the iafor journal of media communication & film Volume 6 – Issue 1 – Summer 2019 Editor: Celia Lam ISSN: 2187-0667 iafor The IAFOR Journal of Media Communication & Film Volume 6 – Issue I IAFOR Publications The International Academic Forum IAFOR Journal of Media, Communication & Film Editor Celia Lam, University of Nottingham Ningbo, China Associate Editor Timothy Pollock, Osaka Kyoiku University, Japan Assistant Editor James Rowlins, Singapore University of Technology and Design, Singapore Published by The International Academic Forum (IAFOR), Japan IAFOR Publications, Sakae 1-16-26-201, Naka-ward, Aichi, Japan 460-0008 Executive Editor: Joseph Haldane Managing Editor: Elena Mishieva Publications Manager: Nick Potts IAFOR Journal of Media, Communication & Film Volume 6 – Issue 1 – Summer 2019 Published August 1, 2019 IAFOR Publications © Copyright 2019 ISSN: 2187-0667 ijmcf.iafor.org IAFOR Journal of Media, Communication & Film Volume 6 – Issue 1 – Summer 2019 Edited by Celia Lam Table of Contents Notes on Contributors 1 Editor’s Introduction 3 Celia Lam Digital War of South Korean Netizens in New York City: From Tweets to 5 a Billboard Advertisement, and an Alt-Right Online Community Hojeong Lee The Internet and Activists’ Digital Media Practices: 23 A case of the Indigenous People of Biafra Movement in Nigeria Emmanuel S. Nwofe Falling for the Amphibian Man: Fantasy, Otherness, and Auteurism in 51 del Toro’s The Shape of Water Alberta Natasia Adji Black Struggle Film Production: Meta-Synthesis of 65 Black Struggle Film Production and Critique Since the Millennium Robert Cummings Memory Politics and Popular Culture – 85 The Example of the United Red Army in the Manga Red (2006–2018) Fabien Carpentras IAFOR Journal of Media, Communication & Film Volume 6 – Issue 1 – Summer 2019 Notes on Contributors Alberta Natasia Adji is currently a doctoral creative writing student at Edith Cowan University, Australia. Her novel and exegesis are concerned with complex ethnic relations in Indonesia, therapeutic and reflective writing. Many of her fiction and scholarly works are concerned with representations of being “the other”. She has published two novels, Youth Adagio (2013) and Dante: The Faery and the Wizard (2014), some short stories in Jawa Pos, an Indonesian national daily newspaper based in Surabaya, and refereed articles in various journals including Atavisme, Paradigma, JAS (Journal of ASEAN Studies), and others. She holds a bachelor’s degree in English literature and a master’s degree in cultural studies from Universitas Airlangga, Surabaya, Indonesia. Her interests are English literature, cultural studies, film studies, Chinese Indonesian studies, and creative writing studies. Dr Fabien Carpentras is currently Associate Professor at Yokohama National University, Japan. His interest lies primarily in film theory and Japanese modern history, specifically the period of 1968 and the influence it had (and is still having) on Japanese politics and society. He is also a regular contributor to the film magazine Eiga Geijutsu. Robert T. Cummings is a research scientist for the computer science and interdisciplinary studies departments at Morehouse College, USA. He has earned a Bachelor of Science in Psychology from Morehouse College. Cummings has published ten publications in Black identity development and supplemental tool development to assist Black students through academia. Notably, he has published and presented on STEM Hip-hop pedagogy and using YouTube videos and social media influencers as advisors for underrepresented minorities. He has an interest in human factors and user experience with ethnic-conscious and culturally relevant entertainment and leisure consumer products. Dr Hojeong Lee is an Instructor in the Temple University Klein College of Media and Communication, USA, and brings her expertise on digital diaspora and social movements. Her doctoral dissertation, “Digital Media and the Korean Diaspora: A Journey of Identity Construction”, examines how the development of digital media influences diasporic members’ social interaction and how this change helps them reconstruct their identities within transnational contexts. Her other research has investigated interplay among digital culture, social movement, and identity of digital media users. She also examines online hate communities and their online discourse construction process. She teaches various courses, including global media, media criticism, and cultural differences in Temple University, USA. Emmanuel Sunday Nwofe is a doctoral student at the University of Bradford, UK. His main research interest is in areas of political communication, film studies, digital culture and journalism. He joined the academe in 2012 at the Ebonyi State University Nigeria, where he tutored undergraduate modules in mass communication before embarking on a study leave to the UK. He obtained a Master’s Degree in Film Studies at the University of Bradford in 2012, a Master’s Degree in Mass Communication at University of Nigeria Nsukka in 2010, and a Bachelor Degree in Mass Communication at Ebonyi State University in 2005. Mr Nwofe has submitted his PhD thesis and is awaiting viva voce. His doctoral thesis, which is titled New Media and Social Movement, examined how the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB) movement has used the internet to mobilise for an independent Biafran state. He has previously examined the sentiments of pro-Biafran campaigners on Twitter after the UK voted to leave the European Union. He is currently working on the “Dialectic between news values and agenda-setting role of the media in the era of political polarisation”. 1 IAFOR Journal of Media, Communication & Film Volume 6 – Issue 1 – Summer 2019 2 IAFOR Journal of Media, Communication & Film Volume 6 – Issue 1 – Summer 2019 Editor’s Introduction The IAFOR Journal of Media, Communication and Film (JMCF) is associated with IAFOR’s MediAsia, FilmAsia and EuroMedia annual conferences. JMCF is committed to publishing peer-reviewed scholarship that explores the relationship between society, film and media – including new and digital media, as well as to giving a voice to scholars whose work explores hitherto unexamined aspects of contemporary media and visual culture. Last year, The Asian Conference on Media, Communication & Film (MediAsia2018), featured the conference theme of “Fearful Futures” that encouraged scholars to reflect upon the role of arts, humanities, media and cultural studies in the contemporary global context of information/disinformation exchange, national and international tensions and polarized politics. This sixth volume of the IAFOR Journal of Media, Communication and Film features contributions from multiple disciplines and nations from around the globe, and extends the conference theme with a specific focus on social movements. The articles in this issue present dialogues on the ways in which media in its various formats (from billboards to manga, films to online) facilitate the formation, expression and representations of social movements. The issue starts its exploration with two articles discussing social movements in action. Hojeong Lee’s article Digital war of South Korean netizens in New York City: From Tweets to a Billboard Advertisement, and an Alt-Right Online Community explores the appropriation of both physical and online spaces by the alt-right in South Korean politics. Focusing on an incident in which advertising was placed in Times Square, Lee considers how meme culture enabled the transmission and transformation of meaning from an online community to a wider transnational offline context. In The Internet and Activists’ Digital Media Practices: A Case of the Indigenous People of Biafra Movement in Nigeria, Emmanual S Nwofe argues for the vital and central role of digital media, and specifically internet use on the consolidation of the notion of Biafra independence in the Nigerian public sphere. The next three articles examine the relationship between social movements and media texts from different perspectives. Alberta Natasia Adji’s examination of Guillermo del Toro’s 2017 film The Shape of Water in Falling for the Amphibian Man: Fantasy, Otherness, and Auteurism in del Toro’s “The Shape of Water” considers the stylistic features of the film and filmmaker to support a reading of the film as protest against Trump-era immigration and social policies. Next, Robert Cumming’s article Black Struggle Film Production: Meta-Synthesis of Black Struggle Film Production and Critique Since the Millennium explores a genre of film that highlight experiences of challenge for African Americans: Black Struggle Films. Adopting a meta-synthesis and thematic analysis approach, Cummings highlights the attributes of Black Struggle Films that distinguishes them from other films featuring African American cast and/or characters, with the aim of enabling producers to better support representative and influential films about the Black experience. 3 IAFOR Journal of Media, Communication & Film Volume 6 – Issue 1 – Summer 2019 Finally, Fabien Carpentras examines the manga Red (2006–2018) in his article Memory Politics and Popular Culture – The Example of the United Read Army in the Manga “Red”. Through a visual analysis of the manga and an exploration of the author’s political stance, Carpentras argues that popular memory of the Japanese terrorist group United Red Army is reshaped through the fictionalisation of real life individuals, as well as the presentation of events through the perspective of “ordinary”