more readily.

THE OPTICAL INDUSTRY AND INFLUENCERS

The optical industry in another industry that has taken full advantage of SMIs and their audiences. SMIs communicate to the consumer the practi- cality and functionality of eyewear as both a medical device and a fashion statement (Wilson & Sengwe, 2018). Through storytelling, SMIs create content that is appealing to a brand’s audience. Storytelling is the ability to create narratives, which convey facts about the brand and its offerings (Schäferhoff, 2018). “Your story is what the world believes about you based on the signals you send through all of your brand assets” (Gutman, 2018, para. 4). Creating compelling brand stories many times leads to influencer advocacy.

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Warby Parker A brand that was successful in combining storytelling and SMIs is the pre- scription glasses retailer Warby Parker. Warby Parker’s marketing strategy has several unique characteristics. Rather than choosing very well-known SMIs, Warby Parker chose individuals who were creative and possessed a need for a quality and stylish eyewear (Kix, 2020). Through the use of social media platforms such as Instagram, these artistic and creative SMIs led other creatives who were needing prescriptive eyewear to the Warby Parker experience. Gutman (2018) a writer who is a fan of books and literature, recalled his shopping experience with Warby Parker. He noted how well the brand created a story based on the brand’s promise, which is the ability for consumers to purchase stylish, cost-effective eyewear with minimum hassle. Gutman (2018) went on to illustrate his customer journey experience with Warby Parker when visiting one of the brand’s stores. He discussed his encounters when entering a Warby Parker store, and how he was greeted by opticians and smiling store employees providing all the necessary information about choosing the correct eyewear. He went on to describe the ambiance as creative, stylish, and the motif was books and literature. Gutman (2018) felt a creative connection and realized that by the “brand telling him who they were, at the same time, the brand was telling him who he was” (para. 13). By choosing Warby Parker eyewear, the brand wanted Gutman (2018) to feel smart, stylish, and even savvy, slowly making him feel part of the brand’s tribe (para. 14). Every step of the buying process included Gutman (2018). After he left the store, he was sent continued updates about the status of his ordered eyewear. When the eyewear arrived at his home, even the packaging was colorful and contained prints of famous artists. Upon opening the box, once again, another connection to the brand was made, a stylish microfiber cleaning cloth containing the brand’s story in less than 100 words (Gutman, 2018). Warby Parker just gained another fan, or what we refer to as an influencer, to tell others about their brand story experience.

Eastern States Eyewear and Optical Transitions Eastern States Eyewear (ESE) and Optical Transitions are two well-known eyewear brands that have partnered with SMIs Coco and Breezy to create content that is unique and tells the brand’s story. Coco and Breezy are twin sisters who are of Puerto Rican and African descent. Growing up in Minnesota presented them with many challenges, one of which was bullying. During this time, these sisters discovered their love for sunglasses and the protection, they felt when wearing a pair. Sunglasses provided them a sense

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of security and allowed them to present their alter-egos, “which were fear- less young women who could conquer the world” (Morad, 2019, para. 1). To avoid bullying, the twins turned to social media to make friends. The sisters used Myspace as a place to show off stylish and cutting-edge eyewear, they had created from existing do-it-yourself sunglasses while connecting and making friends. Their audience were always “bedazzled by their creations” (Morad, 2019, para. 2). With 30,000 followers, Coco and Breezy continued to make and embellish their sunglasses and founded their company Coco and Breezy in 2009. Celebrities also began to take notice and wear their creations. In their small Bushwick apartment on an air mattress, their glasses were eventually worn by big stars such as Lady Gaga and Prince (Morad, 2019). Today, with over 80,000 followers on Instagram, eyewear brands such as Optical Transitions and ESE have partnered with Coco and Breezy to launch the duo’s latest unisex sunglass collection (News, 2017). While these brands know traditional marketing methods are essential, they believe that using SMIs is also an effective strategy to enhance their brand image (Yeh, 2017). Influencers have demonstrated a positive return for Warby Parker, ESE, and Optical Transitions. However, these eyewear brands are not only ones to incorporate SMIs into its brand communication strategy. Less-expensive brands such as J+S Premiums and Kent Wang have also incorporated SMIs into its brand communication strategy. Their sunglasses may not have the price tag of Ray-Ban, Oakley, or Dolce and Gabbana, contributing to their massive marketing budgets, but through influencer marketing, these less- expensive brands can reach potential consumers in a more cost-effective manner. Since less-expensive brands may be somewhat unknown in the optical industry, SMIs can provide the needed trust that is important to capturing market share (Lou & Yuan, 2019). After all, SMIs have grown their followings, knowing what their audience likes and dislikes.

THE FINANCIAL INDUSTRY AND INFLUENCERS

American Express American Express is a brand that understands the power of SMIs and storytelling. As mentioned earlier in the chapter, brand storytelling connects the consumer to the brand’s promise and value through narrative. In the past, brands would advertise their products or services in the hopes of gaining a sale. The presentation of coupons, discounts, and bundling are just some of the ways brands would persuade existing and new customers to purchase what they were offering. The goal of each dollar spent was to create a sale. However, in the present moment, this may not be the case for many brands. In

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today’s “fast-paced, overly-automated, and digitally-driven society, humanity is becoming the new premium” (Costa, 2019, para. 1). Creating content that tells a story is something that many brands, both big and small, are engaging in today. Therefore, the conversion that was once the sale is not necessarily the only goal anymore. Although selling is the end intention for brands, the creation of relationships in today’s digital world is equally as important. Consumers remembering the brand and what it represents seem to be increasingly critical to business success today. Brands want to engage with the consumer with a purpose and enable consumers to feel part of this purpose. For example, through storytelling, Apple taught consumers to think differently and Tesla’s consumers needed to feel that they support a sustainable environment (Costa, 2019). This storytelling is something brands are trying to achieve, including American Express. American Express knew that authentic stories were the most impactful to consumers (Moltz, 2014). American Express worked with and continues to work with bloggers, SMIs, and celebrities to create expression behind what the brand offers. For example, when American Express launched OPEN in 2007, the brand created a narrative that was dedicated to the expression of small-business own- ers. Today, OPEN is a content-driven forum for small businesses, which includes growth stories, local business stories, and built-in America stories (Roque, 2015) all of which resonate among small-business America Express cardholders. American Express implemented a storytelling campaign, which included a series of YouTube videos called “My Travel Style” (Bjornson, 2018). During this series, American Express partnered with SMIs such as Marcus Troy, Krystin Lee, and Adam van Koeverden, and asked them question about their travel style (Bjornson, 2018). The idea was to learn more about how SMIs travel and what essentials they bring with them every time they travel. Responses were fun and warm creating an authentic atmosphere and connecting to people who travel or have an interest in travel. The video ends with each SMI booking their travels with American Express and how if the user saved enough points they can travel the world for free. American Express has also done well utilizing SMIs on Instagram. A recent campaign named AMEX Ambassadors used the hashtag #AMEXAMBASSADORS to promote the American Express Platinum Card and to signify long-term partnerships with specific SMIs (MediaKix, 2019). Knowing how vital their rewards program was to their current audience, and in retaining and acquiring new customers, the brand felt influencer marketing would be perfect when connecting and engaging with these individuals. These influencers would promote lifestyles instead of the actual product, the platinum card. The focus would be on “inspirational influencers leading the luxury lifestyle that American Express can offer” (Seavers, 2018, para. 15).

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American Express has partnered with Instagram accounts of all sizes ranging from celebrities like Shaquille O’Neal (who has over five million followers) to micro-influencers like Corrine Stoke (who has under 100,000 followers) (MediaKix, 2019). The followers of SMIs working with American Express get second-hand experience of a lifestyle of the American Express card users and the rewards they can obtain through the card. The following is an example post on Instagram by the SMI and American Express brand ambassador Adam Gallagher. The picture shows Gallagher on his way to attend an American Express event to celebrate the opening of two new Centurion Lounges in Philadelphia and Hong Kong (MediaKix, 2019). American Express Platinum Cardholders such as Adam Gallagher receive free access to Centurion Lounges around the world with benefits that provide travelers with free wi-fi, workspaces, and gourmet food (letsinfluence, 2020). Posts like these clearly show the perks of owning and using an America Express Platinum Card (see figure 4.5). American Express has consistently worked to integrate SMIs into its marketing DNA (Bullas, n.d.). The brand has realized that working with SMIs provides an opportunity to personalize brand communication messages to a variety of audiences (Bjornson, 2018). These methods of influencer

Figure 4.5 American Express Influencer Post. Adam Gallagher attending an American Express event in Philadelphia.

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engagement provided the brand with authenticity and therefore, attract new consumers while retaining existing consumers.

BEST PRACTICES FOR WORKING WITH SMIS

The previous sections discussed how brands have integrated SMIs into its marketing efforts. It is also important to note that although this is a compelling method of advertising, as well as capturing and retaining customers, knowing if it is an effective strategy can be a challenge. However, studying how existing brands have integrated SMIs into its brand communication can help us uncover some of the best practices for working with influencers. It is important for brands to first determine its objectives and if SMIs are a good fit, can provide a brand with transparency, and subsequently obtain data to measure success (Kuligowski, 2019). Authentic Brand Group (ABG) recommends using SMIs who have an organic following or in other words influencers who have followers that were not purchased or incentivized mon- etarily in some way (Zeman, 2018). Instead, brands should seek out SMIs who have a genuine following that is active and engaged with the influencer. Remember, it is not the number of followers, but it is the activity and relationship that the followers have with the influencer that makes it successful. Another strategy for brands working with SMIs is to develop relationships with influencers. Just because an influencer has a large following, that does not mean that their following or content style is a good fit for the brand. It may be more impactful to work with fewer SMIs, which the brand has developed a relationship with and knows whether or not the influencer aligns appropriately with the brand and its message. In return, SMIs better understand the brand and the message they should convey about the brand. The brand-influencer relationship should be collaborative and focus on telling “authentic stories and collaborate with individuals that want to create content for the brand” (Conick, 2018, p. 42). A strong brand-influencer relationship will allow SMIs to be part of the voice of the brand and have uncanny expertise about the brand. Karen Koslow, cofounder and managing partner of Wellness Amplified, a health and wellness influencer agency, suggests there is not enough strategy or discipline in influencer marketing; instead, there is a lot of people-chasing (Conick, 2018). As such, brands should consider developing an influencer- focused strategy and seek out quality SMIs with an active following who aligns with the brand’s values and aesthetic. Brands should select SMIs who are able to create an authentic and memorable content experience for followers. Once the brand has found the best SMIs to work with, it is the brand’s responsibility to clearly communicate expectations to the influencer. It is also

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important to enable SMIs to be creative and to incorporate their perspective and voice into the brand’s communication. Brands need to trust in the creativity of the SMIs to get the most out of this strategy. Again, this is why proper communication of expectations and the formation of agreeable ground rules are always needed between the brand and the influencer. Another best practice for brands working with SMIs is for influencers to use the product or service offered by the brand. Trust, as discussed previously in this chapter, is essential for consumers, especially in an online environment. It would be disingenuous for an influencer to promote a product or a service having never used it. This also promotes transparency between the brand, influencer, and followers. However, it is important to remember that transparency includes legal disclosures. This means if there is an exchange of any kind between the brand and the influencer, this should be revealed to the audience. Warer Bros. is a prominent example of what happens when there is no disclosure. Warner Bros. reached millions of people with its new video game “Middle Earth: Shadow of Mordor.” The game received many positive reviews, most from video game influencers. The Federal Trade Commission accused Warner Bros. of paying for these reviews (Conick, 2018). Findings revealed that Warner Bros. did “pay each influencer and provided them with a free advance-release version of the game and asked the gamers to promote the game positively” (Commission, 2016, para. 1). It was not the point that Warner Bros. paid for these reviews, it was the fact that the company did not disclose this information to the consumer, these reviews were actual paid independent reviews from reviewers (Conick, 2018). Related, it is the brand’s responsibility to make sure that the federal regulations are properly incorporated into content created by SMIs. More specifically, the Federal Trade Commission requires a brand to disclose the relationship it has with SMIs. This disclosure needs to be in plain view, above the fold, and be present first before the reader continues through the content (Commission, 2019). According to Truth in Advertising (n.d.) using one of the following marker’s is appropriate for transparency and disclosing the brand’s relationship with the influencer:

• #ad or Ad: • Advertisement • Sponsored • Promotion • Paid ad • Thanks [COMPANY NAME] for the free product • Thanks [COMPANY NAME] for the gift of [NAME] product • #[COMPANY NAME]Ambassador • #[COMPANY NAME]Partner

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If a brand is going to claim something, the brand will want to make sure it can back the claims up with facts. Disclosing side effects, FDA warnings, and other important consumer information should always be present when using influencers. Avoid misrepresentation of facts, and do not use gimmicks to get the brand’s message across.

EVALUATING INFLUENCER SUCCESS

As previously mentioned, it is challenging to measure the success of influencer marketing because it is a relatively new strategy; however, there are a few tactics a brand should try to utilize. The Association of National Advertisers (ANA) recommends measuring the following: engagement; the number of users who engage, impressions; impact of brand awareness, impressions, and sentiment, website views; utilizing a landing page or unique URL, posting; are users engaging by posting content, increase in conversions, such as a sale, again this can be done by utilizing landing pages, Facebook Pixel, and/or unique URL, sharing; are users engaging by sharing the content (Conick, 2018, p. 43).

CONCLUSION

SMIs are an essential component for communicating the brand’s purpose and value to consumers. Influencers complete a vital role in creating trust between the brand and the consumer. Brands understand the benefits of employing influencers in their marketing and advertising tactics. Through storytelling, influencers can bring consumers into a world that champions the brand and its messages. Moreover, influencers can be present in all aspects of the customer’s journey. However, full disclosure and choosing influencers that achieve the goals of the brand are necessary when delivering the brand message to its followers.

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Thiefels, J. (2018, July 18). The difference between paid and organic marketing and why it matters. Retrieved from Salceforce: https :/ /ww w .sal esfor ce .co m /blo g /201 8 /07/ paid- organ ic -ma rketi ng -st rateg y .htm l. Weiss, G. (2019, August 23). Beauty Giant Estée Lauder now allots 75% of its digital marketing budget to influencers. Retrieved from Tubefilter: https :/ /ww w .tub efilt er .co m /201 9/08/ 23 /la uder- 75 -pe rcent -digi tal -s pend- influ encer s. Wilson, J., & Sengwe, S. (2018). Social influencers: How optical is leveraging followers, clicks and pics for marketing. Vision Monday, 32(3), 54–62. Yeh, C. (2017, July). Twinning combination. Retrieved from 20/20 Magazine: https:/ /ww w .202 0mag. com /a rticl e /twi nning -com b inati on. Zeljko, D., Jakovic, B., & Strugar, I. (2018). New methods of online advertising: Social media influencers. In B. Katalinic (Ed.), 29th DAAAM international sympo- sium (pp. 0041–0050). Vienna, Austria: DAAAM International. Zeman, K. (2018). Powerful influencer: Authentic brands group unveils Winston, a proprietary social media influencer network that powers influencer programs across ABG’s portfolio. Retail Management, 58(5), 14–17. Zouharová, M., Zouhar, J., & Smutný, Z. (2016). MILP approach to the optimization of banner display strategy to tackle banner blindness. Central European Journal of Operations Research, 24(2), 473–488. https:/ /do i .org /10 .1 007 /s 10100 -015- 0398- 3.

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Watkins_9781793613615.indb 86 22-10-2020 16:43:01 Ishani Mukherjee and Maggie Griffith Williams,“ A Borrowed Identity: Religious and Ethnic Relationships in an Israeli High School” in Migration, Mobility, and Sojourning in Cross-cultural Films: Interculturing Cinema (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2020), 73–91. All rights reserved.

Chapter 5

A Borrowed Identity Religious and Ethnic Relationships in an Israeli High School

Identity is our legacy and not our inheritance, our invention and not our memory —Darwish, A Borrowed Identity (2014)

This prophetic quote from Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish appears in the opening credits of Eran Riklis’ Israeli drama A Borrowed Identity (2014). The film centers on a bright, Palestinian-Muslim boy, Eyad, who is raised in the Israeli town of Tira in the 1980s. Eyad is the brilliant son of a university-educated Israeli Arab fruit picker. Later, during the early 1990s, while attending a reputable high school in Jerusalem, Eyad becomes romantically involved with a Jewish classmate, Naomi. He also forms a lasting friendship with Yonatan, who is suffering from muscular dystrophy, and develops a close bond with Yonatan’s mother Edna, who later in the filmlends Eyad her deceased son’s Jewish name and identity. Riklis’ film, also known asDancing Arabs, is adapted from Sayed Kashua’s (2002) novel of the same name. It is worth mentioning that the actors in the movie speak in Arabic and Hebrew. Direct quotes and dialogues from the movie that we furnish in this chapter are drawn from its English subtitles. The key role of ethnoreligious identity for Eyad is portrayed from the opening scenes of the film with the image of a pensive Eyad smoking on an empty terrace with a mosque in the background and the sound of an azaan (Islamic call to prayer) reverberating in the night skyline. The reel time of A Borrowed Identity (2014) is the early 1980s and follows the progression of Eyad’s life and conflicted identity up to the mid-1990s. Politically, this period in Israel coincides with the first Palestinian Intifada (insurrection against Israeli occupation) leading up to the Gulf War.

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Palestine has long been the subject of geopolitical and religious conflict, and its mobile identity as a nation within Arab states has been historically questioned. However, “many of those that do not recognize the State of Palestine do recognize the Palestine Liberation Organization as ‘representative of the Palestinian people’” (Jandt, 2016, p. 222). As Sorrells (2016) points out, ethnoreligious fundamentalism has an effect on “political, legal, social, and intercultural relations in many areas of the world” (p. 210). Placed in the context of globalization, political mobility, and the “disaffection and isolation” it can produce, a sense of identity via ethnic kinship and religious fundamentalism is understandable (Sorrells, 2016, p. 210). Conflict, compromise, and constant movements of cultural identities along interethnic and interreligious lines abound in A Borrowed Identity (2014). Such movements are particularly evident in Eyad’s interpersonal relationships with his patriotic Arab-Muslim family in a Judaism-predominant Israel, in his father’s political protests to secure an independent identity for Palestine, in the minoritization of Eyad’s religious identity, in Yonatan’s ter- minal disability and his invisibility fueled by ableism, in Naomi and Eyad’s clandestine romance that meets with parental and interreligious disapproval, and most poignantly in Edna’s sacrifice of a Jewish burial to her deceased son so Eyad could ‘borrow’ Yonatan’s identity to move into a life of religious and socioethnic acceptance. The narrative of the film surfaces as a site of conten- tion, familial and social separations, and religious anxiety for Eyad, whose minority identity is continuously developing, moving, changing, rejecting, and adapting to intercultural challenges. In this chapter, we first survey the history of ethnonationalism and ethnic democracy in the Israel–Palestine conflict, its social and political implications on spatial- and state-based identification, and how it shapes the identity of minority groups and individuals, following which we analyze our case study of the film using these intercultural communication concepts.

ISRAEL–PALESTINE CONFLICT: ETHNONATIONALISM AND ETHNIC DEMOCRACY

Ethnicity alludes to people who have descended from the same tribes or regional groups, sharing common cultural traits and social habits across generations (Jandt, 2016). They usually show “such distinguishing features as language or accent, physical features, family names, customs and religion” (Jandt, 2016, p. 13). Grounded in ethnicity is the construct of ethnic identity, which “refers to identification with and perceived acceptance into a group with shared heritage and culture” (Jandt, 2016, p. 13; Collier & Thomas, 1988). In the case of Israel, the two main ethnic groups are Jewish, the

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ethnic majority (Judaism is also a religion, of course), and Arab, the ethnic minority. The historical ethnic tensions between Israelis and Palestinians are established within the first few scenes of the film. “The Jews are coming to visit us next week, so tell your parents to get ready. We don’t want to be embarrassed. You hear me, morons?,” chides the principal of Eyad’s school in Tira, mistrans- lating the American guest’s spiel to students about promoting peace between Israel and Palestine [5:30]. The American representative from Children for Peace, talks about the youth building cultural bridges, in particular encouraging Muslim (Palestinian Arab) children living in Israel to be that bridge. The principal reluctantly translates, and chastises his students for speaking out of turn, telling them they’ll “never be anything but street cleaners and fruit pickers” as the American smiles in ignorance [5:30]. Rouhana and Bal-Tar (1998) have termed the long-standing political and ethnoreligious dispute between Israel and Palestine as an intractable ethnonational conflict—intractable because a mutually beneficial compromise between them has been almost impossible to achieve. An ethnonational conflict is marked by recurrent national, religious, linguistic, and ethnic strife taking place within a state or a nation (Connor, 1994; Rouhana & Bar-Tal, 1998). Other examples of ethnonational conflicts can be seen in Northern Ireland, between Protestants and Catholics; in Sri Lanka, between Tamils and Hindus; and in Northern India (Kashmir), between Hindus and Muslims. The actors of an intractable ethnonational conflict fundamentally disagree on what caused the conflict and/or who was responsible for it (Rouhana & Bar-Tal, 1998). While there may be agreement on many historical facts and a shared understanding that Jewish people went to Palestine to recreate and preserve their Jewish homeland, the two sides’ perspectives and narratives diverge from there (Rouhana & Bar-Tal, 1998). The UN declaration of 1947 to split Palestine into two states, one Jewish and the other Arab, resulted in their erstwhile regional conflict to morph into a full- scale Israel–Palestine war. While Palestinian leaders opposed the UN verdict, the Jewish state accepted it, resulting in the formation of the State of Israel in 1948 (Rouhana & Bar-Tal, 1998). In 1967, the war between Israel and the Arab states of Egypt, Jordan, and Syria brought the remaining Palestinian territory including the West Bank and Gaza Strip under Israeli control. The appro- priation of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip brought with it opportunities for reuniting Palestinians living on either side of the Green Line.1 However, it was also concerning that “nineteen years of living under Israeli rule had produced a variant of Palestinian identity that was different from that developing in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip” (Pappé, 2011, pp. 111–12). After the six-day war of 1967 Israel annexed East Jerusalem, then claiming Jerusalem as its capital, in its entirety. Interestingly, despite being one of the

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oldest cities in the world and a site of global reverence for three religions— Judaism, Christianity, and Islam—Jerusalem still holds a disputed location as the proclaimed state capital for both Israel and Palestine. Palestine’s resistance to Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories in 1967, their continued efforts to reclaim the West Bank and Gaza Strip with claims on East Jerusalem as their capital, and their goal to form an independent State of Palestine reached its climax in the 1987 Intifada (shaking off), resulting in a six-year-long insurrection against Israel (Rouhana & Bar-Tal, 1998). It was only with the signing of the Oslo Agreements in 1993, a “secret channel of negotiation in Norway between Israel’s Labor government and the Palestine Liberation Organization” (Rouhana & Bar-Tal, 1998, p. 763) that Israel and Palestine agreed on a truce. Following the 1967 war, the State of Israel’s Arab population was granted the status of residents, but not citizens (Rouhana & Bar-Tal, 1998). From the 1980s and into the twenty-first century, ethnic discrimination against Arab employees at workplaces forced many Palestinians to do jobs they were overqualified for, despite many being college or university educated, a dilemma characterized in the film by Eyad’s father, Salah (Pappé, 2011). Palestinians in particular “developed a flawed national identity,” one that was equally shaped by the segregated realities in Israel and by their allegiance to Palestinian nationalism (Rouhana, 1997). It is the 1987 Intifada for an independent Palestinian state, and its after- math in Israel during the early 1990s, that forms the backdrop of A Borrowed Identity (2014)—a political reality personified in this visual text through conflicted identities, personal struggles, and spatio-cultural movements of its characters, who are in different ways tied to the complex Israeli–Palestinian dispute. In his review of the film, Turan (2015) compares complexities in both the protagonist, Eyad, and his father, Salah, whose involvement in Palestinian liberation politics compels him to become a low-income fruit picker, despite being university educated. Eyad, on the other hand “lives in a world of mixed messages” (Turan, 2015). He lives with his Palestinian family in Israel, learns about their Islamic heritage from his beloved grandmother, brings home a Jewish friend as part of his school’s peacekeeping initiative, gets upset on finding an old Hebrew news-cutting that labels his father an Arab terrorist, yet still receives “clandestine messages about Palestinian nationalism and he and his family root for the Arab side during the region’s frequent armed clashes” (Turan, 2015).

SPATIAL AND IDENTITY MOVEMENTS

When Eyad attends this new school, his spatial surroundings change as he adjusts to life in Jerusalem. The ethnic tensions are even more pronounced

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in Jerusalem than we had seen him experiencing in Tira. In this chapter we draw on Lefebvre’s work on the power and social dynamics of space, as well as identity development models to frame our analysis of the film.

“Space is Political” For Lefebvre, space is not an empty vessel that we fill as needed; rather space is an active agent in shaping and in being shaped by social relations and the power dynamics therein. As he writes, “Space is permeated with social relations; it is not only supported by social relations, but it also is producing and produced by social relations” (Lefebvre, 2009b, p. 186). Embedded within those social and power dynamics are political processes, which brings up an often quoted point of Lefebvre’s “space is political” (2009a, pp. 170–71). Many times space is thought of as a neutral and empty container, but this association with impartiality is mistaken, likely because it has been planned that way based on ideologies, systems, and strategies that are no longer detectable. As he explains, “Space has been fashioned and molded from historical and natural elements, but in a political way” (Lefebvre, 2009a, p. 171). The state is a critical player in the making, shaping, and maintaining of spaces, in terms of the physical built environment, the social relations therein, and the privileges or disadvantages that people have for moving among those spaces (Brenner & Eldin, 2009). Certain regions, cities, neighborhoods, or even buildings may become sites of racial, ethnic, or religious conflict with different groups and stakeholders claiming rights to it, asserting control over it, and/or understanding the space’s position/history/value in different ways. When tensions rise, the state steps in to discipline those acting out of turn (Foucault, 1980; Rabinow, 2003) and the state may reassert control over how individuals can behave, communicate, move through, or access specific spaces. In the film, Jerusalem is portrayed as a space in conflict, at least from the perspective of the protagonist, Eyad. In the context of Israel as depicted in the film, Arabs are a minority group and they are marginalized within social spaces, relegated to low-wage jobs out of sight—fruit pickers, dishwashers, and so on. In the film, Arabs occupy what Yiftachel (2009) calls gray spaces. Gray space refers to physical spaces and the people therein that fall “between the ‘lightness’ of legality/approval/ safety and the ‘darkness’ of eviction/destruction/death . . . pseudo-permanent margins of today’s urban regions, which exist partially outside the gaze of state authorities and city plans” (p. 243). They are areas that are somewhere between the secure, privileged dominant position in a society and the dangerous, under- world, criminal parts of society—areas that are overlooked because the people in those locations are not valued by the state. But then comes the paradox of such spaces—this oppression and/or abandonment can breed radicalism among

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those who occupy gray spaces that may result in disruption and destabilization stemming from the very policies designed to control and oppress the space (Yiftachel, 2009). Marginalized people in gray spaces are not necessarily powerless, though power is largely “skewed in favor of the state” and middle classes. People occupying gray spaces use them “as bases for self-organization, negotiation and empowerment” and they have some hand in “shaping cities and regions” (Yiftachel, 2009, p. 243). What these conceptions of space reveal is that space is fundamentally social and political, and it plays a role in shaping one’s identity and vice versa. A person’s identity (or identities) may influence which spaces are open to them and which are closed off based on social hierarchies and political structures. Likewise, the spaces a person occupies shape their identity, say as a member of a dominant social group versus as a member of a marginalized group. Many models attempt to explain and predict a person’s identity development based on their status within a social space—whether a member of a majority or minority group.

Minority Identity Development (MID) Identity development among minority groups has drawn attention from numerous scholars. For example, there is Helms’ (1995) people of color racial identity model, Phinney’s (1989) ethnic identity development model, and Atkinson’s (2004) minority identity development (MID) model. For our purposes, because the film addresses minority status in terms of both ethnicity and religion, we apply Atkinson’s more general five-stage model of minority identity to unpack Eyad’s developing sense of identity during his adolescence. Atkinson (2004) points out that although the model marks five distinct stages, in practice the stages blend and a person’s experience is likely more of a flow from one stage to another with fluid boundaries between them. Nevertheless, for the purposes of analysis, we review the five stages of the model, which we use to follow Eyad’s identity development as depicted in the film. Stage one from Atkinson’s model, called conformity, is characterized by a minority individual conforming to the dominant group. There is a prefer- ence for the dominant culture, to the detriment of their own cultural group. An individual in this stage may belittle or diminish their own cultural group in favor of the dominant group. As Atkinson (2004) explains, in this stage the person’s attitude toward the self is “self-deprecating” and their attitude toward the dominant group is appreciative (p. 40). Stage two, dissonance, emerges when an individual encounters a situation or a person expressing pride in the minority identity, which creates dissonance between the individual’s previously held negative attitudes from the conformity stage. Movement to this stage may be triggered by a significant

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world event, by the individual experiencing discrimination firsthand, or by meeting someone who challenges their previously held assumptions. In this stage, a person’s attitude toward the self is “conflict between self-deprecating and self-appreciating” while their attitude toward the dominant group is “conflict between group-deprecating and group-appreciating” (Atkinson, 2004, p. 42). Stage three, resistance and immersion, is characterized by an individual fully embracing their minority culture and rejecting the dominant culture. There may also be an interest in “eliminat[ing] oppression of the minority group” (Atkinson, 2004, p. 42). A person reaches this stage once they have resolved the dissonance from the earlier stage and may experience guilt, shame, or even anger at their adoption of dominant group culture and values from stage one. In stage three, a person’s attitude toward the self and group has reversed from stage one—here, there is a strong sense of self-appreciation combined with group depreciation (Atkinson, 2004). Stage four, introspection, is when an individual has developed a greater sense of security within their own sense of minority identity and they begin to challenge the sweeping beliefs about the dominant group (e.g., “All [x-group] are bad”), and come to see that the dominant group contains both positive and negative components (Atkinson, 2004). Like with stage two, stage four is characterized by some conflict—there is a sense of conflict between group loyalty and personal autonomy. In this stage, a person’s attitude toward the self is “concern with basis for self-appreciating attitude” (Atkinson, 2004, p. 43), which reflects the individual’s work toward balancing pride in their own cultural group with a sense of autonomy that allows them to move beyond a blanket endorsement of their own cultural group. A person’s attitude toward the group is “concern with the basis of group depreciation,” reflecting the movement from total distrust of the dominant group toward “selective trust and distrust” based on a dominant group member’s behavior (Atkinson, 2004, p. 44). The final stage five, synergetic articulation and awareness, is when an individual has achieved a sense of self-fulfillment and the conflict and discomfort from earlier stages is largely resolved. An individual in this stage is both comfortable with themselves and others. Attitudes toward self are self-appreciating and attitudes toward the dominant group are selectively appreciating. Individuals in this stage use experiences from earlier stages to gauge acceptance or rejection of minority or dominant group cultural values on a case-by-case basis. Finally, in this stage, an individual has a drive to “eliminate all forms of oppression,” rather than only oppression toward their own cultural group (Atkinson, 2004, p. 45). We conceptualize movement in this film largely in terms of identity. More specifically, we analyze movement and identity in two contexts: (1) Eyad’s

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evolution along the MID model as a type of movement, and (2) a person’s opportunities for, or exclusion from, movement within social spaces based on their identity within their ethnocultural location. The prejudice and power dynamics that exist around marginalized identities in specific cultural, religious, and social contexts often prevent people with those identities from freely moving within society. Such exclusion is evident in Eyad’s experiences throughout the film, as we explore further in our analysis.

FILM ANALYSIS

In this chapter, we organize our analysis of the film along two intercultural themes, following the protagonist’s complex and recurrent geopolitical and relational mobilities—spatial shifts and identity movements, and ethnic and interpersonal conflicts.

Spatial Shifts and Identity Movements Spatial shifts and movements across minority and majority identities predominantly frame the narrative of A Borrowed Identity (2014). It isn’t until Eyad moves to Jerusalem that he begins to move through the stages of identity development. Between his time as a teenager experiencing adolescent identity development, and the move from Tira, a largely Arab town in Israel, to a Jewish- dominated Jerusalem, this is a stage in life when Eyad begins to feel his marginal status more prominently. This also kick-starts his identity evolution, which we track along Atkinson’s MID model. However, his friendship with Yonatan and romance with Naomi ease the challenges of Eyad’s identity evolution, for example, in the lighthearted ethnic teasing that Yonatan and Eyad engage in, and in Naomi’s willingness to teach Eyad correct Hebrew pronunciation. The scenes depicting Eyad’s early days at the high school with teachers and classmates mispronouncing his name, his culture shock with food customs, and ethnic taunting by Jewish boys from another school illustrate his marginal status in Jerusalem. Moreover, the appearance of military personnel and military checkpoints where identification is required are the film’s attempt to illustrate the power of the state to create and maintain the built environment and the social dynamics therein. In Jewish-dominated Jerusalem, Eyad does not have the freedom of movement that he enjoyed in Arab-dominated Tira. Under these conditions, Eyad’s MID commences. The stage one of MID, conformity, is prominently visible in a scene two years into Eyad’s time at the high school in Jerusalem. It is 1990 and he is in class learning about the formation of Israel. The teacher asks him (as he turns his head to admire Naomi), “What led to the war that then broke out?”. Eyad

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replies, “The war? Oh, the Arabs. Of course,” as his classmates laugh. Eyad continues on with further details about the war:

The Arabs rejected the Partition Plan and tried to prevent the establishment of the Jewish state. When the Plan was accepted, in 1947, the Arabs launched a series of hostilities against the Jewish community, starting the War of Independence. [34:35]

Eyad’s communication here reflects his position in the conformity stage of MID. He talks about Arabs as if they are the “other,” a distant group of troublemakers who changed their minds about a global agreement and started a war. His joke at the beginning, “the Arabs, of course,” reflects a willingness to conform to the notion that Arabs are the source of problems in the region, in order to be accepted by the majority group. Eyad is seeking to fit in, not yet ready to challenge the status quo. Later in the film, two scenes reflect Eyad’s movement to somewhere between stages two (dissonance) and three (resistance and immersion) of the MID model. The dissonance stage is when someone starts to move away from the negative attitudes toward their own minority group and desire to fit in with the majority, exhibited during the conformity stage. The resistance and immersion stage is when someone embraces their minority identity and rejects the majority culture. As noted by Atkinson (2004), movement between stages is often rather fluid in practice instead of being a clear-cut jump from one stage to the next. This fluid movement is illustrated in two scenes when Eyad and Yonatan explore an Arab neighborhood of Jerusalem [35:20] and when Eyad and his school friends are seen running a bustling small business selling hummus and pita/bagels to their fellow students [37:55]. During their time in the Arab neighborhood, Eyad assists Yonatan, who is using a wheelchair, as they look at street vendors’ goods and stop at a cafe for hummus and pita. Yonatan teases Eyad about being an Arab tracker, seemingly referencing Bedouins who protect Israel’s northern border (“Muslim Arab Bedouins,” 2013). Meanwhile, Eyad retorts with a jab at Yonatan’s Jewish identity, using a long-standing negative stereotype about Jewish people being cheap—a stereotype that dates back to at least the Middle Ages when Jewish people were forced to be money lenders based on rules set by the Catholic Church (Balser et al., 2006). Eyad is comfortable in this part of town and seems happy to share his culture with Yonatan. Yonatan enjoys the outing, but it is clear that he has never been there before—it is another world for him even though he lives in Jerusalem. The neighborhood appears more crowded and run down than other parts of Jerusalem that have appeared in the film thus far. As depicted in the film, this neighborhood may be something like a gray space (Yiftachel, 2009) that is overlooked by the

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dominant culture, but the occasional appearance of military personnel in the background reminds the inhabitants (and viewers) of the ever-present power of the state to control spaces throughout the city, especially neighborhoods where minority groups gather. The boys get hummus and pita, which they then enjoy eating in the car with Edna. In the Israeli cultural context, hummus is often thought to be made best by Arabs, although Arabs and Jewish individuals both enjoy eating it (Moser, 2010). The boys’ mutual teasing and the common ground established by eating hummus illustrate both Eyad’s distancing from Jewish culture by teasing Yonatan (stage two), and an embrace of his own Arab culture while rejecting the majority culture (stage three), at least to some extent. Hummus resurfaces as an intercultural leveler a few scenes later when Eyad sells hummus and pita along with Jerusalem bagels2 to his classmates. By intercultural leveler, we mean an artifact or person that works toward resolving cultural, ethnic, and/or religious differences by addressing the causes, symptoms, or products of such conflicts. In these scenes, hummus serves as an artifact that establishes common ground and tastes. In selling hummus with bagels, possibly purchased from the Arab neighborhood of Jerusalem portrayed earlier, Eyad is embracing a part of his own Arab culture. In doing so, he begins to create an understanding with the majority culture in Jerusalem by selling the food to Jewish students. Again, Eyad appears to be somewhere between stages two and three in that he is no longer fully conforming to the majority culture, he is open to critiquing and questioning the dominant culture, and he embraces parts of his minority identity, at least in terms of food heritage. The classroom is another space where Eyad’s identity development is illustrated. As a young boy in Tira, the classroom is a gray space where his teacher surreptitiously teaches the children about Palestinian history. In one scene [5:14] the teacher shows a map of Palestine and asserts that Palestine is the real name of the country, not Israel. He then hears someone coming down the hall, stops and pulls down an Israeli map, and starts speaking of Israel. The classroom in this Arab town is an overlooked, undervalued space where inhabitants push back and attempt to destabilize the system—in this case by teaching children a different version of history. But, as Yiftachel (2009) argues, power in gray spaces is ultimately in the hands of the state, reflected here in the way the teacher quickly reverts to teaching a state-approved version of history as soon as a supervisor is within earshot. This reluctant deference to the state is reinforced in the previous scene when Eyad’s grandmother tells him that despite his father being a gifted student, he is relegated to being a fruit picker “because of the State . . . because [he] got involved in politics” [4:50]. The grandmother’s message seems to be that only so much disruption is permitted; when someone goes too far, the state will step in to discipline and punish.

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Perhaps this awareness of the consequences of pushing too far explains why through most of the film, Eyad rarely disrupts or makes trouble. As Eyad’s identity development evolves, he is seen to gradually move into a space between stage three (resistance and immersion) and stage four (introspection). Recall that stage three is when an individual embraces their minority identity and rejects the dominant culture. Stage four is when an individual has a more secure sense of themselves and their minority identity, and they come to see that there are both good and bad aspects to the dominant culture. But in this stage the individual is still working to balance their personal autonomy and desire to make judgments about their group and other groups independently, with an allegiance toward their own minority group and a desire to protect it. In a classroom scene [53:41], the teacher is leading a discussion about a literary work by an Israeli author Amos Oz, featuring Arab twins in a character’s vision (Weissberg, 2014). The teacher asks about the meaning of the twins in the character’s (Hannah) false vision, suggesting they are perhaps Hannah’s fantasy or childhood friends. She calls on Eyad to respond and he asks if he can opt to not answer. The teacher refuses and accuses him of having not read the book. At this point, Eyad’s transformation becomes clear. He politely offers the response that he knows is expected and that is the typical and accepted majority group interpretation, but then goes on to eloquently challenge that interpretation. He chooses to defend the twins’ identity and marginalization in the narrative, and he does so, consciously, in a room full of Jewish students who listen intently to his thoughtful critique. Eyad explains:

Because when I read it, I think of the Arab twins and not of Hannah. When I read it, I see two poor, violent, ugly Arabs who’ve become the sexual fantasy of a woman who’s losing her mind. I think about how they never did anything wrong, apart from being Arabs. I think about what they represent to the author, to the reader and to the Israelis. I think about the primitive Arab who’s only interested in sex. That image of the wild, animalistic, primitive Arab, who’s only motivated by his phallus. [54:30]

The teacher attempts to interject, but then Eyad continues with his critique. Referencing the book’s author, Eyad asserts, “To him, Arabs just destroy everything. It’s easier for the authors and their readers when an Arab makes a move on a Jewish girl. After all, we all know how Arabs stink.” The teacher, quite awkward by now, tries to change the subject, but Eyad says: “I really would have preferred to keep silent. We’re more polite that way.” The scene ends in a rather surprising way as Naomi gets up from her seat and kisses Eyad on the lips, in a genuine show of affection, and we hear an excited round of applause from the rest of the students in class.

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Here, stage three is illustrated in the way that Eyad rejects the dominant culture’s interpretation of the narrative as yet another stereotype and form of discrimination toward the minority group. He does not necessarily offer a blanket endorsement of his own culture, but he defends it by calling attention to offensive stereotypes and patterns of discrimination, which suggests an interest in “eliminat[ing] oppression of the minority group,” that is characteristic of stage three (Atkinson 2004, p. 42). Remarkably, though, this classroom scene is one of the only moments where Eyad openly “question[s] Israeli hegemony” (Feinstein, 2015). It is a moment when the audience can see Eyad’s “transition from awkward outsider to metaphori- cal shape-shifter,” who is now adept at being polite when unprovoked, and political when pushed (Weissberg, 2014). The classroom serves as a space throughout the film where, either in the scenes with Eyad or memories of Salah’s experiences, protest and disruption of the state must be navigated carefully. At the same time, the way that Eyad attempts to opt out of this conversation to seemingly be “more polite,” and his passionate kiss with Naomi, both suggest that he does have respect for the dominant group, which is indicative of stage four. Clearly, given his relationships with Naomi, Yonatan, and Edna, he knows that there are many beautiful aspects of Israeli Jewish culture and people. Stage four is characterized by a “selective trust and distrust” for the dominant group (Atkinson 2004, p. 44) and that is seen in the way that Eyad trusts Naomi in this scene, perhaps even trusts some of his other classmates, but does not seem to trust the teacher. He tries to avoid the conflict because he believes the teacher will not want to hear his critique and/or it will make her uncomfortable. Eventually, after leaving school, Eyad lives on his own in East Jerusalem and his identity development remains at stage four until he realizes that his best chance for success is to adopt Yonatan’s identity. It is this decision that leads him into stage five, or synergetic articulation and awareness. During Eyad’s time working in a restaurant as a dishwasher, some of the cooks and dishwashers (who are all Arab as well) assert that the waitstaff make more money than them, and they are relegated to the back of the restaurant where customers do not see them because they are Arab. When one kitchen worker asks, “You know how to become a waiter?” another man responds, “Die a martyr and then ask Allah to send you back as a Jew” [1:11:20]. This interaction and Eyad’s work in the restaurant show him that his employment options as an Arab in the Israeli cultural context are limited. This interaction taking place in the back of a restaurant, in the kitchen where Arab cooks and dishwashers remain unseen, reveals another kind of gray space in the film—the kitchen. The film has already established that

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Arabs in Israel often do low-wage jobs like becoming fruit pickers and street cleaners, and here the audience sees another kind of low-wage job reserved for the minority group. In this conversation, Eyad realizes that he will never get a higher paying server job as an Arab. But when, in the next scene, he sees the opportunity to adopt Yonatan’s identity in order to get that higher paying job, he takes it. After all, by now his understanding of the culture and his pronunciation of Hebrew makes him well equipped to blend in. In a key scene Eyad visits Yonatan, whose health has deteriorated and he lies in bed immobile and unable to speak. Yonatan’s identity card lies on the desk and as Eyad looks at the picture, he smiles and remarks, “We really look alike, right?” [1:12:55]. The audience learns what Eyad was thinking in the next shot when he is seen working as a server, wearing a name card that reads “Yonatan.” He has adopted his friend’s identity. Suddenly, Jerusalem is open to him—he now has social and physical freedom of movement in the city and beyond. It is in borrowing Yonatan’s identity that Eyad has progressed to stage five of synergetic articulation and awareness. In this stage the individual is comfortable both with themselves and in their relationship with the dominant culture. Here, minority identity is fully realized. Eyad is comfortable with who he is, but he also needs to survive and has come to realize that being Arab limits his options in Israel. His entry into stage five is complete when Edna, who initially felt betrayed by her son’s identity theft, comes to support Eyad and encourages him to sit for both his own school exams as well as Yonatan’s. She tells Eyad, “It’s alright. No one needs to know. No one” [1:20:30]. Her nod of approval and weighted silence signifies that she has forgiven him. Eyad’s minority identity movement is now almost complete, but it is also a barrier in the social spaces of Jerusalem and Israel more generally, something that Edna too understands. Eyad cements his minority identity when he registers Yonatan’s death as his own with the Islamic Religious Council in Jerusalem. As the clerk stamps Eyad’s (in reality, Yonatan’s) death certificate, Eyad asks: “Can you please wrap him in these shrouds from Mecca?” [1:32:24]. The shrouds are those that Eyad’s late grandmother had left for him (the same ones that she had desired to be buried in). The clerk says: “Don’t forget to return the ID to the Ministry of the Interior.” Eyad registers his own death in order to fully take on Yonatan’s identity. However, in doing so, he is not conforming to the dominant culture nor is he walking away from his Arab identity. He is making a deliberate and informed choice in order to improve his chances at success in life, the very thing that his father wanted for him at the beginning of the film. And, he is making this choice with the support of his beloved Jewish friends. Moreover, in burying Yonatan in his grandmother’s sacred shrouds, he shows

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respect for his friend and Edna, and the sacrifice they make in giving up a Jewish burial for Yonatan. Such fluid movement between Muslim Arab and Jewish Israeli cultures that occurs in Yonatan’s funeral and Edna’s support of Eyad’s identity adoption reflects their deep respect and love for each other, and Eyad’s fully realized minority identity. That is, he can both deceive Israeli hegemony, institutions, and laws by taking on Yonatan’s identity and by doing so critique and call attention to injustices. But, at the same time, he’s done so because of his fully realized minority identity and through the support of the positive, enriching, and loving relationships he has formed with two Jewish individuals. In other words, Eyad is both comfortable with his own identity and is able to selectively accept or reject aspects of the dominant culture and the individuals therein. In adopting Yonatan’s identity, Eyad himself becomes a kind of meta- phor for gray spaces. As Yiftachel (2009) argues, an irony of these types of spaces is that the oppression and marginalization that creates gray spaces often results in a kind of radicalization of the individuals that occupy them, resulting in efforts to protest and disrupt the state. Eyad takes advantage of how the gray spaces in his life are overlooked to improve his circumstances by deceiving the state in order to make himself more socioculturally mobile within their society. Borrowing Yonatan’s identity is a radical form of protest, but Eyad does so in a quiet way, with the support of his ally in Edna.

Ethnic Conflicts and Interpersonal Relationships A Borrowed Identity (2014) pays homage to opportunities presented for and against social and relational mobilities that an individual receives based on their ethnic identity, and the interpersonal connections they form in the process. Early in the film, Eyad and a Jewish boy are partnered as part of a cross-cultural peace initiative at his school in Tira. The boy visits Eyad’s home, and as they head to the terrace asks Eyad if he wants to play “Sharon and Arafat”. This points to the normalization of the Israel–Palestine conflict and the impact it has had on impressionable youth, symbolized here by these boys wanting to role-play Ariel Sharon, then prime minister of Israel, and Yasser Arafat, ex-leader of the Palestinian Liberation Organization. Soon after his young Jewish friend gets scared thinking Eyad’s father is a terrorist, after reading about it in an old Yiddish news cutup that Eyad shows him [10:37–11:00]. This scene presents an interesting dilemma that conflates religious and ethnic identity and the power of linguistic labels. Despite having shared historical claims on the same territories, both religious and geographical, the intractable ethnonational conflict

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“encompasses the meaning and implications of these facts and extends [it] to names, language, main actors, causes, and responsibilities” (Rouhana & Bar-Tal, 1998, p. 763). On the surface of the film, we have these“ frustrating, seemingly irresolv- able conflicts facing Israeli Arabs trying to reconcile Arab ethnicity with Israeli nationality” (Feinstein, 2015). The backstory of Eyad’s father, Salah, presents some of this identity conflict. Salah is driving Eyad to begin school in Jerusalem. Eyad asks his father why he was in Jerusalem in 1969, and Salah explains that he, along with other students, was arrested after a bomb had exploded in the city. He wasn’t charged or brought to court, but was detained for more than two years and spent a year in house arrest. Sadly, he wasn’t allowed to go back to Jerusalem, or even attend university there. “It wasn’t easy. In fact it was very hard. We thought we could liberate Palestine from the Jews,” laments Salah, when disclosing to Eyad that he didn’t have any regrets about his past life [22:31]. Salah’s experiences of religious other- ing, his political activism for Palestinian liberation, and the educational and economic opportunities he missed are evident in his reply to Eyad, “Now we just want them to let us live with dignity.” He convinces Eyad that attending the Jerusalem Arts and Science Academy is a rare, if privileged, opportunity for an Arab boy like him, and because, as Salah exclaims, “I want you to be better than them. In every way. Understand?” [21:00]. Eyad and Naomi’s relationship seems to resemble the impasse between Jewish people and Arabs in the conflicted state of Israel. Ironically, their alli- ance starts on a positive note with a distinct possibility of moving toward a happy ending. She makes the first move to befriend“ Ayid,” as he’s known in his Jewish-dominant school, and later corrects his pronunciation of ‘P’ (Arabs tend to pronounce P as B) with a useful trick [29:50–31:20]. They begin a secret romance, often meeting in their school’s theater. Even as a group of rowdy Jewish teenagers bully Eyad, singing a discriminatory song: “Muhammad’s dead, yo, ya; He had several daughters, yo ya; His daughters are ugly, yo ya; Just like monkeys, yo ya,” we find Naomi standing by Eyad in silent support, though both are disapprovingly awkward in that situation [31:50]. Eyad, Yonatan, and Naomi attend a musical performance that is politically radical. Naomi gets upset, not only with the offensive lyrics but also with an inebriated Yonatan, who gives her a hard time for dating an Arab [34:45]. Later that night Eyad tries to pacify Naomi, blaming her discomfort on Yonatan’s dark, but harmless humor. Naomi is calm, but laments at the truth in Yonatan’s teasing. She convinces Eyad of her love for him, but also feels frustrated that she can’t disclose their romance. She recalls an earlier conversation with her mother, about what their reaction would be if they found out she was dating an Arab. Her mother’s reaction to this hypothetical question

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was “Naomi, darling, tell me you’re a lesbian, tell me you’re a drug addict, or that you have cancer, but don’t ever tell me you have an Arab boyfriend” [43:55]. This conversation marks the start of a growing divide between Eyad and Naomi. Naomi and Eyad’s relationship ultimately ends. A close shot of her in a military uniform suggests she has joined the Israeli army. Not able to keep up with their lies anymore, Naomi asks him to let her go [1:27:40]. Interestingly, the camera’s close up of Naomi ending their romance, in her Israeli military artifact, proposes a nonnegotiable solution to the conflict that their ethnonational differences present. Given Naomi’s new role and responsibilities, there can be no compromising movement, personally or politically, within their interpersonal dyad. Eyad’s first meeting with Yonatan and Edna becomes a turning point in his ethnoreligious identity movement. Eyad is given a service learning assignment from school. He is to help a Jewish student with special needs, Yonatan Avrahami, with his school assignments. Yonatan seems skeptical to meet Eyad, perhaps because he is wary of strangers, or tired of the condescension he has received from able-bodied people, or even circumspect of young Arabs as can be surmised from the TV news coverage of Palestinian terror attacks playing in the background. Whatever the reasons for his skepticism, Yonatan is goaded into meeting Eyad by his mother, Edna. As an icebreaker, Yonatan tests Eyad’s knowledge of music and introduces him to a new band. Alluding to his muscular dystrophy Eyad asks Yonatan, “Were you born that way?”. As he moves away from Eyad, Yonatan’s wryly retorts: “Were you born that way? . . . Arab . . . Is it contagious?”. They both laugh, Yonatan lends a music CD to Eyad, and the scene ends with the possibility of a cross-cultural friendship between the two [27:00–29:40]. Yonatan and Eyad are awkward at first, but soon find common ground in alternative music, dark ethnocentric humor, and in their otherness, the former from his degenerative disability, and the latter from being an ethnoreligious minority in Israel. Eyad’s friendship with Yonatan moves beyond the mundane as he eventually “serves as nurse, nurse’s aide, and pipeline to the outside world” (Feinstein, 2015). Is their relationship symbolic of the peaceful cohabitation and identity mobilization that Israelis and Palestinians secretly desire in the future? Perhaps such is the director’s intention, though presently distant it may seem. Could Eyad’s relationship with Edna be seen as a model for how best to resolve ethnoreligious conflict? There are two scenes in the film that can help answer this. In the first scene, Edna functions as a cultural broker, or mediator in the face of complex, intercultural interactions or conflicts (Sorrells, 2016). Edna is seated next to Eyad in the car that he is driving at night, in Jerusalem. An Israeli guard at a security check post stops the car and asks for their

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identity cards, and they comply. As the guard studies the first ID card, calling out “Yonatan Avrahami,” both look at him, and Eyad gently nods. Next, the guard presumptively enquires: “Edna, you’re his mother?”. She nods her head, as Eyad turns to look at her. All seems well, and the security officer lets them go. The rest of the scene, which is also devoid of interpersonal dialogue, shows Edna smile in approval as Eyad quietly drives on [1:26:19]. In a key moment, Edna becomes what we have earlier referred to as an intercultural leveler. Although a secondary character, she plays a crucial role in the film’s outcome and Eyad’s life (Feinstein, 2015). This penultimate scene starts with a long shot of an Islamic burial ground and a small proces- sion of people carrying a body wrapped in a kafan (burial shroud) and chant- ing Islamic prayers, accompanied by Eyad and Edna. As Yonatan’s shrouded body is placed next to an empty grave, the Imam recites the funeral prayer: “Eyad, son of Fahima. When the angels of death ask: What is your religion and who is your God? Say: ‘“Allah is my God, Islam is my religion and Muhammad is my prophet”” [1:33:24]. As Jewish Yonatan’s body is placed in a Muslim grave, an aggrieved Edna rests her head on Eyad’s shoulder and looks away, as the last piece of this complex identity puzzle gets sorted for Eyad (who is now Yonatan, in public eye). In a final act of sacrifice, Edna has helped Eyad move toward social acceptance. As an intercultural leveler, she has allowed Eyad to borrow her deceased son’s complete identity.

CONCLUSION

The five intercultural stages of minority identity movement in Eyad are closely tied to his mobility across the social spaces he inhabits at different times. Space is always social and political (Lefebvre, 2009a; Lefebvre, 2009b), and the space one occupies invariably impacts one’s sense of identity. The film depicts the restrictions on movement that Arabs experienced in 1990’s Israel—the economic immobility incurred by only being able to get low-wage jobs; the social immobility of being teased, taunted, and discriminated against; and the physical immobility of being stopped and detained by military personnel. The kinds of immobility in this cultural context are inextricably linked to ethnic and/or religious identity. As such, these restrictions on mobility invariably shape one’s minority identity and its development. Indeed, A Borrowed Identity (2014) is not only about the characters’ movements across tangible spaces. The movement illustrated largely concerns an individual’s identity and ability to move within a space or a culture based on that. It also has to do with the prejudice and power dynamics that exist in relation to those identities. Adopting Yonatan’s identity gives Eyad freedom

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of movement, such as easy movement through security checkpoints. He also gets better access to systems in Israel—a higher paying job as a server, increased economic opportunities, and perhaps the ease of getting into and attending college in Berlin, which we later find out he has achieved. The borrowing of cultural, ethnic, and religious identities across social spaces aren’t the only conflicts informing the film. The original title of the movie, Dancing Arabs, was also a subject of conflict. With the exception of Canada, where it was released under the original name, the film released worldwide using different titles including My Son, My Sons, and My Heart Dances (Feinstein, 2015). It received critical acclaim globally, being featured in many countries and film festivals including Israel’s Jerusalem Film Festival (2014), Brazil’s São Paulo International Film Festival (2014), Norway’s Arabian Film Days (2015), and secured festival entries (2014–2017) in the UK, France, Switzerland, Belgium, Spain, Poland, Netherlands, Germany, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Argentina, Canada, and also the United States, where it was released as A Borrowed Identity (Feinstein, 2015). Telling a tale of conflict and borrowed compromise, its U.S. title“ assesses the process of labeling, the possibility of unloading associated baggage, and the consequences of taking action, what is lost and what is gained” (Feinstein, 2015). Ironically, what is lost is also what is gained, which in this case is the protagonist’s sense of identity. Eyad’s interpersonal relationships with Salah, his grandmother, Naomi, Yonatan, and Edna, are at the same time personal and political. His hot–cold relationship with his father is grounded in Salah’s hankering for an independent Palestine. His closeness to his grandmother indicates a yearning for the past and for a revival of their religious heritage. His tumultuous romance with Naomi is indicative of the intractable ethnic conflict that Israel and Palestine grapple with. Eyad’s ties with Yonatan and Edna are both symbolic of what the future can hold for Israel–Palestine, a relationship that could be built on trust, codependence, interethnic respect, and interreligious understanding. Intercultural communication teaches us that religion is one of the stron- gest, and oldest, forces shaping identities, yet also causing conflicts globally (Cannadine, 2013; Jandt, 2016). As in real life, the mobility of spaces and connections that we find in this cross-cultural film are full of complexities and relational compromises. Here, too, we see how religion and ethnicity can function as a regulator of people’s lives and create a sense of clarity in terms of identity (Jandt, 2016). The possibility of peaceful coexistence between Israel’s Jewish and Arab communities is cinematized by Eran Riklis in Eyad and Edna’s mobile relationship. It moves from friendship to a simulated and complicated mother–son bond, but with the final ethnoreligious swapping of identities, “substitution replaces coexistence as a cure for the Israeli- Palestinian impasse” (Feinstein, 2015).

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NOTES

1. The Green Line, also known as the 1949 Armistice border, was a result of the 1949 Armistice Agreements between Israel and the Arab states of Egypt, Lebanon, Jordan, and Syria following the 1948 Arab–Israeli War, which separated the State of Israel’s political boundary between the years 1949 and 1967. 2. The bagels depicted in the film appear to be specifically Jerusalem bagels, which are larger, thinner, and oblong as opposed to American style bagels (Kaufman, 2014).

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Mukherjee and Williams_9781498587686.indb 91 24-09-2020 15:02:38 Jennifer Daryl Slack and Stefka Hristova, “Why We Need the Concept of Algorithmic Culture” in Algorithmic Culture: How Big Data and Artificial Intelligence Are Transforming Everyday Life.Edited by Stefka Hristova, Soonkwan Hong, and Jennifer Daryl Slack (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2020), 15–33. All rights reserved.

Chapter 1

Why We Need the Concept of Algorithmic Culture Jennifer Daryl Slack and Stefka Hristova

The story of algorithmic culture has become increasingly important to tell. Some of our most venerated colleagues in university are those in computer and data science who study artificial intelligence, big data, and machine learning, all of which are algorithmically driven. Some of the wealthiest and most powerful people on the planet are those who have harnessed the use of algorithms to amplify media messages and influence politics. The newest forms of communication and art are algorithmically driven, and all of us live in a world where algorithms increasingly shape everyday life. These everyday realities include matters as diverse as the behavior of the stock market; how people are hired, evaluated, and fired; how college admission decisions are made; how we study and understand climate change; the possible futures of self-driving vehi- cles; emerging practices of policing, incarceration, and parole; whether or not you are recognized by voice or visual recognition systems; how drones target deadly kills; how healthcare is organized and delivered; how news is filtered; what and how we have been guided to consume; and the ways we find love and maintain friendships. There is, in fact, very little in our daily lives untouched by algorithms. From the mundane to life and death matters, functioning mostly in the background, algorithms quietly but powerfully and unforgivingly contribute to shaping what is possible and what is not, what matters and what does not, who thrives and who does not, what the world is becoming, and what we leave behind. As U.S. National Security Administration (NSA) systems administrator and whistleblower Edward Snowden put it recently:

All of these things [devices and everyday realities] are increasingly being created and programmed and decided by algorithms, and those algorithms are fueled by precisely the innocent data that our devices are creating all of the time: constantly, invisibly, quietly, right now.1

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The collection of data, the algorithmically collected activity records, the “meta data,” “tells the whole story,” Snowden continues:

These activity records are being created and shared and collected and inter- cepted constantly by companies and governments. And ultimately it means as they sell these, as they trade these, as they make their businesses on the backs of these records, what they are selling is not information. What they are selling is us. They are selling our future. They are selling our past. They are selling our history, our identity, and ultimately they are stealing our power and making our stories work for them.2

These virtually invisible processes and the myriad links that get us from the technical design of mathematical algorithms to what we are calling “algorithmic culture,” demand our attention in order to grasp the significance of what Snowden means by “stealing our power and making our stories work for them” and enable us to resist or acquiesce. How ultimately are our lives changing as algorithmic governance proliferates? Why should we care? How can and should we respond? We urge thinking in terms of algorithmic culture rather than in terms of algorithms, as if the technical achievements of these mathematical processes and their application to complex tasks were significant in and of themselves. Foregrounding algorithmic culture demands addressing the connections that constitute what matters most about algorithms: their integration in practices, policies, politics, economics, and everyday life with consequential political, ethical, and affective significance. While it ispossible to talk about these elements separately, the more pressing challenge is to recognize that and how they are inextricably linked in ways that matter. The story that needs to be told involves (at the very least) math, probability, technology, marketing, consumption, power, policymaking, ethics, privacy, and what it means to be human. It is a story that requires integrating the knowledge and practice of data scientists, engineers, social scientists, cultural theorists, artists, and phi- losophers. For it is only in the connections among these that matters of power and consequence can be addressed with the attention they deserve. Our approach has some affinity to the concept of the“ structure of feeling” in which Raymond Williams described metaphorically the relationship between elements and the whole (the culture) as a relationship between precipitate and solution: “We learn each element as a precipitate, but in the living experience of the time every element was in solution, an inseparable part of a complex whole.”3 A structure of feeling is constituted of connections among “thinking and feeling which is indeed social and material” and includes myriad “forms of social life.”4 It is a “complex of developments” that includes technologies, social processes, forms of social organization,

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institutions, and feelings and beliefs.5 The “lived experience” for Williams consists of contradictions, settlements, and changing relationships visible in a momentary and changing “set of emphases and responses within . . . determining limits.”6 So while such a structure is not fixed, uniform, or permanent, it is a set of relationships that exhibits some tenacity that has consequences. Just as we have learned to study technology not as a mere artifact but as “articulations among the physical arrangements of matter, typically labeled technologies, and a range of contingently related practices, representations, experiences, and affects,” algorithms are best understood as complex arrangements of math, matter, and related practices, representations, experiences, affects, and effects.7 Recognizing layered complexity as a necessary theoretical position is only, however, the beginning of the task. It is far too easy to acknowledge complexity and proceed to study a phenomenon as if it were simpler. The question we must ask is, “How do we move from recognizing the complexity of context within which algorithms are developed, implemented, and effective to studying that context?” Again, insisting on foregrounding algorithmic culture is a way to work toward that goal. That insistence is the most obvious answer to “why we need algorithm culture” but then demands addressing the question, “What is algorithm culture?” Indeed, the answers to both questions are inextricably linked. We did not invent the term “algorithmic culture.” It emerges first as a theoretical nod, an inchoate sense that algorithms matter, in the title of Alexander Galloway’s 2006 book, Gaming: Essays on Algorithmic Culture.8 Ted Striphas’s 2015 article “Algorithmic Culture” begins to bring the term into a tighter focus to highlight the way that “human beings have been delegat- ing the work of culture—the sorting, classifying and hierarchizing of people, places, objects and ideas—to data-intensive computational processes.”9 In a footnote, Striphas makes a case for thinking about algorithms consistent with the arguments we make here:

Algorithms are best conceived as “socio-technical assemblages” joining together the human and the nonhuman, the cultural and the computational. Having said that, a key stake in algorithmic culture is the automation of cultural decision- making processes, taking the latter significantly out of people’s hands.10

Striphas’s research traces the conditions “out of which a data-driven algorithmic culture has developed . . . to offer a preliminary sense of what ‘it’ is,” he provides a crucial historical reading of “how” algorithms as a form of information have taken on a significant role in cultural decision making.11 The approach we take here is meant to augment this “preliminary sense,” to identify the work of the “precipitates,” the elements that constitute the solution and how they connect to give substance to the term “algorithmic culture.”

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Beyond recognizing that the design and implementation of specific machine algorithms have significant effects, the concept“ algorithmic culture” draws attention to the reality that culture is increasingly explained by, responsive to, and shaped in and by the pervasive work of algorithms. Algorithmic culture exhibits a distinctive circularity, an enfolding really, where algorithms are increasingly used to “explain” culture and culture is increasingly crafted “to become” algorithmic. This enfolding can be mapped in four cascading movements that respond to, create, and account for the fabric of algorithmic culture. These movements, variously recognized in the emerging literature on algorithms, entail (1) the work of selection, transformation, and bias in the design of algorithms, (2) the process of machine learning, in which the “learning” escapes human design, (3) the negotiation of power and control among users and algorithms, including the transformation of skilled worker and machine tender into algorithmic troubleshooter, and (4) the reshaping of culture into the producer of computational logics, including the creation of a subjective landscape where computational thinking and machine logic are normalized as commonsense in navigating the cultural terrain. Emergent scholarship on algorithms most often addresses the first two of these movements. The challenge of “algorithmic culture” is to recognize the ways these four movements articulate—resist, augment, and work in relation—thereby demanding that we rethink work, governance, education, economics, consumption, surveillance, privacy, and so on, the relations among them, the resulting constraints imposed, and a range of possibilities unleashed.

ALGORITHMIC DESIGN: SELECTION, TRANSFORMATION, AND BIAS

An algorithm in its most stripped-down, reductionist iteration is little more than a procedure for describing and executing an operation with a predict- able outcome: a set of steps or rules for getting something done. A recipe for cooking food is often used as an example to illustrate a simple—noncom- puterized—algorithm. An algorithm specifies the ingredients to be selected and the order and process by which they are combined. Recipes are tested and adjusted to ensure they consistently deliver a reliable outcome. This straightforward description carries with it a profoundly misleading sense of innocence because even the simplest recipe entails significant cultural biases and effects. The specific ingredients selected (their cost and availability), their reduction and translation into a language recipe readers understand (language, systems of measurement), the technologies used (the tools required and available for use), the distribution of the recipe (in a recipe online or in a physical cookbook), and the circumstances of implementing a recipe (in

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a real cooking situation with the time and capacity to cook) make a recipe accessible and useful for some and inaccessible and useless for others. Each of these stages entails the introduction of significant selection and bias, with correspondingly significant effects. Together they result in significantly different outcomes/objects/identities. Someone’s grocery store mac ‘n cheese is not the same in quality, taste, and health outcomes as a gourmet magazine’s mac ‘n cheese, even though both are the products of a deceptively similar algorithm. The cultural (if not mathematical) devil, of course, is in the algorithmic details. Even this simplest of examples demonstrates that algorithms entail cultural choices and processes that not only include and exclude but prioritize and value the lives and circumstances of some over others with unequal and discriminatory outcomes. When scholars talk about algorithms, they are typically referring to mathematical and computer-assisted processes to achieve some desired end. Striphas described algorithms as “a set of mathematical procedures whose purpose is to expose some truth or tendency about the world.”12 When data scientists talk about algorithms, they are typically referring to computer- assisted computational processes arranged to achieve a desired end in which the path to the goals13—the processes of selection, reduction to machine language, availability, and implementation that introduce significant cultural effects—are largely irrelevant and typically overlooked, as though they were neutral instruments. As Silicon Valley entrepreneur Antonio García Martínez deceptively asserts, “The algorithm . . . is just fancy talk for a recipe of logical steps and maybe some math. Since there isn’t a chance in hell our brains can parse the jumble of content . . . an algorithm sorts it out for us.”14 Martínez’s assertion of innocence aside, each of the stages of this design process deserves careful examination for its role in the introduction of bias. But to grasp the power and significance of algorithmic culture, we need to see them working in connection to produce a technology that creates a new reality whose presence we must then navigate. Reality is complex and messy, and in creating any algorithm, someone has to decide which features will be selected for inclusion in the process of development, those that will be used to train the algorithm or introduced later as an algorithm is operational. In the process of selection, features that are already assumed to “matter” and can be easily obtained, measured, datafied, and manipulated are prioritized. Further, the complexity of even those real phenomena is “transcoded,”15 that is, reduced to what Cheney-Lippold calls a “measurable type,”16 a sort of “ideal type” that diminishes and reshapes cultural reality into machine language that creates, constitutes, and actually causes new objects to emerge17 as new categories of knowledge. Any concept thus “transcoded” into machine language diminishes and contributes to silencing the originary real. The loss is unavoidable, a banal effect of translation. As Michel Callon and Bruno

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Latour suggest, the process will “translate” even the will of the most dili- gent programmer “into a language of its own.”18 In this way, in the crucial and necessary acts of selection and translation, algorithms begin their work as technologically rearticulating reality, displacing and supplanting a now degraded and largely eclipsed real world. Beyond attention to the cultural implications of selection and translation, the implementation of algorithms has increasingly and explicitly been less about exposing truth or tendency than about being “useful,” in which useful can be interpreted in a wide variety of ways. In other words, the details of the process matter less than being able to generate “useful” mechanisms for describing, operating in, and making decisions in the emerging world that serve particular ends. Being able to manipulate, visualize, use, buy, and sell big data are increasingly sufficient goals, completely apart from any truth or any match to the real world. As the algorithmic world becomes the real world, the tendency in that world is toward results not truth. The drift toward “high tech results are truth” is exacerbated by a deeply ensconced cultural commitment to “technological progress,” which as explained by Slack and Wise, “equates the development of new technology with progress”19 and holds that technology is the ultimate “fix”20 to any socio- cultural challenge or problem. This belief and the practices that embody that belief are held to and relied on with a fervor that largely silences the ability to ask or explore what progress is and who or what benefits from it. As David Noble pointed out decades ago in an observation that is as true today as it was then, it is very nearly heresy to just ask the question, is the development of new technology necessarily progress?21 Meredith Broussard calls this techno- chauvinism, “the belief that tech is always the solution.”22 Coupled with the belief that “computers get it right and humans get it wrong” and “computers are better because they are more objective than people,” the emerging logic is that results are truth, at least the truth that matters.23 An example that illustrates this drift is the often-cited case of bias in hiring using algorithmic screening practices. Hiring algorithms enable handling enormous numbers of job applications rapidly; they enable bypassing the ostensible and known biases of individual human screeners; and they lead to the hiring of predictably successful employees. They are therefore considered efficient, unbiased, objective, and successful. However, in building hiring algorithms based on the attributes of previously successful employees and targeting ads based on previously successful sites for posting, these algorithms produce success at the expense of diversity, notably in gender and racial diversity, regardless of intent.24 The algorithmic process is likely to find only what is similar to what has previously been found, thereby rein- forcing old patterns of inclusion and exclusion. That bias is “baked in” to the algorithm itself has been explored by many researchers and activists.25

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The usefulness of these algorithms is often nothing more than reproducing sameness more efficiently and obscuring the work of even more radical bias. As Frank Pasquale has put it in terms of search results, “they help create the world they claim to merely ‘show’ us.”26 Ruha Benjamin, in considering the racial bias in these algorithms, concludes that

algorithms may not be just a veneer that covers historical fault lines. They also seem to be streamlining discrimination—making it easier to sift, sort, and jus- tify why tomorrow’s workforce continues to be racially stratified. Algorithmic neutrality reproduces algorithmically sustained discrimination.27

That these are the available worthwhile applicants creates and justifies and thereby further promotes a world in which these are the only available worthwhile applicants. Critiques of bias in algorithms sometimes call for more diverse representation in the design process based on the assumption that more diverse designers will identify diverse features to be written into the algorithms. As Broussard points out, “Computer systems are proxies for the people who made them. Because there has historically been very little diversity among the people who make computer systems, there are beliefs embedded in the design and concept of technological systems that would be better off rethinking and revising.”28 However, very few people actually participate in the design teams producing algorithms, making it reasonable to expect little more than extremely limited participation by representatives who would then be expected to stand in for multiple forms of diversity. Furthermore, because those few diverse experts would likely be trained in the same largely nondi- verse schools of computer and data science—taking the same courses, solv- ing the same kinds of problems, and anticipating the same kinds of successful careers as their peers—they would be unfairly burdened by and incapable of standing in as a spokesperson and technician for all manner of diversity. These everyday realities operate against producing and fully incorporating scientists with truly innovative and diverse goals and skills. This situation is further entrenched given the drift toward usefulness as the ultimate measure of the work once on a design team, but just as crucially given the limited opportunity to get on the team to begin with. Imagine, for example, a university setting in which a single faculty position opens up in epidemiology. The search committee has a choice between two white male candidates with expertise in the algorithms that track the likelihood of infec- tion in the current SARS-CoV-2 epidemic and a (even if superior) diversity candidate with expertise elsewhere, perhaps in the impact on the sense of community in marginalized groups during the spread of flu viruses. One of the white guys studying SARS-CoV2 algorithms will likely win out. These kinds

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of real decisions get made every day and the tendency to prioritize based on momentary (if very real) conceptions of usefulness often prevail over diversity. Ultimately, however, regardless of who participates on design teams, the orientation toward usefulness operates against meaningful diversity. Algorithms, regardless of intent, are always biased. As Cheney-Lippold elaborates, “All algorithmic interpretations produce their own corrupted truth . . . in ways particular to their technological capacity and programmed direc- tion.”29 The process of selection sets the initial parameters for what matters and what does not, what can be seen and what is obscured, what speaks, and what is silenced. In the process of translation into computer language, the transformation creates new objects, new realities with which to describe identities and predict behaviors constructed in the process itself. That this contains bias is unavoidable. That we tend to ignore those biases is not inevitable, but is conditioned by deep cultural commitments to technological progress and an emerging understanding of and commitment to usefulness as the measure of a successful algorithm. No single design team can counter the hegemonic power of those forces.

ALGORITHMS IN CONTROL: MACHINE LEARNING

We’ve never talked with a data scientist who can explain what actually happens in “machine learning.” They always resort to some manner of “hand waving” accompanied by the statement that “we don’t actually know what happens.” For the data scientist, machine learning means the capacity of an algorithm “to adapt to new circumstances and to detect and extrapolate patterns.”30 This “learning by experience” takes different forms in supervised, semi-supervised and unsupervised learning. As described by Cheney-Lippold, supervised and semi-supervised refer to initial human intervention to “draw the initial limits for categorical identity,” which means that the programmer presets the identities on which the algorithm operates. For example, “man” would be coded with a specific list of attributes that would not change as the algorithm operates using that coded identity. Unsupervised or unstructured learning “can be thought of as finding patterns in the data above and beyond what would be considered pure unstructured noise,” letting “new categorical limits arise based on data’s statistical proximity.” In unsupervised learning, an identity such as “man” isn’t relevant as a fixed identity, but might merely be the identifier used to point to emergent correlations and patterns in the data.31 These correlations “actually create and re-create kinds of people in the process of naming and studying, which becomes a materialization of the scientific imagination” that may have little or no resemblance to what anyone thinks a man is.32

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In turning an algorithm lose to find and create previously unimagined patterns, data scientists don’t really know what happens computationally to make those patterns emerge. The algorithms are too complex, and the computational work is too fast, both far beyond human time and understanding. To ask what is happening is like asking of human cognition, “What is thinking?” We know it happens and we can point to outcomes, even often consistent outcomes, but we don’t know for certain what is happening in its production. Data scientists are in a similar position. It isn’t clear that they even care, because they are more interested in and rewarded for consistent and useful results than for considering the cultural implications of an essentially unknowable process. All that matters is whether or not the mac ‘n cheese is edible, or whether or not you have identified a criminal. In spite of the necessary limitations of understanding machine learning technically or the difficulty translating the math into nontechnical language, it is important to acknowledge the role of machine learning as a precipitate in algorithmic culture, for the consequences are considerable. Probably the best mathematically accessible example of the kinds of consequences is Broussard’s extended exploration of the causes of mortality in the sinking of the Titanic.33 Broussard illustrates how a supervised machine learning process with known, selected, and mathematically translated data about the passengers on the Titanic produces a pattern that with 97 percent accuracy learns “that passenger fare is the most important factor in determining whether a passenger survived the Titanic disaster,”34 with those who paid more having higher survival rates. Broussard cautions, however:

It would be unwise to conclude from this data that people who pay more have a greater chance of surviving a maritime disaster. Nevertheless, a corporate executive could easily argue that it would be statistically legitimate to conclude this. If we were calculating insurance rates, we could say that people who pay higher ticket prices are less likely to die in iceberg accidents and thus represent a lower risk of early payout. This would allow us to charge rich people less for insurance.35

Broussard counters the algorithmic result with what is considered anecdotal information that might better account for the differences in survival rates: elements of social context that might more truthfully account for the differential rates of survival. For example, she draws on correspondence that suggests that what mattered was how one jumped off the ship. This “data” was not part of the original set, but rather became evident through qualitative contextual reading. She notes that such unscientific information may not be readily available or conducive to coding, because as we know from the above discussion on selection, “Not everything that counts in counted. The computer

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can’t reach out and find out the extra information that might matter.”36 She concludes that “part of the reason we run into problems when making social decisions with machine learning is that the numbers camouflage important social context.”37 Yet we do increasingly make significant social decisions based on machine learning without human intervention and assessment, and we do so without concern for important contextual elements that are actively cam- ouflaged. Besides the underpinning of an unexamined commitment to technological progress, the overall shift toward automation to eliminate human labor (which began with the “industrial revolution”) and thereby improve efficiency and maximize profit now drives the shift to rely on algorithms to manage production and make significant social decisions, thereby reshaping culture. As the era of cheap labor wanes,38 and every conceivable industry and service searches for ways to replace that labor with algorithmically automated processes, the so-called “fourth industrial revolution” will run on algorithms. Klaus Schwab’s version of this story is just one of the many available maps pointing to where we are headed in this “bright future” and how we should respond.39 Bucked up by a sense of misplaced inevitably, Schwab, like generations of technobuskers before him, urges us to “step right up”:

Technology and digitization will revolutionize everything. . . . Simply put, major technological innovations are on the brink of fueling momentous change throughout the world—inevitably so. . . . Digitization means automation, which means that companies do not incur diminishing returns to scale (or less of them, at least). . . . The fact that a unit of wealth is created today with much fewer workers compared with 10 or 15 years ago is possible because digital businesses have marginal costs that tend toward zero.40

Widely circulated articles and online videos speculate about the jobs that will disappear due to algorithmically driven automation, thereby instruct- ing people to adjust their lives in anticipation of a dramatically transformed world. Those disappearing jobs include drivers, farmers, printers and publish- ers, cashiers, travel agencies, manufacturing workers, dispatchers, waiting tables and bartenders, bank tellers, military pilots and soldiers, fast-food workers, telemarketers, accountants and tax preparers, stock traders, construction workers, and movie stars.41 Business Insider has an expanded list of thirty-seven disappearing jobs that add to these positions such as postal service workers, sewing machine operators, textile workers, secretaries and administrative assistants, switchboard operators, miners, computer operators, mechanics, and all manner of machine operators and technicians.42 There are so many jobs on these lists that it is difficult to imagine what anyone will do

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in this brave new world to earn a living. Anxiety about the shrinking opportunities for rewarding work in this algorithmic world is inevitable.

NEGOTIATING POWER AND CONTROL: ALGORITHMS AND USERS

One of the most elusive elements of algorithmic culture is the way in which humans interacting with algorithms marks a change in work life and practices and perceptions of autonomy and control. In short, we are experiencing a shift in the distribution of power and control in human-machine relationships. Slack and Wise insist that when thinking about technology, we recognize that technology is not a thing, but an “articulation,” that is, “a contingent connection of different elements that, when connected in a particular way, form a specific unity.”43 Those elements include “physical arrangements of matter, typically labeled technologies, and a range of contingently related practices, representations, experiences, and affects.”44 The laborer or user of something designated as technology is as much a part of that contingent unity as is the way in which control is distributed among those complex articulations.45 For example, the so-called user of a smart speaker such as Alexa or Echo is integral to the technology, not strictly speaking a user of it, in that the thing only “works” or “does its thing” in relation to the actions and activities of the “user.” It is the relationship that allows for certain voices and actions in certain circumstances (plugged in, connected to the internet, set at a prescribed distance, etc.) to have certain effects. Automation almost always involves, usually intentionally, a concomitant process of deskilling of the workforce, that is, removing the power of decision making from the workers. The value in doing so for management is clear:

A knowledgeable, decision-making skilled worker is never fully under management’s control. Therefore, it is in management’s interests to learn the worker’s skills, train others in those skills, or better yet, create a machine to replicate those skills.46

Totally apart from whatever the mix of motives—reducing the cost of production, speeding up or increasing production, eliminating problems of absenteeism or a lack of available workers, creating a consistently standard product, enhancing safety, or just refusing to negotiate with skilled labor— the deskilling of labor with the implementation of algorithmically controlled production gives management an upper hand over labor. It also means that decisions and the effects of those decisions are increasingly influenced by the outcomes of machine learning. And remember, nobody really knows

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what happens—even mathematically—in the machine learning process, so they certainly don’t have a sense of the ways that biases might enter through the process. Further, recall that the outcomes of machine learning are part of a process of creating new realities that may or may not make a good match with reality as most of us see or experience it. The consequences can be enormous. Remember, too, that it isn’t the algorithm’s “fault” anymore that Alexa is at “fault” alone for—or in control of—ordering that unwanted book. Rather, once again, the devil is in the details of the articulation of many factors. An excellent contemporary example that illustrates the shift in the distribution of power and control through algorithmically induced deskilling and what can go wrong when that happens is the case of the two deadly crashes of Boeing 737 Max aircrafts on October 29, 2018 and March 10, 2019. Following the developing accounts of these crashes has been fascinating and instructive, especially in terms of the relationship between automation, algorithms, and the way users interact with algorithms. Although it is certain we will never have a complete picture of the interrelationships among the wide variety of elements that articulated to result in these crashes— and there are multiple versions of explanation and blame—we draw our discussion from pilot and respected investigative journalist William Langewiesche’s coverage of the question, “What Really Brought Down the Boeing 732 Max?”47 His account benefits from technical familiarity and a passion to explore the complexity of the problem beyond telling a good story. These crashes have become almost legendary, dominated by the breath- taking and terrifying image of a computer algorithm pushing the nose of the aircraft down for short bursts and letting up for a bit and repeating this over and over while the pilot and copilot fight with manual controls to override the computer and race through the flight manual trying to find directions for how to respond until the craft is wildly thrown out of trim and crashes nose down into the sea in one case and into the ground in the other. Langewiesche summarizes the crashes in this way:

After both accidents, the flight-data recordings indicated that the immediate culprit was a sensor failure tied to a new and obscure control function that was unique to the 737 Max: the Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System (MCAS) [aka, an algorithmically driven system]. The system automatically applies double-speed impulses of nose-down trim, but only under circumstances so narrow that no regular airline pilot will ever experience its activation—unless a sensor fails. Boeing believed the system to be so innocuous, even if it mal- functioned, that the company did not inform pilots of its existence or include a description of it in the airplane’s flight manuals.48

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Langewiesche also summarizes the dominant narrative that emerged shortly after the accidents:

[Boeing] had developed the system to elude regulators; that it was all about shortcuts and greed; that it had cynically gambled with the lives of the flying public; that the Lion Air pilots were overwhelmed by the failures of a hidden system they could not reasonably have been expected to resist; and the design of the MCAS was unquestionably the cause of the accident.

In other words, because the pilots were unaware of and/or incapable of coun- tering the actions put in place by the algorithm, the MCAS caused the crash. Langewiesche, in contrast to assigning blame to the algorithm, rather mer- cilessly attributes the accidents to the pilots:

What we had in the two downed airplanes was a textbook failure of airmanship. In broad daylight, these pilots couldn’t decipher a variant of a simply runaway trim and they ended up flying too fast at low altitude, neglecting to throttle back and leading their passengers over an aerodynamic edge into oblivion.49

Our point is not to assign blame one way or the other, but to notice, even in Langewiesche’s own writing, there is never so simple an assignment of blame. Certainly, it is not simply the algorithm at fault: the pilots lacked “airmanship”; they “neglected” to perform appropriately, even in the second crash after “they had been briefed on the MCAS system and knew the basics.” Equally, however, it is never just the pilots at fault: Langewiesche acknowl- edges “the MCAS as it was designed and implemented was a big mistake”; the pilots “couldn’t decipher a variant” of an otherwise normal occurrence, and directions for responding were not in the flight manual.50 A far better way to understand the loss of these hundreds of lives is to acknowledge that something went very wrong in the relationship between the algorithm and the user, placing a far greater burden on the user than was normal for those pilots. Automated features on aircraft are designed to minimize pilot error and minimize accidents, and they typically do so “as long as conditions are routine,” as Langewiesche puts it. But as tasks are computer- ized and routinized, they contribute to deskilling the user. Moments of crisis require “airmanship,” a “visceral sense of navigation, an operational understanding . . . the ability to form mental maps . . . fluency in the nuance . . . a deep appreciation for the interplay between energy, inertia, and wings.”51 If you never fly a plane manually, if you are never routinely called to respond to novel situations, you will never have the opportunity to develop those skills, the exact skills called upon to negotiate with the algorithm, to resist it as necessary, whether you know it is there or not.

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The story of the 737 Max crashes involves more than an algorithm and a couple of pilots. That original narrative of blame shared by Langewiesche should not be too quickly dismissed, for even in his own telling, once again, there are companies in competition with one another (Boeing versus Airbus); companies that do cut corners to beat out another, corners that in a different culture of responsibility and a different economy they would not have cut. There are in the story airlines that not only cut corners but cheat on their maintenance records and certify pilots whose capabilities are questionable. There are politics that enter into what can be investigated and said about these crises. There is never just a guilty algorithm or a guilty pilot in these stories. There is, however, an algorithmic culture that, for many reasons, both good and bad, enables someone like Langewiesche to attribute control and shift the blame to the users, the ones less able to defend themselves, the ones who are now expected to develop airmanship in circumstances and structures that operate against attaining those very same skills. That is also the work of an algorithmic culture: it empowers the algorithms and those who employ them and disempowers the users of those algorithms, and places new exces- sive demands on them. We are all increasingly in that position in algorithmic culture: of having to learn on our own how to negotiate with and manage the algorithms that are indeed largely hidden and that proliferate with the backing of powerful companies, governments, economies, and inequitable systems of education, healthcare, and justice. Yet we are individually held responsible for any failures because the assumption remains that success and failure are choices entirely within our individual control, even as the opportunities for taking control are taken from us, even as the algorithms get smarter at the expense of the “street smarts” we might collectively call on to thrive in the face of the growing crises that characterize contemporary life.

ALGORITHMIC CULTURE: THE PRODUCTION OF COMPUTATIONAL LOGICS

Machine learning algorithms increasingly make decisions that we expect to be made by humans, decisions that allow “officials to outsource decisions that are (or should be) the purview of democratic oversight.”52 In the process of designing and implementing those algorithms, new versions of the world are created and reinforced that then become the ground on which further (often algorithmic) decisions are made. To matter in this emergent world, in the “new real,” we are encouraged to become better data selves: to define ourselves and shape our lives to conform to and satisfy the parameters of the algorithms. So, we do things as mundane as shape job

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applications to include the keywords that we know will get our résumés considered at a higher level of algorithmic consideration. We purchase a house, not because we want one, but because it will improve our algorithmically generated credit rating. In school, we become more concerned about grade point than learning, because algorithms “understand” grade points but not the immeasurable wisdom learning might bring. We reduce education to computational learning outcomes for exactly the same reason. We read the books and watch the movies algorithms teach us we like. We buy the things we are supposed to. We believe in the stereotypes that algorithmically determined content feeds us over and over again. We make decisions about incarceration, parole, and the tracking of students in school based on racist and sexist algorithms. We even transform spiritual activities, like running or meditating, by measuring success in terms of minutes, steps, and heartbeats rather than letting them be private, personal, and unknow- ably good. All that is measurable is elevated and transformed. All that is unmeasured is trivialized, unnecessary, indulgent luxury, or the wasteful activity of marginalized people. In responding appropriately in the presence of algorithms, we produce algorithmic culture without thinking, without even knowing we are doing so. “If you can’t measure it, it isn’t real,” a sociologist said in 1975. It was funny at the time (and a few people dropped his class). Who would have imagined he would be so right, the only difference being that his real is the “new real,” the one he helped create, the one we might have avoided if people like him had taught differently. Things can, after all, be different. We began this chapter emphasizing our affinity with Raymond Williams’s concept of the structure of feeling. We wrote that “while such a structure is not fixed, uniform, or permanent, it is a set of relationships that exhibits some tenacity that has consequences.” We are indeed undergoing a moment of pro- found change in how we interact with the earth, in how we are governed, and in relations of privacy, sociality, race, criminality, justice, and freedom. Most of all we are undergoing an enormous transformation in what it means to be human, to be a self, even just to be. We are not two: a self and a data self. We are complex beings caught up in a web of sometimes homologous, sometimes contradictory forces, values, beliefs, and practices that contribute to an affective sense of chaos and confusion. What is real? What is the “new real”? How and where are we bits of both at the same time? While we keep trying to draw lines between the two, as between real news and fake news, privacy and sharing, independence and dependence, we acquiesce, struggle, and resist, in spite of ourselves, already in the presence of algorithms that constrain and enable the choices we make. As this structure of feeling emerges, it marginalizes, represses, silences, eclipses, and disappears what cannot be counted and what can be counted but counted out.

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To the extent that silencing is successful, nobody would drop a class because the professor insisted that the real is only that which can be counted. To the extent the silencing is successful and algorithmic culture becomes hegemonic, we are caught up in a loop where selection is based on what can be datafied and deemed useful, where what is datafied produces a new real outside human judgment or democratic processes, where users negotiate that real in processes that reproduce and augment sameness and long-standing patterns of discrimination, and where power and control reside in the hands of those who produce and employ the algorithms at the expense of users as workers. Without challenging this circularity, algorithmic culture will continue to silence difference, growth, creativity, and change. This is why we need the concept of algorithmic culture: to see its often-hidden operation, to locate the connections where the work is performed and where intervention might matter, and to challenge and resist its ascension in ways that matter.

NOTES

1. Snowden, Edward. “Edward Snowden on Trump, Privacy, and Threats to Democracy.” The 11th Hour. MSNBC (September 17, 2019). 2. Ibid. 3. Williams, Raymond. The Long Revolution. London: Chatto & Windus (1961), 63. 4. Williams, Raymond. Marxism and Literature. Oxford: Oxford University Press (1977), 131. 5. Williams, Raymond. Television: Technology and Cultural Form. New York: Schocken Books (1975), 26. 6. Ibid., 27. 7. Slack, Jennifer Daryl and J. Macgregor Wise. Culture and Technology: A Primer, 2nd edition. New York: Peter Lang (2015), 153. 8. Galloway, Alexander R. Gaming: Essays on Algorithmic Culture. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press (2016). 9. Striphas, Ted. “Algorithmic Culture.” European Journal of Cultural Studies 18(4–5) (2015), 396. 10. Ibid., 408. 11. Ibid., 396–397. 12. Ibid., 404. 13. Russell, Stuart J. and Peter Norvig. Artificial Intelligence: A Modern Approach, 3rd edition. Uttar Pradesh, India: Pearson (2015), 121. 14. Martínez, Antonio García. Chaos Monkeys: Obscene Fortune and Random Failure in Silicon Valley. New York: Harper Collins (2016), 506. 15. Manovich, Lev. The Language of New Media. Cambridge, MA/London: MIT Press (2001), 45.

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16. Cheney-Lippold, John. We Are Data: Algorithms and the Making of Our Digital Selves. New York: New York University Press (2017), 47. 17. Ibid., 46. 18. Callon, Michel and Bruno Latour. “Unscrewing the big Leviathan: how actors macro-structure reality and how sociologists help them do so.” In Advances in Social Theory and Methodology: Toward an Integration of Micro- and Macro-sociology, edited by K. Knorr-Cetina and A. V. Cicourel. Boston, MA/London/Henley: Routledge and Kegan Paul (1981), 277–303. 19. Slack and Wise Culture and Technology, 28. 20. Ibid., 153. 21. Noble, David. “Introduction.” In Architect or Bee? The Human/Technology Relationship, edited by Shirley Cooley. Boston, MA: South End Press (1982), xi–xxi. 22. Broussard, Meredith. Artificial Unintelligence: How Computers Misunderstand the World. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press (2018), 7–8. 23. Ibid., 8. 24. Bogen, Miranda. “All the ways hiring algorithms can introduce bias.” Harvard Business Review (May 6, 2019). 25. O’Neil, Cathy. Weapons of Math Destruction. Crown, 2016; Eubanks, Virginia. Automating Inequality: How High-Tech Tools Profile, Police, and Punish the Poor. Boston, MA: St. Martin’s Press (2018); Cheney-Lippold, John, We Are Data: Algorithms and the Making of Our Digital Selves. New York: New York University Press (2017); Ruha, Benjamin. Race after Technology. Cambridge, UK/Malden, MA: Polity Press (2019); Pfefferkorn, Marika. Coalition to Stop the Cradle to Prison Algorithm Celebrates Hard-Won Victory with the Dissolution of Problematic Data-Sharing Agreement.” Dignity in Schools (January 29, 2019). 26. Pasquale, Frank. Black Box Society: The Secret Algorithms that Control Money and Information. Cambridge: Harvard University Press (2015), 61. 27. Benjamin, “Race,” 143. 28. Broussard, Artificial Unintelligence, 67. 29. Cheney-Lippold, We Are, 12. 30. Russell and Norvig, Artificial Intelligence, 3. 31. Cheney-Lippold, We are, 79. 32. Benjamin, “Race,” 117. 33. Broussard, Artificial Unintelligence, 96–119. 34. Ibid., 110. 35. Ibid., 114. 36. Ibid., 116. 37. Ibid., 115. 38. Patel, Raj. A History of the World in Seven Cheap Things: A Guide to Capitalism, Nature and the Future of the Planet. University of California Press (2018). 39. Schwab, Klaus. The Fourth Industrial Revolution. New York: Currency (2016). 40. Ibid., 9–10. 41. Alux .co m. 2018. “15 jobs that will disappear in the next 20 years due to AI.” https :/ /ww w .alu x .com /jobs -gone -auto mat io n -ai/ . Accessed June 14, 2020.

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42. Gillett, Rachel, Andy Kiersz, and Ivan De Luce. “37 Jobs That Could be Decimated by 2026.” Business Insider (July 16, 2019). 43. Slack and Wise, Culture and Technology, 152. 44. Ibid., 153. 45. Ibid., 59–73. 46. Ibid., 64. 47. Langewiesche, William. “What Really Brought Down the Boeing 737 Max?” The New York Times Magazine (September 18, 2019). 48. Ibid. 49. Ibid. 50. Ibid. 51. Ibid. 52. Benjamin, “Race,” Technology. Cambridge, Polity Press, 2019, 53.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Alux .co m. 2018. “15 jobs that will disappear in the next 20 years due to AI.” https :/ / ww w .alu x .com /jobs -gone -auto mat io n -ai/ . Accessed June 14, 2020. Benjamin, Ruha. Race after Technology: Abolitionist Tools for the New Jim Code. Cambridge, UK/Malden, MA: Polity, 2019. Bogen, Miranda. 2019. “All the ways hiring algorithms can introduce bias.” Harvard Business Review. https :/ /hb r .org /2019 /05 /a ll -th e -way s -hir ing -a lgori thms- can - i ntrod uce -b ias. Accessed June 11, 2020. Broussard, Meredith. 2018. Artificial Unintelligence: How Computers Misunderstand the World. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Callon, Michel and Bruno Latour. 1981. “Unscrewing the big Leviathan: how actors macro-structure reality and how sociologists help them do so.” In Advances in Social Theory and Methodology: Toward an Integration of Micro- and Macro- sociology, edited by K. Knorr-Cetina and A. V. Cicoure, pp. 277–303. Boston, MA/London/Henley: Routledge and Kegan Paul. Cheney-Lippold, John. 2017. We Are Data: Algorithms and the Making of Our Digital Selves. New York: New York University Press. Eubanks, Virginia. 2017. Automating Inequality; How High-Tech Tools Profile, Police, and Punish the Poor. New York: St. Martins. Galloway, Alexander R. 2006. Gaming: Essays on Algorithmic Culture. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Gillett, Rachel, Andy Kiersz, and Ivan De Luce. 2019. “37 jobs that could be decimated by 2026.” Business Insider. https :/ /ww w .bus iness insid er .co m /job s -qui ckly- disap peari ng -in -the- us -20 17 -5. Accessed June 14, 2020. Langewiesche, William. 2019. “What really brought down the Boeing 737 Max?” The New York Times Magazine. https://ww w.nyt imes. com20 19/09 /18/m agazi ne/ bo eing- 737 -m ax -cr ashes .html . Accessed September 19, 2019. Manovich, Lev. 2001. The Language of New Media. Cambridge, MA/London: MIT Press.

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Martínez, Antonio García. 2016. Chaos Monkeys: Obscene Fortune and Random Failure in Silicon Valley. New York: Harper Collins. Noble, David. 1982. “Introduction.” In Architect or Bee? The Human/Technology Relationship, edited by Shirley Cooley, pp. xi–xxi. Boston, MA: South End Press. O’Neil, Cathy. 2017. Weapons of Math Destruction: How Big Data Increases Inequality and Threatens Democracy. New York: Broadway Books. Patel, Raj. 2018. A History of the World in Seven Cheap Things: A Guide to Capitalism, Nature and the Future of the Planet. Oakland: University of California Press. Pfefferkorn, Marika. 2019. “Coalition to stop the cradle to prison algorithm celebrates hard-won victory with the dissolution of problematic data-sharing agreement.” Dignity in Schools. https :/ /di gnity insch ools. org /c oalit ion -t o -sto p -the -crad le -to -pris on -al gorit hm -ce lebra tes -h ard -w on -vi ctory -with -the- disso lutio n -of- probl emati c -dat a -sha ring- agree ment/ . Accessed June 11, 2020. Pasquale, Frank. 2015. The Black Box Society: The Secret Algorithms That Control Money and Information. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Russell, Stuart J. and Peter Norvig. 2015. Artificial Intelligence: A Modern Approach, 3rd edition. Uttar Pradesh, India: Pearson. Schwab, Klaus. 2016. The Fourth Industrial Revolution. New York: Currency. Slack, Jennifer Daryl and J. Macgregor Wise. 2015. Culture and Technology: A Primer, 2nd edition. New York: Peter Lang. Snowden, Edward. 2019. “Edward Snowden on Trump, privacy, and threats to democracy.” The 11th Hour. MSNBC. https://youtu.be /e9yK1QndJSM. Accessed 05/29/2020. Striphas, Ted. 2015. “Algorithmic culture.” European Journal of Cultural Studies, 18(4–5), 395–412. Williams, Raymond. 1961. The Long Revolution. London, Chatto & Windus. ———. 1975. Television: Technology and Cultural Form. New York: Schocken Books. ———. 1977. Marxism and Literature. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

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Hristova, Slack, and Hong_9781793635730.indb 33 30-10-2020 23:49:44 Arienne Ferchaud, “Audience Motivations for Binge Watching Behavior” in Binge and Bingeability: The Antecedents and Consequences of Binge Watching Behavior (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2020), 25–35. All rights reserved.

Chapter Four

Audience Motivations for Binge Watching Behavior

Why do audiences binge watch television programming? This is a question firmly rooted in the uses and gratifications approach to media consumption, and has in many ways been the starting point for study into the phenomenon of binge watching. As explored in previous chapters, binge watching represents a shift in both television programming and television audiences. As such, it stands to reason that binge watching also marks a shift in audience motivations. Why do some viewers choose to binge, instead of watching on a more traditional schedule? In particular, what needs do these viewers have, and how does binge watching satiate them?

THE USES AND GRATIFICATIONS APPROACH TO TELEVISION

Understanding the uses and gratifications paradigm is vital to understanding why viewers would choose to binge watch. Uses and gratifications has been a major part of the mass communication tradition, dating back to the 1940s. 1 Unlike other mass communication and media effects theories, uses and gratifications is primarily concerned not with the impact of media on the masses, but the motivations for selecting media in the first place. According to Katz, Blumer, and Gurevitch,2 investigations into uses and gratifications of media are primarily concerned with:

(1) the social and psychological origins of (2) needs, which generate (3) expectations of (4) the mass media or other sources, which lead to (5) differential patterns of media exposure (or engagement in other activities), resulting in (6) need gratifications and (7) other consequences, perhaps mostly unintended ones. (p. 510)

80 Lexington Books Film, Television, and Media Studies Chapter Showcase 26 Chapter 4

In essence, the theory focuses heavily on the psychological needs media consumers have and the means by which they fulfill them. More broadly, uses and gratifications is also concerned with where those needs originate and how those needs create expectations within the viewer that then lead to selective exposure to media that fulfill those needs. The result of this exposure is that the viewers’ needs are met to their satisfaction, and there may be other effects beyond need satisfaction. Katz and colleagues 3 also articulate a number of assumptions key to the theory. First, audiences are goal-directed. This means that when a person sits down to consume media, they have a purpose in mind. That purpose might be watching the news to gain information, consuming their favorite reality TV show for entertainment, or using social media to keep up with friends. Second, audiences are active participants in the media consumption process. They do not sit back and consume whatever media is thrown at them; rather, they play a role in the selection of the media content that they wish to engage with. Third, television and other media compete with each other and other sources of need satisfaction. The needs of humans are not generally so specific that they can only be filled by one activity, and so television and other media must vie for viewer attention. For example, if someone has a need for information, that can be filled by television news certainly, but also the internet, other people, or books. Fourth, audiences are self-aware enough to articulate their needs, and finally, “Value judgements about the cultural significance of mass communication should be suspended while audience orientations are explored on their own terms” (p. 511). In essence, audiences are assumed to be active and purposive, selecting media content specifically to fulfill their own needs. Uses and gratifications assumes that individuals are able to understand their own needs and do not need media to articulate these needs. Thus, the viewers themselves are ultimately responsible for their own gratification. Further, uses and gratifications cautions researchers against making assumptions about the media consumed by users. For instance, it is tempting to label certain reality television programs, such as Keeping up with the Kardashians, a reality program about the lives of the wealthy Kardashian-Jenner family, as lowbrow entertainment, or otherwise lacking in cultural significance. How- ever, if these types of programs serve to gratify viewing audiences, then they may indeed have cultural significance. Thus, we should examine specific shows—and other media—in terms of their ability to satisfy the needs of the audiences, rather than perceptions of value. Rubin4 outlines additional assumptions that more recent study into the framework has identified. Namely, social and psychological factors are highly influential in guiding consumer behavior. That is, while there are psychological predispositions that may influence an individual’s behavior, there are

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also social circumstances, such as peer pressure or even channel availability, that help to determine media selection. Additionally, Rubin argues that people are typically more influential in the media selection process than the media are—though not always. While individuals are ultimately responsible for selecting media that would gratify their needs and desires, the media can shape the psychological and social factors that help influence those needs in the first place. Researchers have extended this model in various ways. Perhaps the most notable example of this is the expectancy-value model, first described by Palmgreen and Rayburn.5 As they describe, the relationship between gratifications sought and gratifications received are not only dependent on the factors outlined in the original formulation of uses and gratifications, but also the viewer’s beliefs about the ability of the medium to provide those gratifications. Their model, based upon the Fishbein/Ajzen attitude-behavior model,6 explains that gratifications sought from media are determined by the viewer’s attitudes toward the media, and particularly toward the ability of the media to meet those needs. For example, if someone has a need to be informed, and they believe that satire programs such as The Daily Show or Last Week Tonight with John Oliver can inform them, they will seek those types of programs out. However, if they need to be informed, but believe that satire programs do not do a good job of imparting the important news of the day, they will likely avoid such programs. While original applications of uses and gratification predate the advent of television viewing, its utility in explaining television viewing—especially in newer formulations of the theory—is high. Numerous studies have been done regarding the uses and gratifications of traditional television watching, and a number of potential gratifications have been identified. In a 1983 study, Rubin7 found evidence of five major viewing motivations: habit, information-seeking, entertainment-seeking, companionship, and escapism. Like- wise, Lee and Lee8 identified similar factors, including ritual, mood im- provement, information, social learning (i.e., learning about what life in society should be like), social grease (i.e., gaining something to discuss with others), and an “engrossing different world” (i.e., escapism). Of course, it must be noted that television viewing patterns have become increasingly fractured, with the number of programming options growing exponentially since television was first introduced. Thus, it seems somewhat limited to think only of uses and gratifications of television watching generally. To this end, researchers have explored how gratifications change when the type of program changes. For instance, Rubin and Perse 9 identified two major orientations for viewing news: those who watch news for instrumental purposes—to be entertained and informed—and those who watch habitually. Papacharissi and Mendelson10 argued that entertainment and habit were the most salient motivations for watching reality television. Rubin and Perse 11

82 Lexington Books Film, Television, and Media Studies Chapter Showcase 28 Chapter 4 determined seven motivations for watching soap operas: entertainment, time passing, voyeurism, escapist relaxation, information, social utility, and affinity. Further, Nabi, Stitt, Halford, and Finnerty 12 identified differences in gratifications sought among fictional and reality television programs. Clear- ly, when discussing gratifications sought and obtained while watching television programming, the specific genre—if not the specific show—seems to be important.

THE USES AND GRATIFICATIONS OF BINGE WATCHING

If uses and gratifications assumes an active audience, time shifting technologies and video on demand (VOD) services specifically further empower viewers by allowing them an even greater sense of control. This sense of control is largely what separates binging from more traditional appointment viewing, and thus must be considered in the motivations inherent to binge watching. Researchers studying binge watching have begun the process of exploring user motivations for binge watching. Pittman and Sheehan, 13 for instance, found that users were likely to be motivated to binge watch for purposes of relaxation, engagement, and hedonism. Flayelle, Maurage, and Billieux 14 argued that TV viewers specifically binge watch for purposes of immersion, entertainment, and sociability. Steiner and Xu 15 found that viewers are motivated to binge watch for a number of reasons, including catching up, relaxation, sense of completion, cultural inclusion, and improved viewing experience. Halfmann and Reinecke16 characterize binge watching as an escapist action. Castro, Rigby, Cabral, and Nisi 17 discussed that, in addition to some of the motivations listed already, viewers also binged to learn. Among the gratifications described by these various studies, relaxation, social motives, and immersion or engagement seem to be recurrent. Thus, I will examine some of these key gratifications in detail, and explore why they so strongly motivate viewers to binge watch.

Relaxation

Relaxation has been discussed as a motivation for television watching since the earliest studies into television watching motivations. In a 1977 study on adolescents and television usage, relaxation was found to be the second most important motivation for television watching for older children. 18 Csikszent- mihalyi and Kubey19 describe relaxation to be “among the most characteristic functions of television watching” (p. 323). According to these authors, relaxation may serve a vital function, as relaxation is tied to feelings of cheerfulness and sociability. Thus, relaxation can be thought of as a restora- tive function of television watching. Television viewing can help individuals

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to recover from potentially harmful states, like stress. 20 Indeed, Granow, Reinecke, and Ziegele21 found that binge watching can serve as a recovery experience by increasing perceived autonomy. Participants who binge watched expressed greater feelings of autonomy—the feeling that they have free choice. In turn, those with higher autonomy reported feeling greater recovery experiences. Researchers consider relaxation as a television motive to be passive, or inattentive.22 That is, relaxation does not require careful attention to plot or characters. Rather, viewers who watch to relax simply do so to pass the time, or for habit’s sake. To this end, researchers have found that individuals who watch television—or indeed, binge watch television—gravitate toward certain types of shows. While high-attentiveness binges are reserved for hour- long serial dramas, low-attentiveness binges are relegated to shows that require less attention, such as short comedies or reality television. 23

Sociability

Traditional television viewing has long been conceptualized as social in nature. Researchers have described at length the ways in which family and friend units consume television together.24 Ducheneaut, Moore, Oehlberg, Thornton, and Nickell25 explain that television fosters two separate types of sociability: direct sociability, in which different viewers watch together, and indirect sociability, in which viewers watch separately but then discuss the events of the program together at a later time. The authors go on to explain that individuals integrate television programming into social processes, weaving conversation in with the program at times deemed appropriate. Indi- viduals tend to abide by socially constructed sets of rules while watching, such that they speak only at certain times and are silent at others. Thus, individuals maintain their social needs while also consuming the content on the screen. However, much of the literature into direct television sociability assumes that individuals are collocated. It is relatively easy to imagine situations in which this may occur in a traditional viewing context. Anecdotally, I certainly remember attending Game of Thrones viewing parties with friends each Sunday while the show was airing weekly on HBO. However, when binge watching, coviewing together in person becomes more complicated. Individ- uals are not forced to watch at certain times or on certain days. They are able to arrange their viewing practices around their preexisting schedules, rather than scheduling around the television program. Indeed, when the same friend group that arranged weekly Game of Thrones viewings tried to get together to watch Umbrella Academy—a Netflix original with an entire season dropped at once—the watch parties quickly ceased. It was far too easy for

84 Lexington Books Film, Television, and Media Studies Chapter Showcase 30 Chapter 4 each of us to watch individually, and our viewing progressed at different rates. However, sociability is still a key motivator for binge watching. Thus, it seems that sociability itself may differ in a binge watching setting. First, binge watching does not preclude the possibility of indirect sociability. As individuals binge watch specific programs, they are still able to have discussion with others, particularly on social media. In fact, Jenner 26 argues that the rise of social media alongside binge watching has been key in facilitating fan behaviors—engaging in the text alongside other fans—among those not traditionally considered to be fans. Additionally, social television has become a popular method of consuming television content. Here, social television—or second screening—refers to the practice of watching television concurrently with participating in online conversation. 27 Secondly, binge watching enables individuals to become part of cultural conversations surrounding popular shows. Prior to the rise of VOD services, missing even one episode of a program could mean missing out on social and cultural capital. However, when the shows that are popular among peer groups are easily accessible online, binge watching allows individuals to quickly catch up, thereby allowing these previously left-behind viewers to reinsert themselves into conversations. 28 Additionally, it must be noted that there do seem to be situations in which direct sociability is enhanced through binge watching. Research into romantic relationship maintenance has suggested that sharing media with a partner can strengthen relationship quality, particularly when romantic partners do not have a shared real-world network of friends.29 For example, Flayelle and colleagues30 found that binge watching was a significant activity for participants to engage in with romantic partners. In fact, the researchers found that individuals binge watching with significant others would put rules into place, designed to guard against a sense of “infidelity.” One participant in the study said, “That became a rule between us, we have no right to discover alone some new episode of TV series we used to watch together” while another said “I didn’t cheat, I didn’t watch, I waited for him to come back to watch the next episode” (p. 463). In essence, couples watching a specific show together reserved those shows only to watch with one another. While they found it acceptable to watch other shows separately, they used binge watching as a method to spend time together.

Escapism

Escapism, or escape from the self, has long been considered a major motivation for television viewing behavior, even predating much of the uses and gratifications framework literature. Katz and Foulkes 31 describe escapist media usage as a way to cope with the stressors inherent to life. As events and

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people in a person’s life cause them discomfort or stress, they may seek out media—such as television—to avoid these stressors, thus escaping that which is causing them distress. Escapism, then, is an avoidance orientation individuals use to cope with everyday life. According to Halfmann and Reinecke,32 escapist media usage happens when individuals make a pri- mary appraisal that their environment is, in some way, stressful. Then, they make a secondary appraisal that media usage can remedy, or at least distract from, those stressors. This avoidance style of coping can help individuals to reduce stress and anxiety, while also increasing both hope and courage,33 in contrast with earlier conceptualizations, which describe escapism as potentially dysfunctional.34 While television viewing has long been seen as potentially escapist in nature, binge watching may be uniquely situated to be motivated by escapism. To be sure, numerous studies into uses and gratifications have identified escapism as a key gratification sought by binge watching. For instance, Cas- tro, Rigby, Cabral, and Nisi35 conducted a mixed-methods study in which a browser extension collected information about actual binge watching behavior. The extension asked individuals to select motivations for viewing as well as the intended length of their sessions before tracking their actual behavior. The results indicated that escapism was the selected motivation for binge watching third most often, after only relaxation and boredom relief, typically done at night before bed. Why then, are individuals motivated to binge watch for purposes of escapism? Halfmann and Reinecke36 explain that individuals whose energy reserves are depleted may be more likely to binge partially due to the relatively un- demanding nature of the activity. First, binge watching is an activity that, once begun, is easily continued. When approaching the end of an episode, the next episode is immediately queued to play, meaning that it actually takes more effort to stop binging, or to change to a new episode, than it is to continue.37 Additionally, continually watching a show featuring similar characters, plots, and locations is less cognitively demanding than continually switching activities or even programs. 38 However, I would argue that this is only the case when programs are not especially cognitively demanding. A program featuring numerous complex storylines, morally complex characters, or cognitively demanding plots may, in some circumstances, be more cognitively demanding to binge, and thus less attractive for purposes of escapism.

Immersion and Engagement

One major motivation for watching television programming is the desire to become transported into “an engrossing different world” (p. 15).39 In some ways, the idea of immersion is highly related to escapism. It seems obvious

86 Lexington Books Film, Television, and Media Studies Chapter Showcase 32 Chapter 4 that escaping the troubles and stresses of everyday life by necessity implies an escape to somewhere. Indeed, some researchers seem to define escapism and immersion as two sides of the same conceptual coin. 40 However, they can be distinguished in that escapism, as an avoidance motivation, only sup- poses an experience different from the real world. Immersion, also known as transportation or engagement, requires a story. Thus, the gratification described as immersion is truly the desire to become deeply involved with a narrative. Binge watching in particular offers more immediate gratification for those who wish to become deeply involved in stories. While binge watching, individuals are not—in most cases—forced to interrupt their watching for advertisements. They do not need to wait for a program to re-air. They are not made to wait a week between scheduled programming. They are able to become immersed in a specific narrative world for as long as there are episodes. According to Steiner and Xu,41 “If each season of a show is written as a unified arc, then binge-watching allows viewers to experience that arc without interruption” (p. 11). Interestingly, research suggests that the need for immersion or engagement does not only predict binge watching, but also binge watching of specific content. In particular, those viewers desiring narrative transportation are more likely to watch shows that are highly involving. Pittman and Steiner 42 position different television programs on a spectrum of the amount of attentiveness required. They discovered that the participants in the study indicated that transportation was more important in shows that required more attentiveness than it was for those shows requiring a lower level of attentiveness. These shows are those that viewers must devote cognitive resources to; they are not able to simply put the shows up in the background while attending to other things. It is likely that these types of shows are relatively complex or have compelling plots. It seems that, while escapism and immersion are both potential motivat- ing factors for binge watching, they may motivate individuals to binge watch different content. Those motivated by escapism gratifications are likely depleted, and therefore less likely to desire the careful attentiveness required from highly serialized dramas. In contrast, those motivated by immersion are likely to have greater capacity to utilize cognitive resources. Thus, they are more able to attend to complex dramatic programming. Of course, the gratifications mentioned here have all applied both to binge watching and traditional television viewing, albeit differently for each. How- ever, there are additional motivations that appear to be unique to binge watching—namely, the need for completion.

Lexington Books Film, Television, and Media Studies Chapter Showcase 87 Audience Motivations for Binge Watching Behavior 33 Need for Completion

The drive to watch all available episodes of a program is called need for completion. According to Pittman and Steiner, 43 “the desire to complete a show reflects a viewer’s presumption of control gained from being able to find out what happens next through the convenience of technology” (p. 2). That is, viewers experiencing a need to complete seem to be gratifying not only this specific need, but also the desire for control while binge watching. As a concept, need for completion is relatively new, which seems appropriate given the novelty of binge watching as a whole. The sense of completion obtained after fully progressing through a story results in a sense of accomplishment, according to Perks.44 Thus, completing the story as quickly as possible—perhaps through binge watching—is the fastest way to achieve that sense of accomplishment. Castro and colleagues 45 describe this sense of completion as emergent from new media technologies which allow for the viewer to schedule their watching whenever, wherever, and for however long they choose. Indeed, Steiner and Xu46 have described the need for completion motivation as predictive of the length of a binge. Those who express a need for completion tend to binge for longer than those who do not have such a need. However, because the binges resultant from this motivation may be very long, they may not have positive impacts. In the same article, Steiner and Xu47 also mention that these binges are most often associated with negative feelings, possibly because the need for completion is almost compulsive in nature. So strong a driver it is that it leads individuals to continue watching past the point they know they should stop. 48 This com- pulsion is seemingly fed by VOD algorithms, which automatically start the next episode of a program once the current episode ends, making stopping harder for viewers.49 It is important to note that the gratifications discussed here are ultimately characteristics of the viewer who is electing to binge watch. These motivations do not tell us anything about the shows that are binged themselves. Why are some shows more likely to be binged than others? Are there specific features within the show or external to the show that increase the likelihood that a show will be binged?

NOTES

1. Elihu Katz, Jay G. Blumler, and Michael Gurevitch, “Uses and Gratifications Research,” Public Opinion Quarterly, 1974, 509–523. 2. Katz, Blumler, and Gurevitch. 3. Katz, Blumler, and Gurevitch. 4. Alan M. Rubin, “Uses-and-Gratifications Perspectives on Media Effects,” in Media Effects: Advances in Theory and Research, 3rd ed. (New York: Routledge, 2009), 165–84.

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5. Philip Palmgreen and J. D. Rayburn II, “Gratifications Sought and Media Exposure: An Expectancy Value Model,” Communication Research 9, no. 4 (October 1, 1982): 561–80, https://doi.org/10.1177/009365082009004004. 6. Martin Fishbein and Icek Ajzen, Belief, Attitude, Intention, and Behavior: An Introduc- tion to Theory and Research (Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley, 1975). 7. Alan M. Rubin, “Television Uses and Gratifications: The Interactions of Viewing Pat- terns and Motivations,” Journal of Broadcasting 27, no. 1 (January 1983): 37–51, https:// doi.org/10.1080/08838158309386471. 8. Barbara Lee and Robert Lee, “How and Why People Watch TV: Implications for the Future of Interactive Television,” Journal of Advertising Research 35, no. 6 (1995): 9–18. 9. Alan M. Rubin and Elizabeth M. Perse, “Audience Activity and Television News Grat- ifications,” Communication Research 14, no. 1 (1987): 58–84, https://doi.org/10.1177/ 009365087014001004. 10. ZiZi Papacharissi and Andrew L. S. Mendelson, “An Exploratory Study of Reality Appeal: Uses and Gratifications of Reality TV Shows,” Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media 51, no. 2 (2007): 355–70, https://doi.org/10.1080/08838150701307152. 11. Alan M. Rubin and Elizabeth M. Perse, “Audience Activity and Soap Opera Involve- ment: A Uses and Effects Investigation,” Human Communication Research 14, no. 2 (Decem- ber 1987): 246–68, https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-2958.1987.tb00129.x. 12. Robin L. Nabi et al., “Emotional and Cognitive Predictors of the Enjoyment of Reality-Based and Fictional Television Programming: An Elaboration of the Uses and Gratifications Perspective,” Media Psychology 8, no. 4 (2006): 421–47, https://doi.org/10. 1207/s1532785xmep0804_5. 13. Pittman and Sheehan, “Sprinting a Media Marathon.” 14. Maeva Flayelle, Pierre Maurage, and Joel Billieux, “Toward a Qualitative Understand- ing of Binge-Watching Behaviors: A Focus Group Approach,” Journal of Behavioral Addic- tions 6, no. 4 (2017): 457–71, https://doi.org/10.1556/2006.6.2017.060. 15. Emil Steiner and Kun Xu, “Binge-Watching Motivates Change: Uses and Gratifications of Streaming Video Viewers Challenge Traditional TV Research,” Convergence: The Interna- tional Journal of Research into New Media Technologies, 2018, https://doi.org/10.1177/ 1354856517750365. 16. Annabell Halfmann and Leonard Reinecke, “Binge-Watching as Case of Escapist Enter- tainment Use,” in The Oxford Handbook of Entertainment Theory, ed. Peter Vorderer and Christoph Klimmt (Oxford University Press, forthcoming). 17. Deborah Castro et al., “The Binge-Watcher’s Journey: Investigating Motivations, Contexts, and Affective States Surrounding Netflix Viewing,” Convergence: The Interna- tional Journal of Research into New Media Technologies, 2019, 1–18, https://doi.org/ 1354856519890856. 18. Alan M. Rubin, “Television Usage, Attitudes and Viewing Behaviors of Children and Adolescents,” Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media 21, no. 3 (1977): 355–69, https:// doi.org/10.1080/08838157709363844. 19. Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi and Robert Kubey, “Television and the Rest of Life: A Sys- tematic Comparison of Subjective Experience,” Public Opinion Quarterly 45, no. 3 (1981): 317–28, https://doi.org/10.1086/268667. 20. Diana Rieger et al., “Media Entertainment and Well-Being-Linking Hedonic and Eudai- monic Entertainment Experience to Media-Induced Recovery and Vitality: Media Entertain- ment and Well-Being,” Journal of Communication 64, no. 3 (June 2014): 456–78, https:// doi.org/10.1111/jcom.12097. 21. Viola C. Granow, Leonard Reineck, and Marc Ziegele, “Binge-Watching and Psycho- logical Well-Being: Media Use between Lack of Control and Perceived Autonomy,” Communi- cation Research Reports 35, no. 5 (2018): 392–401, https://doi.org/10.1080/08824096.2018. 1525347. 22. Riva Tukachinsky and Keren Eyal, “The Psychology of Marathon Television Viewing: Antecedents and Viewer Involvement,” Mass Communication and Society 21, no. 3 (2018): 275–95, https://doi.org/10.1080/15205436.2017.1422765.

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23. Steiner and Xu, “Binge-Watching Motivates Change: Uses and Gratifications of Stream- ing Video Viewers Challenge Traditional TV Research.” 24. James Lull, “Family Communication Patterns and the Social Uses of Television,” Com- munication Research 7, no. 3 (1980): 319–33, https://doi.org/10.1177/009365028000700303. 25. Nicolas Ducheneaut et al., “Social TV: Designing for Distributed, Sociable Television Viewing,” International Journal of Human–Computer Interaction 24, no. 2 (2008): 136–54, https://doi.org/10.1080/10447310701821426. FILM, TELEVISION, AND MEDIA STUDIES 26. Jenner, “Binge-Watching.” 27. Sidneyeve Matrix, “The Netflix Effect: Teens, Binge Watching, and On-Demand Digital Chapter Showcase Media Trends,” Jeunesse: Young People, Texts, Cultures 6, no. 1 (2014): 119–38, https:// doi.org/10.1353/jeu.2014.0002. 28. Matrix. 29. Sarah Gomillion et al., “Let’s Stay Home and Watch TV: The Benefits of Shared Media Use for Close Relationships,” Journal of Social and Personal Relationships 34, no. 6 (2017): 855–74, https://doi.org/10.1177/0265407516660388. 30. Flayelle, Maurage, and Billieux, “Toward a Qualitative Understanding of Binge- Watching Behaviors: A Focus Group Approach.” 31. Elihu Katz and David Foulkes, “On the Use of the Mass Media as ‘Escape’: Clarifica- tion of a Concept,” Public Opinion Quarterly 26, no. 3 (1962): 377, https://doi.org/10.1086/ 267111. 32. Halfmann and Reinecke, “Binge-Watching as Case of Escapist Entertainment Use.” 33. Susan Roth and Lawrence J. Cohen, “Approach, Avoidance, and Coping with Stress,” American Psychologist 41, no. 7 (1986): 813, https://doi.org/10.1037/0003-066X.41.7.813. 34. Katz and Foulkes, “On the Use of the Mass Media as ‘Escape.’” 35. Castro et al., “The Binge-Watcher’s Journey: Investigating Motivations, Contexts, and Affective States Surrounding Netflix Viewing.” 36. Halfmann and Reinecke, “Binge-Watching as Case of Escapist Entertainment Use.” 37. Pittman and Sheehan, “Sprinting a Media Marathon.” 38. Halfmann and Reinecke, “Binge-Watching as Case of Escapist Entertainment Use.” 39. Lee and Lee, “How and Why People Watch TV: Implications for the Future of Interac- tive Television.” 40. See Scott Jones, James Cronin, and Maria G. Piacentini, “Mapping the Extended Fron- tiers of Escapism: Binge-Watching and Hyperdiegetic Exploration,” Journal of Marketing Management 34, no. 5–6 (March 24, 2018): 497–508, whttps://doi.org/10.1080/0267257X. 2018.1477818. 41. Steiner and Xu, “Binge-Watching Motivates Change: Uses and Gratifications of Stream- ing Video Viewers Challenge Traditional TV Research.” 42. Matthew Pittman and Emil Steiner, “Transportation or Narrative Completion? Atten- tiveness during Binge-Watching Moderates Regret,” Social Sciences 8, no. 99 (2019): 1–14, https://doi.org/10.3390/socsci8030099. 43. Pittman and Steiner. 44. Lisa Glebatis Perks, “Media Marathoning and Health Coping,” Communication Studies 70, no. 1 (January 2019): 19–35, https://doi.org/10.1080/10510974.2018.1519837. 45. Castro et al., “The Binge-Watcher’s Journey: Investigating Motivations, Contexts, and Affective States Surrounding Netflix Viewing.” 46. Steiner and Xu, “Binge-Watching Motivates Change: Uses and Gratifications of Stream- ing Video Viewers Challenge Traditional TV Research.” 47. Steiner and Xu. 48. Steiner and Xu. 49. Steiner and Xu; Pittman and Sheehan, “Sprinting a Media Marathon.”

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FILM, TELEVISION, AND MEDIA STUDIES Chapter Showcase